groupstart

Generic Function

Package: common-graphics

Arguments: dialog-item

This function is likely no longer needed for any purpose. It can only be specified with an initarg since it is not a property.

A widget with the groupstart attribute allows you to use the arrow keys to move the keyboard focus among the widgets between the groupstart=t widget and the widget just before the next groupstart=t widget in the tab order. The idea was that you would normally tab to the first button in a group (which would have both tabstop and groupstart on), and then use the arrow keys to move to the other buttons in the group. Pressing TAB would jump all the way to the next widget after the button group, because typically only the first of those buttons would have a tabstop.

Modern interfaces seem to put a tabstop on each button, though, instead of just the first one in the group, except for radio-buttons, where the OS seems to force the tab to go to the selected radio-button, from where you can use the arrow keys to change the selected button to be one of the other radio-buttons in the group (where the group is just the set of radio-buttons that are contiguous in the tab order, which is not necessarily the same as the common graphics cluster, though it probably should be set up as the same group for a good design).

Common Graphics and IDE documentation is described in About Common Graphics and IDE documentation in cgide.htm.

The documentation is described in introduction.htm and the index is in index.htm.

Copyright (c) 1998-2000, Franz Inc. Berkeley, CA., USA. All rights reserved.

Created 2000.10.5.