Latest Contributions by RichardFairhurst

I think it used to be you could tell Illustrator to export the entire artboard (but I could be mis-remembering). The option to Use Artboards is not enabled when exporting to emf (and some other formats) in AI6. You might try bringing your emf into an Arcmap layout with no other elements - there will be a data frame which you can't remove, so make sure its frame is set to none so it's not visible. And set the page size to what you want to finished emf's size to be. Position your emf so it's centered the way you want. Then export that "map" to emf from ArcMap, and make sure you have Clip Output to Graphics Extent turned off. I do have AI6, so I am affected by the inability to export the Artboard. For your alternative method, how do I bring my emf file into ArcMap?  The Add Data dialog does not recognize the emf file directly.  Do I have to first open a point layer and assign the symbol to one of the points to try this method? Thanks. Never mind.  I was in Data view and realized your instructions said I need to be in Layout view and use the Insert Picture menu. ... View more

To make this more clear I need to extract everything to the right of the rihjt most space. Becasue some roads are 1E or 1S. Thanks Quinn If there are always just 1 or 2 characters at the end of the value with a leading white space, in VB Script you can use the Right function with the LTrim function to get the last non-white space character or characters: LTrim(Rigth(myFieldValue, 2)) To get all of the characters to the left of the last 1 or 2 characters excluding a trailing white space use the Left Function, the Len function and the RTrim function as follows: RTrim(Left(myFieldValue, Len(myFieldValue) - 2)) Both of these are simple label expressions. ... View more

Hi all, I am looking for asamples that shwo how to find a polygon centroid in C# or vb.net thanks You need to access the Centroid through the IArea interface.  There is an example that extracts the Centroid's X and Y coordinates and that creates a Centroid point object from the shape input's area interface here. ... View more

I hate having to go to Source view.  There is a bug that make SDE layers do a complete database read when I view Source view.  Thereafter it takes 5 minutes to refresh my map no matter what view I am in.  I have to close the map and reopen it (in Display view) to get back performance.  If I could see tables elsewhere and avoid this unnecessary data dump I would gladly never use Source view again. ... View more

I'm trying to do essentially the same thing - update multiple fields in an existing Feature Class with attributes from other Feature Classes, based on spatial relationships (overlay).  All without creating new output datasets.  Seems like this should be possible...any suggestions? There are ways, but you either have to do it one record at a time (Attribute Transfer tool in an edit session) or you have to write a custom cursor pair in Python or ArcObjects, which normally performs much slower than the method I have outlined involving creating new output datasets.   Overall Geoprocessing tools are definitely oriented to creating new outputs and not to modifying existing outputs.  In ModelBuilder you do not have to retain the intermediate datasets if you don't want to (they will be cleaned up when the process finishes), but they still must be created at least temporarily.  If you manage to retain a link back to your original dataset through the process I outlined, you can join the output to your original input and calculate the results back to it, but that only works if the final output has a one-to-one relationship to your original input. Creating and using relationships (spatial and attributes) is practically 90% of my work.  If anyone has a more direct route to acheiving the correct ends I am interested, but these processes have worked for me over the years and been the easiest for me to debug. ... View more

Standalone Tables are not treated with much respect in ArcGIS and many functions that should work on both a Feature Class and a Standalone Table only have options to perform the operation on a Feature Class.  A good example is that copy/paste insertion of records only works on a Feature Cass, despite the fact that Standalone Table records would greatly benefit from this same functionality and this behavior is supported for Tables in databases like Access. Over 75% of my time is spent accessing and manipulating data through Tableviews, whether I am using a Feature Class or a Standalone Table.  Standalone Tables are vital to Linear Referencing and many other applications, but ESRI pays far too little attention to them in the Desktop application.  That needs to change and this idea would be one step in the right direction. ... View more

For those interested in preventing a user from inserting any invalid characters into a textbox, I have demonstrated and others have demonstrated that there is a way to prevent that from occurring through the keyboard.  However, so far no one has prevented invalid characters from being pasted into the textbox. The code below is my first attempt at preventing any invalid characters from being entered by both typing or pasting.  The code below also restricts the total number of characters in the textbox to a set number of characters during both keyboard entry and text paste events into the Textbox. For this example my Textbox will hold a date made up of decimal digits and a date separator.  The code removes any character that was typed or pasted that was not a number or a date separator.  Also, no more than 10 characters can be typed or pasted into the textbox and all attempts to enter characters that would exceed that maximum never appear in the Textbox.  The code works through the TextChanged event, which is triggered by any typing, pasting or programatic change to the Textbox's text value.  Here is the commented code: ' These are the minimum reference imports required for this code. Imports System.Windows.Forms Imports System.Globalization Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions   ' At this time the Code is within a Form class   Private Sub txtToDate_TextChanged(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles txtToDate.TextChanged     If TypeOf sender Is TextBox Then       ' Just a failsafe to be sure that only a textbox is the sender object       Dim tbx As TextBox = sender       ' call the Date Character validation Sub       TextBoxDateText(tbx)     End If   End Sub   ' The code that follows could be moved out of the Form class into a helper class dll.   Private Sub TextBoxDateText(ByVal tbx As TextBox)     If Len(tbx.Text) > 0 Then       ' Only testing for valid characters when at least 1 character has been entered into the Textbox.       ' Variables for the cursor position in the textbox, the character length of the text, and the actual text value       Dim tbxPos As Long = tbx.SelectionStart       Dim tbxLen As Long = Len(tbx.Text)       Dim tbxText As String = tbx.Text       ' Get the user's local Date Separator character(s).  Escapes need to be added in front of . or \ characters,       ' but that is not needed in the U.S.       Dim dateSep As String = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.DateSeparator       ' Create a regular expression string of characters I want to allow.  In this case it is the Date Separator character       ' and any decimal digit (\d is a special group that matches decimal digits for the user's local culture.       Dim validChars As String = dateSep & "\d"       ' Test the text in the Textbox for any character that is not part of the validChar string.  See Function below.       If Not IsValidChars(tbxText, validChars) Then         ' One or more invalid characters was found so get the text with only valid characters.  See Function below.         tbxText = KeepValidChars(tbxText, validChars)         ' Set where the cursor would go and the new text character length after stripping out invalid characters         tbxPos = tbxPos - (tbxLen - Len(tbxText))         tbxLen = Len(tbxText)       End If       ' Test if the maximum character count is exceed.  Here it is hard coded, but in future posts       ' I will change it to a parameter variable.       If tbxLen > 10 Then         ' The text is still longer than the maximum character count so remove excess characters to the left of the cursor         ' This code assumes the Textbox flag is set for left to right entry.  Change to the right of the cursor if you use the opposite.         ' Explanation of Substring expression below:  Start at beginning of string.  From the cursor position going left remove         ' any characters that would exceed the maximum allowed.  Concatenate whatever remains with         ' everything to the right of the cursor.         tbxText = tbxText.Substring(0, tbxPos - (tbxLen - 10)) & tbxText.Substring(tbxPos, tbxLen - tbxPos)         ' Set the new cursor position and the new text character length that applies after characters maximum is respected         tbxPos = tbxPos - (tbxLen - 10)         tbxLen = Len(tbxText)       End If       ' Test if any of the above operations would change the text of the Textbox.       If tbx.Text <> tbxText Then         ' Text changed so replace what is in the Textbox with the character validated text         ' and set the new cursor position to be immediately to the right of the last retained inserted character.         tbx.Text = tbxText         tbx.SelectionStart = tbxPos       End If       ' end of operations on Textbox text with one or more characters entered.     End If   End Sub   Private Shared Function IsValidChars(ByVal txtDate As String, ByVal validChars As String) As Boolean     ' Declare a regular expression which is the negation in any position of the provided valid characters     Dim objNotDatePattern As New Regex("[^" & validChars & "]+")     ' A match occurs if invalid characters are present, but return the match's negation to     ' report true when only valid characters are present.     Return (Not objNotDatePattern.IsMatch(txtDate))   End Function   Function KeepValidChars(ByVal input As String, ByVal validChars As String) As String     ' Making a change that could trigger an error so place in try block.     Try       ' Replace any invalid character with no character, so that only valid characters in the validChars list will remain.       Return Regex.Replace(input, _              "[^" & validChars & "]", _              "", RegexOptions.None)     Catch e As Exception       Return input     End Try   End Function The code does not behave completely like disabling a keystroke through the KeyPress or KeyDown events.  This is because when a user enters invalid text (only through pasting if the KeyPress methods discussed previously have been applied) if they had selected any text that text will be overwritten, even if the new overwriting text was all invalid.  Nonetheless, with this code there is no way for a user to ever enter any character into the textbox that is invalid and have those invalid characters appear in the textbox. While in many ways this approach is similar to the behavior of a MaskedTextBox, it has some differences.  Unlike a MaskedTextBox there are no predefined positions that would require a user to fill in a complete 10 digit date to fill in a mask with all positions required.  Also there would be no strange looking mask holes showing up like "_1/_2/__12" when the MaskedTextBox uses a mask with options that allow short month, day and year values to be recognized as valid.  However, like a MaskedTextBox, additional tests still must occur to validate that the entry is an actual date (I would handle those through the Leave event and in a failsafe Submit event). The disadvantage relative to the MaskedTextBox at this point is that the user must currrently type the separator, where they do not have to do that with the MaskedTextBox.  I plan to enhance the behavior of the TextChanged event with automatic separator placement as the user types whenever a user has clearly entered a full month value or day value (for the moment assuming a U.S M/d/yy format, but I will try to globalize it according to local cultural configurations if I can).  The logic required to do that obviously will be tricky, but I think it can be done. Note that already many of the functions can be used directly to validate other types of Textbox values.  The IsValidChars and KeepValidChars work just as well for Long and Double values as they do for Date values.  They just need to have the correct regular expression character set string passed to them to prevent invalid characters from appearing in those textboxes, even during a paste event.  All of the logic in the TextBoxDateText Sub also applies, with the only modifications being to use a different validChars string.  There would also need to be an additional check in the case of Double fields to deal maximum characters on each side of a globalized decimal separator.  However, Dates have a variation of that type of validation involving the Date Separator, and Longs and Doubles may deal with Thousands separators.  Perhaps as I proceed a generic validation function will come to me that would apply to all such maximum character set parsings on either side of a separator as a user types. Anyway, I hope this helps. ... View more

Perhaps you need to deal with the fact that if you were posting this thread to see if anyone has a more elegant way of handling user input validation, it might be worthwhile to be polite to those who take the time to respond. I do not feel I have been impolite, but I have been persistently maintaining my position of what coding objectives I have just as you have.  I grant your approach is more elegant if I was willing to delay validation to the final check.  You just have not convinced me that your approach is a complete solution that supplants or invalidates my approach.  However, I do actually plan on using most of your suggestions in addition to my approach (by adding validation warning messages, maximum value validation, a final failsafe check, perhaps providing correction options to the user to return to the textbox to make the correction or accept a range of default value suggestions, rather than simply imposing a default value, while still ensuring that if they leave the textbox it will contain a valid value, etc). The discussion has been fruitful and I consider your inputs to be worthwhile.  Many of the challenges you have posed to my thinking will result in changes to the original code I posted.  You have posted coding options I have taken the time to try for myself, which I feel shows I was not wasting your time.  So in any event, I appreciate that you have responded and I have learned a great deal from experimenting with the suggestions you have made. ... View more

Unless your users know in advance, how would they know your text box is expecting a integer vs a double? Try my code please before you keep giving invalid comments.  If you tried it you would see that a user cannot type a decimal character into the field that handles Long values, but they can type one decimal character (and only one decimal character) into the other.  Pasting is the only way the user could avoid observing this restriction.  Try typing any non-number and you can't, so obviously it is not accepting those inputs.  Pasting is the only way to avoid observing that restriction.  Pasting will be at the users peril. If I knew how to capture the paste event, validate the input for compliance, and prevent any invalid input from ever appearing in the textbox I would take that approach in a heartbeat.  I would rather warn them why they cannot put in invalid input in the first place than warn them that they succeeded in screwing up the data input to the form at the last minute.  This would be the form of elegance I would desire and materially different results and effects. I will be doing warnings as I have indicated in later posts and telling the user what they are screwing up, but much earlier than you are. ... View more

Leo: You and I fundamentally differ on our approaches.  Neither is wrong, but they do not have the same results.  Your method delays everything to the submit button.  That is unacceptable to me.  All validation must take place as soon as the user commits any particular piece of information into the form.  A final check is acceptable as a failsafe, but not as a replacement for up front checking.  I am willing to accept the difficulties such an approach results in, since I am unwilling to wait until a user submits the form to warn them of data input errors.  Unless you accept that is where I am coming from and deal with validation at the soonest possible moment in the code you suggest, we will have to agree to disagree on this subject. Your recommendations are noted, and others reading this thread are free to consider your arguments for best practices and follow your advice.  But nothing you have said has had any effect on this aspect of what I want.  This for me is a non-negotiable program requirement.  If a client of yours told you that they won't pay you for an interface that delays validation to a final button press, and no urgings on your part about how acheiving this behavior will complicate the code that you will have to write and maintain will change their mind, would you refuse to comply and force them to hire someone else to get what they want? However, you have convinced me that I do not need to paste the same complete generic code into each Leave event.  And the fact that I have made the code generic to any textbox suggest a different approach.  However, centralizing this kind of validation to each form's Submit button is not a sufficient approach either.  There seems to me to be little doubt at this point that this subject warrants a more comprehensive approach than has been suggested so far. The need for this kind of validation is universal to all forms, and Microsoft clearly has provided no real help to users to easily extend their forms with decent Textbox input validation functionality.  So it seems one or more validation helper classes should be written for all such validations that takes an approach that meets and centralizes well designed code for a variety of user validation needs.  I have done this before whenever I realize I am repeated using the same code over and over and clearly this is going to happen with form Textbox validations. No matter what form a person is designing, or when the form needs to handle validation, Long and Double values (and for that matter any other variable type managed through a textbox) all have similar validation property options in a program, such as whether to be validated against a minimum or maximum value range, handling translations of input and output formats, invalid input messaging, default value suggestions or replacements, valid character filtering/masking, association with a specific unit of measure and conversions to alternative units of measure (including hex and escape codes if desired), precision (obvious for Doubles, but even Longs can be rounded to the nearest 10, 100, or 1,000 for many applications, and dates may at times be resticted to the first day or last day of a month or first or last date of the calendar or fiscal year), etc.  Additionally, once one of these options is set, it tends to be applicable and have implications across all of the other functions.  I find that a helper Class is the best way to deal with this level of interrelationships and collect, organize, extend and maintain the best validation code that is repeatedly used across programs to handle the mechanics of such operations and options.  So I think that will be the direction I will be taking next.  (I love a discussion or thought process that assures me that a universal approach to a problem is warrented, since those are the problems really worth solving and that boost my productivity the most and leave me the most satisfied when I finish). ... View more

Dear rfairhur24 please i want to be able to select a name from a drop down list of a combobox i created and i use to use the enter tab to set the process and not by just selecting the name.  which of the following codes would i use? Thanks def onEditChange(self, text):                 pass             def onFocus(self, focused):                 pass             def onEnter(self):                 pass             def refresh(self):                 pass Please start a new thread for this question.  It is completely different from the other questions on this thread.  Also, I am not an expert on Python custom user interface design, so I am not sure I can help.  Please indicate how you created this combobox when you repost.  Are you hosting the combobox using a script tool interface, a tkinter interface, or what? ... View more