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Undocumented VID buttons

I have decided to quit whining about the VID documentation and produce, for my own benefit, the kind of documentation I would like to see. Easier said that done. Anyway, I listed all the styles using the technique found somewhere, here or on Carl's blog, I forget, and I ran across the items noted in the test script below. Since I have not seen them documented, I am wondering if they are available for a regular person to use, or if they are perhaps internally-used items that are best left alone.
    
Thank you, whoever knows the answer.
    
R E B O L [
     Title: 'VID test harness'
]
;; Paste code below to test
view layout [
     btn-enter
     btn-cancel
     btn-help
]

posted by:   Steven White     14-Apr-2015/19:15:23-7:00



I wrote a section about finding built-in help:
    
http://business-programming.com/business_programming.html#section-13.1
    
You may find this particularly helpful:
    
view layout [
     text-list data (extract svv/vid-styles 2) [
         a/text: select svv/vid-styles value
         show a focus a
     ]
     a: area 500x250
]
    
Learning to find your way around SVV is critical if you want to document all of VID.

posted by:   Nick     15-Apr-2015/22:38:42-7:00



One thing which will help when you come across an unfamiliar style (widget), is to compare it's code to that of one with which you're familiar. You can use a diff app along with the script above. Copy and save the code to each style, from the script above, each to a different text file, and then use something like ExamDiff to examine the line-by-line differences. For example, if you save the code for 'btn and 'btn-help, you'll see that there are differences in the default size, text, color, font, and action values, among others (i.e., the default action for 'btn-help is [notify "Help is not available."]). Of course, any of those defaults can be re-set by the normal means (just as you would for any other style):
    
view layout [
     btn-help 60x20 "Help" [alert "No help has been defined yet."]
]
    
The short answer is that those buttons appear to just be convenience styles which Carl must have considered would be often useful.

posted by:   Nick     16-Apr-2015/6:35:22-7:00



You can see these styles in use in the REQUEST-* functions; have a look at the source of REQUEST-COLOR; you can see BTN-ENTER and BTN-CANCEL in use.
    
>> ?? request-color
request-color: func [
     "Requests a color value."
     /color clr /offset xy /local result
][
     if none? :color-lay [
         color-lay: layout [
             across origin 5x4 space 8x2
             x: box 80x30 ibevel return
             t: field center middle 80 font-size 10 return
             pad 8
             r: slider 16x278 gray red effect [gradient 0x1 255.0.0 0.0.0] [setc 1 r/data]
             g: slider 16x278 gray green effect [gradient 0x1 0.255.0 0.0.0] [setc 2 g/data]
             b: slider 16x278 gray blue effect [gradient 0x1 0.0.255 0.0.0] [setc 3 b/data]
             return
             pad 8 btn-enter "OK" 64 [result: x/color hide-popup]
             return
             pad 8 btn-cancel "None" escape 64 [hide-popup]
         ]
     ]
     x/color: either tuple? clr [clr] [0.0.0]
     r/data: 1 - (x/color/1 / 255)
     g/data: 1 - (x/color/2 / 255)
     b/data: 1 - (x/color/3 / 255)
     refresh
     either offset [inform/offset color-lay xy] [inform color-lay]
     result
]

posted by:   Anton Rolls     16-Apr-2015/9:49:17-7:00



Thank you all for your help. I have modified the ideas above to make a folder of all the code for all the styles, so I can examine them all. Of course don't really know what I am looking at, but a little time and some experimenting should make things clear(er). Pasted below is my modification of the ideas above to capture the style code.
    
R E B O L [
     Title: "Extract code for all VID styles"
]
    
;; [---------------------------------------------------------------------------]
;; [ This is a little utility program for extracting the code behind all the ]
;; [ VID styles and writing the code for each style into a text file named     ]
;; [ .txt. These files then can be examined with a text editor. ]
;; [---------------------------------------------------------------------------]
    
CODE-FILENAME: none ;; will generate name based on style word (dot-txt)
    
CODE-DIR: request-dir
if not CODE-DIR [
     alert "No folder selected for output"
     quit
]
change-dir CODE-DIR
foreach [STYLE-WORD STYLE-CODE] svv/vid-styles [
     CODE-FILENAME: copy ""
     CODE-FILENAME: to-file rejoin [
         to-string STYLE-WORD
         ".txt"
     ]
     write CODE-FILENAME STYLE-CODE
]
alert ["Code files created in " CODE-DIR]
    


posted by:   Steven White     17-Apr-2015/10:58:46-7:00