Apple II Technical Notes _____________________________________________________________________________ Developer Technical Support Apple IIGS #47: What SetDataSize Does Written by: Keith Rollin November 1988 This Technical Note clears up any ambiguity in the description of the SetDataSize call. _____________________________________________________________________________ The Apple IIGS supports windows that contain scroll bars in their frames. These scroll bars are handled by TaskMaster and differ from Macintosh scroll bars in that the size of the "thumb" or "elevator" is used to indicate the size of the visible area of the document in relation to the total size of the document (the "data size"). Initially, the visible size and the data size are defined by the parameter list passed to NewWindow; however, either of these can be changed by SizeWindow and SetDataSize, respectively. SetDataSize is used to not only change the range of scrolling allowed, but also to redraw the size of the thumb to reflect the fact that the data size has changed with respect to the visible area. However, page 25-97 of the Apple IIGS Toolbox Reference contains the following description of SetDataSize: "Sets the height and width of the data area of a specified window. Setting these values will not change the scroll bars or generate update events." When the manual states that SetDataSize "will not change the scroll bars," it is referring to the location, or value, of the thumb. Assume a situation where you have a word processor that scrolls the page using TaskMaster scroll bars. If you delete a range of text, you would also shorten the entire size of the document. Calling SetDataSize to reflect that would indeed change the size of the thumb, but it would not change its location. If you were already scrolled to the bottom of the document when you called SetDataSize, the thumb would become larger (to reflect the fact the the total data size became smaller with respect to the visible data size) and overwrite the down arrow of the scroll bar. To prevent this situation from occurring, you should also change the origin of the window with SetContentOrigin before calling SetDataSize. Further Reference o Apple IIGS Toolbox Reference, Volume 2