Re: [Pythoncard-users] clearing up tab order in resourceEditor

[<bra...@om...>]

I'm still in favor of a separate data structure for tab order. It's 
important to be able to take some 
focusable components out of the tab order, just as you can in FileMaker. 
This is normally done 
with rarely used-fields which still need to be focusable by mouseClick.

Here's a proposal for handling tab sequence:

Every background rsrc gets a new property, which is a simple list of 
component widget names,
let's call it tabSeq. 

Rules for tabSeq:

        - If a widget isn't in tabSeq, it's not included in the tab order.
        - If a widget is deleted in Resource Editor, it must be deleted 
from tabSeq
        - If a widget is renamed in Resource Editor, it must be renamed in 
tabSeq
        - By default, at on_initialize, the focus would start at the first 
widgets in tabSeq
                (this would reduce need setFocus statements in 
on_initialize)
        - Tab order in final background UI is determined by tabSeq

The Resource Editor UI to handle this would be a modal dialog box listing 
focusable widgets
of the current background, with checkboxes alongside each item. Any widget 
with a 
checkbox is included in the tabSeq. Widgets could be reordered by using an
appropriate list reordering UI.

Yes, this is yet another dialog box for Resource Editor, but I don't think 
it would
need to be implemented in Resource Editor right away. I for one would be 
happy
to set the values of tabSeq from a script, but hope for a future time in 
which Resource 
Editor handles keeping the resource file in sync with tabSeq, and 
providing
a dialog UI for managing tabSeq.