dock .xft form

[jrob61]

Using XMetal Author Essential 7.0 & Developer.

We are using a .xft form to loop thru a .xml file and populate a listbox with a particular Element’s text.  We then use the listbox’s OnChange event to make the activedocument window contain only the selected Element (by setting its .containerstyle = display:block and re-setting other’s .containerstyle= display:none).  After the OnChange event we then have to Cancel the form in order to allow the user to edit within the activedocument window.  (This approach of only displaying a single element in the activedocument window was necessitated by need to speed up editing within large documents).

In an effort to try and allow the user to always see an entire list of the particular Element’s, wondering if there is anyway to “dock” the .xft form while user is typing in the activedocument window?  If not, is there an alternative approach to what we are trying to accomplish?  Thanks in advance.

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[Derek Read]

There is no way to dock an XFT form.
If you can redesign your feature so that it works in the Resource Manager that would give your users a window they can dock (it is by default).

You can add a tab to the Resource Manager and then specify an ActiveX control to display there. You can't embed XFT in it, so you either need to write your own control or use an existing one. This is what many of the CMS integrations do to provide a way to navigate the CMS, usually using some form of tree control.

If you do not wish to create your own custom ActiveX control you can embed the Internet Explorer WebBrowser control instead and use it as a framework to build inside of. In this case you have two main bits of code: 1) The code in your XMetaL customization's Macro that adds the tab to the Resource Manager, specifies that the IE WebBrowser control should be displayed in the tab, and which page to load into it. 2) The page to load into the IE WebBrowser control, written in something IE can load (usually HTML + JScript or VBScript). This is basically what we use for the DITA Map Editor in XMetaL Author Enterprise.

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