Re: Problem with non-modal children of modal dialogs

[Liam Gumley <Liam.Gumley(at)ssec.wisc.edu>]

Phillip & Suzanne David wrote:
> I remember this issue being discussed shortly after IDL 5.0 came out,
> but not noticing that this affected me at the time.  However, in some of
> my programs, I display moderately complicated (modal) dialogs, and want
> to provide a help capability for these.  The problem I have using IDL is
> that if I display the help in a different window, IDL requires that
> window to be modal as well.  Thus, when the user actually desires to use
> the information in the help window, s/he must first close the window
> (remembering the help tip) and act on the help information.  There
> appears to be no way to make the window stay up while allowing the user
> to switch back to the modal dialog.  My solution so far has been to
> stick with the IDL 4.0 convention to XManager that allows non-modal
> children of modal dialogs (although there appears to be no way to close
> them except by closing the modal dialog).  Does anyone know of a better
> way to handle this?

I find it more convenient to manage widget sensitivity manually, using
the SENSITIVE keyword to WIDGET_CONTROL. For example, your program
information structure could contain a master list (array) of widget
names, and corresponding widget ids. Whenever you create a new widget,
you pass the names of the widgets which should be *insensitive* to a
routine that scans through the master list of widget names and ids.
Whenever it finds a match on a widget name, it checks to see if the
widget is active. If it is active, it desensitizes the widget using
WIDGET_CONTROL, ID, SENSITIVE=0
When the widget dies, you then call the same routine with the SENSITIVE
keyword set, and again it scans through the list of widget names.
Whenever it finds a match on a widget name, it checks to see if the
widget is active. If it is active, it sensitizes the widget using
WIDGET_CONTROL, ID, SENSITIVE=1

This way you don't have to worry about MODAL keywords, and you can set
the sensitivity of your widgets exactly to your taste.

Cheers,
Liam.
 
-- 
Liam E. Gumley
Space Science and Engineering Center, UW-Madison
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/~gumley