Custom Dialogs

Custom dialogs are composed of buttons, icons, text fields, edit fields, check boxes, radio buttons and scrolling menus

• Useful, because it is possible to perform checks on what the user inputs (such as type or range checks)
• Also gives the designer more power to make the dialog more expressive - hence greater control over the user interaction

dialog(Title, Top, Left, Depth, Width,  
   DItems, Response)

• Title corresponds to the title displayed on the dialog
• Top, Left, Depth and Width correspond to position the dialog on the screen
• DItems correspond to a list of choices to be made by the user - and are generally referred to as dialog field format descriptors
• Response is a variable which indicates the selected button

start :-
 dialog('Destruct',60,20,70,160,
 [button( 37,87,26,66,'Ok'),
  button( 40,10,20,60,'Cancel'),
  text(10,12,20,140,'Launch Missile')],
  Response).

This will lead to a dialog with the title Destruct placed at the part of the screen specified by the first 4 coordinates - it also has 2 buttons and a text field above the buttons.

  
Figure 10: The Missle box

• If user presses Ok - call succeeds and Response is bound to 1
• If user presses Cancel - call fails
• Normally - first two items should be buttons (as these are handled in a special way)

 
• Field Description
• Dialog primitives