[Lazarus] lfm file format

[Marc Santhoff]

On Sa, 2014-04-05 at 12:23 +0200, Mattias Gaertner wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Apr 2014 12:06:20 +0200
> Marc Santhoff <M.Santhoff at web.de> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > ist there a complete documentation of Lazarus' LFM xml file format?
> 
> No.
> If someone wants to start one I will help.
> Note: The xml format has not yet implemented all features.

Oops, I confused something. I silently assumed .lfm's are stored in XML,
but they are not. In fact the storage format is someting like XML
without tags but python-like syntactical indentation.

Now I'm confused. When and how is XML used to store form descriptions?
What use cases is it made for?

What I really want to do is to write some form descriptions (and code)
by a generator program. If there is any existing code that can be reused
it would be very helpful.

> > Maybe someone having good knowledge of the IDE source code can name the
> > unit(s) where writing and reading forms is handled?
> 
> xml "driver" reader/writer:
> components/lazutils/laz_xmlstreaming.pas
> 
> Component streaming in general:
> unit classes, see TReader/TWriter
> 
> IDE additions:
> designer/jitforms.pp

So for not generating form code myself I would learn to use jitforms
unit. Do you see any problems in writing the code to a file instead of
using it like in lazarus' desing mode?

-- 
Marc Santhoff <M.Santhoff at web.de>