How to select multiple edit fields?

Hi,

In my user interface, users can specify a dimension, for exam m x n, then I draw a m x n table, where each element is an edit field such that users can change values in any edit field.

% Horizontal margin of the canavas
hMargin = 0.02;
% Vertical margin of the canavas
vMargin = 0.02;
% Element width 
elemWidth = min((1-2*hMargin) / n, (1-2*vMargin)/m);

% Create an edit field for each entry
for j = 1 : m
    for i = 1 : n
        pos = [hMargin+(j-1)*elemWidth 1-vMargin-i*elemWidth elemWidth elemWidth];
        e = uicontrol('Style','edit',...
                    'Units','normalized',...
                    'Position',pos);
    end
end

But sometimes, users might want to have a row with same values:

for example in the image, users will have to change the values on row 5 one by one from 0.5 to 1.

Is there a way to have something like a brush, that for the places with the same values, after modifying one edit field, the others can be simply "brushed" to have the same values? Or is there a way that users can jump between each edit field with the arrow keys (currently they always have to use a mouse to select)?

Thank you very much!

[Benjamin Thompson]

Can you post some sample code?

[xiaojuezi]

Hi! I have posted the sample code for creating the edit field entries.

Answer 1

[T.Nikhil kumar]

Hello,

I understand that you want to know if after modifying one edit field, the other fields in the same row with same value can be made to have the same edited value or if users can jump between each edit field with the arrow keys.

I can suggest you a way to achieve the latter task. You can allow users to navigate through the cells using the arrow keys by leveraging the ‘KeyPressFcn’ property of the edit fields to capture keyboard input(arrows) and navigate accordingly. Refer to the below mentioned procedure:

• Add a ‘KeyPressFcn’ argument and pass a callback function’s handle as its value, for each edit field. This callback will listen for arrow key presses.
• In the definition of the callback function, you can detect when an arrow key is pressed and programmatically determine the next cell to focus on and set focus to that cell using the ‘uicontrol’ function.

Refer to the below mentioned code snippet for better understanding:

% Horizontal margin of the canavas 
hMargin = 0.02; 

% Vertical margin of the canavas 
vMargin = 0.02; 

%Define rows and columns number 
m=5; 
n=5; 

% Element width  
elemWidth = min((1-2*hMargin) / n, (1-2*vMargin)/m); 

% Create an edit field for each entry 
for j = 1 : m 
    for i = 1 : n 
        pos = [hMargin+(j-1)*elemWidth 1-vMargin-i*elemWidth elemWidth elemWidth]; 
        e = uicontrol('Style','edit',... 
                    'Units','normalized',... 
                    'Position',pos,'KeyPressFcn', @(src, event)navigateEditFields(src, event, m, n, i, j)); 
    end 
end 

Refer to the definition of an example callback function ‘navigateEditFields’:

function navigateEditFields(src, event, rows, columns, i, j) 
    % Get the key that was pressed 
    key = event.Key; 

    % Check the arrow key direction 
    switch key 
        case 'uparrow' 
            % Move to the edit field above 
             if j > 1 
                j = j - 1; 
                uicontrol(src.Parent.Children(i*j+(rows-j)*(i-1))); 
            end        

        case 'downarrow' 
            % Move to the edit field below 
            if j < rows 
                j = j + 1; 
                uicontrol(src.Parent.Children(i*j+(rows-j)*(i-1))); 
            end         

        case 'leftarrow' 
            % Move to the edit field on the left 
           if i > 1 
                i = i - 1; 
                uicontrol(src.Parent.Children(i*j+(rows-j)*(i-1))); 
            end 

        case 'rightarrow' 
            % Move to the edit field on the right 
            if i < columns 
                i = i + 1; 
                uicontrol(src.Parent.Children(i*j+(rows-j)*(i-1))); 
            end 
    end  

end 

You can learn more about setting focus and defining callbacks for ‘uicontrol’ object here:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/uicontrol.html

Hope this helps!