Simple way to scroll to a widget and give it keyboard focus?

[kavika13]

v1.53 (can't easily update right now, in case this is easier in a newer version)

Is there a simple way to scroll to a widget and give it keyboard focus? Right now it seems like I need to jump through some hoops to get it to work right.

The only way I've gotten it to work right:

• Frame 0+: Display widget (...wait for external impulse that triggers set-focus logic)
• Frame 1: Display widget
• Frame 1: SetScrollHere
• Frame 2: SetKeyboardFocusHere
• Frame 2: Display widget
• Frame 3+: Display widget

If I call SetKeyboardFocusHere without calling SetScrollHere first, then it does nothing, unless I already have the window scrolled to the right place.

If I call SetScrollHere then immediately call SetKeyboardFocusHere, either immediately before or immediately after the widget call, then the wrong thing gets focused.

In my experiments, it also seems like SetScrollHere and SetKeyboardFocusHere have different concepts of "here", and the order they need to be invoked (list at the top) makes it pretty hard to use.

Please let me know if you want a minimal repro to accompany this, or if it is already clear enough.

[ocornut]

Hello,

No need for a repro, it's a known issue (see e.g. #343) and I am aware of the inconsistency with the "Here" concept :(

A while ago I started a work-in-progress branch to ditch SetKeyboardFocusHere() and replace it with a couple of new helpers, along with reworking the entire Tabbing code which is severely outdated, but I couldn't finish the work and had to move to other tasks. There were a few unsolved issues back then, but I'll like to get back to it - those functions are known to be problematic.

I think a workaround you may use to get SetKeyboardFocusHere() to register is to manually set g.ActiveId = to the ID of the item if you are able to obtain it, this will disable clipping.

Note that 1.60+ has SetItemDefaultFocus() which would perhaps do what you need on an Appearing windows.

-Omar

[kavika13]

I have successfully worked around this challenge in my code already, by just having some global variable I set temporarily after the impulse is detected, and clear on the next frame.

I wanted to file this ticket as sort of a "feature request" to make this simpler in some way. Maybe SetItemDefaultFocus() already covers it?

My use case is changing the control that has focus, depending on some outside input. In my case, it is selecting one of the several widgets in my 3D scene that will cause the corresponding field in the 2D UI to gain focus. The window probably will already be open when I want this focus change to happen.

[ocornut]

SetItemDefaultFocus() won't cover your use case at it is designed for the window appearing frame.

The future/intended new API FocusItem and ActivateItem are aimed at solving this properly.

[kavika13]

Should I close this ticket then, since it is sort of a dupe/there's planned features for this already?

[ocornut]

Closing! Thanks for the reminder that this needs to be sorted out :)