Fake modal dialog using Show?

Question

My application have several modules, each in one tab on the mainform. When using a dialog it is convenient to call ShowModal because you know when the dialog is finished. Bu

Answer 1

I have actually almost implemented local modal dialogs now. It is built around that when a TForms Enabled property is set To False the whole Form is locked from input. And my modules is just a descendant from TForm.

My ViewManager class that decide what modules is current add/close modules etc got 2 new methods. LockCurrentView and UnLOckCurrentView.

function TViewManager.LockCurrentView: TChildTemplate;
begin
  Result := CurrentView;
  Result.Enabled := False;
  Result.VMDeactivate;         // DeActivate menus and toolbas for this module
end;

procedure TViewManager.UnLockCurrentView(aCallerForm: TChildTemplate);
begin
  aCallerForm.VMActivate;           // Activate menus and toolbas for this module
  aCallerForm.Enabled := True;
end;

TAttracsForm is the baseclass of all dialogs. I Override FormClose and add a new method ShowLocalModal to call instead of ShowModal. I also have to add a TNotifyEvent OnAfterDestruction to be called when the dialog is closed.

procedure TAttracsForm.FormClose(Sender: TObject; var Action: TCloseAction);
begin
  if Assigned(fCallerForm) then      
  begin
    ClientMainForm.ViewManager.UnLockCurrentView(fCallerForm as TChildTemplate);

    if Assigned(OnAfterDestruction) then
      OnAfterDestruction(Self);

    Action := caFree;
  end;
end;

{ Call to make a dialog modal per module.
  Limitation is that the creator of the module must be a TChildtemplate.
  Several modal dialogs cannot be stacked with this method.}
procedure TAttracsForm.ShowLocalModal(aNotifyAfterClose: TNotifyEvent);
begin
  fCallerForm := ClientMainForm.ViewManager.LockCurrentView;    // Lock current module and return it
  PopupParent := fCallerForm;
  OnAfterDestruction := aNotifyAfterClose;
  Show;
end;

Some test with simple dialogs looks promising. So the module just have to call ShowLocalModal(myMethod) which have a TNotifyEvent as parameter. This method is called when the dialog is closed.