Class: FlyByHelp

• Inheritance
• Description
• Class protocol
  • accessing
• Instance protocol
  • defaults
  • developer menu
  • event handling
  • help texts
  • queries
  • show & hide help
• Private classes
• Examples

Inheritance:

   Object
   |
   +--EventListener
      |
      +--ActiveHelp
         |
         +--FlyByHelp

Package:

stx:libview2

Category:

Interface-Help

Version:

rev: 1.156 date: 2024/04/09 12:17:34

user: stefan

file: FlyByHelp.st directory: libview2

module: stx stc-classLibrary: libview2

Description:

an instance of me is used to provide tooltips 
sigh: Smalltalk was ahead of its time in the early 90's:
    initially called 'activeHelp', 
    then renamed to 'flyByHelp' 
    and is now commonly known as 'tooltip'.

I will watch the mouse movements via an event hook, and determine
where the mouse pointer is. 
Then ask the underlying view about its helpText 
and display it in a little floating popup view.

The tool is installed via:
    FlyByHelp start
and possibly deactivated/uninstalled via:
    FlyByHelp stop

There can be only one FlyByHelp at any time - the start/stop methods assure that.

Additional features:
    if you press CTRL, the helpKey which was responsible for the helptext
    is shown instead of the full text. This helps to find out which text to modify
    in case of typing errors or missing translations.

    if you press LEFTSHIFT+RIGHTSHIFT+CTRL (in that order), a menu developper menu appears,
    but only if Smalltalk is in the debeloper mode (i.e. not in end-user applications).

copyright
COPYRIGHT (c) 2001 by eXept Software AG
             All Rights Reserved

This software is furnished under a license and may be used
only in accordance with the terms of that license and with the
inclusion of the above copyright notice.   This software may not
be provided or otherwise made available to, or used by, any
other person.  No title to or ownership of the software is
hereby transferred.

Class protocol:

 currentlyShownView

 flyByHelpTimeoutMillis

abort tooltip text generation if the text could not be generated
within this time (generation took too long).

 flyByHelpTimeoutMillis: nMillis

abort tooltip text generation if the text could not be generated
within this time (generation took too long).

 helpKeyInsteadOfHelpTextQuery

 maxNumberOfColumns

 maxNumberOfLines

Instance protocol:

 flyByHelpTimeoutMillis

abort flyby help text generation, if no text can be generated within that
time delta. This is used to abort long-lasting parsing/scanning/analysis in
large methods when the mouse is moved over some syntactic constructs, and
it takes too long to parse...
The returned time is given in ms

 openDeveloperMenuFor: aView at: aPoint

with CTRL+SHIFT, this menu appears

 buttonMotion: buttonAndModifierState x: x y: y view: aView

DebuggingEvents := true

 buttonPress: button x: x y: y view: aView

DebuggingEvents := true

 keyPress: key x: x y: y view: aView

care for the special keys:
Ctrl (while help is shown)
L-Shift+R-Shift+Ctrl (while nothing is shown)

Usage example(s):

^ super keyPress:key x:x y:y view:aView

 keyRelease: key x: x y: y view: aView

DebuggingEvents := true

 mouseWheelMotion: state x: x y: y amount: amount deltaTime: dTime view: aView

DebuggingEvents := true

 pointerLeave: state view: aView

DebuggingEvents := true

    HelpKeyInsteadOfHelpTextQuery

UserPreferences current toolTipShapeStyle:nil
UserPreferences current toolTipShapeStyle:#cartoon

 FlyByHelp isActive

 FlyByHelp stop
 FlyByHelp start