ListViews and Inplace editors

Hello All,

Does any one know if it is possible to embed controls within a listview,
rather like the checkbox that is embedded in a listview if you display a
boolean value? I'm hopeing to able let the user enter data directly into
the listview rather than through a popup dialog or have a row of controls
under the list view, consequently I'd like to embed combo boxes and date
pickers etc into the listview. If it is possible how do you do it and can
you point me at some examples. Thanks

Cheers

Barry Carr
Ixian Software Components Ltd
Blairgowrie
Perthshire
Scotland

Barry,

> Does any one know if it is possible to embed controls within a listview,

Windows would have to be object-oriented (or at least substantially more
flexible) for that to work, but there is good news...

> rather like the checkbox that is embedded in a listview if you display a
> boolean value? I'm hopeing to able let the user enter data directly into
> the listview rather than through a popup dialog or have a row of controls
> under the list view, consequently I'd like to embed combo boxes and date
> pickers etc into the listview. If it is possible how do you do it and can
> you point me at some examples. Thanks

A list view isn't the only solution.  Ian's goodies (if only an older
version??) contain some things that might be helpful.  My PaneHolders
package contains a vertical list that could work for you, and you might find
other options.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

"Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]> wrote in
news:asb0nh$kdr$[hidden email]:

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your suggestion but your paneHolder and Ian's multipromter
aren't what I'm looking for. I was hoping I could get the sort of
behaviour that a lot of Delphi grids have where a control can be assinged
to a column, take a look at the stuff DevExpress do (www.devexpress.com)-
thats the kind of functionality I want and users demand.

This is only problem I have with Dolphin - I can't get the UI of my apps
to be as slick or as flexible as I could with Delphi and the range of
available controls is poor too. I know you can use ActiveX controls but
does any really use them with Dolphin? I get the impression that no-one
does, perhaps I'm wrong. It seems a shame that you can't write really
cool looking apps in such a cool language.

Thanks for your help

Cheers

Barry

On Sun, 1 Dec 2002 19:51:19 +0000 (UTC),
Barry Carr <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> This is only problem I have with Dolphin - I can't get the UI of my apps
> to be as slick or as flexible as I could with Delphi and the range of
> available controls is poor too. I know you can use ActiveX controls but
> does any really use them with Dolphin? I get the impression that no-one
> does, perhaps I'm wrong. It seems a shame that you can't write really
> cool looking apps in such a cool language.
>

There is a nice module (Apollo, IIRC) out there wrapping the Delphi VCL stuff
for Ruby. You might want to look into this for inspiration.

s.

Barry,

> Thanks for your suggestion but your paneHolder and Ian's multipromter
> aren't what I'm looking for. I was hoping I could get the sort of
> behaviour that a lot of Delphi grids have where a control can be assinged
> to a column, take a look at the stuff DevExpress do (www.devexpress.com)-
> thats the kind of functionality I want and users demand.

You should be able to achieve almost anything by associating sufficiently
powerful presenters with the elements of the list.  I have not tried it, but
I would suspect that vertical list could even host OCX controls if that's
what you want to do.


> This is only problem I have with Dolphin - I can't get the UI of my apps
> to be as slick or as flexible as I could with Delphi and the range of
> available controls is poor too.

Since you can host basically any OCX control, I don't think that's accurate,
unless you are talking about things that come out of the box.   But for
that, you'd be forcing others to buy and download them.


> I know you can use ActiveX controls but
> does any really use them with Dolphin?
> I get the impression that no-one
> does, perhaps I'm wrong.

I can't speak for others.  I prefer to write my own GUI elements because the
results are more flexible, easier to debug, don't break unless I break them
(or Dolphin itself changes between versions), are often MUCH faster than
their external binary counterparts, and by being just more of my code, they
don't add installation hassles.


>  It seems a shame that you can't write really
> cool looking apps in such a cool language.

I disagree. There is nothing about the XtraGrid that you coudn't cobble
together in relatively short order w/o any additional dependencies.  Failing
that, you should be able to host controls and (I think anyway) set
properties in the ViewComposer.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

I'm using the MSXML objects in a server project that is currently being
tested.  I'm using them to do XSL transformations.  So far, so good.

I use several COM objects in some VA applications.  They seem to be working
fine, and COM Dolphin's wrapper is superior to VA's.

I can't speak to Active/X UI components as I don't (yet) have much
experience.

jlo

"Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:ase6nr$nia$[hidden email]...
> Barry,
>
> > Thanks for your suggestion but your paneHolder and Ian's multipromter
> > aren't what I'm looking for. I was hoping I could get the sort of
> > behaviour that a lot of Delphi grids have where a control can be
assinged
> > to a column, take a look at the stuff DevExpress do
(www.devexpress.com)-
> > thats the kind of functionality I want and users demand.
>
> You should be able to achieve almost anything by associating sufficiently
> powerful presenters with the elements of the list.  I have not tried it,
but
> I would suspect that vertical list could even host OCX controls if that's
> what you want to do.
>
>
> > This is only problem I have with Dolphin - I can't get the UI of my apps
> > to be as slick or as flexible as I could with Delphi and the range of
> > available controls is poor too.
>
> Since you can host basically any OCX control, I don't think that's
accurate, the
> results are more flexible, easier to debug, don't break unless I break
them
> (or Dolphin itself changes between versions), are often MUCH faster than
> their external binary counterparts, and by being just more of my code,
they
> don't add installation hassles.
>
>
> >  It seems a shame that you can't write really
> > cool looking apps in such a cool language.
>
> I disagree. There is nothing about the XtraGrid that you coudn't cobble
> together in relatively short order w/o any additional dependencies.
Failing

"Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]> wrote in
news:ase6nr$nia$[hidden email]:

Hi Bill,

> You should be able to achieve almost anything by associating
> sufficiently powerful presenters with the elements of the list.  I
> have not tried it, but I would suspect that vertical list could even
> host OCX controls if that's what you want to do.

No, I'm not interested in OCX, ActiveX controls. They have their own
problems and since the advent of .NET, soon to be a deprecated
technology. I would much rather use or buy controls natively written in
Dolphin. Or, at the very least have sufficent documentation so that I
could have a go at writing my own.

> Since you can host basically any OCX control, I don't think that's
> accurate, unless you are talking about things that come out of the
> box.   But for that, you'd be forcing others to buy and download them.

Sorry Bill, I don't understand this? Surely the richer the set of native
UI components the better? If you don't want to download them surely they
could be bought or downloaded separately? Why shouldn't Dolphin have a
very rich set of UI components? It would make a great product even
better! It could even encourage more non-Smalltalker to use it. That was
the reason I chose it - because at least Dolphin apps *look* like windows
apps. But since I started using it at about version 3.0 the the set of UI
controls has stayed virtually the same. Since then we've seen Outlook
bars, Dockable windows, Moveable toolbars etc. I know a lot about a UI is
personal taste and choice - but its nice to have a choice and to be able
to write apps that look contemporary and not 3 or 4 years old before you
start.

I would be interested to know if other Dolphin developers are using
ActiveX controls - I suspect that they aren't for the reasons you've
stated. I agree completely with your ideas about native components- see
my first commect above.

> There is nothing about the XtraGrid that you coudn't
> cobble together in relatively short order w/o any additional
> dependencies.  Failing that, you should be able to host controls and
> (I think anyway) set properties in the ViewComposer.

I'd love to see some examples of this 'cos I haven't a clue where I'd
start if I was going to write such components and I would like to try.

Cheers

Barry

Hi Stefan,

Found it! I've downloaded a copy. Thanks for the tip-off.

Cheers

Barry

Barry Carr <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:Xns92D696564B968barrycarrixiansoftwa@158.152.254.254...
Take a look at this
http://www.mitchellscientific.com/smalltalk/listeditpresenter.htm .  It is
an example of a list view with a text edit in one column.  I wrote this a
while ago.  I have actually improved this concept quite a bit (more generic,
and it is more virtualized), but I don't have it in a state that can be
easily distributed right now (it is also in flux).  I have done similar
things with comboboxes.  I think you could also do something similar for
check boxes.  Hopefully this could serve as an example of what one could do.

Chris

"Christopher J. Demers" <[hidden email]> wrote in
news:asgohn$r9cg4$[hidden email]:

Hi Chris,

Nice one! This exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. I'll take a
look at it, thanks.

Cheers

Barry

Barry Carr <[hidden email]> writes:

> I'd love to see some examples of this 'cos I haven't a clue where I'd
> start if I was going to write such components and I would like to
> try.

You should look at the BuildView tutorial at
http://www.idb.me.uk/tutorials/buildview.html. This shows you how to
create a completely custom control. It doesn't look fancy but that
makes it easier to understand what is going on because the code is
minimal but complete.  

--

Vennlig hilsen

Syver Enstad