ProtoPhoneExpando Bug in Setup1 Method

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


ProtoPhoneExpando Bug in Setup1 Method (2/6/96)

Q: I am having a problem using protoPhoneExpando under Newton 2.0 OS. Something is going wrong in the setup1 method. Is this a known bug?

A: Yes, this is a known bug. protoPhoneExpando (and the entire expando user interface) have been deprecated in the Newton 2.0 OS, and are only supported for backward compatibility. If possible, you should redesign your application to avoid the expandos.

The problem seems to be that the expando shell is sending the setup1 and setup2 messages to the template in the lines array. These methods in protoPhoneExpando rely on information that isn't created until the view is actually opened.

We're investigating solutions to this problem. You can usually hack around the problem by placing a labelCommands slot in the template which has an array of one element, that element being the label you want to appear in the phone line. For example: labelCommands: ["phone"].

This hack works only if your protoPhoneExpando doesn't use the phoneIndex feature. If it does, you'll have problems that are harder to work around.