Deactivating and Triggering Objects (XForms (Forms Library) - Version 1.2 (Rev. 4) A Graphical User Interface Toolkit for X)

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### 3.10 Deactivating and Triggering Objects

Sometimes you might want a particular object to be temporarily inactive, e.g., you want to make it impossible for the user to press a particular button or to type input in a particular field. For this you can use the routine

    void fl_deactivate_object(FL_OBJECT *obj);

`obj` is the object to be deactivated. When `obj` is a group the whole group is deactivated. To reactivate the group or button use the routine

    void fl_activate_object(FL_OBJECT *obj);

To find out if an object is in active state use the function

    int fl_object_is_active(FL_OBJECT *obj);

Normally you also want to give the user a visual indication that the object is not active. This can, for example, be done by changing the label color to grey (see below). This is not done automatically, so unless you set e.g., a different color the objects appearance won’t change on deactivation (or re-activation).

It is possible to simulate the action of an object being triggered from within the program by using the following routine

    void fl_trigger_object(FL_OBJECT *obj);

Calling this routine on an object `obj` results in the object returned to the application program or its callback being called if it exists. Note however, there is no visual feedback, i.e., `fl_trigger_object(button)` will not make the button object named `button` appear to be pushed.