Re: List boxes in Microfocus Dialog System/Net Express?

From: TofuTheGreat (cswearingen_at_co.wood.wi.us)
Date: 09/13/04 

Date: 13 Sep 2004 07:12:17 -0700

Hmmm.. Apparently I wasn't quite clear enough in my description. The
listbox is question is called a "Selection Box" in Dialog System and
it's optional type is a "drop down list". If you're familiar with VB
it should be analogous to a "ComboBox" drop-down (but isn't proving to
be). The actual values of the list items are (in order) the static
text entries of:
    Not Applicable
    In Assessment
    Recommended
    Not Recommended
    Enrolled
    Not Enrolled

There aren't actually numbers in the visible text of the choices.
What you see above is exactly what's shown to the user. The numbers
are the row indexes of the drop-down and that's the value that's
written to file. Dialog System's listbox rows start at 1.

I don't have room in the file to make the field bigger without
ballooning the size of the file. The system still uses indexed
sequential files (definitely NOT BY MY CHOICE!). Talk to the
powers-that-be and you'll see why.

Back to the problem at hand, the ordering of the items is indeed in
the order of most frequent use. The picture string for the box is pic
9(1) (see where the row number comes in to play?). The idea is that
the user can ONLY choose those items from the list.

The interface works quite well for choosing the status from the list
and storing it in the client's record. However these status values
change over time and need to be updated and that's where my
interface's problems are starting. When I bring up a client's record
to change their status (i.e. from In Assessment to Recommended, from
Recommended to Enrolled, etc.) that's when I encounter the problems
described in my previous post.

I want the interface to reflect what the client's current status is,
in text form, when I pull up the record from the file. This is not
occuring and that's what I'm trying to solve.

There isn't enough screen real estate to move to radio buttons or
check boxes. The data-entry flow isn't conducive to the addition of
yet another window to the process (this window is for a small sub-set
of the clientele).

>> James Gavan wrote:
> Which reminds me - Mr. Tofu - have you done a thorough check against the
> Dialog System manual on ComboBoxes. There *just HAS TO BE * a demo on
> Droplists. It wont necessarily be apparent from the demo project titles
> - you will probably have to confirm by reading the accompanying
> readme.txt for each demo project. The following (Gotcha !) is from the
> GUI class on-line help :-

I have gone through the Master Index multiple times. I've read
through the knowledge base on MicroFocus' website. I've posted to the
forums they host on their supportline website.

The only documentation and examples that I've been able to locate show
how to:
1- Add items to the list using groups
2- Add items using Dialog
3- Add items using a delimited string
4- How to delete items from the list

None of the examples I've found show how to accomplish what I'm trying
to accomplish. Mr. Gavan's reference to the selectionBox object DOES
NOT apply here. Dialog System is very much a beast of its own.