Re: [lmi] wx-2.9.5 tab navigation [Was: wx-2.9.5-rc1 regression: proposed patch(es)]

[Greg Chicares]

On 2013-07-23 15:25Z, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
[...]
> fixed it in http://trac.wxwidgets.org/changeset/74588

Thanks, that works.

Here's a regression that I hadn't noticed before:
  File | New | Illustration
  change to "Solve" notebook page
  in "Solve for" groupbox, select "Specified amount"
  change to "Face" notebook page
The contents of these three textcontrols are highlighted:
  "cap"
  "offset"
  "Specified amount"
By "highlighted", I mean that the textcontrol has its usual color,
but all of the text it contains is in reverse video: here, text is
white foreground with blue background. I would expect highlighting
like this only in an enabled textcontrol that has focus (or for
a substring of text that has been selected in such a control),
but never in a disabled control. Unlike its siblings listed above,
the "Salary multiple" textcontrol has no such highlighting. [I'll
send a screenshot on request if that makes this more comprehensible.]

I think this may be related to another difference that I hadn't
noticed before, which I consider an improvement. It affects what
I customarily call a "tab control": the little tabs themselves that
label the pages on a wx notebook control, which in the case of lmi
contain labels "Plan", "Group", and so on. With old wx-2.9.3, the
tab control often had focus (indicated by a surrounding dotted line),
and changing the notebook page (by clicking on it, or with keystrokes
like Ctrl-PageUp) always seemed to give focus to the tab on the newly
selected page. That's not ideal, because lmi users can't interact with
the tab itself, and always need to Tab away from it. Now, however,
with new wx-2.9.5 (with recent patches), the tab doesn't grab focus on
page change; more specifically, it initially has focus when the tabbed
dialog is created, but once an interactive control on the initial page
gains focus, changing to a different notebook page focuses a control
on that page (the one that had focus the last time that page was
visited, or the first enabled control if it was never visited). IOW,
e.g., it works a lot like gnumeric's "Format Cells" dialog:
  Format | Cells | Format [shortcut: ctrl-1]

I point this out not merely to thank you for that improvement, but
also to speculate that it may be related to the odd highlighting noted
above--which does not occur if I add a step to the above instructions:
  change to "Solve" notebook page
  in "Solve for" groupbox, select "Specified amount"
+ focus the "Solve" tab (e.g., click on it)
  change to "Face" notebook page
If the tab control has focus, so that "Solve" is highlighted, then
changing to the "Face" page causes the "Face" tab to be highlighted;
but then (as expected) none of the textcontrols has any highlighting.

BTW, is there an easy way for lmi to prohibit the tab controls from
ever receiving focus, even if the user deliberate Tabs to them or
clicks on them? We always have "OK" and "Cancel" buttons, which can
receive focus if every single control on a notebook page is disabled.