Iconic Buttons and Graphic Boilerplate in Forms 5

[McCormick]

What I want to do is put a graphic of an envelope on my form (under
Forms 5.0.6) where the user can click on it to open up another canvas
to edit an address. I know I can use an iconic button, but I am not
happy with the border that comes with all buttons. Importing a graphic
onto the canvas doesn't help because Canvases and Windows have no
triggers associated with them.

I've tried putting a button with the Visible Property off over the
graphic, but it's invisible to the Mouse Pointer as well as the Window.
I've tried putting an ON-MOUSE-CLICK trigger on the block, but that
only triggers when I click on an item belonging to that block. Any
clickable item I put over the graphic occludes it.
I've tried putting an ON-MOUSE-CLICK trigger on the Form itself. That
works, in its way, but I'd have to hard code the coordinates of the
graphic into the trigger function. FIND_ITEM and GET_ITEM_PROPERTY do
not appear to work on canvas graphics.

If anyone knows a way to make a graphic image clickable, or how to
get rid of the borders around a button, I would love to hear it.

Thanks!

Mike McCormick

[McCormick]

I figured out a solution, but it's kind of ugly. I put the graphic on
the canvas, then I put a button with the Visible property set Off over
it. In a form level WHEN-MOUSE-CLICK trigger I put code like:

IF ( :SYSTEM.MOUSE_ITEM IS NULL ) THEN
IF HIT( 'CUSTOMER.CUST_ADDY_BUTTON' ) THEN
....

where the HIT function looks like:

FUNCTION HIT (item_name VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN IS
v_mouse_x NUMBER;
v_mouse_y NUMBER;
v_item_x NUMBER;
v_item_y NUMBER;
v_item_width NUMBER;
v_item_height NUMBER;
item_id ITEM;
BEGIN
v_mouse_x := CEIL(TO_NUMBER( :System.Mouse_X_Pos ));
v_mouse_y := CEIL(TO_NUMBER( :System.Mouse_Y_Pos ));

/* Get the id of the "hidden" button */
item_id := Find_Item(item_name);
IF Id_Null(item_id) THEN
NOTE('No such item: '||item_name);
RETURN FALSE;
END IF;

v_item_x := CEIL(TO_NUMBER( GET_ITEM_PROPERTY( item_id, X_POS )));
v_item_y := CEIL(TO_NUMBER( GET_ITEM_PROPERTY( item_id, Y_POS )));
v_item_width := CEIL(TO_NUMBER( GET_ITEM_PROPERTY( item_id, WIDTH
)));
v_item_height := CEIL(TO_NUMBER( GET_ITEM_PROPERTY( item_id, HEIGHT
)));

IF ( v_mouse_x < v_item_x OR v_mouse_x > (v_item_x + v_item_width) )
THEN
RETURN FALSE;
END IF;

IF ( v_mouse_y < v_item_y OR v_mouse_y > (v_item_y + v_item_height) )
THEN
RETURN FALSE;
END IF;

END;

It works, but it is ugly and I'd hate to be the one who'd have to
come in and modify it later. Back to iconic buttons.

Mike McCormick