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ask answer dialog icon not shown on windows
Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 3:06 pm
by reelstuff
I have been attempting to display custom icons for ask answer dialogs in a standalone application.
After extensive testing, using different formats for the icon, I have come to the conclusion that the windows standalone will not display an icon.
The MAC version shows the correct ask answer icons along with the dialog text, however the windows version shows only the text.
I was hoping that someone else might have encountered this issue when building a standalone.
I did notice that in the standalone application settings, there is a selection in the MAC OSX tab that allows the setting of specific icons for ask answer dialog.
However as noted above this does not seem to carry over to the windows standalone.
Has anyone else seen this behavior and were you able to find a work around and or fix for this issue.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
ask/answer icons
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 6:32 pm
by ttbo
I have had the same experience that the Mac standalone displays the icon in ask/answer dialog boxes but the Windows version does not. Since the Windows tab in Standalone Settings doesn't give the options that the Mac OSX tab does regarding these icons, I assume that it can't be done with Windows.
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:07 pm
by reelstuff
I would hope that would not be the case as one the the reasons that you would use an icon is for branding.
I have researched the matter completely and have found no reason why it should not work, however as you say it actually does not work as it should.
I was wondering if it could be solved as simply as adding the same options to the windows tab as is used in the mac osx tab, adding that option to the engine would seem to be a simple task.
Anyone else seem this behavior when working with standalone apps???
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 9:25 pm
by Janschenkel
The 'custom application icon' in dialog boxes - where the application icon is shown when using the
plain style of dialog, or the small application icon is combined with the 'information'/'question'/... icon - is a Mac-specific human interface guideline thing - there's no equivalent in the Windows user interface styleguide.
That being said, are you seeing no icons at all, even when you're using one of the iconTypes 'information'/'question'/'error'/'warning' ? Then you should verify that the following image ID's are present in your standalone:
- 210008 (= information)
- 210010 (= error)
- 210006 (= warning)
- 210010 (= question)
HTH,
Jan Schenkel.
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 9:47 pm
by reelstuff
Janschenkel wrote:The 'custom application icon' in dialog boxes - where the application icon is shown when using the
plain style of dialog, or the small application icon is combined with the 'information'/'question'/... icon - is a Mac-specific human interface guideline thing - there's no equivalent in the Windows user interface styleguide.
That being said, are you seeing no icons at all, even when you're using one of the iconTypes 'information'/'question'/'error'/'warning' ? Then you should verify that the following image ID's are present in your standalone:
- 210008 (= information)
- 210010 (= error)
- 210006 (= warning)
- 210010 (= question)
HTH,
Jan Schenkel.
I am not sure I follow your post.
I see the image numbers are available in the image library however no icon at all shows in a dialog in the standalone for windows.
The only thing that appears is the actual text of a dialog but not an icon of any type at all.
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 10:05 pm
by SparkOut
If I try
Code: Select all
answer warning "This is a warning message"
or
on my system (Win XP, Rev Studio 3.0.0 build 750) I get the dialogue boxes shown with the right icons.
I don't believe it is possible to make any "custom" icon to use in the ask/answer dialogues. On Windows I think you are restricted to the standard "information", "error", "warning" or "question" icons, as offered by Microsoft.
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 11:01 pm
by BvG
Or you could make your own custom dialogues, as the ask and answer dialogues (the simple ones, not the ones pertaining to files and folders), are just modal stacks prepared by Rev.
look in the dictionary for:
style property
modal command
go command (using "as modal" or better "as sheet")
dialogData property
Note that Mac OS X users expect certain dialogues to be sheets, so ideally you'd use that form with the "go" command, if you're doing cross platform work. Also note that images in dialogues are supposed to be of a certain style for Mac OS X (and I think for Vista too), so read the GUI guides. Of course your button ordering would be wrong for Mac OS X, unless you shuffle them around.
As you might tell, making your own dialogues cross platform compatible is not very easy, so simply targeting for "at least it works" considering dialogues might be a good way to abstain from going insane.
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:07 am
by reelstuff
Thanks BvG I will take a look at those for a solution.
It would be nice to have a custom dialog instead of just the plain dialogs what is interesting to me is that there seems to be a disconnect in that when you specify an icon in the MAC OSX tab, in the windows SA, no icon appears, however if you do not specify an icon the standard icon appears in windows
So then in order to have your custom icon appear you need to build twice once for MAC and once for Win, which is really a shame because it sort of defeats the code once deploy everywhere mantra.
I did read some where about being able to design a custom dialog, I will test and see if this creates a disparity between platforms.
It would be nice if it just worked,
(you know, I really see no reason that this cannot be worked into the engine build)
Thanks again for the suggestion, I will check it out and see if I can find a work around will post here if such occurs.
Tim
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:39 am
by Klaus
Hi guys,
why not set the icon(s) manually? I do this all the time
There are global properties which manages the icon in "ask/Answer Dialogs":
"gRevAppIcon" and "gRevSmallAppIcon" check the docs.
Set it/them once when your stack(s) start or everytime you open these dialogs if you want to show different icons.
Best
Klaus
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 12:01 pm
by Janschenkel
Let's see if we can make this perfectly clear.
1. If you use the following commands on Windows, do you see an icon at all?
- answer error "test"
- answer information "test"
- answer question "test"
- answer warning "test"
2. If these do show, is your issue that the following command on Windows does not contain the 'large Application icon' as it does on MacOSX...
...and that the following commands do not show the 'small Application icon' as they do on MacOSX?
- answer error "test"
- answer information "test"
- answer question "test"
- answer warning "test"
If the answer to both questions is 'yes' then
nothing is wrong. Showing the application icon is a MacOSX specific user interface feature, and there is no equivalent in the standard Windows UI guidelines. Period.
If you still want to display such icons in your dialog boxes, you will have to create your own dialog boxes and routines. Or you can submit an
enhancement request in the
Revolution Quality Center - as this is not a bug.
Jan Schenkel.
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 1:31 pm
by reelstuff
Janschenkel wrote:Let's see if we can make this perfectly clear.
1. If you use the following commands on Windows, do you see an icon at all?
- answer error "test"
- answer information "test"
- answer question "test"
- answer warning "test"
2. If these do show, is your issue that the following command on Windows does not contain the 'large Application icon' as it does on MacOSX...
...and that the following commands do not show the 'small Application icon' as they do on MacOSX?
- answer error "test"
- answer information "test"
- answer question "test"
- answer warning "test"
If the answer to both questions is 'yes' then
nothing is wrong. Showing the application icon is a MacOSX specific user interface feature, and there is no equivalent in the standard Windows UI guidelines. Period.
If you still want to display such icons in your dialog boxes, you will have to create your own dialog boxes and routines. Or you can submit an
enhancement request in the
Revolution Quality Center - as this is not a bug.
Jan Schenkel.
Thanks Jan, yes it would appear that your synopsis is correct, I tested two versions of two different builds,
With the exclusion of a warning,
Icon does not exist:/Applications/Revolution Enterprise/3.0.0-dp-8/Runtime/Windows/x86-32/Support/Sample Icons/genericapp.ico
The dialogs work as you suggest they should.
Just for clarification on the error for the build, I did check to see that the ICO file was present, as well the application build shows the genericapp.ico is in fact present and does show visible in the build.
Of course that is a different situation entirely, thanks for your post, I believe I see the situation much more clearly.
coming from Delphi, it is interesting to me that you cannot specify an application icon for dialogs, as this is a standard feature in many other IDE type applications.
perhaps an enhancement would be a good thing.
Thanks again for your post.
Tim
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 2:22 pm
by Klaus
Hi Tim,
my hint from 10:39 (gRevAppIcon) DOES also work on Windows!
Best
Klaus
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 2:35 pm
by reelstuff
Klaus wrote:Hi Tim,
my hint from 10:39 (gRevAppIcon) DOES also work on Windows!
Best
Klaus
Hi, Klaus, yes, I was looking at your hint and was slogging through the docs to see what I could learn about it, and or find a way to set a custom ICON as you pointed out.
It would seem that these ICONS are after all just an image that is copied to the standalone, so one could change the default icons or at least it would appear so.
I was attempting to see the easiest way to accomplish this, I would think that you could create a custom default ICON, I wonder if you could create a default, answer icon,
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 3:40 pm
by Klaus
Hi Tim,
yep, apparently the term "Icon" as used in Rev is a bit misleading.
We use to think of an icon as a tiny image, right?!
In Rev an "Icon" is the ID of ANY image in ANY stack that can be used to display this image inside of a button.
Best
Klaus
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 5:11 pm
by billworld
Then the docs in the dictionary need to be updated. Here's what is stated:
Code: Select all
Summary:
A special global variable that specifies the application icon to be used on OS X systems with the ask, ask password, and answer commands.
Has anyone sent this in as a doc bug report?
Klaus wrote:Hi Tim,
my hint from 10:39 (gRevAppIcon) DOES also work on Windows!
Best
Klaus