GUI / Programming matters

Hint

Answer:

How can I devide sets radio buttons or toggle buttons into groups?, whatever I add seems to stick to the rest...

In VB "frames" are the fundament object to split groups of radiobuttons and toggle buttons by putting them into it.

XBasic has no direct frames but instead you can group Radiobuttons by labels as their fundament (or so called "parent grid").

Be sure that you insert the radio/toggle/etc. buttons within the border margins of the label else they will be seen as a kid of the windowgrid which will group them with the rest of the buttons which are situated there.

As you may know, you can give a label a "Frame" look so eventually, XBasic has got frames but you have to take two steps to set them up instead of one.
Download the GUI window here

How can I set a radiobutton or box to a checked status before my program start? (sort of default set options)

If you want to have default options set for the user this can be done by sending a #SetValue message right to the kidnumber of the radiobutton / box you want to check (or uncheck).

Preselecting buttons before starting you need to set this value in parameter v0 to $$TRUE using the kidnumber, now to have them set before the windows even pop up you can either do that in the InitWindows or CreateWindows, but you need to know the kidnumber of the radiobox / button / togglebutton you want to enable since you can only use direct numbers in the kid argument as the kids of your windows are not defined in global constants. (You can find the kidnumbers in the constants defined in your [windowfunction]Code())

Suppose we do it in the CreateWindows function:
FUNCTION CreateWindows()

' My window that contains buttons:
        Search         (@Search, #CreateWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, $$WindowTypeSystemMenu, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Search, #SetCallback, Search, &SearchCode(), -1, -1, -1, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Search, #Initialize, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Search, #SetGridProperties, -1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)

'It contains 4 radioboxes, kid 5 is box 4 (kid 0 is the parent grid)
        XuiSendMessage ( Search, #SetValue, -1, 0, 0, 0, 5, @index )
        XuiSendMessage ( Search, #DisplayWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)

END FUNCTION

What if we want to set it somewhere else besides the CreateWindows() function?

FUNCTION CreateWindows()
        Search         (@Search, #CreateWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, $$WindowTypeSystemMenu, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Search, #SetCallback, Search, &SearchCode(), -1, -1, -1, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Search, #Initialize, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
'       XuiSendMessage ( Search, #DisplayWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)  'Don't display yet
        XuiSendMessage ( Search, #SetGridProperties, -1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
'Store the gridnumber in a global variable
        #SearchWindowGrid = Search
END FUNCTION

FUNCTION InitWindows()
        XuiSendMessage ( #SearchWindowGrid, #SetValue, -1, 0, 0, 0, 5, @index )
        XuiSendMessage ( #SearchWindowGrid, #DisplayWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
        AnyFunction()
END FUNCTION

FUNCTION AnyFunction()
        ' retrieve values from the radiobuttons
        FOR X = 1 to 5
                XuiSendMessage( #SearchWindowGrid, #GetValue, @Value, 0, 0, 0, X, 0)

                IF Value THEN
                        PRINT "Option "; X; "is selected"
                ELSE
                        PRINT "Option "; X; "is not selected"
                END IF
        NEXT X
        'Changing values on-the-fly without using the mouse to select
        FOR X = 1 to 5
                XuiSendMessage( #SearchWindowGrid, #SetValue, @Value, 0, 0, 0, X, 0)
                XuiSendMessage( #SearchWindowGrid, #Redraw, 0, 0, 0, 0, X, 0) 'Never forget this when live updating!)
        NEXT X
        'You should now have all four radiobuttons enabled (while this should not be possible)
END FUNCTION 

How do you change colours and fontsets of Drop-boxes and listboxes etc?
I can't get this done in the GUI Designer!

For each GUI design you can set assets per object that you edit.

The Appearance editor does incorporate settings for sub-assets that belong to sub-kids from eg. a menu object or a drop-list object (Click the "Kids" menu in the appearance window) but in some cases settings don't stick or don't get translated to the source-code function of your design.

These options you have to manually set yourself AFTER you did a "ToFunction" translation.

When you examine create function() that has been generated by the GUI designer, you will e.g. find your lisbox options being created like this:
     XuiListButton  (@g, #Create, 52, 4, 208, 20, r0, grid)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetCallback, grid, &FileDialog(), -1, -1, $LBDrives, grid)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetGridName, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, @"LBDrives")
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetStyle, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetColor, $$Blue, $$Black, $$Black, $$White, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetColorExtra, $$LightRed, $$White, $$Black, $$White, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetAlign, $$AlignMiddleLeft, 0, -1, -1, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetBorder, $$BorderFlat4, $$BorderFlat4, $$BorderNone, 0, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetFont, 240, 400, 0, 0, 0, @"MS Sans Serif")
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetTexture, $$TextureRaise1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetGridName, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, @"PressButton")
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetGridName, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, @"XuiList721")

Though, you would like to have the fonts set of the characters within the list AND on the button set to MS Sans Serif, you notice that in the above example only kid "0" is set to this font, while Kid "0" is the button itself.

It's nice to know that these objects have more kids, for the XuiList the kidnumber for the text on the button is "1", the kidnumber for the text in the list is "2"

By copying this line another two times underneath the original:

        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetFont, 240, 400, 0, 0, 0, @"MS Sans Serif")

And changing the Kid numbers, you have set the fonts for the other assets of the XuiList object.
Your sourcecode will now look like this:
     XuiListButton  (@g, #Create, 52, 4, 208, 20, r0, grid)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetCallback, grid, &FileDialog(), -1, -1, $LBDrives, grid)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetGridName, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, @"LBDrives")
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetStyle, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetColor, $$Blue, $$Black, $$Black, $$White, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetColorExtra, $$LightRed, $$White, $$Black, $$White, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetAlign, $$AlignMiddleLeft, 0, -1, -1, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetBorder, $$BorderFlat4, $$BorderFlat4, $$BorderNone, 0, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetFont, 240, 400, 0, 0, 0, @"MS Sans Serif")
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetFont, 240, 400, 0, 0, 1, @"MS Sans Serif")
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetFont, 240, 400, 0, 0, 2, @"MS Sans Serif")
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetTexture, $$TextureRaise1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetGridName, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, @"PressButton")
        XuiSendMessage ( g, #SetGridName, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, @"XuiList721")

For every aspect, the same rules apply: To make changes to the rest, copy the original and change the kidnumbers.

Maybe you even want to have different colours in each of the subkids, then just adjust the colours.

Nice that you can change the above assets within the [function]() but I want to do this in the InitWindows() or in the [function]Code()

Before the asset-change:

 










After the asset change:

 

Okay, okay...

For this we need a trick-message called #GetEnclosedGrids.

The general tree structure of how we control xbasic (explained here) goes up to three levels deep.

If we want to change these matters there are a couple of ways how you can do this.

I choose for the way with the best survey, download this small window and then start Xbasic with a new "GUI Program"
Open up the toolkit and select menu "Window" option "Load", load the window and select again menu "Window" option "ToFunction"

Go to the "CreateWindows()" function where the following should be listed:
         Listbox        (@Listbox, #CreateWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Listbox, #SetCallback, Listbox, &ListboxCode(), -1, -1, -1, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Listbox, #Initialize, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Listbox, #DisplayWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
        XuiSendMessage ( Listbox, #SetGridProperties, -1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)

Add the following line underneath it:

        #ListBoxGrid = Listbox

You know why I did this?
I made the gridnumber of the window global this means that I can now make changes or read anything from this window and it's kids from any place within the whole program.

If I have more windows I store the gridvalues in a multidimensional array along with it's function address and it's active status.

There are tools to get this information when needed, but I don't want to think about when and how to use these tools, I just want to know for sure what it is even if I would drop my code for a couple of months.

Now getting back to the story, add the following code to the "InitWindows()" function:


        STATIC text$[24]

        FOR x = 0 TO 24
                text$[x] = "Line " + STRING(x)
        NEXT x

        XuiSendMessage(#ListBoxGrid, #SetTextArray, 0,0,0,0,1,@text$[])

You see that you can already change the contents of the list by using this global variable. You do have to lookup the kid number but at least you can maintain your windows from pretty anywhere.

Now when you run the code you would see the picture displayed in the left box.

By just adding a few elements you can also change the look of this list;

Go back to the "InitWindows()" function and add the last piece of code under the "XuiSendMessage...":

 XuiGetEnclosedGrids ( #ListBoxGrid, #GetEnclosedGrids, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, @grid[] )

' Setting the font of the Button
 XuiSendMessage ( grid[0], #SetFont, 240, 400, 0, 0, 1, @"MS Sans Serif")

' Setting the font of the list
 XuiSendMessage ( grid[0], #SetFont, 240, 400, 0, 0, 3, @"MS Sans Serif")

' Setting the style of the list to 1 (small arrows in scrollbars
 XuiSendMessage ( grid[0], #SetStyle, 1, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0)

' Setting the borders of the whole set:
XuiSendMessage ( grid[0], #SetBorder, $$BorderLower1, $$BorderLower1, $$BorderNone,0,1 0)
XuiSendMessage ( grid[0], #SetBorder, $$BorderRaise2, $$BorderLower1, $$BorderNone,0,2,0)
XuiSendMessage ( grid[0], #SetBorder, $$BorderRaise1, $$BorderLower1, $$BorderNone,0,3,0)

' Redrawing the changed assets:
XuiSendMessage (grid[0], #Redraw, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0)
XuiSendMessage (grid[0], #Redraw, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0)
XuiSendMessage (grid[0], #Redraw, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0)

The #GetEnclosedGrids will place all the gridnumbers of the kids into an array (counting from kid 1, not kid 0!);
This is important because you need to change sub-kid assets from these kids and you can only do that by using the gridnumbers of those kids.

A listbox has 3 sub kids:
The frame (kid 0)
the textfield, (kid 1)
the arrow-button (kid 2) and the list (kid 3)

You can change every aspect per sub-kid to the possibilities of it's function, like the list can receive #SetStyle messages, #RedrawText messages and so more.

In the example above we change the fontset and it's borders when done the listbox should display like the picture on the left.
 
The Appearance window you notice in the GUI designer does unfortunately not offer a possibility to change these options from there so you have to make these adaptions manually.

You can at least quickly make some default window with some buttons, lists and set some options so you can quickly copy the line you need without needing to grab the documentation for finding how to set the font again.

BEWARE!:
I have to warn you that when using the XuiGetEnclosedGrids () statement it gets only the first kid-branch underneath the parent-grid
So if you have two labels with two sets of radioboxes, your returned kid[] array only contain two kid grid numbers:
grid of label number one and grid of label number two.

To retrieve the kidnumbers of the radioboxes you need to repeat the XuiGetEnclosedGrids () statement but in this case you don't send the windowgrid as grid number but the gridnumber from the label with radiobox set from which you want the gridnumbers from.

Another nessesary thing to tell:
When using Xui objects like filedialogues, the GetEnclosedGrids does not see a XuiFile as "one" object, the XuiFile covers the main grid with a couple of grid objects therefore, GetEnclosedGrids returns also gridnumbers
from the objects that build the XuiFile Dialogue.

If you truly want a distinct object direct command, try the #GetKidArray message instead

Download this example source to see a demonstration of how GetEnclosedGrids work.

How #GetKidArray works:
         setKid = 0      'Select the parent grid of all kids in this case the windowgrid
        XuiSendMessage (grid, #GetKidArray, 0, 0, 0, 0, setKid, @KidArray[])

        IF UBOUND(KidArray[]) > -1 THEN

                FOR akid = 0 TO UBOUND(KidArray[])      'Setting all colors of all child kids to one set.
                        XuiSendMessage ( KidArray[akid], #SetColor, back, draw, -1, -1, 0, 0 )
                        XuiSendMessage ( KidArray[akid], #SetColorExtra, -1, accent, lowText, highText, 0, 0 )
                        XuiSendMessage ( KidArray[akid], #SetImage, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)   'Removing image IF placed
                NEXT akid

        ELSE    'grid has no kids, change the color-set of the parent grid only.
                XuiSendMessage ( grid, #SetColor, back, draw, -1, -1, setKid, 0 )
                XuiSendMessage ( grid, #SetColorExtra, -1, accent, lowText, highText, setKid, 0 )
                XuiSendMessage ( grid, #SetImage, 0, 0, 0, 0, setKid, 0)     'Removing image IF placed
        END IF

The XstGetNextField() and XstGetNextItem() are poorly explained in the docs, what can I actually do with them?
 

These functions are used to tokenise (separating words) line-phrases, they give you the ability to process words from a textfile (also comma delimited / separated). If you want to make a word processor like an HTML viewer, such functions can be very handy to use.

Examples tell the most, click here to download some exclusive examples done by Max Reason himself.

I'm not getting mouse messages send to my function, neither as #WindowMouseDown neither as #MouseDown, the docs describe it as #Window... messages are sent to the window and the other are sent to the grids but I'm having troubles even getting the messages from inside the window.
I'm able to find out where my pointer is by sending a XgrGetMouseInfo() message but I want to respond on the available messages.

How can I get those mouse messages sent to my current window?

I had to deal with this problem myself too at the beginning.

David Szafranski came up with a solution that I overlooked.
In his attempt to figure out how to change eg. a mouse-cursor made it necessary to figure out where the mousepointer was. For that a #MouseEnter event and a #MouseExit event is necessary.

These messages are not sent to your functionCode() but to your function() (this is called the window function).

It's not nice to spread your processing routines across two functions at least you don't really have survey on all your code.

You need to set the CEO function:

The XgrSetCEO() is used to have all messages sent to the function you supply it's address from.

If your functionCode() is named HelloWorldCode() then you simply add this line in the InitWindows() function:

XgrSetCEO(&HelloWorldCode())

And voila, all messages are sent to the HelloWorldCode().
Just enable the "ReportWindow" and check out what messages it receives.

Notice that messages like #MouseDown and #MouseMove are not sent but #WindowMouseDown and #WindowMouseMove are sent to the function.
 

Okay I set the CEO but I have more windows than just one, I don't want to manually add a line in each function to change the CEO constantly and also trying the window to figure out what window it has to set the CEO to, I just want to have the CEO automaticly set to the window I select as soon as I click on it.
 

This is possible but it's tricky and it brings up one limitation.

In a Gui Program you have the loop where the messages are processed:

DO
  XgrProcessMessages (1)
LOOP

Just change it to the following:
 DO
  CentralCEO ()
  XgrProcessMessages (1)
LOOP

Now select from the PDE menu "View" option "new function" and call it "CentralCEO"

Make it look like this:

'
'
' ###########################
' #####  CentralCEO ()  #####
' ###########################
'
FUNCTION  CentralCEO ()
    STATIC CEOWindow

    'Get the window number that is currently selected
    XgrGetSelectedWindow(@window)
 
     IF CEOWindow <> window THEN
         'Get it's gridnumber
         XgrGetWindowGrid(window, @wingrid)

          'If the gridnumber is one of our own application grids...
          IF wingrid > 0 THEN
                  'Grab it's gridtype name and strip off the first three letters
                  XuiSendMessage (wingrid, #GetGridTypeName, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, @gname$)
                  gname$ = UCASE$(LEFT$(gname$, 3))

                  'Check if the UCASE(windowname) is starting with a "XUI", in this case you stumble upon
                  'an autonomous child-window which causes an application crash if you send a
                  '#GetCallback message to this window!
                  IF (wingrid > 0) AND (gname$ <> "XUI") THEN
                          XuiSendMessage ( wingrid, #GetCallback,@callGrid, @callFunc, @v2, @v3, @r0, 0 )

                          XgrSetCEO(callFunc)
                  END IF

          END IF

    END IF

END FUNCTION


Why is the gridtype name checked for a "Xui" prefix?
This has one important reason:

The toolkit objects like XuiPulldown menu's, listboxes and droplists are a cluster or various options you can use.

Example:
The menu-bar exists out of a XuiMenuBar and a XuiPullDown.

The XuiMenuBar will be a kid of your main window but the XuiPullDown has it's own window.

As long as you select kids that are a direct object of your main window, the name of your window should appear in the gridtypename "gname$"
No problem so far since the messages can be send to an existing functionCode()
However if you select the "pulldown list" of your menubar you also select a new (frameless) window that has no further kid structure causing you to mess up the ProcessMessages routine and it will start to crash.

Because these functions are named "Xui..." they are easily filtered out of the process so the CEO is only changed if a window is encountered that has not the prefix "Xui" (or any case of XUI, xui, xUi, xuI, etc).

The only limitation is that you should not name your application window with "Xui" as a prefix. If you want to make a toolbox set with this prefix : fine but for your main window focus inside your core application, don't use it.

Okay , all CEO messages seem to arrive, but now when I want to use the messages on the kids but nothing seem to happen if I do a simple
XuiSendMessage(grid, #message, v0, v1, v2, v3, kid, r1)

No redraws, no changes of labels, it does repond on keyinput and selections but no ordinary mousclicks, well it responds but does not send the change to the kid.

what is wrong?

Setting the CEO to your function means that you receive ALL messages, not only grid messages but also the window messages.

For grid-messages the gridnumber is sent in the parameter "grid" but when a window message is encountered, the windownumber will be supplied in the "grid" parameter.

So for each #Window[.....] message you should your message selector GOSUB to a routine that converts the windownumber into a grid number before you jump to any routines that do XuiSendMessages to grid oriented treatment.
The next example is a small extract from the top of a functionCode() where you could change the window number to a grid.

'
        $UpperKid   =   3  ' kid maximum
'
'       XuiReportMessage (grid, message, v0, v1, v2, v3, r0, r1)
        IF (message == #Callback) THEN message = r1
        
        XgrMessageNumberToName (message, @messageName$) 

        IF LEFT$(messageName$, 6) == "Window" THEN
            XgrGetWindowGrid  (grid, @grid)
        END IF

If you are not sure you will receive a windownumber yes/no, you can always use the XgrGetWindow() function to get the window number to be sure you convert a window number.

 

XBasic V2.0022 and higher does not support wheelmouse anymore like it did earlier

What happened?

XBasic still supports Wheelmouse, as a matter of fact, Eddie Penninkhof even added Wheelmouse support in the Beta release of the Linux version, so pretty soon you may even expect cross compilable support for this kind of mouse-driver devices.

It just does not behave the way Max implemented it, the problem was that Max's solution was oriented on the Native window message that is broadcasted to XBasic when the wheel on that mouse is scrolled.
Windows NT 4.x/2000 and Win'98 support this native message, Windows '95 however does NOT, so he was sort of excluding Win'95 users from having the benefit of it. I can't Blame Max since he runs Win'98 so there are minory differences between Win95 and Win98 that pop up as soon as someone notices the difference or is missing something, that's good since it keeps the effectiveness of XBasic high and it's general behavior should be that way the ordinary XBasic user would not be able to notice any difference between XBasic on whatever platform unless one particular platform lacks kernel support for an action that can be done on other platforms.
With that though, I added support for WM in win95 and translated both the native message as the win95 proprietary message into a general XBasic message. I Hope Eddie does the same in Linux.

Yet the support remains pretty simple for so far (no fancy five button support etc.)

If you want something visual to play with, test the following example (9k) in your PDE.

How do Unions work with complex types?
 

This one is posted by Steven Gunhouse:

###################################
Just to answer Kenneth's implied question - the purpose of a UNION is to either have the same space hold several different kinds of data (which is the example in the documentation) or to have the same data accessible by different methods (which is what I did). If it holds different kinds of data, then you'd need a separate flag to indicate what type is currently stored there. In our case, since it is really the same data in either format the flag is not required - at best it would only indicate whether the data has been converted yet or not (in essence, an endian flag).
 
One of my previous languages was PowerBASIC for DOS, version 3.0. They didn't have equivalents to the XBasic GHIGH and GLOW or DHIGH and DLOW, so one example they had in the manuals was using a UNION to access the high and low INTEGER (SSHORT to us) of a LONG (SLONG in XBASIC). While the whole is slightly larger here and the pieces a little smaller, it's the same concept.
 
Given that function arguments can include the ANY type, I never did see much use in XBasic for a union as holding different kinds of data ... though I suppose perhaps a parser of some sort might.
 
If you are reading multiple coefficients from the file and they are stored together, Kenneth's example would be better because it reads several at once, rather than one at a time. But we don't know the precise format of your files, it could be that there are some sort of tags stored with the values and thus they couldn't be read in order.
###################################

The following cut-snippets are there to convert a Unix DEC format to M$ IEEE and a DEC format binary is very adequate for using a UNION type of figures since DEC format are just plain 8-byte words that can be swapped easily..

         TYPE DECDBL
             UNION
                 UBYTE     .u[7]
                 DOUBLE   .d
             END UNION
         END TYPE
         ...
         ...
        DECDBL DECtoIEEE
        UNO = OPEN (MyDECFile$, $$RD)
          ...
        FOR i =1 TO NCOEF

               READ [UNO], DECtoIEEE.d
               
               SWAP DECtoIEEE.u[0], DECtoIEEE.u[7]
               SWAP DECtoIEEE.u[1], DECtoIEEE.u[6]
               SWAP DECtoIEEE.u[2], DECtoIEEE.u[5]
               SWAP DECtoIEEE.u[3], DECtoIEEE.u[4]

               NUM[i]=DECtoIEEE.d
          
        NEXT i

Go to the FAQ

to search more answers

Mail more questions

to us for more answers