Despite the GCombo control being in the library for over 3 years you are the first to report these issues . I suspect most users (including myself) have only used the GCombo for fixed lists.

Anyway thanks for raising these issues they are an omission that needs to be fixed and I will do that for the next version. Perhaps you would raise an issue on GoogleCode so that you get notification when it has been fixed.

Until then I have a quick fix for you that will work (I have tried it out).

In your sketch create a new tab called GComboPlus.java - note this is NOT a pde file and the spelling including capitals are important. Now copy the code from below into this tab.

Once you have done that, in your sketch replace all occurances of GCombo with GComboPlus (don't forget the event handlers). BTW If you are using the GUI builder tool do not use it after you have does this bit.

Effectively you are creating a new type of control that does everything that GCombo does but with the extra methods.

HTH

1. public class GComboPlus extends GCombo {
2.   public GComboPlus(PApplet theApplet, String[] options, int maxRows, int x, int y, int width) {
3.     super(theApplet, options, maxRows, x, y, width);
4.   }
5. 
   
6.   public int getNbrOptions() {
7.     return optGroup.getOptions().size();
8.   }
9. 
   
10.   public void removeAll() {
11.     optGroup.getOptions().clear();
12.     setText("");
13.   }
14. 
    
15.   public void setOptions(String[] optTexts, int selected) {
16.     removeAll();
17.     for (String s : optTexts)
18.       addOption(s);
19.     setSelected(selected);
20.   }
21. }

Hi quarks,

Thanks for the quick reply, and work-around.  Your library has saved me a significant amount of time!

I would be curious to know what most people do for user interfaces:
 - G4P
 - ControlP5
 - Write their own
 - ??

Thanks!
bbc 

Thanks for logging this as an issue and if you think of any additional functionality for GCombo or G4P in general then let me know.

In the next version of G4P I have added these 3 methods to GCombo, the only difference is that I have called removeAll to removeAllOptions to keep the method naming consistant. I suggest that in the above code you change line 10 to

  public void removeAllOptions() {

if you do this then it will be a simple matter of changing GComboPlus back to GCombo and deleting the GComboPlus.java file from your sketch when the next version of the library becomes available.


As to what GUI most people use, it is probably ControlP5 because it was released in November 2006 about 2.5 years before G4P. As to writing their own, I have seen questions on the forum about creating buttons for their own sketchs and although it is fairly easy task, creating something as comprehensive as ControlP5 or G4P for others to use requires significant programming experience.

Thanks for supporting the library.  I'll be sure to make suggestions as I see them...