Skip to main content

FoxPro Design Tip: Check Visible before checking Autosize Width

This may seem fairly obvious but it's something that may catch up many FoxPro developers in screen design, as it just did me

Setting AutoSize to True is a great way to identify how wide a label needs to be to show its entire content. However, you may be tempted to set the AutoSize before showing the label so your screen doesn't appear to resize dynamically.

The catch here is that if the object isn't visible, AutoSize will not change.

Want to try it out?

_SCREEN.AddObject("lox","label")
lo = _SCREEN.lox
? lo.Width && Returns 100
lo.Caption = "Hello"
lo.AutoSize = .T.
? lo.Width && Still Returns 100
lo.Visible = .T.
? lo.Width && Now Returns 29

This isn't really a bug - after all, AutoSize should only ever decide what width to use once it knows it's being seen, but it can trip you up if you are trying to layout objects on a screen before making them visible.

The solution? Use LockScreen before doing any of the work. That way, AutoSize will still work properly but the user won't see you doing anything funky until you're completely done. LockScreen preserves the screen until you unlock it.

Using the same example:

_SCREEN.LockScreen = .T.
lo.Caption = "Hello my name is George"
MESSAGEBOX(lo.Width) && Shows 140 but won't show the new label
_SCREEN.LockScreen = .F.

Now you can see it working.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .
4 comments
Read more

Who Wants To Be Logical? I Do! I Don't! (with Claude)

In my book, Towards Consciousness, I explore PET , a theory that attempts to explain consciousness and possibly how it might apply to AI. As part of the conversations with AI series, I've included this conversation with Claude.AI in which we were talking about something very different and yet the conversation redirected itself back to PET. For the record, there is no such thing as "Colfsity". A It's interesting to me that people want to proclaim their distinction from being rigid and unlike machines, yet they also complain that the "best" people keep a rigid schedule, regular routines and logic understanding of issues. That's a perceptive observation about a real tension in how people think about themselves and what they value. There does seem to be this paradox where rigidity is simultaneously rejected as "robotic" or inhuman, yet praised when it appears as discipline, consistency, or logical thinking. I think part of what's happening is t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Programmers vs. Developers vs. Architects

I received an email this morning from Brandon Savage 's newsletter. Brandon's a PHP guru (works at Mozilla) but his newsletter and books have some great overall perspectives for developers of all languages. However, this last one (What's the difference between developers and architects?) kind of rubs me the wrong way. Either that, or I've just missed the natural inflation of job descriptions. (maybe, it's like the change in terminology between Garbage man and Waste Engineer or Secretary and Office Administrator) So maybe it's just me - but I think there's still a big difference between Programmer, Developer and then of course, architect. The key thing here is that every role has a different perspective and every one of those perspectives has value. The original MSF create roles like Product Manager, Program Manager, Developer, Tester, etc - so every concept may pigeon hole people into different roles. But the statements Brandon makes are often distinction...
11 comments
Read more