Combination drop and popup list

[Spogg]

Hello!

In Flowstone we have two listbox prims. One is a Dropbox the other is a Popup.
Neither seems to have the ability seen in many Windows apps, even in Flowstone’s own menu.

In the FS drop box you click and open, then you click on the option from the list, and then it closes.
In the Popup you click to open but hold and drag down and release the mouse over the wanted selection.

The Windows control I seek is a combination of the two.
Click, release, then click to choose OR click and drag and release in one action. I’ve tried to find a name for this system but haven’t found a suitable search term.

I’m aware that others have made excellent list boxes with scrolling etc. but I would love to have the combination method which would work the same way as the Dropbox prim.

I suspect that if this can be done it’ll be a Ruby solution, so I have no chance myself.

Has anyone achieved this or even knows what it’s called?

Cheers

Spogg

[adamszabo]

Could you maybe show us some screenshot because I dont really understand what you mean

[Spogg]

Maybe I’ll have to make a quick video Adam. It’s not so easy to describe.

In the meantime, I’ve looked into the dark and fearsome world of Ruby and see it only provides CreateDropList, and I have a working Ruby selector using that. But it doesn’t do what I often see on other synths and even in the Flowstone Edit main menu items:

(1) Click (left mouse down). Release (left mouse up). The droplist remains visible. Choose by clicking over the item you want.

OR

(2) Click (holding left mouse down) and drag down and release over the item you want. The droplist then goes away.

The droplist prim does (1) and the popup Prim does (2).

The control I want would do both, depending on what the user did.

If it’s still not clear I’ll make a screen video capture…

Cheers

Spogg

[adamszabo]

I have a hard time understanding still I try the basic selector and I click the mouse, i let it go and the menu stays open until I click on something. If I make a createdroplist in ruby it does the same thing. Maybe if you upload a schematic instead and show there?

[tulamide]

I don't have issues understanding it.

Adam, your example: Now instead of what you described, click (hold down the button) and drag over any item, then let go off the mouse button. Spogg would like to see that the menu now closes, and the item under the mouse cursor is reported. (The item the mouse cursor was at, before closing!)

[adamszabo]

Ah ok i think I get it now. So you click once then keep holding the mouse, then when you select the one you want and let go of the mouse it selects and closes the droplist. Yeah I dont know if its possible to hack the ruby one like that.

[tulamide]

I'm afraid not. You have to build a menu from scratch and play with the view switching and stuff to realize it.

[adamszabo]

Yeah I think you have to create your own menu from the ground up with clever tricks to achieve this

[Spogg]

Thanks guys, I think you've got my point.

For a working example open Flowstone and try the Options menu item at the top.
This looks to be a standard Windows control function, that I see many times, and operates in both the ways I describe.

It's a shame that the Dropbox prim doesn't feature this, but what surprises me more is that Ruby would seem to have the same restriction out of the box. Surely this is just a call to a Windows function, like in the Edit prim...?
I don't even know what this "dual" control behaviour is called either, so it's tricky to put in a feature request to Maik.

I've been using the popup system in my projects lately (I had to add preset management with an item counter because the popup prim doesn't have an item count output).
It’s faster for small lists (one click instead of 2) but not so good for longer lists like presets. This means I have mixed control behaviours between selectors and I don’t think that’s such a good thing for the user.

Tulamide, do you have Ruby guys on a forum or something, where you could ask if such a thing has been made or exists?

Cheers

Spogg

[tulamide]

What you are looking for is a menu (you correctly identified "options" as a menu item). The dropbox is not a menu, it is a list. Lists behave differently. Menus (like a right click popup menu) are not part of the Windows controls that Flowstone provides.

There might be a way to call them using the Windows API, but I'm not very fit in that area.