Stats

  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 3
  • Subscribers 143
  • Views 13344
  • Members are here 0
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Information areas in one-dimensional forms

skillprogramme

Hi all!

I want to create a simple forms with some fields and a text area providing some information to the user explaining what is about to happen. I want to keep my code as simple as possible and I am therefore using only one-dimensional form layout. However, I can't find a good field for displaying the information to the user. hiCreateOutputStringField() seems to have a defined size, irregardless of the number of newlines in the string provided as input. This leads to part of the string being impossible to see. A simple example:

theString = hiCreateOutputStringField( ?name gensym() ?value "a rather long\nstring with a\nlot of lineshifts\nfor illustration\nonly\n")
theForm = hiCreateAppForm( ?name gensym() ?fields list(theString) ?formTitle "A form")
hiDisplayForm(theForm)

I have tried hiCreateLabel with similar results. hiCreateMLTextField with "?editable nil" seems like a too big hack-around and doesn't look good. Is there a better field for doing what I want? I know it is possible to achieve this by using two dimensional forms, with the extra cost of having to define specific coordinates for every field, so I want to stick to one-dimensional ones. 
 
Best regards,
Max 

 

  • skillUser

    Hi Max,

    This is not too elegant, but as a quick hack it works - each line is converted into a single output string field and they are returned together as a list.  Note that other fields will need to be appended to this list, or otherwise combined in a new list (see append or nconc as possible examples) 

    str = "a rather long\nstring with a\nlot of lineshifts\nfor illustration\nonly\n"
strFields = foreach(mapcar strPiece parseString(str "\n")
    hiCreateOutputStringField(?name gensym('strPiece) ?value strPiece)
  )
theForm = hiCreateAppForm( ?name gensym() ?fields strFields ?formTitle "A form")
hiDisplayForm(theForm)

     Hopefully this helps?

    regards,

    Lawrence.

  • Andrew Beckett

    Making the form a 2D form is not exactly onerous, so I don't really see what the objection is... sure, it would be nicer if you could "pack" or "grid" the fields, but it's really not that much work nor would it really complicate the form, in my opinion. You can always compute the coordinates in a loop, based on the contents of what you're trying to display.

    Anyway, Lawrence has given an alternative solution...

    Andrew

  • skillprogramme

    Thanks, Lawrence, I think that'll do it for now. 

    I actually tried the 2D approach first, Andrew, but I found specifying all coordinates for ~10 different fields a bit more complicated than what it needed to be. I would however really appreciate if you link me a nice example of the 2D approach, since it definitely has its advantages! I was unable to find any myself (I didn't spend too much time searching, though...)

    Max 

Community Guidelines

The Cadence Design Communities support Cadence users and technologists interacting to exchange ideas, news, technical information, and best practices to solve problems and get the most from Cadence technology. The community is open to everyone, and to provide the most value, we require participants to follow our Community Guidelines that facilitate a quality exchange of ideas and information. By accessing, contributing, using or downloading any materials from the site, you agree to be bound by the full Community Guidelines.