[Lazarus] fpGUI

Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.lists at gmail.com
Mon Jan 10 13:39:56 CET 2011


Op 2011-01-10 13:42, Michael Schnell het geskryf:
> On 01/10/2011 12:30 PM, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
>> The fpGUI UI Designer generates source code.
> 
> Why does fpGUI go the other way ?

The reason the fpGUI's UI Designer follows a different design is simple:
I like having less files around. Object Pascal is not C, so why mimic
the C header files idea. Also, I can quickly search & replace components
or properties, because the whole UI is defined as normal source code. I
can quickly modify a property value without having to switch to a form
designer, I am guaranteed a specific creation order, less
"behind-the-scenes" magic and much clearer change logs in the source
code repository.

Now just to through a spanner in the works. ;-)
Just because the current fpGUI UI Designer generates source code to
describe the UI, doesn't mean fpGUI can't use the [external or internal]
resource method like Lazarus. Indeed it is possible to have say external
*.frm files describing the UI (in the same object format as the *.lfm
files of Lazarus), and you can even modify the *.frm files at runtime,
that ship with your application so you can tweak the UI without
recompiling your application. I believe some other widgets like GTK2 and
Qt have the same ability, but they use XML files to describe the UI
instead. I have already created a demo showing this ability, but need to
neaten it up before I commit it to the public repository.



Regards,
  - Graeme -

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/





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