Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!mcnc!kk
From: kk@mcnc.org (Krzysztof Kozminski)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Moving a Textedit field in a modal dialog
Message-ID: <1345@speedy.mcnc.org>
Date: 23 Aug 89 12:57:01 GMT
References: <8356@hoptoad.uucp> <884@cbnewsk.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: kk@mcnc.org.UUCP (Krzysztof Kozminski)
Organization: Microelectronics Center of NC; RTP, NC
Lines: 34

In article <884@cbnewsk.ATT.COM> ech@cbnewsk.ATT.COM (ned.horvath) writes:
>
>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...

Sorry, not true.  HideDItem does remove these items from the tabbing loop.
It works correctly even if the insertion point was in the item being hidden:
the vertical blinking bar moves to the next text item in the loop.  In any
case, the TErecord associated with the hidden item gets deactivated, so even
if there are no more edit text items left, the hidden item won't receive any
keyboard stuff.

>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...

Yes, but switching to another dialog differing from the current one in one
or two items will redraw the whole dialog window and will be be annoying.
Did you really mean this or am I misreading you?

Personal opinion:
Graying items out seems to be most user friendly; changing the dialog box
size (like old MacDraw did for custom rulers) to uncover new items goes
second; hiding/showing items goes in the third position for me (even though
I do use it occasionally).

KK
-- 
Kris Kozminski   kk@mcnc.org
"The party was a masquerade; the guests were all wearing their faces."