#  Copyright (c) 1998-2000 by Scriptics Corporation.
#  All rights reserved.
#
#  RCS: @(#) $Id: chooseDirectory.n,v 1.1 2000/01/27 00:23:10 ericm Exp $
#

=head1 NAME

chooseDirectory - pops up a dialog box for the user to select a directory.

=for category  Tk Generic Methods

=head1 SYNOPSIS

I<$widget>-E<gt>B<chooseDirectory>( ?I<option value ...>? );

=head1 DESCRIPTION

The method B<chooseDirectory> is implemented as a perl wrapper on the
core tk "command" B<tk_chooseDirectory>, and I<$widget> is passed as
the argument to the hidden B<-parent> option.

The B<chooseDirectory>
method pops up a dialog box for the user to select a directory. The
following I<option-value> pairs are possible as command line
arguments:

=over 4

=item B<-initialdir> I<dirname>

Specifies that the directories in I<directory> should be displayed
when the dialog pops up. If this parameter is not specified, then
the directories in the current working directory are displayed. If the
parameter specifies a relative path, the return value will convert the
relative path to an absolute path.  This option may not always work on
the Macintosh.  This is not a bug. Rather, the I<General Controls>
control panel on the Mac allows the end user to override the
application default directory.

=item B<-parent> $widget

Makes $widget the logical parent of the dialog. The dialog
is displayed on top of its parent window.

=item B<-title> I<titleString>

Specifies a string to display as the title of the dialog box. If this
option is not specified, then a default title will be displayed.

=item B<-mustexist> I<boolean>

Specifies whether the user may specify non-existant directories.  If
this parameter is true, then the user may only select directories that
already exist.  The default value is I<false>.

=back

=head1 CAVEATS

Perl does not have a concept of encoded filesystems yet. This means
that operations on filenames like C<opendir> and C<open> still use
byte semantics. Tk however uses character semantics internally, which
means that you can get filenames with the UTF-8 flag set in functions
like C<chooseDirectory>, C<getOpenFile> and similar. It's the user's
responsibility to determine the encoding of the underlying filesystem
and convert the result into bytes, e.g.

    use Encode;
    ...
    my $dir = $mw->chooseDirectory;
    $dir = encode("windows-1252", $dir);
    opendir DIR, $dir or die $!;
    ...

See also L<perlunicode/When Unicode Does Not Happen> and
L<perltodo/Unicode in Filenames>.

=head1 EXAMPLE

    my $dir = $mw->chooseDirectory(-initialdir => '~',
                                   -title => 'Choose a directory');
    if (!defined $dir) {
        warn 'No directory selected';
    } else {
        warn "Selected $dir";
    }

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<Tk::getOpenFile>, L<Tk::getOpenFile>

=head1 KEYWORDS

directory selection dialog