No PopUpMenu on a ContainerControl?

General
1

I have designed a ContainerControl I embed on a window if needed. But the GUI was overloaded, therefore I replaced the SegmentedControls on the Container by PopUpmenus and rearranged the code. But now when I try to instantiate a new ContainerControl, I get an illegal cast exception because “PopUpmenu cannot be cast to a ContainerControl”. Does that mean I cannot use them on a container or did I do something else wrong?

Besides that, I would have used NSSegmentedControls with Icons rather – but (beside the MBS plugins) they don‘t seem to be available, at least not in MacOSLib. I can understand that; they are a big chunk to declare. But I still have the idea someone could have made them available somewhere – is that so?

2

I use popups on containercontrols without problems. It seems more that your casting is wrong. From the errir it seems you try to treat the containercontrol as a popup.

3

As for the icons: I use segmented controls with a background picture (I think, not at my Mac atm)

4

Thanks, Markus, will look through my setup to see if some old segmented control code resides.
The background images are some NSSegmentedControls then? Cocoa delivers a multitude of optical options that seem not to be available for Xojo controls I really do miss – or did I miss them?

5

Back at my Mac. Sorry, was wrong on the segmented controls. I use a containercontrol with a canvas and some pictures which works nice for my purpose.

For the popup in container controls see the screenshot. Each colour is a container control with a canvas and a popup:

6

Thanks Markus. Yes. that would‘t fit my needs. Nothing against the built-in segmented control, but I would really be able to use the extended native versions. But wow, it‘s that much to declare and a lot of interdependencies! (Same goes for NSButtons, btw.)

7

About the casting: when you cast then you tell the compiler “what comes next is what I say it is”, so if you cast like

PopupMenu( ContainerControl ).text

you tell the compiler that the ContainerControl is a popupmenu … which it is clearly not.

The best thing would probably be if you add a bridge, e.g. a property to the ContainerControl that you can access from outside.

So add a property “myPopUp” as PopupMenu to the ContainerControl.

Make sure that myPopUp exists: so In the ContainerControl add a method “Constructor”. Add the code to it “myPopUp = new PopupMenu”

In the Popup on the ContainerControl add in the Open event: “myPopUp = me”

So now from the outside you can simply access ContainerControl1.myPopUp as you would any PopupMenu, for example:

ContainerControl1.myPopUp.addRow “success”

(hope I got that all right)

8

Thanks again, Markus. I had to revert to an older version because I had maneuvered myself into too many errors. Guess I‘ll start on redesigning the original control rather and check for everything is right step by step.

9

Been there :wink:

One thing to note: it is easy to forget a bracket “)”, especially with casting, and you might suddenly be shown 4 or 5 errors just because you forgot that single bracket.