A Dialogbox Design Program for Turbo
Vision Version 4.1

A Dialogbox Design Program for Turbo
Vision Version 4.1
Welcome to Dialog Design 4.1, your Dialogbox design program for Borland's
Turbo Vision. With Dialog Design, you can:

1. Lay out your dialogbox on screen using your mouse to locate and size
controls.

2. Test the dialogbox to see how it will eventually act in your program.

3. Generate Pascal or C++ source code or dialog resources to be
incorporated in or used by your program.


REQUIREMENTS

Borland Pascal 7.0 and/or Borland C++ 3.1

An older version of Dialog Design (V2.2) is still available for Turbo Pascal
6.0 users.


WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 4

Version 4 has many new features, changes, and bug fixes. Listed here are
the major changes.

1. One program now supports both Pascal and C++.

2. All source code and resource generation is now done by external programs
called from Dialog Design. Communication between Dialog Design and the
conversion programs is via an ASCII script file. Since source code
is provided for the conversion programs, modifications can be made to:

a. Customize the source code generated.
b. Incorporate custom controls into the source or resources generated.

3. A toolbox is now provided to enable easy selection and placement of
controls.

4. In addition to Pascal resources, C++ dialog resources can now be
generated.

5. Pascal (only Pascal) dialog resources can now be read allowing Dialog
Design to edit and use dialogs designed elsewhere. In particular,
Dialogs can be input from Blaise' Turbo Vision Development Toolkits's (tm)
.BRS files.


WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 4.1

1. Controls may now be duplicated as you might want to do for a column
of TInputLines. To Duplicate a control, hold the ctrl key down and
left click it.

2. Easier to move around in the help file. Use alt-B to go to a previous
topic and alt-C to go to the contents topic. There's also a menu item
which returns you to the previous topic.

3. Double clicking with the left button to bring up a control's edit
dialog has been removed (clicking with the right button does the same
thing). If you really liked the way it worked before, there's an
option in the Options/Configuration dialog to turn it back on.

4. An '@' operator has been added to allow inserting a variable name
wherever a string can be entered. See the .doc or help file for
further info.


FILES SUPPLIED

DLGDSN.EXE EXE file for Dialog Design
DLGHLP.HLP Help file for Dialog Design

Documentation
DLGDSN.DOC DOC file for Dialog Design. Read this one.
SCRIPT.DOC Script file explanation. Read this when it comes time to
modify something.
OPBUTTON.DLG A demo dialog showing how to handle a non standard button.
See SCRIPT.DOC.

Pascal Conversion Files
PASSRC1.PAS Converts script file to Pascal Source (type 1)
PASSRC2.PAS Converts script file to Pascal Source (type 2)
SKEL.DAT Used by PASSRC2
PASRSRC.PAS Converts script file to Pascal Resources
READSCPT.PAS Reads script files--used by above
PAS.MAK Make file to generate Pascal conversion EXE's

C++ Conversion Files
CPPSRC1.CPP Converts script file to C++ Source (type 1)
CPPSRC2.CPP Converts script file to C++ Source (type 2)
CPPSKEL.DAT Used by CPPSRC2
CPPRSRC.CPP Converts script file to C++ Resources
CPP*.PRJ Project file for above
READSCPT.CPP Reads script files--used by above
READSCPT.H Header file for above
CPP.MAK Make file to generate C++ conversion EXE's

Pascal special controls, etc.
COLORTXT.TPU TPU for TColoredText
COLORTXT.INT Doc and partial source for TColoredText
INPLONG.PAS Doc and source for TInputLong
TESTCASE.PAS Program to test Pascal code generated by Dialog Design

C++ special controls, etc.
TCOLORTX.H Header file for TColoredText
TCOLORTX.OBJ Object for TColoredText
SCOLORTX.CPP Registration object for TColoredText
TCOLORTX.DOC Doc and partial source for TColoredText
TINPLONG.H Header file for TInputLong
SINPLONG.CPP Registration object for TInputLong
TINPLONG.CPP Doc and source for TInputLong
TESTCASE.CPP Program to test C++ code generated by Dialog Design
TEST.PRJ Project file for TESTCASE.CPP

INSTALLATION

Probably the easiest installation is to put all files in one working
directory. More appropriate might be to put C++ files in one directory,
Pascal in another, and DLGDSN.EXE in a directory on your path. The help
file, DLGDSN.HLP should be in the same directory as DLGDSN.EXE.

In order to save download time, the EXE files for the conversion programs
have not been included in this file. These are available in a separate file
which may also be downloaded (named DLGEXE.ZIP or something similar) but
it's probably easier to generate them yourself from the included source code.
Make files are provided for this. Assuming Borland's MAKE.EXE or MAKER.EXE
is on your path,

MAKE -f pas.mak

will construct the three Pascal conversion files, and,

MAKE -f cpp.mak [noblink]

will construct the three C++ conversion files. Note that the "-f"
must be lower case. These two files assume the standard Borland
directory setups. If you have trouble when running MAKE you may need
to alter the .MAK files to specify your own directory locations.

Note the optional "noblink" parameter for the C++ make file. C++ Turbo
Vision does an automatic screen blank which causes an annoying flash
on some systems. If you find this annoying, the "noblink" option will
patch out the offending clearSceen() routine.


CONFIGURATION

When you first run Dialog Design, a configuration dialog will come up.
Be sure and select your choice of languages. You should also add the
path where the conversion programs are located to the conversion filenames
already listed. Once you select OK on this dialog, you will be asked if you
want to save it to disk (DLGDSN.CFG).

Once it's saved to disk, you won't see this dialog on startup, but you can
access it at any time from the menu (Options/Configure...) to make
configuration changes.