We Keep Coding

Surface sdk 2.0 keyboard not showing in application

I am trying to show the keyboard when I click a button, but it's not showing a keyboard at all.
The "TEST" gets printed but the keyboard isn't showing.
My code is :
private SurfaceTextBox mySurfaceTextBox = new SurfaceTextBox();
void showKeyBoard(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
//System.Windows.Input.Keyboard.Focus((IInputElement)getCanvasFromButton((SurfaceButton) sender));
System.Windows.Input.Keyboard.Focus((IInputElement)mySurfaceTextBox);
Console.Write("TEST");
SurfaceKeyboard.IsVisible = true;
SurfaceKeyboard.CenterX = (float)InteractiveSurface.PrimarySurfaceDevice.Bounds.Width - (SurfaceKeyboard.Width / 2);
SurfaceKeyboard.CenterY = (float)InteractiveSurface.PrimarySurfaceDevice.Bounds.Height - (SurfaceKeyboard.Height / 2);
SurfaceKeyboard.Layout = Microsoft.Surface.KeyboardLayout.Alphanumeric;
SurfaceKeyboard.Rotation = (float)(Math.PI / 2);
SurfaceKeyboard.ShowsFeedback = false;
}
Can someone help me please?

I don't know much about the surface framework; but usually you cannot force a keyboard to appear, the focused object needs to accept text as an input.
Because buttons generally don't accept text input, the keyboard's focus cannot be given to it, and thus
System.Windows.Input.Keyboard.Focus((IInputElement)sender);
will be ignored.
If the idea is to only make the keyboard appear, then an option is to add a SurfaceTextBox and to give focus to the textbox (this will inturn remove focus from the button)
XAML
Add this to your XAML file
<Canvas>
<s:SurfaceTextBox
Name="yourSurfaceTextBox"
Canvas.Top="200" Canvas.Left="200"
Width="100" Height="40" />
</Canvas>
Code File
void showKeyBoard(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
Console.Write("TEST");
System.Windows.Input.Keyboard.Focus((IInputElement)yourSurfaceTextBox);
// Rest of your code...
}
If the idea is to get navigation between buttons, you should consider using a SurfaceListBox since it accepts as a default behavior arrow navigation from the keyboard, then your code above should work.
Question in Comments
How I can test this on a non-surface device?
You can use a simulator which should be included in the 2.0 sdk
How I can change the cursor position in the SurfaceTextBox to the place it's touched?
I don't really understand what you mean by 'place it's touched', but you can change the cursor location in the textbox using the select method.
yourSurfaceTextBox.Select(position, 0);
To get the touch locations you can use
ReadOnlyTouchPointCollection touches = touchTarget.GetState();
Then you'll have to figure out where in relation to an object the touch was, but I this question is beyond the scope of the original question.
Have fun!

Any Characters - Masked Text Box [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Masked TextBox Input Align Left
(2 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I'm writing an app in C# with Visual Studio 2012, and I'm needing to format some input text using MaskedTextBox. The user will type in a folder path to the text box, but since the folder path is relative to another path, I need it to start with ".\", but I do not care how long the path is.
Right now, I have the mask set for the box to \.\\CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC. This works fine except for the fact that when the user clicks into the box, it places the cursor where they click instead of the beginning of the box.
Is there a way to set the mask to still put in the ".\" but not to set any limit on the characters that come after it?
Or is there a way I'm overlooking?
EDIT: More info
So I've tried a couple recommended things, but they don't seem to work. The answer linked here doesn't work well. While I can set it to go to that selection point when I click on the box, it will go there every time you need to click on the box. So you can't select the whole box or edit part of what you typed, which is even worse for usability.
I also tried the method suggested by Adelmo. I made an even handler like so:
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
refreshList();
this.textBoxPrintFolder.GotFocus += new EventHandler(textBoxPrintFolder_GotFocus);
}
private void textBoxPrintFolder_GotFocus(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.textBoxPrintFolder.Select(2, 0);
}
This works when tabbing to the box, but apparently clicking on the box doesn't go into the GotFocus event.
I've also tried using the MouseEnter event. While it does work, it takes a few seconds before it will move. Not ideal.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Maybe using onFocus event:
You can control cursor position (and selection) by TextBox.SelectionStart and TextBox.SelectionLength properties.
Example if you want move cursor to before 3th character set SelectionStart = 2 and SelectionLength = 0.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/04362a62-8cbf-4d86-a1bc-2aba8e4978ca/cursor-position-in-textbox
Hope it help you

Second TextBox showing same Text Selection as first

Long time listener, first time caller here. I'm having a strange issue with the TextBox in WinRT C#/XAML that I hope someone may be able to help me with.
Basically, I'm working on creating a Custom Control that essentially requires a second TextBox to be a copy of the first, including showing the same Text, and showing the same Selected Text. Obviously for the Text requirement I simply respond to the TextChanged event on the first TextBox and set the Text of the second TextBox to the Text from the first, which works great.
For the Selected Text requirement I started with a similar solution, and my code for this is as follows:
void TextBox1_SelectionChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
this.TextBox2.Select(this.TextBox1.SelectionStart, this.TextBox1.SelectionLength);
}
This seemed to work pretty well when initially used with a mouse:
But I'm having a problem when selecting text with Touch. I double-tap within the TextBox to create the first "anchor" as you do in Touch, then drag to begin the selection; but I only ever manage to select a single character normally before the selection stops. The TextBox doesn't lose focus exactly, but the behaviour is similar to that; the selection anchors disappear and I can't continue selecting anything unless I re-double-tap to start a new selection. If I remove the code to select text in TextBox2 then the Touch selection behaves perfectly in TextBox1.
I've been trying to fix this for a while and cannot, I'm not sure if I can get the desired behaviour with WinRT TextBoxes. Does anyone have any ideas? Or perhaps another way to implement a solution with two TextBoxes with this behaviour?
Thanks a lot.

So this is far from an answer, but discovered a few things that maybe will help you or others come up with a potential workaround. Apologies if these are things you've already seen and noted.
First, it's not the call to TextBox2.Select() that's the problem per se. This for instance, works fine for me
private void txt1_SelectionChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var start = TextBox1.SelectionStart;
var length = TextBox1.SelectionLength;
TextBox2.Select(3, 5);
}
unfortunately, using start and length versus the hard-coded 3 and 5, that is, the following, DOES NOT WORK:
private void txt1_SelectionChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var start = TextBox1.SelectionStart;
var length = TextBox1.SelectionLength;
TextBox2.Select(start, length);
}
I also discovered that I could select TWO characters if I started from the end, but only one from the beginning. That got me to thinking about dispatching the call to set the second selection:
private void txt1_SelectionChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var start = TextBox1.SelectionStart;
var length = TextBox1.SelectionLength;
Dispatcher.RunAsync(Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Low,
() => TextBox2.Select(start, length));
}
Now I can select 2 from the front and 3 and sometimes 4 from the back. Took it a step further, and was able to select as many as six or seven with a really fast swipe.
private void txt1_SelectionChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var start = TextBox1.SelectionStart;
var length = TextBox1.SelectionLength;
Dispatcher.RunIdleAsync((v) => Highlight());
}
public void Highlight()
{
TextBox2.Select(TextBox1.SelectionStart, TextBox1.SelectionLength);
}
Seems like the trick to working around this is not setting TextBox2 until whatever vestiges of the TextBox1 SelectionChanged event have completed.
This may be worth registering on Connect.

Mine is only a partial solution as well.
I did some debugging and noticed that the SelectionChanged event is fired throughout the text selection process. In other words, a single finger "swipe" will generate multiple SelectionChanged events.
As you found out, calling TextBox.Select during a text selection gesture affects the gesture itself. Windows seems to stop the gesture after the programmatic text selection.
My workaround is to delay as long as possible calling the TextBox.Select method. This does work well, except for one edge case. Where this method fails is in the following scenario:
The user begins a select gesture, say selecting x characters. The user, without taking their finger off the screen, pauses for a second or two. The user then attempts to select more characters.
My solution does not handle the last bit in the above paragraph. The touch selection after the pause does not actually select anything because my code will have called the TextBox.Select method.
Here is the actual code. As I mentioned above, there are multiple selection changed events fired during a single selection gesture. My code uses a timer along with a counter to only do the programmatic selection when there are no longer any pending touch generated selection changed events.
int _selectCounter = 0;
const int SELECT_TIMER_LENGTH = 500;
async private void TextBox1_SelectionChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
// _selectCounter is the number of selection changed events that have fired.
// If you are really paranoid, you will want to make sure that if
// _selectCounter reaches MAX_INT, that you reset it to zero.
int mySelectCount = ++_selectCounter;
// start the timer and wait for it to finish
await Task.Delay(SELECT_TIMER_LENGTH);
// If equal (mySelectCount == _selectCounter),
// this means that NO select change events have fired
// during the delay call above. We only do the
// programmatic selection when this is the case.
// Feel free to adjust SELECT_TIMER_LENGTH to suit your needs.
if (mySelectCount == _selectCounter)
{
this.TextBox2.Select(this.TextBox1.SelectionStart, this.TextBox1.SelectionLength);
}
}

How to find the id of dragged control

I am implementing drag and drop functionality among lables. I want to find the ID of a dragged control like label, button, etc so that I can assign a text to it.
I am not sure how to get that data through the events. Any suggestion will help.

you can use Drag_Enter and DragOVer Events, to achieve the goal DragEnter Doucmentation
and DragOver Documentation
alternativily you can check following tutorials
Code project : Drag and Drop in Windows Forms
Code Project : Drag and Drop UI in WinForms

check out System.Windows.Forms.DragEventArgs e
void MyControl_DragDrop(object sender, DragEventArgs e)
{
var controlBeingDrag = (Label)sender; // cast from object
string[] files = (string[])e.Data.GetData(DataFormats.FileDrop, false);
}
the control sending drag event is object sender

Assuming you've done your research to figure out how to do drag and drop of controls on your form (and your question is really only limited to your question title: How to find the id of dragged control) most standard WinForm events provide a parameter (object sender) which represents the control used to invoke the event. You should be able to get its ID as you would normally.
Apparently it is less obvious how to consistently get the ID from a WinForm control. Luckily, Brian McMaster has a (fairly old meaning only possibly relevant) MSDN blog post for doing just that. In .NET 3.5 I'd probably use this old post as the start to an extension method for control objects.
If your question is broader than that then you may benefit from #Ravi's links, but on SO we generally expect that you do your own research. Please be sure to do so before asking questions.

How to detect previous state of text field in C#?

I'm coding a simple text editor using Windows Forms. As in many editors, when the text changes the title bar displays an asterisk next to the title, showing that there is unsaved work. When the user saves, this goes away.
However, there is a problem. This is handled in the change event of the main text box. But this gets called too when a file is opened or the user selects "New file", so that if you open the editor and then open a file, the program says that there are unsaved changes. What is a possible solution?
I thought of having a global variable that says whether the text changed in a way that shouldn't trigger the asterisk, but there has to be a better way.

before loading data to a textbox, unassociate first the eventhandler for change
uxName.TextChanged -= uxName_TextChanged;
uxName.Text = File.ReadAllText("something.txt");
uxName.TextChanged += uxName_TextChanged;

This is a horrible solution, but every time the text change event fires, compare the value of the textbox to some variable, and if they are different store the contents on the textbox in a variable and add the asterisk. When the method is invoked via the New File dialog or any other such event that is NOT changing the text, the asterisk won't appear.
This is not a viable solution for a real text editor since the memory would quickly get out of hand on even medium-sized files. Using a finger tree or whatever data structure text editors use to compare "versions" of the text is the only real efficient solution, but the premise is the same.
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/05/finally_finger_trees.php
Below the second picture he mentions the use of finger trees in text editors to implement an extremely cheap "undo" feature, but I'm sure you can see the validity of the tree for your problem as well.

There are no global variables in C#. You should have such an variable as an instance variable in your form (or better yet, in a model for which your form is a view), and that is perfectly fine.

This is a very simple and stupid solution. I would use a MVP design pattern for this but here the fastest and simple solution:
//Declare a flag to block the processing of your event
private bool isEventBlocked = false;
private void OnTextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if(!isEventBlocked)
{
//do your stuff
}
}
private void OnNewFile() //OR OnOpenFile()
{
try
{
isEventBlocked = true;
CreateFile();
}
catch
{
//manage exception
}
finally
{
isEventBlocked = false;
}
}