Triggering the OnExit...

the onexit of the editbox, not of the form right? (just checking)

oh ok, ive made brighter remarks, i admit it

Actually, it is not... If you click on the speedbutton it doesn't seem to get triggered. At least not with Delphi 6.
Problem is, the click on the speedbutton might require the calculation to be executed again. Of course every speedbutton event could trigger the Calculations in it's own OnClick event but that too is a bit clumsy in my opinion.

Most controls will make sure the OnExit of the editcontrol is triggered. But with menu-options and speedbuttons this event does NOT get triggered. And I need some event to be triggered whenever the user changes the focus to somewhere else. It has to do with the fact that a speedbutton is no TWinControl and thus it can't get focus. Thus, the edit control never loses focus and is thus never really exited.
It gets even more interesting when you realise that the OnExit method is triggered by the CM_EXIT message. This message is sent to the focused control when the form gets information that the focused control is about to change.

So the trick that I am looking for is some event or message that gets called whenever the user does something to another control. Especially if it is a control that cannot receive focus.

The work done on processing cannot be done faster, unfortunately. Actually, since more is going to be added, it's actually becoming even slower but no problem... The user sees an hourglass. :-) (And hopefully the user has the related Access database on his local machine and not on some other system that's only accessible by a 10 mbit network with all other kinds of slowing factors...)

Basically, I am trying to improve the performance of an older project while we're also working on a newer version of this product. The newer version will have everything it needs in-memory thus it performs a lot faster. But it's expected to be finished in 2007. So I like to improve the speed of the old version a bit, which we would like to be ready at the end of this month... Stupid deadlines... :-)

> Problem is, the click on the speedbutton might require the calculation to be executed again. Of course every speedbutton event could trigger the Calculations in it's own OnClick event but that too is a bit clumsy in my opinion.

Well really there is no reason to have an OnExit event for a speedbutton, thats why it has an OnClick event.
You wouldnt code a button to do nothing when you click it, but to fire off an event when you leave its area, that is very clumsy and unnecessary.
This is why you split out calculations to be called from a routine that many events can use, its the right thing to do.

Could you just instead trigger the OnExit button of last wincontrol component on click of button?

Have a global variable storing last enter/exit of wincontrol, then cast the control to use its OnExit event.
Just a thought.

Sorry, mike... The trouble is that a click on a non-TWinControl is triggering some actions but I need the calculations to be done at that moment too! At the moment e.g. the SpeedButton is clicked, I'd like to perform the same action as on the OnExit event. Since I use quite a few speedbuttons and other controls that cannot receive focus, I need a more generic solution. Either something for on the form or a modification that can be applied to the TEditControl class. (I am using a custom-made editcontrol for my project with some additional functionality which makes it impossible to use alternative third-party solutions for this problem.)

Not very different from mikelittlewood idea, is it? Ok, then same objection, I guess...

Well, thing is that I can simply solve this by calling the calculation method for every speedbutton or menuoption that gets clicked. But this is the situation that I'm trying to avoid here.
I do have one alternative solution, which is by defining my own speedbutton class which is either inherited from TWinControl or which sends an OnExit message to the active control, followed by an OnEnter message, every time it gets clicked. Still leaves me with the menu-options and shortcut keys, which also behave in this way.

Geo is suggesting a good point here, although I must avoid having to perform this calculation too often. In the current situation, the calculation is called on the OnChange event which actually results in the user typing a character, then waiting half a second, then type another character, wait some more, etc. (And the worst thing is that the calculation is calling ProcessMessages itself to keep the application responsive, meaning that the next OnChange event can actually occur while it is processing an OnChange event!)

Basically, I need a more reliable method which won't get triggered as often as the OnChange event...
I considered using an ActionList, btw. Unfortunately that too would cost too much time since too many options would have to be changed to TActions...

Am just waiting a bit more in case someone has the perfexct solution. Otherwise, the points will be split.