Handling measurement units in NSTextField - objective-c

I am creating a test application to calculate the area of a rectangle.This application uses NSTextField control to get the length and breadth of rectangle.
The user is expected to enter a string value which will include units of length as well (Sample Values 2.5 inches, 1500 mm).
I want NSTextField to convert the value in centimeters (cm) automatically so that it displays the converted value (in cm) as soon as the text field looses focus.
For Eg:
User Enters length as: 1500 mm
As soon as user goes to next text field to enter breadth, the length field displays
Displayed Value: 150 cm
How can we achieve this?

I think you want to use the delegate method, controlTextDidEndEditing:, which is sent to your text field's delegate when the editing is finished. Once you get the string from the field editor, you'll need to parse it somehow to find the units (how you parse it depends on what all you need to find). If you have a small number of things you're hunting for, like cm, mm, m, then you could probably just use rangeOfString: and test for 0 length to find out what units were entered. BTW, you should do your math correctly too -- 1500mm = 150 cm

I would consider a different approach, using a UIPicker to display the available units, and have them enter the number separately.
Otherwise, you'll have to do all this parsing. Don't see the point of parsing. Plus, if they make a mistake spelling the units, or use different ways of indicating it, then you would have to account for that as well. Depends on your application, but if the user has to type the units out anyway, it might be more convenient for them to use a UIPicker.

Related

Valid displayAt() range in GMS

Images can be displayed at a specific location with the DisplayAt() command.
Does anyone know the valid range?
For example, DisplayAt(-9000, -9000) is that valid? What is the total valid range?
Of course in the example the image would not be seen within the GMS frame, but that is exactly what I need.
Thanks
Yes, negative values are completely ok and will indeed "place" the image outside the visible range of the window.
There is nothing like a "valid" range - the coordindates are just numbers. ( There is likely a limit when the value exceeds the value-range of the internallly used variable type to store the coordinates, possiblye long (4 byte signed integer). )
Just be aware that concepts like "front most" window will also apply if an image is outside the "visible" range. Images will f.e. also show up in the ImageBrowser regardless of their position on the workspace. The same is true for iterating through images on a workspace using f.e. CountImageDocuments() and GetImageDocument()
Some commands ( I think ShowImage() ) might have addtional code to ensure that images stay "visible" and might therefore shift the image back into the workspace range. Also using "auto-arrange" will take images from the "off" and place them back into the visible range.
So if you deliberatly use "off-screen" display, this is ok, but it might create some unintended side-effects. What is the exact purpose of using it this way? There might be more suitable concepts. (f.e. one can create imageDocuments and add ImageDisplays to them without the need of showing the imageDocument.) Image may also be temporarilly "hidden". Finally, one might condiser shiftung "unwanted" images onto a separate workspace.

Formatting duration for display

In a SAP database there are values formatted as PxDTyH where x is the number of days and y is the number of hours. A value like P2DT0H is 2 days + 0 hours. I can see that via SE16:
Unfortunately, this is exactly displayed like that to the user, "3" corresponds to the index in the database (not seen in the screenshot above).
I'd like to see it displayed
without the index (changing the options "show keys within drop-down lists" did not have an effect)
instead of the technical name P2DT0H I'd like to see "2 days and 0 hours" (or similar)
Is there a way to process the data before it gets displayed in the combo box? The developers can't change the format in the database because it would change the API.
FYI: I'm just a tester, I don't know how to code in ABAP, but from knowledge of other programming languages, I'd say that the data can be converted before it's displayed. I don't need a fully-fledged answer, just a pointer to a SAP hook or event which enables writing a conversion function.
Probably, conversion routines can be an option for you. What you should do is to:
Take your domain (which is used for PxDTyH values) or create new one specially for this.
Create FM with name CONVERSION_EXIT_%NAME%_OUTPUT, and put conversion logic in there. Mandatory parameters INPUT and OUTPUT should exist.
Enter the %NAME% into Convers.routine field in domain properties.
Enable Check conversion exits checkbox in user parameters.
More info is here.

How to increase the length of select-options in UI

As I understood, select-options in abap just takes 45 characters from UI.
Whatever I assign the type of select-option, it doesnt take more then 45 characters.
SELECT-OPTIONS: s_key FOR somlreci1-receiver NO INTERVALS VISIBLE LENGTH 100.
somlreci1-receiver is char(1215). But I cannot write more than 45 into that select-option.
Any way to increase this length ?
This official link
http://help.sap.com/abapdocu_70/en/ABAPSELECT-OPTIONS.htm
says it isn't possible to pass input larger than 45 chars, sorry :|
At the end of the documentation posted by #vlad-ardelean it mentions that:
If a selection criterion for data types is supplied with data when
calling up an executable program with SUBMIT
...
If the selection criterion is declared with the addition NO-DISPLAY,
no conversion routine or truncation will be performed for the first
row either.
You could declare the select-options as NO-DISPLAY in your main program, then call it from a second program with
SUBMIT programname WITH so_field EQ lv_longdata SIGN 'I'.
...or similar to pass the long value to the main program. It's a pretty convoluted way of doing it, however.
In addition to #vlad-ardelean's answer: It might be interesting to note that in recent releases, the maximum field length was raised to 255 characters (see http://help.sap.com/abapdocu_731/en/ABAPSELECT-OPTIONS.htm).

Objective-C: How to use both "." and "," as a decimal separator or at least convert one to another on-the-fly

I have an instance of NSTextField, e.g. someTextField, for which I will use the number formatter to limit the input to numbers only.
The problem comes with the localization combined with the specific keyboard layouts used.
I would like to allow both the, say, American and European users to enter their localized decimal separators. As you all know, in the USA that would be . and for the good part of Europe that would be , (and similar with the thousands separator, etc. but let's put that to the side for now).
So I wrote the following task:
[numberFormatter setLocale:[NSLocale currentLocale]]; for the instance of the NSNumberFormatter.
Problems occurs when the user who has , set as a decimal separator AND US keyboard layout switched on (fairly common here in Europe) presses the decimal separator key on the numeric keyboard. With the US keyboard layout on, that would give him the . as the decimal separator but at the same time it'll be ignored in the someTextField because of the localized settings system-wide. So, if you want to type 1/2 using numeric keyboard only, you'll type 0.5 (US keyboard layout) in the text field and it would be read by the system as 0 because it recognizes only , as decimal separator. This is how the program currently is working and I would like to improve it in this regard.
I would like to allow user to type in the . in the someTextField and for the system to recognize it as a decimal separator just like it would ,. This kind of behavior can be seen in Apple's own Calculator application. If you type . on the numeric keyboard it'll appear as , immediately on the screen (for all conditions as described previously).
Question is: is it possible for me to achieve this using an instance of NSNumberFormatter? If not, is it possible to set on-the-fly conversion of the numerical keyboard decimal separator key output to the decimal separator set system-wide? Or perhaps you have some other suggestions?
Thanks.
I don't have a specific answer to your question, but I'd say the right approach is not to muck about with the NSNumberFormatter at all and concentrate on trying to change the characters generated by the keyboard.
The default locale for number formatters is usually the system's default locale as set by the user in the internationalization settings. If you change that behaviour programmatically for UI elements, you are effectively telling the user "I know better than you how you want to input numbers". Arrogance of that sort on the part of the developer never gets them good marks with respect to UI design.
In fact, you could apply the same argument to remapping the dot button on the numeric keypad. How do you know that the user hasn't set US keyboard layout because it allows them to get a dot from that key? Maybe they consider it more important to be able to type the thousands separator from the keypad than the decimal separator. I'm not saying you shouldn't implement your feature, just make sure that the user has control over when it is enabled or disabled.
Anyway, you probably want to override the keyDown event on the control. More info here.
Take a look at the UITextFieldDelegate protocol. It allows your textfield to ask its delegate if it should accept a character which the user just typed. The apropriate method would be textField:shouldChangeCharactersInRange:replacementString. If the character in question is , or . just let the delegate append the properly localized decimal separator "manually" and return NO.
I'm not quite sure if this will work if the text field is set to number mode, maybe the input is being filtered before the delegate method is called - leading to the method not being called if the "wrong" separator has been filtered out previously. If so, you might want to consider leaving the text field in alphanumerical mode and use the delegate method again to filter out anything that is not numbers or separators. However, in this case you should make sure the user is not allowed to type more then one decimal separator - either ignore the surplus ones or remove the first one and accept the new one.

Displaying/Formatting Tabular Data (web)

In my example I have a table where each row is a user for example. Columns could include their name, address, email address, etc. I now need to add a column for (hypothetical example) their cat's names. While most people will have no cats and some people will have 1- 2 cats there will be the occasional person with 20 cats that create one very long row in the table. This is giving me an issue in presentation and for filtering/searching for cat names. Is there a good solution to displaying this type of data?
Have the first 50 (or whatever) characters of the field displayed as normal then put the rest in a block with its visibility set to hidden through CSS. Include a link / button / icon that will allow the user to toggle the visibility so they can see the entire value.
Several options:
Set a maximum width for the cell and allow the data to wrap
Place the content inside a wrapper tag (such as a div) and set the div with a fixed width/height and style of overflow:hidden to ensure that a particularly long word doesn't force out the width of the cell.
Truncate the output text on the server side
For cases #2 and #3, set the Title attribute of the TD tag to contain the full non-truncated text. This will present itself as a tooltip when hovering over the cell.
I would mention other CSS-based solutions but they're very sparsely supported right now, so not worth mentioning.
You might want to try doing something like what SO does. Namely, once someone reaches a certain point in their Rep, it suffixes the number and appromixates it. Ex. 10k instead of 10,236.
That way the numbers don't get out of hand.