[news.eclipse.platform.swt] Re: JFace Dialog - change default focus

[Matthew Hall <matthall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe Gagnon wrote:
> We have a situation in our project where we display a dialog (using a 
> JFace Dialog) and we want to change the default focus from the OK/Cancel 
> buttons to a button (or other widget type) on the "body" of the dialog. 
> The "body" is implemented as a SWT Composite. Creating a Composite that 
> contains all of the widgets for a given screen has been the approach 
> we've been using for screens in general. This way we can place the 
> composite on any container (dialog, wizard, editor tab, etc.).
>
> The reason we need to do this is that the user community that will end 
> up using this will tend to hit Enter/Return on their keyboards to move 
> from field to field on the screens. (They have been accustomed to using 
> terminal-based applications and hitting Return is how they enter data 
> and navigate through a screen's fields.) If they do this on dialogs, the 
> will trigger the OK button and end up closing the window.
>
> Any ideas on how to shift the focus to where we need it, -or- some other 
> solution?

What you need to do is override the traversal events on your form.  This 
can be done using a SWT.Traverse event filter.  Be aware that event 
filtering can slow down your application if you're not careful, so try 
to keep your listeners lean.

display.addFilter(SWT.Traverse, new Listener() {
  public void handleEvent(Event event) {
    if (event.detail == SWT.TRAVERSE_RETURN &&
        shouldOverrideDefaultTraversal(event.widget))
      event.detail = SWT.TRAVERSE_TAB_NEXT;
  }
});

I'm not positive this will work but you can always try.  Make sure to 
remove the filter when the user closes the dialog.

Matthew