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Topic: Dialogue Box Editor Community Edition (Read 792 times) |
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JonR
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Dialogue Box Editor Community Edition
« Thread started on: Jan 29th, 2012, 9:27pm » |
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I have uploaded to the Yahoo! group's file area the first release of a community edition of the BBC BASIC for Windows visual dialogue box editor.
This release is based on the most up-to-date version of Richard Russell's DLGEDIT and incorporates improvements from Malcolm's friendly dialog editor, my own jDlgEdit and the skeleton program generator from Yee Leong. My thanks to them all for all the hard work they have done without which this would not be possible.
The source code, a compiled version and additional resources are available from the Yahoo! group's file area:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bb4w/files/Tools/Dialog%20Editor%20Community%20Ed%2e
Changes, improvements, documentation and new artwork are welcome. Until we have the project properly hosted for collaborative editing please submit all new code to me directly. I hope that this will become the one-true dialogue box editor for BB4W and avoid current situation with DLGEDIT where multiple different versions are maintained by different people.
Regards,
Jon
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admin
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Re: Dialogue Box Editor Community Edition
« Reply #1 on: Jan 30th, 2012, 2:27pm » |
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Looks good on an initial play. The only thing I don't really like is the way you have to pause before you can drag a control with the left mouse button (I know you can use the middle button without pausing).
I can see that sharing the left button betwen its normal click action and dragging the control (after a delay) is a clever idea, but at the moment I keep forgetting to wait long enough (until the cursor shape changes) and I find myself dragging the entire dialogue box instead! Is there some way you could detect the 'drag' operation (even if the user starts it before the cursor has changed) so the initial pause isn't essential?
I noticed that the 'skeleton BBC program' doesn't respond to clicking on Cancel as you might expect: instead of reporting 'you clicked on Cancel' the dialogue box simply vanishes! That may need looking into.
If I may be forgiven for mentioning FreeForm (the roughly equivalent program for Liberty BASIC) it has a few features which perhaps could be considered for inclusion (in the long term):Double-clicking on a control brings up its Properties dialogue.
A 'list all controls' feature, which summarises all the controls and their main properties in a table.
Some way to change the 'Z-order' of a control (e.g. Bring to front, Send to back, or dragging in a list). I know there's a danger of the wish-list growing like topsy, so I certainly don't feel these are at all essential.
Richard.
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Malvern
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Re: Dialogue Box Editor Community Edition
« Reply #2 on: Jan 31st, 2012, 9:16pm » |
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Richard,
I can get rid of the time delay on move. Would you or anyone else then still want that move function short cut duplicated on the middle button or would you be happy to release that for some other function?
Malcolm.
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admin
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Re: Dialogue Box Editor Community Edition
« Reply #3 on: Jan 31st, 2012, 9:31pm » |
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on Jan 31st, 2012, 9:16pm, Malvern wrote:| would you be happy to release that for some other function? |
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I guess it would depend on what that "other function" was! Without some 'mental retraining' I will inevitably find myself using the middle button for 'move' some of the time, so if that were to take me by surprise it could be just as irritating as I found the new left button behaviour to be. But if reassigning the middle button would greatly enhance some functionality, perhaps the 'retraining' would be worth it.
Having now used the LB utility a bit, I wonder whether my original decision (much justified at the time!) to use 'real' rather than 'simulated' controls in DLGEDIT was the right one. The LB tool displays an approximation of what the true controls will look like, but as a result it can put 'handles' on their edges and corners making resizing much more natural than it currently is in DLGEDIT (all variants as far as I know).
But I mustn't peek into Pandora's box!
Richard.
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