Widget¶

structure Widget¶

This object is the base class of all GUI elements. No matter which GUI element you are dealing with, it will have these properties at minimum.

Suffix	Type	Description
`SHOW`		Show the widget.
`HIDE`		Hide the widget.
`VISIBLE`		SET: Show or hide the widget. GET: see if it’s showing.
`DISPOSE`		Remove the widget permanently.
`ENABLED`	`Boolean`	Set to False to “grey out” the widget, preventing user interaction.
`STYLE`	`Style`	The style of the widget.
`GUI`	`GUI`	The GUI ultimately containing this widget.
`PARENT`	`BOX`	The Box containing this widget.
`HASPARENT`	`Boolean`	If this widget has no parent, returns false.

Widget:SHOW()¶

(No parameters, no return value).

Call Widget:show() when you need to make the widget in question start appearing on the screen. This is identical to setting Widget:VISIBLE to true.

See Widget:VISIBLE below for further documentation.

Note: Unless you use show() (or set the Widget:VISIBLE suffix to true) on the outermost Box of the GUI panel (the one you obtained from calling built-in function GUI), nothing will ever be visible from your GUI.

Widget:HIDE()¶

(No parameters, no return value).

Call Widget:hide() when you need to make the widget in question disappear from the screen. This is identical to setting Widget:VISIBLE to false.

See Widget:VISIBLE below for further documentation.

Widget:VISIBLE¶

Type: Scalar
Access: Get/Set

This is the setting which can also be changed by calling Widget:show() and Widget:hide().

Most new widgets are set to be visible by default, except for the outermost Box that represents a GUI panel window. (The kind you can obtain by calling built-in function Gui.) Because of this, you generally only need to set the outermost GUI panel window to visible and then all the widgets inside of it should appear.

The typical pattern is this:

set panel to GUI(200).

// <--- Add widgets to panel by calling things like panel:addbutton,
//      panel:addhslider, panel:addvslider, panel:addlabel, etc...

panel:show(). // or 'set panel:visible to true.' does the same thing.

Note that the showing of a widget requires the showing of all widgets it’s contained inside of. Hiding a widget will hide all widgets inside it, regardless of their infividual visibility settings. This is what is happening when you make a GUI Box with a call to GUI, fill it with widgets, and then show it. The widgets inside it were already set to “visible”, but their visibility was suppressed by the fact that the GUI they were inside of was not visible. Once you made the GUI panel visible, all the widgets inside it (that were already set to be visible) appeared with it.

Widget:DISPOSE()¶

(no parameters, no return value)

Call Widget:DISPOSE() to permanenly make this widget go away. Not only will it make it invisible, but it will make it impossible to set it to visible again later.

Widget:ENABLED¶

Type: Boolean
Access: Get/Set

(This is true by default for all newly created widgets.)

When this is true, then the widget can be used by the user.

When this is false, then the widget becomes read-only and its skin takes on a “greyed-out” theme. The user cannot interact with it, even though it may still be visible on the screen.

Widget:STYLE¶

Type: Style
Access: Get/Set

The style of the widget.

A reasonable style will be chosen by default for most widgets. It will be one that is copied from the default style used in KSP’s standard stock GUI skin. But if you wish to change the appearance of the GUI widgets that kOS provides, you can create a modified style and set the widget’s style to that style here, or you can “swap” styles by assigning this widget to the style usually used by a different widget. (For example, making a button look like it’s just a passive text label.) Such changes should be carefully thought-out if you do them at all, because they can very easily confuse a user with conflicting visual cues.

To see how to make a modified style, see the documentation for Style.

Widget:GUI¶

Type: GUI
Access: Get-only

To be useful, all widgets (buttons, labels, textfields, etc) must either be contained inside a GUI widget directly, or be contained inside another Widget which in turn is also contained inside a GUI widget. (Or contained inside a widget contained inside a widget contained inside a GUI, etc..)

This suffix will find which GUI is the one which ultimately is the one holding this widget.

Widget:PARENT¶

Type: Box
Access: Get-only

Widgets can be contained inside Boxes that are contained inside other Boxes, etc. This suffix tells you which Box contains this one. If you attempt to call this suffix on the outermost GUI Box that contains all the others in a panel, you may find that kOS throws a complaining error because there is no parent to the outermost widget. To protect your code against this, use the Widget:HASPARENT suffix.

Widget:HASPARENT¶

Type: Boolean
Access: Get-only

If trying to use Widget:PARENT would generate an error because this widget has no parent, then HASPARENT will be false. Otherwise it will be true.