| > 1. Currently, the widget goes away when OK is activated and only
> one file is selected. What do you do when you need more than
> one file at a time? You bring up the widget again, not very
> friendly. Adding another pushbutton as a child of file selection
> widget would not help neither, I have no way to find out which
> file has been selected.
autounmange is set false - therefore it is the application that
unmanages the fs widget on activate callback (OK button activate).
One way to support multi-file selection is to leave the fs widget
managed... (you can change the 'OK' pb label to something like
'Add' and add a 'finished' pb in the work area)
> 2. When putting in the additional widget, it would be nice to have
> more control of location instead of a fixed place. Sometimes,
> an application may want to position the Filter, Ok, and Cancel
> pushbuttons somewhere else too. I understand that there will
> be differrent looking file selection widgets, but sometimes it's
> necessary.
we have received several requests along these lines. XUI is frozen and
this is also not supported of the Motif fs widget. However, I agree that
this feature would be useful and have added it to the Motif wish-list.
> 3. The extra space in the listbox is very annoying. When the directory
> spec is long, the widget becomes **very** wide. Since the directory
> spec is printed right above the listbox, it's very unlikely that
> anyone would want to scroll left to see the whole file names.
I definately agree! However, 2.1 covered only high-profile bugs and
this 'feature' will not be fixed in XUI. However, this is fixed in
Motif.
> Has anybody implemented a more flexible file selection widget?
> How would the DECwindows group think about these modifications?
> There must be reasons why the file selection widget is the way it is
> today. Would someone please enlighten me, or point me to the previous
> discussions if any.
I am not aware of any other fs widgets. The main reason the fs widget
'is the way it is' lies in the fact the toolkit group had limited
resources and was not in control of its own schedule. We had to hit
VMS/ULTRIX deadlines, which left us with tight time slices to complete
as much work as possible. The result is that many desirable features -
such as the ones outlined above - were dropped.
Jay Bolgatz
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