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Re: Ampersand (&) in column titles in XPA 3.2c?

Frederik Soete
 

Hi,

Maybe that behavior is inherited from the used DotNet controls, maybe not. Before 3.2c was released I pointed out to MSE some other GUI column fenomenon with regard to unicode character support. So magic support fixed that bug: unicode worked when input directly, but not through an expression. It is now fixed, but from that case I infer magic sometimes needs to program specific support for the various portions of its' engine (seemingly different execution for titles without or with expression).

Perhaps they have code reuse for different GUI items. So maybe the code for displaying keyboard accelerators is triggered not only intentionally for buttons, but unintendedly also for column titles. I am also just speculating here... It seems like a smoking gun that I could not elicit a visible response when trying to 'trigger' a column with ampersand+letter through keypresses alt+letter. So there does not seem to be a DotNet response to those keypress events... And in my admittedly limited experience I have not yet seen programs having column accelerator keys. So there is that fact too. It just seems to be a tiny bug in the title handling.

Have a nice day,

Frederik


Op 28 jul. 2017 16:54 schreef "Andy Jerison" <droidaj@...>:

I imagine xpa inherits this behavior from the Windows controls it uses.

On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 1:16 PM, Frederik Soete <frederik.soete@...> wrote:
Hi,

Thanks. Though I did know that from experience with the button formats. Still thanks for the helpful suggestion.

I have already passed the problem along onto magic support. That way I will know for sure whether the strange display glitch is here to stay, or will be bugfixed in a further release. In any case, it is not really a logical thing to have in the engine in GUI table columns. So, from my perspective, it is faulty behavior.

Bye,

Frederik



Op 28 jul. 2017 11:08 schreef "Alan Brookes" <alanjbrookes@...>:
Frederik,
        I can't answer your question directly, but if yo need to display the ampersand, try doubling it (&&) in the heading string (just a WAG).


Regards,

Alan

On 28-07-2017 08:32, Frederik Soete wrote:
> Hi, group,
>
> We are currently checking our Magic v.9 application after conversion to XPA. Some of our tasks in Magic v.9 have column titles containing an ampersand
> (&), short for 'and'. After converting to XPA these column titles (both in designer and in runtime) are shown without an ampersand, but with an
> 'underscore' on the next space sign. It is as though XPA wants to regard the ampersand as a keyboard accelerator indicator (just as is the case in
> buttons, where Alt+letter allows one to activate the button). It seems this may be a column title bug, because if you have an ampersand and then a
> letter, the apparent keyboard accelerator does not work: i figured it maybe allowed one to park on a column quickly, but that was not the case.
>
> So, is this a bug, or is this a feature one could abuse for underlining parts of a column title? Anyone have a clue?
>
> Bye,
>
> Frederik Soete
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