FLAKEY ONKEY

[Barry Shadduck]

Hello A5 fans,
If anyone can assist it will be greatly appreciated:

BACKGROUND:
Have a fairly simple form used to add records only, no changes allowed. When a key field is filled in via a lookup, a subform is opened as read-only, to display some
meaningful info from another table. Everything works well,
even a check for duplicate key, however.....

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
I had a nice routine for the ONKEY event of the parentform
to trap the ESC key, so I could cleanly take care of the form, and present a blank record again for add mode. Seems ONKEY FLAKES out when the subform is used, that is, I copied the parentform to another name, deleted the subform, and PRESTO, the ONKEY logic works. But I can't seem to get
it to work while the subform exists.

WORKAROUND, SORT-OF:
I do have a work around where a 'CANCEL' button will do the
same sort of 'clean-up-the-form' logic as in the ONKEY script. However, this is not desired as the user can see
the mess that A5 leaves behind when you let A5 handle the
ESCAPE key, until the user can press the 'CANCEL' button to
get rid of the mess.

A5 COMPLAINT:
You see the ESCAPE key has to be allowed to work first, as
a typical cancel operation is when a user tries to enter
a record that already exists, "duplicate key situation",
only ESCAPE can stop the "duplicate key situatioon", CANCEL
button won't do it. But again, when you let A5 do the ESCAPE key, it clears the condition ok, but then fills the form with unwanted data from record 1 of the table. Don't want to see that record, or any other when I'm in add mode, thank you very much.

Any replies will be very much appreciated.
Later

[JohnZaleski]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

One thought would be to eliminate the subform. If you have a one to one set linking the subform table to the primary table, can't you just display the fields from the linked table without a subform?? Tag them as read only and you should get the same effect as if you had a subform.

[forskare]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

Barry,

I think this is the way A5 works. Not that I like it as I experience this as well. When I cancel a ecord, I don't enjoy seeing a previous record appear and it certainly confuses the user.

kenn

[Barry Shadduck]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

Thanks for the reply John,
I had your idea in place before I turned to the subform,
reason I turned to subform, is that is much easier to
hide the form when there is no data, or unwanted data to display. Thanks to A5, it plops record 1 into the area, while the user is keying in a field that will find and
display the correct info. Until the user does this, I want
nothing to display. Subform is easier to work with, just hide() or show, with no subform I have to hide/show each field, and that got messy, and did not work as well as the subform.
Thanks,
Barry

[Barry Shadduck]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

Thanks Ken,
Maybe A5v5 will correct this? We can hope.

[JohnZaleski]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

If you put the fields on a conditional object it will be at least as easy to hide and unhide than a subform. Make the condition be the value of a varible and anytime you chage the variable value, the fieldsappear or dissappear.

[Barry Shadduck]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

John, I'll give it a try, I have another more complicated form that employs the conditional object technique (thanks to help from someone else on this forum a while back). This more complicated form does not make use of the ONKEY
event, but maybe it'll work. I'll let you know.

Thanks a lot.

[Barry Shadduck]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

Hello John,
Well the ONKEY logic works ok with the CONDITIONAL OBJECT,
but now I can't seem to hide the CONDITIONAL OBJECT, using
this.COND1.refresh() to toggle the True and False condition, but not working (works on the more complicated form I talked about with a button) I'll find a way if someone like you dosn't beat me to it.
Thank you very, very much for your assistance.
See you later sir.

[Barry Shadduck]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

John,
You are absolutely correct. It works! Found that all I have to do is toggle the Layout Variable from False to True, etc;, and ONKEY works great with it.
Thank you very much sir.
This one is a wrap.
Without this forum, I'm dead.

[tlyon]

RE: FLAKEY ONKEY

Used to use that method, but got tired of the difficulties with subforms and z-order, etc.
Here is a script I use to hide fields on a form:

objfld = obj(":" + a_form_current)
count = objfld.children()
for i = 1 to count
	object = objfld.child(i)
	objtype = object.class()
	if objtype = "field" then
		object.hide()
	end if
next

This won't hide buttons or browses, but can easily be modified to do so. It works very quickly.

Tom Lyon