AlphaWiki/Interface/MessageBar

Description

Starting with version 8.1a4, AlphaX installs a message bar at the bottom of the document windows. This message bar is located under the horizontal scrollbar and displays window specific messages about the actions performed by the user. It partially replaces the global status bar of the application (located, by default, at the top of the screen under the menu bar).

To send messages to a window message bar, the [status::msg] command has been modified. Its syntax is now:

 
     status::msg ?-w win? string

If the -w option is specified, the string message is displayed in the message bar of window win. If it is not specified (or if window win does not have a message bar), the message is displayed in the global status bar.

Note that this syntax for the -w option differs from the common behavior adopted by most of Alpha commands: usually, when -w is not specified, a command is directed to the current window.

Suppressing the message bar

There is currently (as of version 8.1a4) no way to suppress the message bar from the user interface but developers have the possibility of programmatically creating document windows without a message bar. There is a new -attr option for the [new] and the [openFile] commands which let you specify controls which should not be drawn when creating a particular window. The -attr option is documented in the WindowAttributes page on the Wiki. Here is an instruction creating a window without a message bar

 
     new -n FooWin -attr 64