I have a programmatically created trackbar control (TRACKBAR_CLASS). I would like to be notified of scrolling changes using TRBN_THUMBPOSCHANGING. However, I am currently not receiving that notification. I have monitored all the WM_NOTIFY messages sent by the control, and I have only seen the other two: NM_CUSTOMDRAW (-12) and NM_RELEASEDCAPTURE (-16).
The pertinent excerpts of the code (which I inherited) are these:
// this code creates the window
HWND hwndControl = CreateWindowEx(
0,
TRACKBAR_CLASS,
NULL,
TBS_AUTOTICKS | TBS_TOP | TBS_HORZ | TBS_RIGHT | WS_CHILD | WS_OVERLAPPED | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP,
0,
0,
width,
height,
parentWindow,
dlgID,
hInstance,
NULL);
//and the WM_NOTIFY routine:
bool HandleWMNotify(WPARAM wparam, LPARAM lparam)
{
if (! controlIsMyTrackBar) return false; // abbreviated pseudocode
switch(((LPNMHDR) lparam)->code)
{
case NM_CUSTOMDRAW:
break; //This case hits whenever the control draws itself.
case NM_RELEASEDCAPTURE:
break; //This case hits whenever I release the mouse on the control.
case TRBN_THUMBPOSCHANGING:
break; //This case never hits. :-(
default:
break; //This case never hits either (which is expected behavior).
}
The documentation for the Trackbar offers TRBN_THUMBPOSCHANGING as an option for monitoring trackbar changes. But weirdly, this overview page does not mention any of the WM_NOTIFY events in its Trackbar Notification Messages section.
I have found a number of other questions similar to this one, but the answers basically just point back to one of these two documentation pages that seem not exactly to be in agreement with each other.
If I have to, I will use WM_HSCROLL, but TRBN_THUMBPOSCHANGING would be preferable.
The TRBN_THUMBPOSCHANGING notification is sent before the thumb control moves; it seems intended to allow for snapping to custom positions, and presumably lets you block and/or modify the position the thumb moves to.
The documentation on this notification message is not especially clear, but the note about the return value does imply that it is sent before the control changes value:
Return TRUE to prevent the thumb from moving to the specified position.
Obviously this would not make sense if it was sent after the control had already moved.
Another clue is in the name of the message; if you look at the listview control, for example, it has LVN_ITEMCHANGING and LVN_ITEMCHANGED notification messages. the "changing" message is sent before the change occurs, and the "changed" message is sent afterwards. Of course the trackbar seems to have no such "changed" message - that function being, presumably, filled by WM_HSCROLL and WM_VSCROLL.
Once we know that the message is sent before the thumb moves, the name of the TBS_NOTIFYBEFOREMOVE style makes sense - and indeed, this style needs to be set in order to receive these notifications.
The line in the remarks section of the documentation is quite confusing:
Send this notification to clients that do not listen for WM_HSCROLL or WM_VSCROLL messages
To me this reads as an internal comment that wasn't intended for public documentation.
Related
I can disable window movement by doing this in the message loop:
case WM_MOVING:
GetWindowRect(hWnd, (RECT*)lParam);
break;
This, however does not work if you remove the call to GetWindowRect(). Why ?
This looks like the message loop is only modifying the message in passing (WM_MOVING.lParam points to the destination RECT of the movement). The message still gets processed (by the system ?). Just doing a break; does not throw away the message, the window is movable.
The message is processed no matter what (even if you don't call DefWindowProc() on it), you can just set its lParam so that the window goes back to its initial position. Is there no way to discard the message completely ? And who's doing the processing ? (obviously, the system is, is there a ubiquitous DefWindowProc() up there in the sky - that you cannot turn off- ?)
What is exactly going on ?
WM_MOVING is one of calbacks done inside callig SetWindowPos. Window is moved after returnig from callback, and after finally moving window next is send WM_MOVE. There are also WM_NCCALCSIZE, WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING, WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGE, WM_GETMINMAXINFO, WM_SIZING, WM_SIZE.
Some messages when routed to DefWindowProc do real work (for example WM_NCPAINT, WM_ERASEBKGND), some are used for gathering information for further processing (WM_NCHITTEST, WM_GETMINMAXINFO), some are used for notifying you about changes (WM_MOVING, WM_MOVE, WM_SETTINGCHANGE) or actions (WM_COMMAND, WM_LBUTTONDOWN). It is recommended that when you don't process message, you should route it through DefWindowProc. If you fail to do this for some messages that wouldn't have any effect, but for others you will miss essential functionality.
For modifying interactive moving or sizing of a window, WM_NCHITTEST is a good choice. You can disable default action activated by part of window, or implement selected action on any part of the window.
case WM_NCHITTEST:
{
LRESULT r = DefWindowProc( hwnd, msg, wparam, lparam );
if ( r == HTCAPTION )
r = HTNOWHERE;
return r;
}
Or try bellow code and see what happens when left or top border is dragged.
case WM_NCHITTEST:
{
LRESULT r = DefWindowProc( hwnd, msg, wparam, lparam );
if ( r == HTLEFT )
r = HTTOP;
else if ( r == HTTOP )
r = HTLEFT;
return r;
}
The "Window Procedures" doc says:
For example, the system defines a window procedure for the combo box
class (COMBOBOX); all combo boxes then use that window procedure
I imagine that procedure belongs with the system (the appropriate system DLL, comctl32.dll I guess, unless you subclass it), but it executes in the app thread of course (after it loads that DLL). What that excerpt, and the apparent behavior suggest is the following:
If the style you select requires a title bar, a title bar window (a
system facility) is instantiated for your app, with its own
windowProc, let's say "sysTtlBarProc".
When you try to move this window,
messages (system-created, starting from the input driver) are sent to
both your app's windowProc() and to sysTtlBarProc()
sysTtlBarProc() waits on your windowProc() (which can call DefWindowProc() or not) to return before acting on the message
This would explain the behavior: this protocol gives your windowProc() a chance to act (on its own) and/or modify the message, thus potentially modifying sysTtlBarProc's behavior. This is just a general concept, some messages I guess are purely informative (you can't change sysTtlBarProc's behavior for these), you can only monitor what's happening, and do something of your own next to what sysTtlBarProc() does.
This can easily be demonstrated by doing this :
case WM_SIZING:
case WM_MOVING:
Sleep(1000);
break;
You can then try and move/resize the window and watch the new "sluggish" behavior. Whoever is processing those two WM_SIZING/MOVING messages (you're not calling DefWinProc(), and you're not doing anything with the messages) is definitely delaying his work by a second now.
I've got an application with a main window which has a bunch of controls, including the spacebar, which is handled by a simple method called onSpacebar(). On top of that main window, I've got a persistent modeless dialog.
I need the spacebar to behave the exact same way, regardless of whether the dialog has focus, or the main window has focus.
This dialog is backed by a DialogProc which looks something like this:
BOOL CALLBACK DialogProc(HWND hDlg, UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam)
{
switch(uMsg)
{
case WM_NOTIFY:
std::cout<< "WM_NOTIFY" <<std::endl;
switch(LOWORD(wParam))
{
// which component caused the message?
case COMP_TREE:
if(((LPNMHDR)lParam)->code == NM_DBLCLK){
onDoubleclk()
}
//...
break;
// other components...
}
break;
case WM_CLOSE:
// the dialog can only be closed when the whole app is closed
//EndDialog(hDlg, IDCANCEL);
return TRUE;
case WM_DESTROY:
PostQuitMessage(0);
return TRUE;
}
return FALSE;
}
From what I gather, I should call my onSpacebar() method from within the DialogProc, similarily how I handle the double click. I can see that WM_NOTIFY is received by the dialog when the spacebar is pressed (the phrase WM_NOTIFY is printed to cout), but I can't seem to differentiate the spacebar notification from the other numerous notifications the dialog receives.
Please, tell me how to recognize that the particular WM_NOTIFY was in response to a spacebar keypress.
A WM_NOTIFY message is not the standard way that a window processes key press events. When a key is pressed, your window should be receiving WM_KEYDOWN, WM_KEYUP, and possibly WM_CHAR messages. WM_NOTIFY serves an entirely different purpose altogether: passing on a message from a common control to its parent window.
So the fact that you're receiving a WM_NOTIFY message in response to a key press is a fairly unusual thing, explainable when you understand how focus works (which is key to solving your ultimate question).
In Windows, only one window can be focused at a time, and the currently focused window is the one that receives all keyboard input. Thus, if a dialog box has the focus, it will receive key press notifications. If a child control on that dialog box has the focus, it (not its parent dialog) will receive key press notifications. And there is a focusable child control on a dialog box, it will always receive the focus in preference to its parent dialog, therefore it will also always receive key press notifications.
So the likely explanation for your curious WM_NOTIFY messages is that one of the common controls on your dialog has the focus, it is receiving the space key press event, and after processing it, passing on a notification to its parent window (your dialog) in the form of a WM_NOTIFY message. As you might imagine, this is not a reliable method of detecting that the space bar has been pressed.
Instead, you need to figure out some way of trapping key press notifications before they get sent to the focused control. To do that, you'll need to modify your application's message loop to trap WM_KEYDOWN or WM_KEYUP messages before calling either DispatchMessage or IsDialogMessage.
If the key event corresponds to the space bar, you will call your onSpacebar function and indicate that the message was handled, preventing it from being passed on and processed by another window.
If the key event does not correspond to the space bar, then you will need to handle the message as you usually would, ensuring that it does get passed on and processed by the other window.
Since this approach filters out space key presses at a global level, it solves both the problems of child controls on a dialog stealing the key press and the other modeless dialog. However, you do need to be careful because it's very easy to screw things up so that the user can't navigate your dialog using the keyboard at all.
More fundamentally, I think your idea to handle presses of the space bar is fundamentally flawed. The logic of certain common controls basically requires that they process presses of the space bar. For example, consider a textbox: if you filter out all presses of the space bar at a global level, the user will never be able to type a space in a textbox. If you insist on handling the space bar, you will need to check the focused control in your global handler, and if it's a textbox (or other common control that you wish to receive spaces), pass it on; otherwise, handle it yourself.
Honestly, what I'd do instead is choose a more unique key combination (like, I don't know, Ctrl+Space) and set that up as an accelerator. Presumably, your global message loop is already processing accelerator keys by calling the TranslateAccelerator function, so that would take care of all the dirty work for you. No code is even required—you'd do everything simply by editing the accelerators resource file in your project. The MSDN documentation on keyboard accelerators is here, but you'll probably have an easier time consulting your favorite book on Visual C++.
I'm trying to track focus changes between several TrackBars (aka sliders, all within the same window) using WTL.
So far I've tried a
MESSAGE_HANDLER(WM_SETFOCUS, func)
as well as one
COMMAND_HANDLER(IDC_SLIDERn, WM_SETFOCUS, func)
for each slider without success.
The about trackbar controls page on msdn says: "WM_SETFOCUS Repaints the trackbar window." ..
edit:
I now have derived the sliders from my own class where I handle WM_SETFOCUS with MESSAGE_HANDLER and notify the parent window by posting the message to it with m_hWnd as lParam so I can check in the parent which slider gained focus.
This works, but is there a more elegant way to do this?
WM_SETFOCUS is sent to the specific window that gets focus, not to the parent, as you've discovered.
However, there's an alternate tecnique that you can use to avoid subclassing; most controls (specifically the 'common controls', which includes sliders) will send a WM_NOTIFY to their parent when certain events happen, allowing the parent to handle these events for a collection of children.
In your case, try listening for WM_NOTIFY message at the parent window, specifically checking for the case where the notification ID is NM_SETFOCUS - from MSDN:
Notifies a control's parent window that the control has received the input focus. This notification code is sent in the form of a WM_NOTIFY message.
...which sounds like what you are looking for. Apparently ATL supports these in the message map using NOTIFY_HANDLER, something like:
NOTIFY_HANDLER(IDC_SLIDERn, NM_SETFOCUS, func)
Note that this works because the Win32 Common Controls support this sort of notification forwarding; if you were to use some other custom control instead, you may not get these notifications and would have to resort to subclassing. But for the common controls, this is the simplest way of doing it.
You don't need to derive your class, subclassing with CContainedWindowT is just fine.
BEGIN_MSG_MAP_EX(CDialog)
// ...
ALT_MSG_MAP(IDC_TRACKBAR)
MSG_WM_SETFOCUS(OnControlSetFocus)
MSG_WM_KILLFOCUS(OnControlKillFocus)
END_MSG_MAP()
// ...
CContainedWindowT<CTrackBarCtrl> m_TrackBar;
// ...
CDialog() :
m_TitleListView(this, IDC_TRACKBAR)
// ...
LRESULT OnInitDialog(HWND, LPARAM)
{
// ...
ATLVERIFY(m_TrackBar.SubclassWindow(GetDlgItem(IDC_TRACKBAR)));
// ...
// ...
LRESULT OnControlSetFocus(...) { }
LRESULT OnControlKillFocus(...) { }
I know that WM_PAINT tells a window that it needs to repaint itself entirely, but apparently that's not the message that gets sent when it's been covered partially and then the window that was in front of it is no longer in the way and it needs to repaint the dirty portion. Does anyone know what message is sent in this case?
EDIT: Found the problem:
The issue involved a Delphi control I wrote to embed a SDL rendering surface on a Delphi form. SDL has an API to build its renderer on another window's HWND, and it marks it as a "foreign window".
SDL usually handles WM_PAINT internally, so I ended up having to add some code to SDL's WindowProc to forward the message on to the external WindowProc if it's a foreign window. That was working sometimes, but it turns out there was a glitch that was stripping the foreign window flag from the window's data structure, so it was swallowing the message instead of passing it on to my app. Once I fixed that, I started getting the WM_PAINT messages all the time.
Why do you say it's apparently not? WM_PAINT should be called for partial redraws (the updated rect is returned by BeginPaint or GetUpdateRect). If it doesn't appear to be getting called, there may be a bug elsewhere in your app that's preventing it. What are you seeing that leads you to believe that it's not working?
WM_PAINT is sent to indicate that some portion (including the entirity) of the window needs to be repainted.
Call GetUpdateRect() to get a rectangle that bounds the region to be updated. This information is also included in the PAINTSTRUCT (as the rcPaint field) passed to BeginPaint().
The BeginPaint() function returns the rect that requires validation in its 2nd parameter: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd183362(VS.85).aspx
case WM_PAINT:
{
PAINTSTRUCT psPaint;
HDC hdc = BeginPaint( hwnd, &psPaint );
// psPaint.rcPaint contains invalidated area
EndPaint (hwnd, &psPaint);
}
return 0;
Look at psPaint.rcPaint : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd162768(VS.85).aspx
I'm pretty certain the Win32 API uses WM_PAINT even for partial repaints. From MSDN:
The WM_PAINT message is sent when the system or another application makes a request to paint a portion of an application's window. [My italics].
That link has the full detail on WM_PAINT but if, as you say, the WM_PAINT message is not being sent for partial redraws, the Spy++ is the tool you need to find out for sure.
Take a look at WM_PRINTCLIENT. There are some circumstances when WM_PAINT is not sent and a WM_PRINTCLIENT message is sent instead. (AnimateWindow for example.)
i need to implement the functionality of EM_SETCUEBANNER, where a text hint appears inside an Edit control:
The catch is that i cannot use version 6 of the Common Controls, which is what is required to get the Microsoft supplied implementation of a cue banner.
i've looked into simply changing the text of the edit control, and the font format to
Dark Gray Italic Text
but it will throw Change events (component wrapper provided by higher component library) that i can't find a way to avoid.
So i was instead going to custom draw the text, drawing the Cue Banner text when the control is unfocused and empty, and rely on default painting otherwise.
The Edit control doesn't nicely expose a custom drawing mechanism, like ListView, TreeView and others provide.
Other people have looked into it, but it seems to be an nearly impossible task:
From the way things are looking, I'll
have to handle the following
messages:
WM_ERASEBKGND, WM_PAINT (for obvious reasons)
WM_SETFOCUS, WM_KILLFOCUS (to prevent
the white bar from displaying --
described above)
WM_CHAR (to process and update the
text in the control)
And I also need to find a way to
display the caret in the control,
since I haven't found a way to allow
Windows to do that for me without also
painting the white bar I mentioned.
This is going to be fun. :rolleyes:
Given that the Windows Edit control was never meant to be custom drawn: does anyone know how to custom draw a Windows Edit control?
Note: i will also accept answers that solve my problem, rather than answering my question. But anyone else wanting to custom draw an Edit control, coming across this question, would probably like an answer.
Custom drawing an Edit control is essentially impossible. There are a few specialized cases were you are doing so little that can get away with it, but you risk breaking badly in the next revision of windows (or when someone runs your app on an older version, or via terminal services, etc).
Just taking over WM_PAINT and WM_ERASEBKGROUND aren't good enough, because the control will sometimes paint on other messages as well.
You are better off just writing your own edit control. I know that's a huge amount of work, but in the long run it will be less work than trying to hack your way into taking over all of the Edit controls' drawing code.
I remember back in the good old days when everyone use to subclass the button control to add color and graphics, etc. The thing is, one day I sat down and just wrote my own button window class. and it was LESS CODE than what we had in our source tree to subclass and custom draw the Windows button.
Create a window class of your own that looks like and empty edit control, that draws the cue text and shows a caret and has focus. Create the edit control also, but position it behind your window. (or leave it hidden)
Then when you get the first WM_CHAR message (or WM_KEYDOWN?). You put your window behind the edit conrol, give focus to the edit, and pass the WM_CHAR message on. From then on the edit control will take over.
You can listen to EN_CHANGE notifications from the edit control if you need to go back to showing your cue text when the edit gets empty. But I'd think that it would be fine to go back to the cue text only when the edit looses focus AND is empty.
Subclassing the EDIT control worked well for me - needed to display some formatting information to the user when editing object attributes (and some attributes could be multiple lines). The important thing, like Adrian said in his answer too, is to call the EDIT control's procedure before your own drawing. Calling it afterward or issuing your own BeginPaint/EndPaint (with return 0 or DefWindowProc) caused issues for me from the text not displaying at all, to it displaying only when resizing but not after editing, to leaving screen litter of the leftover caret. With that, I haven't had any issues regardless of the EDIT control's other repaint times.
Some setup:
SetWindowSubclass(attributeValuesEdit, &AttributeValueEditProcedure, 0, reinterpret_cast<DWORD_PTR>(this));
// Not only do multiline edit controls fail to display the cue banner text,
// but they also ignore the Edit_SetCueBannerText call, meaning we can't
// just call GetCueBannerText in the subclassed function. So store it as
// a window property instead.
SetProp(attributeValuesEdit, L"CueBannerText", L"<attribute value>");
The callback:
LRESULT CALLBACK AttributeValueEditProcedure(
HWND hwnd,
UINT message,
WPARAM wParam,
LPARAM lParam,
UINT_PTR subclassId,
DWORD_PTR data
)
{
...
case WM_PRINTCLIENT:
case WM_PAINT:
{
auto textLength = GetWindowTextLength(hwnd);
if (textLength == 0 && GetFocus() != hwnd)
{
// Get the needed DC with DCX_INTERSECTUPDATE before the EDIT
// control's WM_PAINT handler calls BeginPaint/EndPaint, which
// validates the update rect and would otherwise lead to drawing
// nothing later because the region is empty. Also, grab it from
// the cache so we don't mess with the EDIT's DC.
HDC hdc = (message == WM_PRINTCLIENT)
? reinterpret_cast<HDC>(wParam)
: GetDCEx(hwnd, nullptr, DCX_INTERSECTUPDATE|DCX_CACHE|DCX_CLIPCHILDREN | DCX_CLIPSIBLINGS);
// Call the EDIT control so that the caret is properly handled,
// no caret litter left on the screen after tabbing away.
auto result = DefSubclassProc(hwnd, message, wParam, lParam);
// Get the font and margin so the cue banner text has a
// consistent appearance and placement with existing text.
HFONT font = GetWindowFont(hwnd);
RECT editRect;
Edit_GetRect(hwnd, OUT &editRect);
// Ideally we would call Edit_GetCueBannerText, but since that message
// returns nothing when ES_MULTILINE, use a window property instead.
auto* cueBannerText = reinterpret_cast<wchar_t*>(GetProp(hwnd, L"CueBannerText"));
HFONT previousFont = SelectFont(hdc, font);
SetTextColor(hdc, GetSysColor(COLOR_GRAYTEXT));
SetBkMode(hdc, TRANSPARENT);
DrawText(hdc, cueBannerText, int(wcslen(cueBannerText)), &editRect, DT_TOP|DT_LEFT|DT_NOPREFIX|DT_NOCLIP);
SelectFont(hdc, previousFont);
ReleaseDC(hwnd, hdc);
// Return the EDIT's result (could probably safely just return zero here,
// but seems safer to relay whatever value came from the edit).
return result;
}
}
break;
Writing your own EDIT control (which I've actually done more than once, to partial degrees of completeness compared to the built-in one) is not much work if you do the bare minimum (maybe English only with basic caret support), but it's a LOT of work to get correct if you want caret navigation over complex scripts with variable sized clusters, selection over ranges, IME support, context menus with copy and paste, high contrast modes, and accessibility features such as text to speech. So unlike so many other answers, I recommend not implementing your own EDIT control merely for cue banner text.
Subclass the edit control. Handle WM_PAINT by first calling the original window procedure and then, if it's empty and not in focus, draw the cue text. Pass every other message to the original window procedure.
I've done this--it works. The problem the CodeGuru person had doesn't seem to apply to your situation. I believe he's trying to do more to the appearance. For performance, it looks like the edit control is doing some updates outside of WM_PAINT processing (probably for performance). That's going to make it nearly impossible to take complete control of the appearance. But you CAN draw the cue prompt.
And I also need to find a way to display the caret in the control,
since I haven't found a way to allow Windows to do that for me without
also painting the white bar I mentioned.
If you want to handle WM_PAINT by yourself without forwarding the message to the original windowproc of your superclass, you should not forget to call DefWindowProc. So that the caret will be drawn.
To avoid the white bar you should remove class brush with SetClassLongPtr.
And somehow keep your DC's clipping region to clip Edit controt's ExtTextOut outputs.
The white bar may be the result of OPAQUE option passed to ExtTextOut by Edit control.
Conclusion: Write your own control. No pain, no gain.