Comments on: Figure toolbar components

By: Kesh

Kesh — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:01:27 +0000

Yair,

Actually, I thought of that right after I posted yesterday so I did some more testing and found out that the behavior of a Matlab uicontrol popupmenu is indeed what I expect. For example, create a figure with a uicontrol popupmenu and enable both its callback and figure’s keypressfcn:

uicontrol('style','popupmenu','string',{'1','2','3'},'Callback','disp(''popupmenu callback'')');
set(gcf,'WindowKeyPressFcn','disp(''windowskeypressfcn'')');

Then, when you put focus on the popupmenu and press “1″ key, Matlab prints:

popupmenu callback
windowskeypressfcn

I believe I found the fix. Simply the same KeyPress callback function can be assigned to the Java combo-box’s KeyPressCallback.

Thanks for your tips and great blog!!

By: Yair Altman

Yair Altman — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:44:41 +0000

@Kesh – this is actually the expected behavior: the combo-box “consumes” the keyboard event and so the figure window is not aware that an event has occurred. Change your combo-box items to {’1′,’2′,’3′,’4′} and then click 1,4,3,2 to see that the combo-box moves the selection to the next relevant entry. It is really quite intuitive once you see it.

BTW, the combo-box keyboard listeners can be removed, but I strongly suggest to NOT do it, since it will also prevent using the arrow keys etc. Moreover, many users will actually expect the regular behavior.

By: Kesh

Kesh — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:35:48 +0000

@Yair – Brilliant solution!

I have another little annoyance that I’d love to get rid of. It’s a focus-related issue with JComboBox (I suspect it’s more than JcomboBox specific and applies to all Java GUI Components).

Here’s an example:

fig = figure;
set(fig,'WindowKeyPressFcn','disp(''1'')');
tb = uitoolbar;
drawnow
jToolbar = get(get(tb,'JavaContainer'),'ComponentPeer');
jCombo = javax.swing.JComboBox({'Test Item 1','Test Item 2'});
jToolbar.add(jCombo);
jToolbar.repaint;
jToolbar.revalidate;

WindowsKeyPressFcn is supposed to display “1″ in Command Window if a key is pressed anytime when the figure is on top. However, clicking on JComboBox causes WindowsKeyPressFcn to be not called until another part of the figure is clicked.

I’m guessing that this behavior comes from the fact that the figure window control has been passed on from Matlab to Java when JComboBox gets the focus; thus, Matlab callback events are no longer happening.

I’m currently using java.awt.Robot.mousePress to force the control back to Matlab. It works, but I’m wondering if there is a better solution (Can we mess with Java Focus Manager?).

Any ideas?

By: Yair Altman

Yair Altman — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:01:27 +0000

@Kesh – good point. Java toolbar customizations are not stored in the saved FIG files. However, you can place your code in the figure’s CreateFcn property, and it will automatically get executed whenever the figure is reloaded from disk:

codeStr = ['tb=uitoolbar;' ...
           'drawnow;' ...
           'jToolbar=get(get(tb,''JavaContainer''),''ComponentPeer'');' ...
           'jCombo=javax.swing.JComboBox({''Item 1'',''Item 2''});' ...
           'jToolbar.add(jCombo);' ...
           'jToolbar.repaint;' ...
           'jToolbar.revalidate;'];
set(gcf,'CreateFcn',codeStr)
hgsave('test');
eval(codeStr);  % display the new toolbar
 
hgload('test');

By: Kesh

Kesh — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:38:19 +0000

Yair,

Good stuff! I’ve been always wondered about the possibility of adding popupmenu to a uitoolbar. I do have a question though.

I found if you save a figure (either via GUI or via hgsave) with added JComboBox toolbar component, the JComboBox is not saved. Do you know of any workaround to save java components to a .FIG file?

Here’s a quick example:

Let say we created a figure with a popupmenu toolbar:

fig = figure;
tb = uitoolbar;
drawnow
jToolbar = get(get(tb,'JavaContainer'),'ComponentPeer');
jCombo = javax.swing.JComboBox({'Test Item 1','Test Item 2'});
jToolbar.add(jCombo);
jToolbar.repaint;
jToolbar.revalidate;
 
hgsave('test');
hgload('test');

TIA!

By: uiundo – Matlab’s undocumented undo/redo manager | Undocumented Matlab

uiundo – Matlab’s undocumented undo/redo manager | Undocumented Matlab — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:04:39 +0000

[...] A couple of months ago, I explained how to customize the figure toolbar. In that article, I used the undocumented uiundo function as a target for the toolbar customization [...]

By: Modifying default toolbar/menubar actions | Undocumented Matlab

Modifying default toolbar/menubar actions | Undocumented Matlab — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:08:32 +0000

[...] Examples of toolbar customizations were presented in past articles (here and here). A future article will explain how to customize menu [...]

By: Yair Altman

Yair Altman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:16:11 +0000

Your first two buttons are zoom and pan, which know of each other and have internal code to handle mutual exclusivity. Your third button is different, so you need to let them know of each other.

This is more than the space here allows, so if you want to continue discussion, please contact me offline using the email link on the top-right of this page.

By: danny

danny — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:03:28 +0000

OK, I got it to work, but I don’t see any information that corresponds to a “button group”. I was able to copy and paste some code from a GUIDE output file that works as far as creating a “group” of two buttons that are mutually exclusive (a previously selected button will become deselected if the other button becomes selected). However, I’m unable to add my own “custom” button to this group! Any tips? In the example code snippet below, I’m trying to add a third button “select region” to a group of two other buttons. The first two buttons seem to know about each other but don’t see the third button… I think it has something to do with the “createfcn” called “local_CreateFcn” that I copied from the GUIDE output. Any help is MUCH appreciated!!!!!!!!! Thanks!!

    icons = load('icons') ;    
    appdata = [];
    appdata.lastValidTag = 'zoom';
 
    handles.tb = uitoolbar(...
      'Parent',handles.fig,...
      'Tag','zoom',...
      'CreateFcn', {@local_CreateFcn, blanks(0), appdata} );
 
    appdata = [];
    appdata.toolid = 'Exploration.ZoomIn';
    appdata.CallbackInUse = struct('ClickedCallback', 'zoom');
    appdata.lastValidTag = 'zoom';
 
    handles.zoom = uitoggletool(...
      'Parent',handles.tb,...
      'ClickedCallback', 'zoom',...
      'CData',icons.zoomin,...
      'TooltipString','Zoom',...
      'Tag','zoom',...
      'CreateFcn', {@local_CreateFcn, blanks(0), appdata} );
 
    appdata = [];
    appdata.toolid = 'Exploration.Pan';
    appdata.CallbackInUse = struct(...
      'ClickedCallback', 'pan');
    appdata.lastValidTag = 'pan';
 
    handles.pan = uitoggletool(...
      'Parent',handles.tb,...
      'ClickedCallback','pan',...
      'CData',icons.pan,...
      'TooltipString','Pan',...
      'Tag','pan',...
      'CreateFcn', {@local_CreateFcn, blanks(0), appdata} );
 
    A = 1 - [ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 ; 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 ;  0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0] + 1 ;
    m = gray(2) ;
 
    appdata = [];
    appdata.toolid = 'Exploration.SelectRegion';
    appdata.CallbackInUse = struct(...
      'ClickedCallback', '');
    appdata.lastValidTag = 'selreg';
    handles.selreg = uitoggletool(handles.tb, 'TooltipString', 'Select Region', 'OnCallback', @selreg_on, 'OffCallback', @selreg_off, 'CData', ind2rgb(A, m),...
      'CreateFcn', {@local_CreateFcn, blanks(0), appdata}) ;    
  end
 
  function local_CreateFcn(hObject, eventdata, createfcn, appdata)
    if ~isempty(appdata)
      names = fieldnames(appdata);
      for i=1:length(names)
        name = char(names(i));
        setappdata(hObject, name, getfield(appdata,name));
      end
    end
 
    if ~isempty(createfcn)
      if isa(createfcn,'function_handle')
        createfcn(hObject, eventdata);
      else
        eval(createfcn);
      end
    end
  end

By: Yair Altman

Yair Altman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:28:13 +0000

@danny - you need to enable one of the modes before this appdata property becomes available. For example, by clicking on one of the buttons or programmatically (e.g., zoom('on') or pan('on')).