Form Design Ideas 1

[Glenn9999]

I'm working on something that I'm kind of struggling on how to design.

Mainly from some process (not important exactly what), I have some data to show on a form to allow a user to interact with it.

1) Date.
2) Identifier.
3) General Description.
4) Specific items and description.

Now the problem is that I'm not seeing a good specific way to handle this within the Delphi forms. What I'm thinking is just showing the date and identifier and then either right click or hyperlink to get the description and other data on a separate form. Then allow the user to be able to select that.

This should work, but I'm wanting to be able to have an option for the user to show the specific items (like a TreeView) and then individually select/deselect those if they desire.

A lot of this is probably my short knowledge, but how would I put form elements within form elements (simple: a check box on a button)? Or is there a better way to approach this? I could just put all the information on a TListBox and be done, but it would be insufficient to what I'm trying to do.

Any ideas?

It is not possible for anyone to acknowledge truth when their salary depends on them not doing it.

 

[DjangMan]

Hi Glenn,

I'm not grasping what the goal is so I'm having a hard time visualizing your problem.

Are you wanting to present the user with a number of choices from a list and when they select one or more items on that list you put some data on another form for the user to work with?

 

[Glenn9999]

I apologize, it's hard to visualize without a mockup. I would have drew up an image of what I had in mind to do, but it'd be hard to present it here.

The problem is coming up with a control structure to accomplish this task. I did recently figure out how to OwnerDraw a TListBox item to any size I want, so that will accomplish part of my problem in representing as much data as I want in a TListBox item (as long as it doesn't get too hard to navigate).

The other part of the problem that I'm not sure about is this: How to put a control item onto a "listing" control (like TListBox, TListView, TTreeView, TLabel if I hyperlink it).

I'm thinking to fully solve the problem as I am visualizing it, I want to put a TTreeNode that can be accessed and used within the TListBox item corresponding to it, but I'm not sure how to do that or if that's even possible.

It is not possible for anyone to acknowledge truth when their salary depends on them not doing it.

 

[Glenn9999]

For the particular project, I just ended up OwnerDrawing the set of data onto a TListBox, and let the user deal with the aggregate of data (since they know what they will be getting into before they select the option). If I figure out how to make combinations of controls, I can go ahead and enhance it with that.

Thanks for reading!

It is not possible for anyone to acknowledge truth when their salary depends on them not doing it.