Hideable Buttons

From TrillWiki

by Sjoerd on 09/04/04

Many people with setting files in their skin have the option to show, or not to show the hide Button.

Like this (image the symbols in brackets are buttons):

[ * User you are typing to_(v)(_)(=)(x)]

becomes:

[ * User you are typing to____(_)(=)(x)]

But, when you have longer names (eg "User with very long name you are typing to"), most of the time:

[ * User with very long nam(v)(_)(=)(x)]

becomes:

[ * User with very long nam___(_)(=)(x)]

This happens because most people use for the icontrol:

visible="&showbutton;"/>

and in their settings file:

<!ENTITY showbutton "1">

with the description to change 1 to 0 if you don't want to see it.

Here's how I would change it using selectable DTD files.

First, I'd make a file named: hideis1.dtd and add this to it:

<!ENTITY showthehidebutton "1">

<!ENTITY topicright "[valueright]">

Then another file called hideis0.dtd

<!ENTITY showthehidebutton "0">

<!ENTITY topicright "[valueright]">

In your trillian.dtd, add the line:

<!ENTITY % showhide SYSTEM "settings/hideis&showbutton;.dtd">

%showhide;

(See below -Tometheus)

Finally, in the topic control which should change width:

<right num="&topicright;" width="1"/>

The result would become:

[ * User with very long nam(v)(_)(=)(x)]

[ * User with very long name t(_)(=)(x)]

This technique can become very useful for a config file, by defining parts the user can change (the <!ENTITY showthehidebutton "0"> bit), and then using these bits in the code as you would a reference to any file, you can store all the bits a user might want to change in one file.

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comment by Tometheus

Good concept, but it doesn't quite work as described here.

<!ENTITY % showhide SYSTEM "settings/hideis&showbutton;.dtd">

%showhide;

1. The use of &showbutton; in a % SYSTEM entity won't work. ("&" entities only expand on the XML level, not the DTD level)
2. Even if it was changed to a '%', % entities are bypassed in % SYSTEM entities, so you have to trick the parser into evaluating it.

So here's the TRILLIAN.DTD correction that will work.

<!ENTITY % ENTshowhide

'<!ENTITY &#37; showhide SYSTEM "settings/hideis%showbutton;.dtd">' >

%ENTshowhide; %showhide;

The call to %ENTshowhide; with the &#37; forces the showhide entity to parse the entire string, including the %showbutton;, since the parser is required to expand &#37; immediately.

Then, once you have that expanded, you can call %showhide; to actually load your chosen file.

See the XML Spec Section 4 and Appendix D

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comment by eh?one

Now that we have skin math in Trillian 3.0+ we can just use this: dtd: <!ENTITY showthehidebutton "(0|1)"> xml: <right num="(&showthehidebutton;*16)+48" width="1"/>