Radio buttons as indicator lights

[Ken Norris]

Hi Graham,

Just so you know, there are two Ken's actively on this list. Ken Ray's the
pro, but I'm getting better at getting around Rev.
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> Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 13:16:31 +0200
> From: Graham <graham.samuel at wanadoo.fr>
> Subject: Re: Radio buttons as indicator lights
>
> Thus I can get the effect I
> want by grouping a series of radio buttons whose keyboard focus and
> autohilite is turned off. I can then use Ken's solution to hilite one
> button at a time, while automatically turning off any previously hilited
> button.
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Yes, but the _user_ can still click on any other one and it will _also_
hilite if the autoHilite property is true. I know you want to prevent this,
so you _also_ must shut off autoHilite of all the Radio buttons (you can do
it by using the multi-line Message in the Msg Box, which I posted earlier),
and just let the script control them. This is a better solution, IMO, than
covering them with a  grc.

However, I would again caution against using Radio Buttons for something
they aren't intended. It'll have the HIG folks shaking their heads.

Alternative solution:

In the multi-line msg box, write a script to change all your buttons to
style "round", set the hiliteColor to your choice, and give them all a
family number, probably "1" (see the "family" keyword in the Transcript
Dictionary).

NOW, you can put a noop grc over the top of all of them to intercept mouse
clicks, thus blocking the user from clicking them.

This family of buttons will take on radioBehavior characteristics, i.e., you
can only set the hilite of one at a time, even by script, thus:

set the hilite of button x to true

...will set the hilite of _only_ that button to true, meaning whatever the
hiliteColor of that button is will show that color while all the rest are
blank (clear).

I made a little stack with 30 of these things (all of them green, but they
could each have been a different color, any of 256 colors) in it that
lighted randomly. Reminded me of those TV depictions of computers back in
the '50's. Now I just need to add wierd little sounds to complete the
effect.

 ;-)

Ken N.