Windows - hierarchyΒΆ

Desktop

The desktop window, also known as the screen window, occupies the whole screen. It is not visible if the wintask window occupies the whole screen. The desktop is common to all applications, but cannot be defined or directly referenced in a Sculptor program.

Task window

Whenever an application starts, its task window opens on the desktop, unless it has been assigned the style flag WS_INVISIBLE. In Sculptor, the task window is named wintask. The parent of the task window is the desktop. See The task window wintask

Top-level windows

The task window, like all other standard windows pre-defined in Sculptor, is a top-level window - that is, a window whose parent is the desktop. An application may create other top-level windows. Any user-defined window which has no parent assigned is a top-level window. All top-level windows may overlap each other.

Child windows

A child window is any window which has been assigned a parent window other than the desktop. A parent window is assigned by means of the parent = clause. Unless it has the style flag WS_OWNED assigned, a child window must be wholly contained within its parent and cannot overlap other top-level windows. Window controls such as buttons, listboxes, menus, tables and textboxes are child windows. Window objects which are not controls are children, but are not child windows. Specific restrictions apply to child windows, and especially to the children of child windows.

Unless a child window has been assigned the style flag WS_OWNED, any menu defined for it appears in the parent window. From Sculptor V 5.5 onwards, menus defined for child windows with WS_OWNED assigned appear in the child window. See !compat childmenu.

The first_child() function returns a pointer to the first child window in a window.

Tab control windows

A special type of window in which each child window defines a tab.


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