Aegisub / Automation / Lua / Dialogs

These functions are used to display dialogs for the user to interact with.

Display dialog functions

aegisub.dialog.display

Synopsis: button, result_table = aegisub.dialog.display(dialog, buttons)

This function displays a configuration dialog to the user and waits for it to close. It then returns whether the user accepted or cancelled the dialog, and what values were input.

@dialog (table)

A Dialog Definition table containing the controls to be in the dialog.

@buttons (table)

Optional. This is an array of strings defining the buttons that appear in the dialog. If this is left out, empty or is otherwise not a table, the standard Ok and Cancel buttons appear.
The strings in this table are used as labels on the buttons, and for identifying them in the return values of the function.

button (boolean or string)

If no custom buttons were specified, this is a boolean telling whether Ok (true) or Cancel (false) were clicked in the dialog. If custom buttons were specified, this is the text on the button clicked by the user. Even if custom buttons were specified, this can still be boolean false if the user closes the dialog without pressing any button.

result_table (table)

The Dialog Result table corresponding to the values the user input in the dialog.

aegisub.dialog.open

Synopsis: file_name = aegisub.dialog.open(title, default_file, default_dir, wildcards, allow_multiple=false, must_exist=true)

Open a standard file open dialog to ask the user for a filename. Returns the path to the selected file(s), or nil if the user canceled.

@title (string)

Title of the dialog

@default_file (string)

Default filename to preselect. May be empty.

@default_dir (string)

Initial directory to show in the open dialog. If empty, the last used directory is shown.

@wildcards (string)

File filters to show. If empty, a sane default will be used.
E.g. "All Files (.)|.|XYZ files (.xyz)|.xyz"

@allow_multiple (boolean)

Let the user select multiple files. If this is true, a table of filenames will be returned rather than a single string, even if only one file is selected by the user.

@must_exist (boolean)

Only let the user select files that actually exist.

file_name (nil, string, or table)

nil if the user cancelled. A string containing the path to the selected file if allow_multiple is false, or a table containing the paths to all selected files if allow_multiple is true.

aegisub.dialog.save

Synopsis: file_name = aegisub.dialog.save(title, default_file, default_dir, wildcards, dont_prompt_for_overwrite=false)

Open a standard file save dialog to ask the user for a filename. Returns the path to the selected file, or nil if the user canceled.

@title (string)

Title of the dialog

@default_file (string)

Default filename to preselect. May be empty.

@default_dir (string)

Initial directory to show in the open dialog. If empty, the last used directory is shown.

@wildcards (string)

File filters to show. If empty, a sane default will be used.
E.g. "All Files (.)|.|XYZ files (.xyz)|.xyz"

@dont_prompt_for_overwrite (boolean)

Don't ask the user to confirm that they wish to overwrite the file if they select a filename that already exists.

file_name (nilor string)

nil if the user cancelled, and a string containing the path to the selected file otherwise.

Configuration Dialog interface

This section describes the tables passed to and received from aegisub.dialog.display and the export filter configuration panel.

This file describes the functions and data structures used for the Configuration Dialog functionality in Automation 4.

Dialog Control table format

A Dialog Control table describes a single control in a configuration dialog, which can display information to the user and allow them to change it.

There are a number of different classes of controls, and the keys a Dialog Control table must contain depends on the control class.

Common keys for all control classes:

class (string)

Defines which class this control has. Must be one of:

• "label",
• "edit", "intedit", "floatedit", "textbox",
• "dropdown",
• "checkbox",
• "color", "coloralpha", "alpha"

x (number)

y (number)

width (number)

height (number)

Determines the position and size of the control in the dialog. These values are used to create a grid containing the controls. They should all be integer. The top left corner is x,y=0,0. If any of width and height are set to zero or less, it will be set to one instead.

Keys defined for all classes except "label":

hint (string)

A string displayed to the user as tooltip, when hovering over the control.

name (string)

A name that uniquely identifies the control. This is recommended to be a string easily used as an identifier in Lua, since it will be used to access the value input into the control.

Keys defined only for "label" and "checkbox" classes:

label (string)

The text displayed to the user on the control.

Key defined only for the "edit" and "textbox" classes:

text (string)

The contents of the control when the dialog is first displayed. This can contain newlines if the control is of the "textbox" class.

Keys defined only for the "intedit" and "floatedit" classes:

value (number)

The value in the control when the dialog is first displayed. For the "intedit" class, if this is a non-integer number it will be truncated.

min (number or nil)

max (number or nil)

If one of these are nil, the other must also be nil. (i.e. undefined.) If both are present, the control gets a spin button that the user can click to update the value of the control. The user won't be able to enter values outsize the (inclusive) range between min and max.

Key defined only for the "floatedit" class:

step (number or nil)

Specifies the size of change when the spin buttons are clicked. If nil, spin buttons will not be displayed even if min and max are set (but the values accepted will still be limited). Note that this does not require that min and max be set.

Keys defined only for the "dropdown" class:

items (table)

This is an Array Table containing only strings. They are used for the options displayed to the user in the dropdown box. All strings in the array table should be unique. (There is not way to distinguish non-unique strings from each other.)

value (string)

Determines which item is selected when the dialog id first displayed. If this is not one of the items specified, no item is selected. This is case- sensitive.

Key defined only for the "checkbox" class:

value (boolean)

Determines whether the checkbox is checked or not when the dialog is first displayed.

Keys defined only for the "color", "coloralpha" and "alpha" classes:

value (string)

A color value in VB or HTML hexadecimal format. For the "color" class, this should be a 3 byte value, i.e. "#RRGGBB". For the "coloralpha" class, this should be a 4 byte value, i.e. "#RRGGBBAA". For the "alpha" class, this should be a one-byte value, i.e. "#AA".

Dialog Definition table format

The Dialog Definition table is simply an array of Dialog Control tables.

Note, however, that while the visual ordering of the controls are decided entirely by the "x", "y", "width" and "height" of the controls, the "tab order" of the controls is decided by their ordering in the Dialog Definition table.

Dialog Result table format

A Dialog Result table contains the user input from a configuration dialog.

The control "name" properties are used as keys in this table.

The type of the value for each entry in the table depends on the class of the control. The control classes map to types in the following manner:

label: nil

Since the user cannot change a label, they do not produce any value.

edit, textbox: string

The text input in the box. This can contain newlines in the case of a textbox class control.

intedit, floatedit: number

The number input into the control, guaranteed to be within the constraints set by the class (integer or float) and the min/max properties.

dropdown: string

The case-exact text of the selected item.

checkbox: boolean

The checked-state of the checkbox.

color, coloralpha, alpha: string

A VB colorstring following the same scheme as for setting the value property.