Writing My Own Designer

[dwmartin]

I am starting the development of a specialized designer for styling point of sale menus for restaurants. I have an application that uses an old technogoly for storing, display and processing dialogs which is limited.

I would like to write a new designer that works much like the FireFly SDK except I do not need to generate any source code. I simple need to design and save the forms that are created.

The point of sale application will read the forms and create the dialogs on fly.

I would like to find some or buy some portions of source code required so I do not have to start from scratch. This product will not compete with FireFly.

Any suggestions?

[TechSupport]

When I started to write FireFly I used a fair amount of code from Jule's example located at http://www.powerbasic.com/files/pub/pbwin/tools/VDesign.zip

The FireFly code is much more complicated than that source especially when dealing with multiple controls and forms, however, it should serve as a good starting point for you.

[dwmartin]

Is there any sample source code available for reading and writing the FRM files created by FireFly?

A few snippets of code from FireFLy would be of great savings of time in the developement my own restaurant menu designer.

I have no intentions of creating a competing product.

[TechSupport]

Is there any sample source code available for reading and writing the FRM files created by FireFly?

I won't be publishing any of the FireFly internal source that maintains the frm files but I can tell you that FireFly uses Don Dickinson's XML parser code to create, read, and write the frm files. You can see the frm structure by using any standard XML reader.
You can get Don's code from http://dickinson.basicguru.com/code_other.htm

[James Klutho]

Just curious Paul, what advantage does XML have over a simple text file for the forms.  Is it the "databaseish" quality of it?, cross platform appeal?

Just curious.

[TechSupport]

The advantage is that it is easier to deal with XML code. I am using Don's XML engine so it makes dealing with the files really easy. Also, if I extend FireFly to allow 3rd party developers to interface then using a standard like XML makes sense.