tab navigation and clusters

[Mads]

Is there a way to make tab-navigation skip highlighting the frame of a cluster and instead jump straight to the first control in the cluster?

I do not understand why tab navigation highlights the cluster frame, there is nothing you can do with the cluster with the keyboard anyway; it's the controls within it you want to navigate to...the fact that the controls are in a cluster should be transparent to the user. Sure, I can skip the cluster and use individual control on the front panel, however that introduces a need for bundling a large number of values and makes the diagram bigger and less readable...

Any tips and/or views on this?

[Mads]

Reading the higlight property of the cluster and acting on that by highlighting the first control in the cluster instead...is perhaps a partial solution, but not a very elegant one...

The cluster frame would reveal itself in a flash (I did not mention that the cluster frame has been made transparent, but the frame is revealed as a black line when tabbing highlights the cluster. The "Skip this control" option does not help either as you still need to access the controls within it using the tab key...function keys are off course also possible, but that does not fix the ugly tab behaviour)

[JeanPierre]

That technique just needs a slight modification to work. Skip the cluster when tabbing but create a dummy string or boolean (off screen) that, when receiving key focus by tabbing, immediately sets the key focus to an element of the cluster.

[Mads]

That's a good idea, still you have a similar problem when reaching the last control in the cluster; then it should exit on the next tab input...

Lot's of code for something that it would seem natural to have behaving the requested way by default (no need to make controls in a cluster require a tab->cluster highlight-> Ctrl-arrow-tab to be accessed using the keyboard...(?)).