Comments on: Spicing up Matlab uicontrol tooltips

By: Yair Altman

Yair Altman — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:41:56 +0000

@Alan - thanks.

I’ll do a post or two about systemdependent but look at my long TODO list: so little time, so much to do…

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:19:30 +0000

Offtopic, sorry, but just wanted to reiterate - great blog idea, you should definitely keep it up. How about a post on systemdependent() ?

By: Yair Altman

Yair Altman — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:18:56 +0000

@wei - handle2struct/struct2handle are internal Matlab functions that cannot be modified. However, you can easily build your own m-file version that try’s to call the built-in version and if an error is thrown, then the catch segment will create the necessary output object based on inspection of the Java object.

This could be a nice File Exchange submission - care to tackle it?

You can get some pointers by looking at the code within my UIInspect utility on the File Exchange.

By: Yair Altman

Yair Altman — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:10:51 +0000

@Ben - this was challenging: Until you asked I thought I knew the standard answer, which is “no” - tooltips use the system’s ToolTipManager object that can’t be modified. But then I found this Java hack, which I’m not even sure is documented in Java… Assuming you get the Java reference in jHandle:

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
action = jHandle.getActionMap.get('postTip');
actionEvent = ActionEvent(jHandle, ActionEvent.ACTION_PERFORMED, 'postTip');
action.actionPerformed(actionEvent);

The mouse does not even have to be anywhere near the GUI object!

Unfortunately, this hack requires the Java reference of the GUI object, and is not available for Matlab handles. To get a Matlab handle’s underlying Java reference you can use my FindJObj utility on the File Exchange and then use the hack.

By: Ben Shepherd

Ben Shepherd — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:39:20 +0000

That looks like a really handy feature! On a slightly related note, do you know of any way of forcing a tooltip to display (or update one that is already being displayed)?

By: MATLAB GUI - Tool Tips are your Friends! | blinkdagger

MATLAB GUI - Tool Tips are your Friends! | blinkdagger — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:09:26 +0000

[...] Yair’s Undocumented Tips on How to Spice up Tooltips [...]

By: wei

wei — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:37:06 +0000

Yair, Could handle2struct/struct2handle pair be extended to cover all java objects?