Locking All Other GUI Windows While Another is Up

I have a GUI which controls hardware. The GUI creates multiple new GUI's from it which change aspects of how the original GUI interacts with this hardware. While a user is changing settings of how the original GUI functions, I do not want the original GUI to be able to function. Ensuring the button to configure the GUI is unusable is easy as I simply make the button to do so invisible while the user is waiting on results. However, I have not been able to find a simple way of making the original GUI unusable.

I've tried uiwait with a simple example, but it has not worked as the "fail test" still displays text on the original GUI (under handles1.GUI) if I change my focus back to the original GUI after creating the second (handles2.GUI).

handles1=struct();

handles1.GUI=figure();

handles1.UI1=uicontrol('style','text',...
    'parent',handles1.GUI,...
    'units','normalized',...
    'position',[0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1]);

handles1.UI2=uicontrol('style','pushbutton',...
    'Callback',@Lock_Me,...
    'parent',handles1.GUI,...
    'String','Lock Test',...
    'Units','Normalized',...
    'position',[0.4 0.4 0.1 0.1]);

handles1.UI3=uicontrol('style','pushbutton',...
    'Callback',@Fail_Me,...
    'parent',handles1.GUI,...
    'String','Fail Test',...
    'Units','Normalized',...
    'position',[0.6 0.6 0.1 0.1]);

function Lock_Me(hObject,~,~)

      handles2=struct();

      handles2.GUI=figure();

      handles2.UI1=uicontrol('style','pushbutton',...
          'Parent',handles2.GUI,...
          'Callback',@Unlock_Me);

      setappdata(handles2.GUI,'lockedfig',hObject.Parent)

      uiwait(hObject.Parent);
  end

function Unlock_Me(hObject,~,~)

      uiresume(getappdata(handles2.GUI,'lockedfig'))

      close(hObject.Parent)

end

function Fail_Me(hObject,~,~)

      GUI1children=hObject.Parent.Children;

      for i=1:length(GUI1children)

          if strcmp(GUI1children(i).Style,'text')

              GUI1children(i).String='Failure';

          end
      end

end

I'm not super familiar with uiwait and uiresume while using multiple figures, so I may be incorrect in using appdata to transfer the handle of the original figure which needs to be resumed.

This is not the exact structure of my GUI, it is much more complex with a few pushbuttons, and popupmenus I would like to disable. The GUI window which is spawned to configure the original GUI also has multiple GUI's it can create to change advanced settings of the original GUI. However, if the above code works the way it should, then I should be okay.

I'm using MATLAB 2017b and am not using GUIDE, but I'm sure if you submit something with how GUIDE does something I can figure out how to do it manually.

[Adam Danz]

What if you turn off the visibility of the original GUI during period when you don't want users to use that GUI? Note that the visibility property does not block access to the object's components. It just makes the object not visible.

If guiHand is the handle to your GUI.

guiHand.Visible = 'off'; 
guiHand.Visible = 'on';

[Luke Perry]

Huh... That could work. I see no immediate reason why this would not work, but I worry if something does go wrong with the configuration settings where the windows crash without making the original GUI visible. I would of course place the visibility in the CloseReqFcn of the configuration GUI's...

Hmmm...

I'm going to see how this looks, but you may have solved my problem at least in the interim if there is no better solution.

P.S. I can't mark this as answered as you commented on this rather than answered, but if you answer it I'll mark this as the proper answer until I get a better response.

[OCDER]

I like @Adam's answer. If you're worried about crashing, etc, perhaps a try/catch statement could work.

handles.GUI.Visible = 'off';
try
   Out = NewGUI(handles.GUI.Position, ...); %Open your new GUI 
   %As bonus, perhaps you could draw this NewGUI RIGHT ABOVE the current 
   %GUI's position. Just so it looks like you're in the same GUI.
   %You'd have to feed in the position of the current GUI and use that
   %to resize the GUI's position.
catch E
   disp(E);
end
handles.GUI.Visible = 'on'; %Restore your GUI Visibility

[Luke Perry]

The windows are sized slightly differently, so I have the top left corners of the GUI's in the same position to allow the user moving the window if need be already, so that is taken care of.

Shouldn't the

handles.GUI.Visible = 'on'; %Restore your GUI Visibility

line be inside of the catch statement instead as the regular visible change would be inside the second GUI's CloseRequestFcn? Otherwise, doesn't this simply make that first GUI visible once more once the new GUI is rendered?

[OCDER]

If you put the handles.GUI.Visible 'on', in the catch statement, then your original GUI will reappear ONLY WHEN there's an error from the New GUI - as in, normal-working New GUI will just forever hide the original GUI.

The New GUI should have uiwait and uiresume in it, so the the original GUI is waiting for the New GUI to complete and return an output. Without the uiwait and uiresume in NewGUI, you're right - it'll just open New GUI + reshow Orig GUI.

[Luke Perry]

But if I want to execute multiple actions in this new GUI, wouldn't uiwait be tripped and allow the old GUI to appear as soon as one action executed, (one button pressed, etc.), or would it wait for the GUI to close?

I've never looked under the hood of uiwait to see how it actually finishes.

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

To summarize my and OCDER's suggestions:

Toggle the visibility of the GUI with

handles.GUI.Visible = 'off';  % or 'on'

In the case of a malfunction when the GUI is inivisible one option is to set a try/catch as OCDER suggested in the comments above.

handles.GUI.Visible = 'off';
try
   Out = NewGUI(handles.GUI.Position, ...); %Open your new GUI 
   %Any other stuff that might trigger an error goes here....
catch E
   disp(E);
   handles.GUI.Visible = 'on'; %Restore your GUI Visibility 
end
handles.GUI.Visible = 'on'; %Restore your GUI Visibility

The second option is more reactionary and not automatic. You could write a simple function that searches for your invisible GUI and turns it back on. You could call this function from the command window or from a button in the visible GUIs whenever an error occurs. Of course you won't have the GUI handle any more so you have to search for it.

This function finds all figures, determines which ones are invisible, and turns those ones on.

function h = findMyInvisibleGUI()
% Searches for any figures that are invisible and makes them visible, 
% and returns the handles. 
allFigHandles = findall(0, 'Type', 'figure');
visibleStatus = get(allFigHandles, 'Visible'); 
isOff = strcmpi(visibleStatus, 'off'); 
h = allFigHandles(isOff); 
set(h, 'Visible', 'on')

[OCDER]

Also, uiwait, uiresume, and waitfor could be used to control which GUI must complete first before another GUI can resume. Here are the websites links for these.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/uiresume.html https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/waitfor.html https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/uiwait.html