88. How do I update the text of a pane in a status bar?

By default, a CStatusBar pane is not enabled when the pane is created. To activate a pane, you must call the ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI() macro for each pane on the status bar and update the panes. Because panes do not send WM_COMMAND messages, you cannot use ClassWizard to activate panes; you must type the code manually. For example, suppose one pane has ID_INDICATOR_PAGE as its identifier and that it contains the current page number in a document. To make the ID_INDICATOR_PAGE pane display text, add the following to a header file (probably the MAINFRM.H file):

afx_msg void OnUpdatePage(CCmdUI *pCmdUI);

Add the following to the application message map:

ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI(ID_INDICATOR_PAGE, OnUpdatePage)

Add the following to a source code file (probably MAINFRM.CPP):

void CMainFrame::OnUpdatePage(CCmdUI *pCmdUI)
{
　　pCmdUI->Enable();
}

To display text in the panes, either call SetPaneText() or call CCmdUI::SetText() in the OnUpdate() function. For example, you might want to set up an integer variable m_nPage that contains the current page number. Then, the OnUpdatePage() function might read as follows:

void CMainFrame::OnUpdatePage(CCmdUI *pCmdUI)
{
　　pCmdUI->Enable();
　　char szPage[16];
　　wsprintf((LPSTR)szPage, "Page %d", m_nPage);
　　pCmdUI->SetText((LPSTR)szPage);
}

This technique causes the page number to appear in the pane during idle processing in the same manner that the application updates other indicators.