Placeable answer and ask dialogs?

[Richard Gaskin]

J. Landman Gay wrote:

> On 7/24/04 12:45 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> 
>> Wilhelm Sanke wrote:
>>
>>> I wonder whether you list members would be interested to have 
>>> slightly modified ask- and answer-dialogs with the new version of the 
>>> IDE that allow placing these dialogs anywhere on the screen or 
>>> relative to the stack they are launched from.
>>> Such a minor change would add flexibility to the dialogs, and it is a 
>>> feature some Metacard and Revolution users had asked for in the past.
>>>
>>> See my stack "Place Dialogs" on <http://www.sanke.org> , English 
>>> version, page "Tools and Samples for Development"; the stack contains 
>>> examples and information.
>>>
>>> All that is needed are two script lines added before the end of the 
>>> preopenstack handlers:
>>>
>>> " if the NewLoc of this stack is not empty then set the loc of this 
>>> stack to the NewLoc of this stack
>>> set the NewLoc of this stack to empty "
>>>
>>> The stacks can be used as usual if no NewLoc property is set.
>>>
>>> Line 2 of the script makes sure to restore the default behavior of 
>>> the dialogs the next time they are opened without a specified  "NewLoc".
>>
>> Thank you for your willingness to contribute.  Scott Rossi has already 
>> offered to work on the Ask and Answer dialogs -- maybe the two of you 
>> could work out those enhancements?
>>
>> Doesn't Rev provide support for specifying the loc of those dialogs?  
>> If so, can we use their syntax?
>>
> 
> I have no objection to this change. But I am not clear why we need it; 
> doesn't this do the same thing:
> 
>  set the loc of stack "answer dialog" to myloc
> 
> It is only a single line, which is the same amount of space it would 
> take to set a stack property. Am I missing something?

The problem with the loc property is that the Ask and Answer dialogs set 
their own on preOpenStack.  So we need to use a customProp and modify 
the dialogs to use that if set.

I just checked Rev and there is no option there for setting the loc. 
Rather than do something that becomes incompatible, should we make a 
proposal on the improve-rev list so we can all be working from the same 
spec?

It might be nice to add something like "alertLoc" to the spec so that 
when that's encountered it centers horizontally and is two-fifths of the 
screen down from the top as spec'd in the HIG.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com