wtm%gr.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Thomas McCollough) (05/14/91)
The FAQ says that only widgets that can have the focus can have their help callbacks activated with the help key (F1). Does this mean that I can't get help for a widget that is insensitive (grayed out)? We make heavy use of XtSetSensitive() by graying out push buttons that make no sense given the current selected set. The push buttons I refer to are in pulldown menus of the main menu bar. During our initial design we expected that the user could ask for help on the grayed out widget to find out what is required to light it up. Did we goof? I can't seem to give the focus to insensitive widgets by using keyboard traversal. And implementing "Help on Context" hasn't worked because I can't pull down a menu when XmTrackingLocate() has grabbed the mouse. Am I out of luck? Thanks, Tom McCollough wtm@gr.utah.edu
nazgul@alfalfa.com (Information Junkie) (05/14/91)
> to are in pulldown menus of the main menu bar. During our initial > design we expected that the user could ask for help on the grayed out > widget to find out what is required to light it up. Did we goof? Personally I think that the binding of keyboard focus to help is pretty poor. I can see how it's necessary for keyboard only things, but it just doesn't work for mouse driven apps. There ought to be a standard accelerator (maybe using a button) that gives help on the current mouse pointer as well. But in the meantime you do have a problem - for two reasons. You can't get help on insensitive items, and you can't get help on menu items. Even if you put the help callback in each menuitem all you'll ever get is the help on the menubar. Very frustrating. Alfalfa Software, Inc. | Poste: The EMail for Unix nazgul@alfalfa.com | Send Anything... Anywhere 617/646-7703 (voice/fax) | info@alfalfa.com I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's.