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Retiring VectorScript Legacy Dialog APIs


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Guest Lyndsey

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

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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.

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Guest Lyndsey

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 by Lyndsey
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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.

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Guest Lyndsey

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.

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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

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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.

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