Benefit of a Data Field set as Always Modeless?

[DRW]

Can anyone give me an explanation of the benefit of being able to set a field's property to be 'always modeless'?

My initial impression was that this property would be useful for circumstances where one wanted a form to be opened in Modal Mode so as to to prevent unintentional data modification to most of a record's fields but perhaps had a particular field, say like a notes field, that one might want to always be editable without regard to the form's overall modal status. I.E. Set the form's property to modal but set the notes filed to always be modeless so as to then be able to edit the notes field and save the changes without having to put he entire form into change mode. However, this doesn't work - changes made to fields defined as always modeless will not be saved unless the form itself is first put into change mode.

So... how/where would the 'always modeless' property for a field be of value? I couldn't find any discussion or examples in the help files pertaining to this.

[MikeC]

Re: Benefit of a Data Field set as Always Modeless?

Douglas,
Although I do not have v9, I can verify that what you stated actually does work in v8 and even v5...that when a form is set to modal no data can be changed without first putting the form into change mode....unless a field's property is set to Always Modeless in which then data can be changed whenever.

BTW-did you close and reopen the form after making these changes to have them go into effect??

Oh yeah, here is a little bit from the help file too regarding this..

Always Modeless
When checked the control will always be in modeless data entry mode regardless of what the form's setting.

:formname.fieldname.field.non_modal as L

[DRW]

Re: Benefit of a Data Field set as Always Modeless?

Mike I perhaps spoke a bit in error. My query was prompted by my testing on a memo field and hadn't tested against a character field.

As you say (both in V9 and V8) if I set a form to be modal and a character field to 'always modeless' then any edit made to the field will flip the entire form into modless and allow the edit to be saved. So I was incorrect on that score.

However, 'Always Modeless' applied to a memo field does'nt work. When a memo field with the 'always modeless' attribute applied is edited A5 allows entry of the edits but it will not save them. A5 discards the edits once the field loses focus because A5 never flips the form into modeless mode as it does with normal character field.

So is this a bug? I'm thinking so. I haven't tested memo fields in V8 so I don't know if this flaw exists there as well.

[MikeC]

Re: Benefit of a Data Field set as Always Modeless?

I find that it sometimes works but not consistantly in v8, whether it is a memo or a RTF field.

When someone that has v9 confirms which am sure it will be, then a bug report should be given....mentioning that it also affects v8.

[Selwyn Rabins]

Re: Benefit of a Data Field set as Always Modeless?

Can anyone give me an explanation of the benefit of being able to set a field's property to be 'always modeless'?

My initial impression was that this property would be useful for circumstances where one wanted a form to be opened in Modal Mode so as to to prevent unintentional data modification to most of a record's fields but perhaps had a particular field, say like a notes field, that one might want to always be editable without regard to the form's overall modal status. I.E. Set the form's property to modal but set the notes filed to always be modeless so as to then be able to edit the notes field and save the changes without having to put he entire form into change mode. However, this doesn't work - changes made to fields defined as always modeless will not be saved unless the form itself is first put into change mode.

So... how/where would the 'always modeless' property for a field be of value? I couldn't find any discussion or examples in the help files pertaining to this.

it makes no logical sense to have a form be set to modal, but a particular control on the form that is bound to one of the fields in the form's underlying table be set to 'always modeless'.

the intention behind the 'alway-modeless' property is that it would be applied to controls on the form that were bound to ***variables*** (NOT to fields).


in a typical application, you might have set the form to be modal, but your form might contains some variables that are used to control some aspect of your form's behavior. you don't want to have to switch the form to change mode just to change the state of the variable. so you set the control that this variable is bound to to be 'always modeless'.

(a good example is the multi-state button showing the letters of the alphabet in the 'customer_information' form in alphasports - it would make no sense not to be able to click on one of those buttons just because the form was set to modal data entry).



so to repeat: it makes no sense in a form that is set to Modal, to single out a memo field (which is by definition is bound to a field in the underlying table and not a variable) and make that field 'always modeless'.

i suppose that the 'always modeless' property in the properties dialog should actually be disabled if the control was bound to a field.

[DRW]

Re: Benefit of a Data Field set as Always Modeless?

Selwyn, thanks for clarifying the intention of the 'always modeless' attribute. Its usage with variables as you describe does make sense. I was just confused because the the functionality I described works when it's bound to regular character fields.

I would like to complement you on your hands on, active personal involvement with this board. This is something that clearly differentiates Alpha from just about every other software company I've had dealings with over the past 30 years. Anyone who's been around the block in software development would readily acknowledge how truly unusual it is to see the head honcho dialoging with the masses. Thanks again.