Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!dptg!att!cbnewsk!ech
From: ech@cbnewsk.ATT.COM (ned.horvath)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Moving a Textedit field in a modal dialog
Message-ID: <884@cbnewsk.ATT.COM>
Date: 22 Aug 89 21:41:05 GMT
References: <8356@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 23

Someone, long ago:
>>>Then I wanted to move it away.  I GetDItem'ed it and SetDItem'ed it
>>>to Siberia ( actually, somewhere off to the left of the screen ).
>>>It did not go away.  Does anyone have any idea why I can't move it
>>>around like this?  I also can't move it to other places on the screen.

Tim Maroney:
> Sure, I think the answer is pretty clear, but I'm assuming you made a
> small mistake in evaluating the results of your SetDItem, Tim.  The
> item is getting moved.  However, SetDItem does *not* do any drawing.

There's a worse issue with moving TextEdit items off-screen: they stay
"in the loop" for tabbing from field to field.  I don't think that
HideDItem fixes this issue.  This is particularly disturbing to users: hit
tab, start typing -- whoops, where's the cursor?  Where's my text?  Panic,
book across room, call to tech support...

DLOGs and DITLs are cheap: get prototyper, or ResEdit, and roll up as
many as you need.  They don't take up appreciable space in your resource
file, and the code to choose the right one is cheaper than the code to make
one DLOG do too many different things.  Crunch all you want...

=Ned Horvath=