Hi Geoff

I suspected as much having glanced through the source. The customer
operators tend to use the keyboard rather than the mouse anyway so I
would probably be better off removing the control (and the temptation)
altogether and letting them type the date and time!

Thanks for the reply
Regards
Paul

--- In IBObjects@yahoogroups.com, Geoff Worboys <geoff@...> wrote:
>
> > Customer has complained that they cannot edit the time, can
> > only use the updown arrows, to adjust time in the IB_DateTimeEnh
> > dropdown in a grid. The updown arrows are too laborious when
> > moving several hours.
>
> > Current work round is to edit the time in the grid after
> > selecting the date in the dropdown.
>
> > Is there a setting somewhere to allow the time edits to be
> > entered and edited or is it a limitation?
>
> The drop-down does not allow focus - intentionally - and this
> prevents any sort of keyboard editing. Changing this behaviour
> would be very difficult - and risks breaking other behaviour.
>
> The time part of the date/time drop-down has always been poor.
> To be honest I dont like the month or year parts much either.
>
> The drop-down (on all the Enh combo controls) was always about
> mouse editing, any design change to the drop-down will also be
> about mouse editing. It was always intended and expected that,
> if you want to type the value, you would type it in the
> editable part of the control and not use the drop-down. [This
> expectation is (probably) partly based on my own bias that I
> hate constantly swapping between mouse and keyboard... let me
> do one or the other.]
>
> I have spent considerable time and imagination in trying to
> come up with a _useful_ way to allow time entry via mouse. So
> far none of the ideas have gotten past the experimental stage.
>
> On top of all that I have so few places that users are expected
> to enter date AND time, and in those few they seem to have been
> happy enough to select the date from the drop-down and type in
> the time, that I have not given the issue any priority.
>
> OK, so there are the excuses/reasons for current behaviour.
>
> If this problem is a priority to you then I suggest that the
> _practical_ way to solve the problem is to remove the drop-down
> and replace it with a modal dialog that shows when they hit
> the down-arrow (I'd probably replace it with the ellipsis
> button option).
>
> Using a modal dialog lets you avoid all the problems that are
> the reasons why the Enh drop-downs never receive (or at least
> they never keep) keyboard focus. It also means you can create
> a dialog that operates how you want. _IF_ you come up with
> a dialog that is very very clever and can conceivably be
> operated by only by mouse then I can show you how you could
> create your own date-time drop-down.
>
> That is the best I can offer at short notice.
>
> --
> Geoff Worboys
> Telesis Computing
>