G'Day Dennis,

I need some advice on using Foxpro. How to write to a window without disturbing "keyboard focus"? How do I determine the full path to the "install directory" for Logic?

As you may see elsewhere I have written some personal functions to enhance my use of the spot log and alerts.

The effort is based around the fact that I am a "little pistol" and I often get more duplicated "alerts" than I can handle, more alerts when the band to the DX is dead for me, and no access to DX Notes when the alert happens.

I have integrated "alert" filtering to remove repeated alerts, and I have now also written similar code, based on DXCC and time of day, that I call "propagation filtering" to suppress alerts on bands at a time of day when I cannot hope to work the DX. If I filter by "spot_by" I miss heaps as there are relatively few in VK actually generating spots for DX. A 5,000 km circle does not get very good results.

Initially I used messagebox, and wait, but now, to see that my code is working correctly I define a couple of windows and log the data to the windows in real time as your code runs through the alert filters, and calls my modules.

My problem is "keyboard focus". Despite my best efforts my code keeps stealing focus from other activities - it is brief but annoying. When in production the code will not "log" to a window and all will be OK. But ...

I want to develop another module - one that collects together the "DX Notes" from 425DXN, DX Daily etc for the alert as it happens. I am tired of looking through "other files" to find the notes about the DX. I want to create a form with a drop down list of alerts, linked to the relevant notes extracted from DX publications. I want the DX notes to come to me, as compared to me chasing the dx notes.

In Visual Foxpro, how do I write a text log of activity to a window in such a way that the "keyboard focus" does not leap about. If I was working "on air" and logging a contact as Telnet delivers a spot, I can see problems ahead with the notes module.

I understand the details of dynamically updating a control on a form. How do I update a control on a form during the processing of an alert without stealing focus from other activity?

Any ideas or suggestions are appreciated.

Peter VK4IU

PS: The spell checker in Firefox does not function on the forum input text box. IE is OK. Chrome is OK - in fact it checks the whole text - as compared to "as I type", and lets me "add to the dictionary". It is Chrome for me on the forum from now on.

PPS: I returned to Firefox to again check the settings and see why it would not spell check. A Google search found - no dictionary installed by default!!!! I installed English(Australian) - hey presto - Firefox now spell checks the whole text box just like Chrome. Just magic!