I'd like to send a keypress to a SysDateTimePick32 common control.
Imagine the following scenario: There is a table with many rows and many columns, which is user-drawn. When you hit "Enter" in one of those columns, a SysDateTimePick32 control is created and placed into the current cell so you can pick a time for this cell's actual content. This works fine, but I'd like to enable the user to start editing the time without pressing enter first.
This means: The table is in "display" mode and a cell is selected. There is no SysDateTimePick32 control, yet. Instead of pressing enter (and therefore creating and showing a SysDateTimePick32), the user types e.g. "3". Now a SysDateTimePick32 should be created and shown and the previously typed "3" should be sent to it, just like the user pressed "enter" and then "3".
I'm trying
SendMessage(sysDateTimePick32Handle, WM_KEYDOWN, '3', MAKELPARAM (1, 0));
However, this does not seem to work.
What is a "clean" way to send specific keystrokes to a Win32 control, especially SysDateTimePick32?
Sending keystrokes like that is filled with bear traps. It isn't clear why it would not work, although it is the wrong way. WM_KEYDOWN is posted, not sent, so you should use PostMessage() instead. For typing keys like '3' you should send WM_CHAR instead, saves you from the hassle of getting the modifier keys state set properly (Shift, Ctrl, Alt) and removes the active keyboard layout as a failure mode. Favor SendInput() if that's not appropriate.
Do consider the less hacky way that makes this easier. Just always create the picker when the focus enters the cell. Destroy or ignore it when you find out that nothing was entered.
Related
I originally had code that set the focus to the first widget in a dialog, in the onInit method. But there were problems with it: if I pressed TAB, indeed focus moved to next control (wxTextCtrl), which got the blue 'focus' color, but the 'focus' color/highlight was not removed from previous focus widget. So now it looked like both first and second control had focus at the same time...
When cycling manually (by pressing TAB) full circle (till last control and then wrap around to the first), suddenly all worked well. That is, when moving focus from first control to next one, the first visually lost focus (blue color was removed) as it should. From now on, only one item had the focus color/highlight.
So instead of setting focus on the first control, I tried a different approach: I set the focus to the last control in the dialog, which is always the OK button. Next, I want to emulate programmatically that a TAB is pressed and received by the dialog. So I wrote this (inside Dialog::onInit):
m_buttonOK->SetFocus();
wxKeyEvent key;
key.SetEventObject(this);
key.SetEventType(wxEVT_CHAR);
key.m_keyCode=WXK_TAB;
ProcessWindowEvent(key);
Now the focus indeed moves away from the OK button, but it does not wrap around to the first control.
Only when I manually press TAB after the dialog opened, the first item gets focus.
Question: why does this wrapping around to set focus on first widget not work with the code shown above?
First of all, your initial problem is almost certainly related to not calling event.Skip() in one of your event handlers, see the note in wxFocusEvent documentation.
Second, you can't send wx events to the native windows, they don't know anything about it. In this particular case you can use wxWindow::Navigate() to do what you want, but generally speaking what you're doing simple can't, and won't, work reliably.
Basically, I want to bind a certain letter to scroll up the mouse reel, and do so continuously if I hold the key continuously. I need it to work even if other keys are being pressed at the same time, and only work on a certain window title/tab title in the browser.
I basically want to emulate the function of the autohotkey program for the "Attack On Titan Tribute Game"'s reeling function.
An AutoHotKey equivalent is available at:
http://fenglee.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7548
(Which may be offline due to unknown reasons, might have to wait)
Basically, if you download the application, set Reel In to the "x" or "e" key, it works regardless if other keys are being held. Just make sure you uncheck the checkbox so it can work in any window. It basically scrolls down for you. It also includes the source.
Or.. if I can use any other free application to do the same thing, that'd be nice.
All I want is the scrolling function and it has to be specific to a window/plugin/etc. and be able to be triggered while holding down other keys.
I'm writing a Silverlight+XNA game and when the user has something in their clipboard they can see less of the screen. I'd really like to be able to not show this clipbaord but I can't see any way (though it does seem to go away after some amount of time)
I've tried an empty string and Clipboard.SetText(null) but that throws an exception.
Unfortunately, there is no way to either clear the clipboard from code or influence the display of the SIP beyond setting an InputScope.
The best you can do for now is to update your design to allow for the amount of space which the SIP may use. :(
While more complicated, you could create your own text input keys as buttons, and instead of using a textbox, use buttons templated to look like textblocks, with background as you show above, and all... When the user taps the "button" that is a "textblock", you set a flag that says which textblock the keypad buttons send their numbers to.
Or, if the only spot you are sending inputs to (as it appears now that I look at your UI again), there is no need for the button template as the input space, or the flag. Just create buttons for user to tap for input, and send that input to the textblock that appears to be where your answer is. You could make the buttons whatever size you want, that way, as well, so you control how much of the screen is visible. Another thing you could do is make the buttons semi-transparent, so you could have even more background image showing.
Another thought - send the buttons all to the same event handler (except the backspace button), and have the code for that event handler look like this:
{
Button btn = sender as Button;
textblock.Text += btn.Content;
}
I have an NSTableView in which I need to be able to intercept keyboard events within an editable cell and replace the cell with strings. For example, press "a" and have the "a" intercepted and the value "Alpha" assigned when the table reloads. The actual situation is a bit more complex in that I'm also handling HID devices, but that's a whole other story. Suffice it to say, I just want to be able to go into edit mode and stop the keyboard-generated values from being displayed.
The latter part of this (displaying "Alpha") is easy, but I can't figure out the first part of the problem. If I subclass the table and make it first responder, I can receive the keyDown: event, but once the user double-clicks on a cell and starts typing, this goes silent.
Since none of the other NSTableView components (NSCell, NSTextFieldCell, etc) derive from NSResponder, I'm assuming there is an NSTextField buried in there somewhere.
So, what's the best way to filter text once the user goes into cell edit mode?
As always happens: after working on this for eight hours, reading all the docs five times, and then resorting to the net, I find the answer five minutes later:
- (BOOL)textShouldBeginEditing:(NSText *)textObject.
Sorry to consume bandwidth.
In the programming of a table-based application module (i.e. the user mostly enters tabular data in an already laid-out table), how would you reject user input for a given cell?
The scenario is: the user edits the cell, enters something (text, picture, ...) and you want them to notice when they finish editing (hitting enter, for example) that their entry is not valid for your given "format" (in the wider meaning: it can be that they entered a string instead of a number, that their entry is too long, too short, they include a picture while it's not acceptable, ...).
I can see two different things happening:
You can rather easily fit their entry into your format, and you do so, but you want them to notice it so they can change if your guess is not good enough (example: they entered "15.47" in a field that needs to be an integer, so your program makes it "15")
You cannot guess what to do with their entry, and want to inform them that it's not valid.
My question specifically is: what visual display can you offer to inform the user that his input is invalid? Is it preferable to refuse to leave the editing mode, or not?
The two things I can imagine are:
using colors (red background if invalid, yellow background for my case 1 above)
when you reject an input, do something like Apple does for password entry of user accounts: you make the cell "shaking" (i.e. oscillating left and right) for one second, and keep the focus/editing in their so they don't loose what they've typed.
Let's hear your suggestions.
PS: This question is, at least in my thought process, somehow a continuation and a specialization of my previous question on getting users to read error messages.
PPS: Made this community wiki, was that the right thing to do on this kind of question or not?
Be careful using autocorrection such as forcing user input to fit your format. See:
Is it acceptable to normalize text box content when it loses focus?.
It’s generally better to prevent invalid entries in the first place than to autocorrect them later. For example, if only integers are allowed, then you ignore any keying of the decimal point (along with all letters and most special characters). In some environments, you may want to provide a quiet audible signal that input is ignored (e.g., a dull thud).
As for when you need to alert the user to an error, how about a callout? Draw a bright line from the control or point in question (field, status annunciator, button, menu, location of a drag and drop) to the margin of the window and put a brief message (two or three words, like "Unrecognized date") in a balloon. Placing the message on the margin should keep it from occluding anything of interest in a crowded table.
The sudden appearance of the call-out should be sufficient to catch user attention, so it's okay to let the user move on to other cells in case they want to fix the error later. For efficiency, you may want to hold the user in the error-related field when the error originally occurs (since often the user wants to correct it right away), but then allow the next tab or mouse click to navigate the user away.
On mouseover or when focus is on the control associated with the error, the line is highlighted (to distinguish it from other callout lines that may be present) and the balloon expands to a full error message, providing more details on how to fix the problem (up to two sentences). Allow the user to drag and drop the balloon to a new location in case this occludes something of interest.
Include a Help button in the expanded balloon for further details. You can also include a button to fix the error (e.g., Retry, Reconnect, or set to default value).
The balloon disappears automatically when the error is fixed. Undo reverts whatever caused the error (e.g., reverts the field to its original value), which should clear the error.
If the user scrolls away from the place associated with the error, the balloon shrinks to an icon that remains in view so that the user is less likely to forget about it. Maybe an exclamation point in a triangle is a good icon. Place the icon beside or in the scrollbar track to indicate its relative location in the table, so the user can quickly scroll to find it later. Mouseover expands the icon to its full message. Perhaps clicking the icon can scroll to the right place in the table and put focus in the relevant control.
Balloons could also shrink to icons if they start visually interfering with each other. You may even want to include a control in a balloon to allow the user to force it to assume an icon.
For consistency, use for all errors, not just those associated with fields in tables.
The last time I did such a form (on a web page) I put a red box around the offending input.
I thought it was really neat... until a user asked me "Why's there a red box around this cell?"
What'd be nice is also displaying why the input's incorrect: "This field accepts only numbers", say.
You could display an icon in the cell, or a tooltip. The tooltip could open automatically or when mouse pointer hovers over the icon. It could disappear automatically when user edits another cell or when some timeout expires.
You can go with arrow tooltips like Adobe Flex's error tooltips. It focuses the attention to the error and supplies a brief description.