October Portland Smalltalk Users Group Meeting

We're going to be holding our next Portland Smalltalk Users group  
meeting next week, October 10th at 7pm. Details are here:

http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/eric/blogView?
showComments=true&entry=3337289535

All are welcome.

Eric

I'm implementing a simulation of parent/child modality, using a regular
application window to stand in for a dialog box.  It's pretty trivial to pop
up the child window when someone clicks on the parent window, but what I
would really like to implement is for the parent to become unresponsive to
mouse clicks as long as the child is still open.  It would be probably be
good enough if I could just disable the client area of the window.

Any ideas?

-Carl Gundel, author of Liberty BASIC
http://www.libertybasic.com 

Take a look ot the Class Notice and methods>>showNotice: aString
complete: anInteger while: aBlock title: titleString.

Note the line:

InputState default grabInputFor: noticeModel builder window.
       
and somewhere at the end is ungrab.

Even though this Grab/ungrab business is not documented it appears that
it allows one to simulate the dialog behavior.

HTH

--Mark



Carl Gundel wrote:

Mark & Carl:

>InputState default grabInputFor: noticeModel builder window.

Indeed, for VisualWorks in general, this is the only way, and it doesn't work
perfectly.

That said, for Pollock, you'd use:

InputState default grabInputFor: myUserInterface mainWindow.

And don't forget to ungrab when you're done, or no mouse activity will be seen
to "other" windows.

                                And So It Goes
                                     Sames
______________________________________________________________________

Samuel S. Shuster [|]
VisualWorks Engineering, GUI Project
Smalltalk Enables Success -- What Are YOU Using?

Okay, I'm not using the latest version of Pollock but this doesn't appear to
do anything at all.  Ideas?

Here is a simple test class I created to show what I did to try and make
this work.

Smalltalk defineClass: #GrabInput
 superclass: #{Panda.UserInterface}
 indexedType: #none
 private: false
 instanceVariableNames: ''
 classInstanceVariableNames: ''
 imports: ''
 category: 'InputGrab'!

!GrabInput class methodsFor: 'interface opening'!

open
 | result |
 result := super open.
 InputState default grabInputFor: result.
 result when: Panda.Closed do: [ self ungrab: result ].
 ^result!

ungrab: aWindow
 Transcript nextPutAll: 'ungrabbing...';cr.
 InputState default ungrabInputFor: aWindow! !

-Carl Gundel, author of Liberty BASIC
http://www.libertybasic.com 

Carl,

>Okay, I'm not using the latest version of Pollock but this doesn't appear to
>do anything at all.  Ideas?

Nope, I'm afraid I'm all out. This is one of those things that has never been
supported in VisualWorks.

                                And So It Goes
                                     Sames
______________________________________________________________________

Samuel S. Shuster [|]
VisualWorks Engineering, GUI Project
Smalltalk Enables Success -- What Are YOU Using?

>>Okay, I'm not using the latest version of Pollock but this doesn't appear
>>to
>>do anything at all.  Ideas?
>
> Nope, I'm afraid I'm all out. This is one of those things that has never
> been
> supported in VisualWorks.

Thoughts about the future?  Are you planning to support this functionality
in Chagall?

-Carl Gundel, author of Liberty BASIC
http://www.libertybasic.com 

Carl,

> Thoughts about the future?  Are you planning to support this  
> functionality in Chagall?

Well, if not Chagall then in Peaches. But it's a long way away either  
way.

                                 And So It Goes
                                      Sames
______________________________________________________________________

Samuel S. Shuster [|]
VisualWorks Engineering, GUI Project
Smalltalk Enables Success -- What Are YOU Using?

I managed to make Pollock do what I need by subclassing EventDispatcher.
When I need to lock a window I simply short circuit out of dispatchEvent:.
It seems to work okay, but we'll see.  Hopefully it'll work as well on the
Mac and Linux as it does on Windows.  :-)

-Carl Gundel, author of Liberty BASIC
http://www.libertybasic.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Samuel S. Shuster" <[hidden email]>
To: "Carl Gundel" <[hidden email]>
Cc: "VWNC" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 6:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Pollock]How to disable a window temporarily?