Embedded Wizard Studio: Inspector Assistant window
This window assists you while working with the Inspector. It helps in particular to find and select the right operand when you edit the initialization expression of a property or configure the attributes of a project member. For example, the Assistant can list all bitmap resources existing in your project, so you can select the desired one easily:
Inspector Assistant window
Show the Inspector Assistant window
The availability of the Assistant depends on the type of the respective property or attribute currently selected in the Inspector window. If available, a small button (triangle) is displayed on the right of the Inspector:
★To show the Assistant window click on the small button (triangle)
★... or press the key ENTER while the respective property or attribute is selected.
The Assistant window appears modeless immediately below/above the affected property or attribute. Embedded Wizard implements various variants of the Assistant, which are shown depending on the type of the affected property or attribute.
Please note the alternative button (ellipsis), which also can appear in Inspector. Activating this button opens one of the native MS-Windows file/folder selection dialogs where you can explore the file system and select e.g. an image file to use within your project, etc. This, however, is not related to the Assistant window described here.
List Assistant
In its simplest variant the Assistant displays a list with suggestions (usually members of your project) compatible to the type of the selected property or attribute. For example, activating the Assistant for a property of type string will cause the Assistant to present all string constants existing in your project:
You can explore the list and if desired select one of the proposed suggestions:
★To navigate in the list use the keys Up and Down.
★To pick the selected suggestion press the key ENTER
★... or double click on the corresponding list item.
Multiple options Assistant
If the affected property or attribute accepts multiple options to select simultaneously, the Assistant displays the available options in a check box list. For example, activating the Assistant for a property of user defined set type will cause the Assistant to show all items defined within this set:
You can explore the list and enable/disable every option individually:
★To navigate in the list use the keys Up and Down.
★To enable or disable an option, click with the mouse on the small check box found on the left of the item
★... or press the key Space while the item is selected:
★To apply the changes click on the button
★... or press the key ENTER:
Color Assistant
In the case, the type of the affected property or attribute is color, a special variant of the Assistant providing up to two separate views is shown. In the first view you can explicitly determine the desired color value by picking it from a color wheel. In the second view you can select one of color constants existing within your project. Please note, the second view is available only if there is at least one color constant in your project:
★To switch between the view with color wheel and the view with color constants use the buttons and found at the bottom of the Assistant
★... or simply press the key CtrlTab:
The handling with the color constants view is exact the same as described in List Assistant section. In particular, you can navigate in the list and select the convenient suggestion.
In turn, the functions of the color wheel view and the associated workflow are described in Color selection dialog. Please note, when working with the color wheel view, you have to explicitly apply the made color selection:
★To apply the changes click on the button
★... or press the key ENTER:
Filter suggestions
As long as the Assistant window displays a list with suggestions or options, you can apply a filter pattern to the displayed items and thus find the desired one in a more convenient way:
★For this purpose, simply enter text after the Assistant appeared.
With every entered character, the Assistant window is updated to show only those suggestions, whose actually contain the given text fragment. The entered text itself is displayed in-place in the Inspector window:
An alternative and more advance approach is the usage of wildcard signs ? and * in the entered filter pattern. Here, the sign ? is assumed as representing exactly one arbitrary character within the suggestion. In turn the sign * can represent any arbitrary number of characters including even an empty text.
Please note, when using the wildcard signs, the suggestion has to match the complete specified pattern in order to be listed in the Assistant window. For example, the pattern *ary matches only suggestions ending with the text ary with any or even none text in front of it. In turn, the pattern ary (without any wildcard signs) matches all suggestions containing the text ary regardless of its position:
Reset the filter
You can edit or even reset the filter pattern:
★To delete the complete filter pattern, press the key Escape.
★To delete only the last entered sign press the key Backspace.
Dismiss the Assistant window
The Assistant disappears automatically as soon as you have made the selection or applied the modification. If desired, however, the Assistant window can be dismissed explicitly without picking any suggestion:
★To dismiss the Assistant press the key Escape.
Please note, if after appearing the Assistant window you have entered any text (e.g. to filter suggestions), you have to press the key Escape twice. The first Escape deletes the entered text and the second dismisses the window.