The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

July 1995

From the Quill of Bill....

More GENSCRNX

by Bill Anderson

Here’s another trick that uses GENSCRNX. The example below is specific to the Macintosh environment (Ed Leafe, Steven Black, Bruce Onder, does this trick work for you?), though the same idea will work under Windows.

In one of my applications I built a generic Find screen. These screen(s) would have one or two data entry fields, four pushbuttons and a list box. The data entry field(s) were used as a filter — enter ing “T” in the data entry field would just display those results beginning with ‘T, etc. The four pushbuttons are designated Find, New, Select and Close. The Find button places the records which match the filter condition into the list box. New represents a new record. Select is used to select a record from the list box (double clicking on an entry in the list béx works as well), and the Close pushbutton1is the bailout mechanism. So far, so good.

When first entering this screen only the data entry field(s), Find and Close pushbutton are enabled. When Find button is pushed, the list box is enabled (and filled) as well as the New and Select buttons. This forces the user to browse the records before selecting the New pushbutton. The Find button is left enabled in case the user wishes to enter a new filter condition. Again, it’s pretty straightforward.

Now the catch. The users wanted the ability to use the Enter key to select the Find key before list box was filled and have the Enter key work on the Select pushbutton after the list box was filled ** with the corresponding visual cues lOW, the Find key should have the thick default border before the list box was filled with the Select key having the thick default border after the list box is filled -- a movable visual default cue.

Here’s how I solved it:

First, the issues needed to make the Enter key work is tangential to this discussion. Second, I only use Chicago, 12 Normal for my pushbutton font and I think I hardcoded the SYSMETRIC values for this font. To make it work with different fonts would

require functions for these hardcoded values. Also this would have to be modified for the Windows platform because the pushbutton curvature is differ ent.

The Find and Select buttons should not be the default pushbuttons in the Screen Builder -- neither of them have the thick border. In the comment button of the Find button I placed the following:

The Select button has the same function in the comment snippet but it’s called FUNCTION

What does this function do? Depending on the setting of the logical variable (Enable), a black border is painted around the pushbutton or a border the same color as the screen is painted around the pushbutton. This function calls a UDF called SKIRT, listed below. SKIRT is a common UDF.

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