How can I make a textbox selectable?

I'm trying to trigger an event when a textbox is selected. If I manually set the "Selected" property to "on", the box is highlighted. But I can't figure out how to do this via user interaction.

Minimal example of the type of interface I'm trying to create:

f = figure;
a = axes(f);
foo = annotation('textbox','String','Foo','BackgroundColor','white');
bar = annotation('textbox','String','Bar','BackgroundColor','white');

somePlot = plot([1, 2],[1, 1]);

xlim([0 3])
ylim([0 2])

xscaled = (somePlot.XData - a.XLim(1))/(a.XLim(2) - a.XLim(1));
yscaled = (somePlot.YData - a.YLim(1))/(a.YLim(2) - a.YLim(1));

foo.Position(1:2) = [xscaled(1)*a.Position(3) + a.Position(1) - foo.Position(3)/2,...
	yscaled(1)*a.Position(4) + a.Position(2) - foo.Position(4)/2];
bar.Position(1:2) = [xscaled(2)*a.Position(3) + a.Position(1) - bar.Position(3)/2,...
	yscaled(2)*a.Position(4) + a.Position(2) - bar.Position(4)/2];

foo.Selected = 'on';

Ideally I'd like to be able to change the selected textbox with a mouse click. I've tried setting the PickableParts property to 'all' but that doesn't change anything.

Answer 1

[Voss]

One way to set the Selected property via mouse click is to define a ButtonDownFcn for each textbox.

For example this will allow multiple textboxes to be selected at any time (i.e., click to select, click to de-select, independently):

set([foo bar],'ButtonDownFcn',@cb_select_textbox);


function cb_select_textbox(src,evt)
    if evt.Button ~= 1 % only allow left-clicks
        return
    end
    if strcmp(src.Selected,'off')
        src.Selected = 'on';
    else
        src.Selected = 'off';
    end
end

And this will allow at most one textbox to be selected at any time (i.e., click to select thus deselecting all others, click to de-select):

set([foo bar],'ButtonDownFcn',{@cb_select_textbox,[foo bar]});


function cb_select_textbox(src,evt,textboxes)
    if evt.Button ~= 1 % only allow left-clicks
        return
    end
    was_off = strcmp(src.Selected,'off');
    set(textboxes,'Selected','off');
    if was_off
        src.Selected = 'on';
    end
end