listdlg obscures longer prompts

I'm using a listdlg to get information from users, but the prompt for my dialog is too long to fit on one line. Unfortunately the second line is obscured by the top of the list box. Is there a way to fix this other than making my dialog window unnecessarily wide?

[Image Analyst]

I'd send that in as a bug, or at the very least, a request for enhancement. I mean, you should be able to have more than one short line as a prompt!

Answer 1

[Bruno]

For anyone out there experiencing the same frustration as I was, the solution I've come up with is to enter the prompt string as a cellstr in which the first cell entry is the prompt, and subsequent empty strings {''} are padded onto the end. See below for example.

listdlg('PromptString','This is a long prompt string for the purposes of illustrating my point.','ListString',[{'blah'} {'blah'} {'blah'}])

listdlg('PromptString',[{'This is a long prompt string for the purposes of illustrating my point.'} {''}],'ListString',[{'blah'} {'blah'} {'blah'}])

[Jan]

{'bla', 'bla', 'bla'} is more efficient than concatenating three scalar cells with the same result.

[Image Analyst]

For me, with your second, "working" example, the last word "point." does not appear in the prompt, so it's still not working 100%.

[JohnDylon]

Add another {''} and problem is solved. See below:

listdlg('PromptString',[{'This is a long prompt string for the purposes of illustrating my point.'} {''} {''}],'ListString',[{'blah'} {'blah'} {'blah'}])

[Sokratis Panagiotidis]

Man your answers were a huge help, thanks a lot!

Answer 2

[Jan]

Create a copy of LISTDLG in a user-defined folder and modify it accordingly: You need a modification of the 4th argument of the position in:

listsize = listsize - [0, 32];
listbox = uicontrol('style','listbox', ...
                    'position', [ffs+fus, ffs+uh+4*fus+(smode==2)*(fus+uh) listsize],...

A smart idea would to perform this dynamically depending on the extent of the prompt:

ext = get(prompt_text, 'Extent');
listsize = listsize - [0, ext(4) + 30];

[Bruno]

Jan, I'm trying that and Matlab is complaining that the following functions are undefined. How do I resolve this?

warnfiguredialog

getnicedialoglocation

setdefaultbutton

[Walter Roberson]

Look in toolbox/matlab/uitools/private

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/private-functions.html

Answer 3

[Marcel]

Despite the issue being old and already having a answer, i wanted to post my solution as well. By using the following code, those empty {''} values are added automatically for every 32 characters in the string. I at least use this function myself so i can have an easier time calling it etc and since im working on my github repo for matlab hacks, this might be a good thing to post.

Tested in Matlab R2021a.

answer = msgList(["Live", "Statisch"], ...
                        "This is a lot of text it is amazing the char limit for one line seems" + ...
                    " to be 32 characters. its amazing to be able to work around it tho", ...
                        "An interesting title");

function results = msgList(list, prompt, title)

    lineBreaks = [];
    counter = 1;
    for i = 1:strlength(prompt)
        if counter == 32
            lineBreaks = [{''}, lineBreaks];
            counter = 1;
        end
        
        counter = counter + 1;
    end
    
    [index,tf] = listdlg('PromptString',[{prompt}, lineBreaks], 'ListString',list, "SelectionMode", "single", "Name", title);
    results = list{index};                              
end

[Damien Watson]

Another optimisation could be to calculate lineBreaks using:

numLineBreaks = floor(strlength(prompt) ./ 32);

% For strings
lineBreaks = strings([numLineBreaks, 1]);

% Or for chars
lineBreaks = repmat({''}, [numLineBreaks, 1]);