[Developers] Popping up an initial dialog

[Bert Bril]

Hi all,


Sometimes you want to launch a dialog, and from that immediately launch 
another one. For example, a dialog which wants an input file, and you 
want to immediately have the user select one. You'd have fields like:

inpfilefld_ = new uiFileInput( this, "Input foo file",
		uiFileInput::Setup().withexamine(true) );

barfld_ = new uiGenInput( this, "Bar value", FloatInpSpec() );
barfld_->attach( alignedBelow, inpfilefld_ );


What you *could* do, is put this in the constructor:

uiFileDialog dlg( this, false, GetDataDir() );
dlg.go();

The effect is that the 'bar value' dialog does not show up until after 
the user leaves the uiFileDialog. That can be pretty confusing.


... -> set a timer. That allows the underlying dialog to pop up, and the 
user will see why the file dialog comes up. You can then also quit the 
dialog altogether on a cancel:

Sketch:

uiFooBar( uiParent* p )
	: uiDialog(p,Setup("Aap","Noot","") )
     	, timer_("FileDlg popup timer")

{
     // fields created

     timer_.tick.notify( mCB(this,uiFooBar,popupInitialFileDlg) );
     timer_.start( 100, true ); // 100 msecs; user won't even notice
}


void uiFooBar::popupInitialFileDlg( CallBacker* )
{
     uiFileDialog dlg( this, false, GetDataDir() );
     if ( !dlg.go() )
	done( 0 );
     else
     {
	inpfilefld_->setFileName( dlg.fileName() );
	handleNewFileName();
     }
}




/Bert

-- 
-- Bert Bril / OpendTect developer at dGB
-- mailto:Bert.Bril at opendtect.org , http://opendtect.org