How do I break Save Dialog rules?

This is more a philosophy question than one asking for Technique. I’m thinking specifically of the MS Word Save dialog where you can specify various formats (or rather 3 letter extensions added) for a Save Document.

In my case, I might want two choice - so radio buttons - let’s say I want to give a choice to save as a text (.txt) document or a proprietary format that saves partial solutions to a problem - such that when I open it again, it will fill in what it has, ready to continue from there.

I’ve seen lots of developer environments that provide a standard Save dialog - but they seem to give only one choice for file format.

So would you create your own Save Dialog window that would look “just like” the official one, except it has fields/buttons/checkboxes/lists to capture the specialize info and then, when its Save button is pushed, it passes it on to an internal Save command?

I can see that as being somewhat simple if only dealing with filename and format type. But the “real” save dialog also has that navigation operation that lets you traverse the file/folder structure to designate where the file should go. So, to appear natural, the artificial Save window would need that feature too.

And it seems that would require creating that whole navigation feature from scratch?

Sure, the easiest way would be to just pop up a dialog requesting the “custom” info and then showing a regular save dialog to get the desired file name and location. But it seems cleaner to be able to do it in one.

How would you go about that?

It’s possible to add extra items Apple’s standard file dialogs (Save/Open) in Apple’s native languages (Objective-C and Swift), but unfortunately that can’t be transferred over to an outside language like Panorama’s. You have to use either Objective-C or Swift to do it (and even then, it’s quite complex).

So, the only possibly solution would be to create a “fake” dialog window that looks like the official one, but built using Panorama’s tools, from scratch. I think that would be somewhat possible, but it would definitely look and work a bit different than the standard dialog. Some challenges that immediately come to mind would be determining and displaying the correct file icons, and finding out what the list of favorite locations are. Plus there would be no way to display the icon or multi-column views, only list view.

I understand why you want this feature, I would like it myself, but Apple has made that difficult/impossible (and I understand why, it’s a very difficult problem). Programs like MS-Word do it by programming Objective-C or Swift in XCode, but that’s not an option for a Panorama database.

I sorta, kinda, figured it would be like that - but didn’t hurt (okay, only a little) to ask. We have a nearby retail store area. Sometimes they close the street for an event. I asked the fire department how the “overlord” could just close a city street. The FD said it wasn’t a city street; it was a private road. But it was made to look like a city street - correct width, curbs, signs, etc. So I figured the MS Office dialogs were like that - they only LOOKED LIKE official dialogs.

Fortunately, my “custom” info requirement is small, with low frequency use. So it’s easy enough to obtain it with a prequel to the Save dialog.

By the way, Jim, all those features in V10.1 (and 10.1.1)… Wow! - I’m gettin an itch to code again. I’ll discuss more in private email later.

Not sure if I made it clear, the MS Office dialogs are in fact official dialogs, with the additional items added with Objective-C (I don’t think Microsoft is using Swift yet).

That’s a really interesting story about your local private street. IANAL, but I think most likely they HAVE to close it from time to time, or it will be deemed a public right of way and they will lose the right to close it.

However, here in Huntington Beach they close several blocks of Main street every Tuesday night for “street fair”, so I think this type of event is possible for public streets as well (Main street is definitely not a private road, it’s been public for over 100 years). I know of quite a few other local cities with similar events. City hall can do what they want!

We have closed our street for National Night Out for the past several years, with the city’s permission.