| Dialog_Pickfile Whack-a-Mole [message #81626] |
Fri, 05 October 2012 06:23  |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
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Senior Member |
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Folks,
I was excited to learn about Mark Piper's recent promotion
(right word?) to IDL Product Manager. Although sorry he
is leaving the teaching ranks. He was one of the best!
We have already seen the benefits of having a programmer's
sensibility in that position.
Since I am sitting here this morning reinstalling an operating
system after an all-night wiping (and repair, God willing)
of the hard drive, I thought I would share some of today's
mail bag with Mark.
This letter is from "Vijay" who writes in to complain about
his inability to position Dialog_Pickfile, which always
appears in the upper-left corner of his display, to his
mind the least advantageous spot on the whole computer.
I commiserate, because I have been complaining about this
lack of positioning control for about as long as
Dialog_Pickfile has been with us, to no apparent effect.
Dialog_Pickfile actually only appears in the upper left
the first time it's used. Thereafter, on my machine,
anyway, it seems to come up in the last place you
left it. (I wish to God it could remember the last
directory, too, but that's why I use cgPickfile instead
of Dialog_Pickfile.)
This letter strikes a chord with me because I have
been frustrated with Dialog_Pickfile (via cgPickfile)
for a couple of weeks now, too. Roughly corresponding
to when I started working more regularly with IDL 8.x.
In a word, I can't find the damn thing half the time!
I type the command and stare at the screen
and the grayed-out IDL prompt and think IDL has gone
into a funk again (seems unlikely, but...), when
I finally discover the dialog back behind another
graphics window, or even behind the IDL workbench
itself!
To my mind a blocking dialog should be, you know,
somewhere where you can see the darn thing. This is
especially annoying when you are showing new IDL
users how things work. They can't figure out WHAT
is going on!
And, I can't say I understand it, either. Sometimes it's
visible and sometimes it's not. I haven't yet figured
it out. I just know that the annoyance factor is creeping
up. And Vijay's e-mail this morning gives me a chance to
mention it and see if anyone else has solved the mystery
of where Dialog_Pickfile might or might not appear next.
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Sepore ma de ni thue. ("Perhaps thos speakest truth.")
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