Preventing Selections in the Find Overview

One of the Newton 2.x OS Q&As
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This document was exported on 7/23/97.

Preventing Selections in the Find Overview (2/5/96)

Q: When I use ROM_compatibleFinder in Newton 2.0, the overview of found items contains checkboxes for each item, allowing the user to attempt to route the found items. Since my found items are not soup items, various exceptions are thrown. How can I prevent the checkboxes?

A: What you do depends on how you want to handle your data. There are basically two cases. The first case is when you want no Routing to take place (Routing refers to Delete, Duplicate, and the ability to move the data using transports like Beam or Print). The second case is when you want some or all of the Routing to occur.

The first case is easy. Just add a SelectItem slot to the result frame, set to nil.
For example:
    AddArraySlot(results, 
          {_proto: ROM_compatibleFinder,
            owner: self,
            title: mytitle,
            SelectItem: nil,   // prevents checkboxes
            items: myresults});

The second case is more complex. The problem is that there are many variants. The best strategy is to override the appropriate methods in your finder to gain control at appropriate points. This may be as simple of overriding Delete to behave correctly, or as complex as replacing GetTarget and adding appropriate layouts. See the Newton DTS Q&A "Creating Custom Finders" for more information.