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Button Bar Manipulation

The buttons on the button bar can be directly manipulated. There are five things that can be done with buttons in the drag-and-drop context.

1. . Buttons can be deleted from the button bar. All of the buttons on the button bar correspond to menu items which occur somewhere down in the menus under the menu bar. To delete a button, simply drag it and drop it on the menu bar (any place on the menu bar will do).

2. . The buttons within a button bar can be rearranged. To move a button to the end of the button bar, drag it and drop it on the blank space at the end of the button bar. To move it to any position within the button bar, drop it on the button you want it to go before.

3. . Buttons can be added in one of two ways.

If there's another window on the screen which has a button corresponding to a command that also exists in this window's menus, drag the button from that window and drop into any position on this window's button bar as described above.

If you have tear-off menus enabled, tear off a menu from this window and then drag a menu item from the torn-off menu and drop it into any position on the button bar.

4. . The labels on buttons can be changed. The buttons on Apex windows have a word or phrase which describes the operation. The major disadvantage to this is the amount of space taken by a button label. This limits the number of buttons which can fit in one or two rows. One can now relabel those buttons which have longer labels to some shorter word and then be able to fit more buttons in the same space (or less space).

To relabel a button, drag the text of the new label and drop it on the button. The text can be dragged from any place which supports Motif text drag. For example, type a word into the text field in the main Apex window. Double click on it to select the text. Drag the text and drop it on the button.

Any of the changes done to a button bar as described above, only affects that window in the current session. To make the changes permanent, save them in one of the usual ways: saving the button bar, save the window characteristics, or make the changes in your default session and resave it.

5. . Objects can also be dropped on buttons. The corresponding operation run on those objects. This only occurs for buttons which correspond to commands that take filesystem arguments. This can also be done to menu items which occur in torn-off menus.

For example, you have a directory window on the screen that has on its button bar operations like visit, check_out, and code. Drag a pathname from anywhere on the screen and drop it on the visit button and the visit operation will be done. Drop it on the code button and the code dialog will be raised with that object in it. Use the Shift modifier in this case while doing the drag and the object will be coded.

To display the internal widget name of a button, drag a button or a menu item from a tear-off menu and drop it on the Hold window. This will display the window kind and the menu item internal name.

Button bar manipulation is also discussed in Using and Customizing the GUI.


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