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| Purpose: | This object is used to display information for the user. |
Description
The StatusField object provides an area for displaying context sensitive help messages, keyboard status, and other application dependent information.
By default a StatusField is a recessed rectangle in which information is displayed. It has a Caption and a Text property, which by default are empty, but either or both of which can be used to present information. The Caption is left justified in the field and the Text is displayed immediately to its right. Typically, you would use the Caption property as a title to describe the information that the StatusField displays, and the Text property to show its current value. However, you are not obliged to use both of them and you can achieve most effects with just one.
Note that when the StatusField is used to display hints it is its Text property that is used.
A StatusField may be used to monitor the status of the keyboard and this is controlled by its Style property. The default value for Style is an empty vector. However, you can set it to monitor various keyboard states as follows :
| CapsLock | Monitors state of Caps Lock key |
| ScrollLock | Monitors state of Scroll Lock key |
| NumLock | Monitors state of Num Lock key |
| KeyMode | Monitors the keyboard mode (APL/ASCII) |
| InsRep | Monitors the state of the Insert key |
In each case, the Text property of the StatusField is used to display the keyboard status. If Style is CapsLock, ScrollLock or NumLock, the field displays "Caps", "Num" or "Scroll" if the corresponding mode is selected and is blank if not.
If Style is InsRep, the StatusField displays either "Ins" or "Rep". Initially it always displays "Ins" and then toggles between "Rep" and "Ins" each time the Insert key is pressed.
If Style is KeyMode, the StatusField displays the name for the current keyboard mode which is defined in the input table being used. For the 2-mode tables APL_US.DIN, APL_UK.DIN etc., the mode name displayed is either "Apl" or "Asc". The unified tables have no modes so a StatusField with this Style does nothing.
If Style is set to one of the above, you may still use the Caption property to give the StatusField a title. You may even set the value of the Text property, but be aware that this value will be reset when the user next presses the key the StatusField is monitoring.