Guest Lyndsey Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Hello everyone, For those of you who display dialogs from your VectorScript code, you may be aware that there are two systems that you can use: 1) the modern Layout Manager System and 2) the Legacy Dialog System. I have listed the Legacy Dialog VectorScript functions at the bottom of this message for your reference. On Windows the Legacy dialog system is built on a QuickTime emulation layer which is a constant source of performance and maintenance problems for us. Over the next couple of years we will be removing the QuickTime emulation layer, and with it the Legacy dialog system. This work will likely be completed for Vectorworks 2011. Please make plans in the next year or two to rewrite any legacy dialogs that you have to use the modern Layout Manager Dialog System. Please feel free to contact us with questions about making this transition. Sincerely, Lyndsey Ferguson P.S. Here are the Legacy Dialog VectorScript functions: AddButton AddChoiceItem AddField BeginDialog ClrDialog DialogEvent DrawDialog EndDialog GetDialog SetTitle AddGroupBox AddHelpItem GetField ItemSel SelField SetField SetItem SetItemEnable GetChoiceStr NumChoices DelChoice SelChoice GetSelChoice InsertChoice SetHelpString SetTextEditable Quote Link to comment
panta rhei Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Bad news but exemplary communication! To those of us who use dialogs only when there is no other option, this is a bummer. Unless... I'll take the liberty to correspond with Lyndsey, but in short: if we get the ability to programmatically generate pop-up value lists to PIO OI, I'm easy. Why? Well, my users may have hundreds of irrelevant classes and thousands of equally irrelevant symbols in their imported files. I'm not exaggarating! In my feeble, dilettante attempts with Modern Dialogs I've been totally defeated. We hatess dialogss.. I'll report back, if there's anything to report. Quote Link to comment
Guest Lyndsey Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 (edited) Have you been able to dynamically populate a object info palette's popup button with the old dialog system? I was unaware that this was possible... I assume that this functionality is for a plug-in object? If so, can you elaborate on what your plug-in objects do currently? Thanks, Lyndsey Edited December 5, 2008 by Lyndsey Quote Link to comment
panta rhei Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 I've probably been confusing and inaccurate, if not even misleading, esp. as comes to what the dialogs in my objects actually do. What if I explain these things in email, Lyndsey? It may well be that what I now do is doable in a Modern Way, but ideally I'd like to get rid of dialogs altogether. They are, by and large, Bad User Interface. Quote Link to comment
Guest Lyndsey Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 You can email me at lyndsey at vectorworks dot net. Keep in mind that if you can describe what you're doing, here in this post, it may benefit other VectorScript developers. Quote Link to comment
ccroft Posted December 6, 2008 Share Posted December 6, 2008 Thanks for the heads up Lyndsey. We've known it was coming and nobody looks forward to re-write, but 2 years is a timetable I can work with. For anyone who's not familiar with it, I've found DialogBuilder to be an excellent resource for learning and creating ModernDialog. It has a translate, or import function that sometimes works to update a Classic dialog. Support>Customization>VectorScript>Tools Quote Link to comment
panta rhei Posted December 6, 2008 Share Posted December 6, 2008 You can email me at lyndsey at vectorworks dot net. Keep in mind that if you can describe what you're doing, here in this post, it may benefit other VectorScript developers. Lyndsey, I intend to do that when I know what I'm doing! But why not indeed discuss the matter here first. What I hope to do is to replace certain dialogs in parametric objects with pop-ups that have value lists generated programmatically. At present I have dialogs for choosing a - symbol, so that one first chooses a folder (thus avoiding the imported AutoCAD blocks unless the user has placed them into a folder) - wall style - hatch to be used by the object. I should also have a dialog for choosing a class from a filtered set, eg. those with the prefix "MATERIAL-", but there are only so many hours in a day. Ideally, for each object and instance of it, the user would be able to determine which classes are relevant for a component of the object. I believe that most users do not like classes called "Style-n". All in all, from my point of view: the control of PIO pop-up value lists should be given to the end user, according to syntactic rules set by the developer, but using arguments defined by the user. Quote Link to comment
panta rhei Posted December 7, 2008 Share Posted December 7, 2008 What I hope to do is to replace certain dialogs in parametric objects with pop-ups that have value lists generated programmatically. And what do you know! I may have found the solution: there is a pop-up widget! http://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php?title=VS:Parametric_Custom_Shape_Pane Hopefully I can get it to work for my purposes. Quote Link to comment
Dieter @ DWorks Posted December 8, 2008 Share Posted December 8, 2008 Those procedures are added to VW2009. I'll have to wait for those. But I must say that this is very good! when now translating or changing those items, you'll only need to change them once in the pio texts and not anymore in the pio parameters. I find it strange that the article is from august while VW2009 was only availeble from september. Quote Link to comment
panta rhei Posted December 8, 2008 Share Posted December 8, 2008 Dear Gent of Belges (the bravest of all Gauls): the article should have appeared much earlier! Quote Link to comment
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