Re: Differents: Dialog.ShowMsg & Dialog.ShowStatus

Guy Laden (laden@math.tau.ac.il)
Fri, 11 Oct 1996 23:12:46 +0200 (GMT+0200)

Hi,

> Hello everybody,
>
> Because of the documentation, I thought there must be a different in the
> presentation of the string to the user between Dialog.ShowMsg and
> Dialog.ShowStatus. I use a WIN-NT and Win311 as Operating-System. Why has
> both procedures the same behaviour? Is this a bug? Or do I use this
> procedures wrong?

a. The exact effect of calling the procedures is implementation dependent-
it isnt specified how/where the message will be displayed, and in the
case of ShowStatus even if it will be displayed.
b. The essential difference between the procedures is that calling ShowMsg
guarantees that the message will somehow be output, while calling
ShowStatus _might_ not cause the message to be displayed for various
reasons. I think the documentation allows for an implementation where
the effect of calling ShowStatus to be identical to that
of calling ShowMsg, as long as calling ShowMsg guarantees the message
is somehow displayed.

So, in my opinion the behaviour under Windows is consistent with
the documentation.

Hope this helps,
Guy

> Thanks for your reply
>
> Reinhard Dietrich
>
> PROCEDURE ShowParamMsg (str, p0, p1, p2: ARRAY OF CHAR)
> Presents str as a message to the user. The string is mapped, as are the
> additional input parameters p0, p1, and p2. This procedure is used to
> present urgent messages to the user, typically alerting the user that some
> action has failed. It shouldn't be used for casual success messages.
>
> PROCEDURE ShowParamStatus (str, p0, p1, p2: ARRAY OF CHAR)
> Presents str as a message to the user. The string is mapped, as are the
> additional input parameters p0, p1, and p2. In contrast to ShowParamMsg,
> ShowParamStatus is used for shorter-lived and less urgent messages, e.g.
> messages produced and updated during a lengthy process. This procedure
> should not be used for vital messages, because on some platforms there may
> be no status area to display status messages, or the message mechanism may
> currently be switched off. These conditions are indicated by the global
> variable showsStatus.