A Thought for the developers

[Bob Whitaker]

I am now evluating an Acer Tablet computer as means of entering data into our application and am very impressed by the speed and ability of the handwriting recognition. The machine shipped with a Microsoft application called Sticky Notes and it would be so cool if there a field type that would accept the drag and drop of this handwritten sticky notes. Any thoughts guys ??
Bob Whitaker

[T Sayers]

RE: A Thought for the developers

Hi Bob,

I have adjusted one of Alpha's examples to get something that should be helpful. This is just a rough & ready example, but hopefully it'll show you how you might proceed.

Paste the code below into the code editor. Run the script and move the box that appears to the right. Get any other application up and have that on the left of the screen. Now, if you press the 'control' key, any text on your clipboard will go into the firstname field. This will happen for any program and it does not matter which program is active or where your mouse is, so you don't need to leave whatever app you're in. I don't have Sticky Notes to check, but if, by simply selecting text, it automatically gets placed on the clipboard, all you need do is press the control key to get your data over.

A few points:
1) Obviously whatever data you paste will have to be the same data type as the receiving field and will be subject to whatever field length you have set for the field.
2) This particular example runs in Xdialog but the basic idea is just an OnTimer script so I don't see why it couldn't run on a form
3) You will need to do a little more coding to get the data saved
4) To really speed your data entry, you could have the script auto-jump forward to the next rec as soon as your target field receives valid data.
5) Even better, the script could blank the clipboard as it runs, and auto run again as soon as you put anything else on the clipboard.
6) If you will not always be pasting into the same field in Alpha, you can extend the example above using UI_DLG_CONTROL_FROM_POS() to determine which control you have the mouse on top of and then the script could paste into that field, or use A_USER.MOUSE.EVENT to detect you clicking on the target field.

Regards,
Trevor


dim dlg_title as C
dlg_title = "Where is the Mouse"
ui_dlg_box(dlg_title,""%dlg%
{wrap=100}
Move the mouse around the dialog. Notice that as you move the mouse, the current control's definition is shown.;
{timer=timer}
{interval=.05}
{line=1,0};
{lf};
{region}
First name: |[.20fname];
Last name: |[.20lname];
City: |[.20city] State: [.4state] Zip: [.6zip];
{endregion};
{line=1,0};
{region};
Current control:;
{frame=1,1}
{region}
{text=80,2:current_control};
{endregion};
;
{endregion};
{lf};
"10&OK!ok" "10&Cancel!cancel";
%dlg%,""%code%

IF a_dlg_button = "timer" THEN
a_dlg_button = ""
current_control = ui_dlg_control_from_pos(dlg_title)
current_control = remove_blank_lines(current_control)
SELECT
CASE sys_key_down("control")
fname = :clipboard.get_data()
END SELECT
END IF
%code%)

[Bob Whitaker]

RE: A Thought for the developers

Thanks Trevor that's really neat and has a place in what I am trying to achieve. Perhaps I should have been more explicit. Sticky notes is a computer based version of the "post it" notes that people use to stick their high security password onto the monitor of their PC. The added feature of sticky notes is that being on a tablet based PC it can be handwritten using the stylus. These notes can the be dragged and dropped into certain types of document i.e. word or wordpad or excel in much the same way you might stick a post it note on a paper document (except the adhesive is better !) I thought I would be great if you could drop these notes into a suitable field on Alpha record.
Once again many thanks for your help.

Bob