AOB
Registered User.
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- Sep 26, 2012
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Hi there,
I have a status form which I use to show users the progress of various routines as they are performed. It's pretty basic; just a textbox and a couple of coloured labels; one for the outline ('things to be done') and one for the progress so far ('things done').
I have a function which I call periodically during the runtime of the routine which passes as arguments the text to display in the textbox (i.e. a description of which 'thing' is being worked on at that time) and two long integers representing what is 'done' and what is 'to be done' (i.e. 3 'things' done out of a total of 7)
So if I can divide a function into 7 distinguishable 'parts', I would call that function 7 times during the life of the overall process to show the updated status each time.
The function redraws the labels (i.e. sets the width of the 'done' label as a proportion of the width of the 'to be done' label, based on the ratio of the two arguments) and repaints the form. So you get a nice animated progress bar which can be easily controlled by calling the same function and just incrementing the 'done' argument each time.
Now - and admittedly this is purely aesthetic and for my own curiosity rather than anything fundamental - I was wondering if it were possible to represent this progress as a 3D pie chart rather than a horizontal bar (label)?
For no other reason than I think it would look really tidy.
I know it's possible to add a chart object to a form but the chart wizard insists I link the chart to a table or query. In this instance, I don't want to do that; I merely want to draw a very basic pie chart based on the two values passed as arguments to the status function.
Is it possible to do this?
(Not going to lose sleep over it, the existing horizontal labels work great, I just like trying out funky ideas to make the interface look a bit more appealing to the end users. If it's a tonne of work I'll just park it - it's just an idea and I'm curious to know if it can be done?)
Cheers!
AOB
I have a status form which I use to show users the progress of various routines as they are performed. It's pretty basic; just a textbox and a couple of coloured labels; one for the outline ('things to be done') and one for the progress so far ('things done').
I have a function which I call periodically during the runtime of the routine which passes as arguments the text to display in the textbox (i.e. a description of which 'thing' is being worked on at that time) and two long integers representing what is 'done' and what is 'to be done' (i.e. 3 'things' done out of a total of 7)
So if I can divide a function into 7 distinguishable 'parts', I would call that function 7 times during the life of the overall process to show the updated status each time.
The function redraws the labels (i.e. sets the width of the 'done' label as a proportion of the width of the 'to be done' label, based on the ratio of the two arguments) and repaints the form. So you get a nice animated progress bar which can be easily controlled by calling the same function and just incrementing the 'done' argument each time.
Now - and admittedly this is purely aesthetic and for my own curiosity rather than anything fundamental - I was wondering if it were possible to represent this progress as a 3D pie chart rather than a horizontal bar (label)?
For no other reason than I think it would look really tidy.
I know it's possible to add a chart object to a form but the chart wizard insists I link the chart to a table or query. In this instance, I don't want to do that; I merely want to draw a very basic pie chart based on the two values passed as arguments to the status function.
Is it possible to do this?
(Not going to lose sleep over it, the existing horizontal labels work great, I just like trying out funky ideas to make the interface look a bit more appealing to the end users. If it's a tonne of work I'll just park it - it's just an idea and I'm curious to know if it can be done?)
Cheers!
AOB