Nested Window query

I am trying to create and use a nested window for the first time. I have noted the StrongHelp manual says “Nesting windows and attaching them correctly is not an easy task; an amount of experimentation will be required before you can achieve the desired result.”. I have experimented, but still not achieved the desired result, even after reading the SH manual, the original spec from 1998, and the ROOL PRM Wiki.

My challenge is to add a small ‘furniture’ window over the left-hand side of a bottom scrollbar, which I have done. The scrollbar shrinks to allow space for the new window, and the child window and scrollbar work.

However, if I click any of …
– Adjust on the left scroll arrow
– Adjust in the left scroll well
– Select on the right scroll arrow
– Select in the right scroll well
the main window contents move to the left (as expected) but so does the whole child window.

Other actions work as expected.

My Nesting Flags are 0xA0000, which I think is bottom left linked to the lower bound of the parent, but I have experimented with many other values.

Are these flags correct for what I want to do?

Do I have to explicitly set the X scroll for the child back to zero if the main window moves?

0xA0000 means you have the bits 17 and 19 set, which would correspond to:
child’s left linked to right of parent
child’s bottom linked to top of parent
child’s right linked to work area of parent
child’s top linked to work area of parent
child’s x scroll offset linked to work area of parent
child’s y scroll offset linked to work area of parent

Linked to work area (as far as the bounds are concerned) means that the child window would appear to be fixed to the background of the parent window. A typical use would be if you had a child window within a web browser’s main window, showing an editing form within a web page.

Anyhow, that combination does not sound the right arrangement to me. You don’t want anything linked to the work area if you’re having the child window in the scrollbar well.

I would try linking the left and the right of your child window to the left bound of the parent, and the top and bottom link to the bottom of the parent. So that would be 0×550000.

Of course, that may not work, as an amount of experimentation will be required before you can achieve the desired result…

If you want your child window to get wider if the parent window is made wider, then you could link the right of the child window to the upper (right) bound of the parent, which would be 0×650000.

I’ve neglected to mention the scroll offset flags. I have never understood from the documentation what they are supposed to do, so that’s the bit I generally have to experiment with. I would guess that they need to be zero, but I may be wrong.

Thanks Matthew for those hints. It seems I had misunderstood the order of the two bits used in each of the nesting values: I had assumed they were but it seems to be the other way round – all the documentation to my eyes is very unclear.

&550000 does indeed work as you suggested – perfectly.
Just before your post I had tried &5550000, after discovering that is what Netsurf uses. It also seems to work fine, with the scroll offsets linked as well.