IntroductionIt is always difficult to start a new article and the first question that arises is what to title it. I must admit that this time I have been a bit pretentious but my first goal was to provide a new framework based on an XML description (like XUL or XAML). Actually I started to develop with MFC two years ago and like every newbie I had to fight even to do simple operations (display different kinds of pictures: BMP, JPEG, animated GIF, change font...) and I still don't understand why it is always so difficult to do simple things. Besides recently a friend of mine showed me another IDE (Borland C++) and I was very impressed by the number of properties available by default. These reasons convinced me to start this project. Before starting, I studied all the "dynamic screen" projects and I found very interesting materials in the following articles and my project is more or less based on them.DynScreen
GUI Editor
Diagram Editor
Note: In this article, I am using XUIxxx but I have still not renamed all my classes so actually you have to translate it in GUI or Dyn. In any case, if you are not interested in the whole project you may find some interesting parts like the use of CxImage to display pictures in the widgets folder. ArchitectureThis project tries to use an OO approach and could be described in modules. I tried to use platform independent libraries and in particular the widget manager uses the STL.There are mainly four parts: An XML parser: I am using TinyXml because it is portable (Windows XP/CE, Unix) and uses a logical approach. XML is used to save and load widget properties. For instance, if you put a Static in the form with a red background color, it will be saved as:
The format used looks like the one in use in WxWidgets and it's not surprising because my main goal is to do the porting to this framework. A class to handle settings (CSettings): Actually this class is what is called a Singleton in design patterns and it means that you can instantiate it only once. You can call a pointer on it from everywhere you want in your code as long as you include its header file (it's a kind of improved global variable, I am saying that for people coming from C). I am talking about this class, but in this project I am not using it.
A properties manager using PropertyViewLib: This class is used to display widget properties. To do so, each widget derives from it and implements two methods: GetProperties() and PropertyChanging(). GetProperties(...) is used to add/remove fields from the properties toolbar while PropertyChanging is called every time you modify a property. Read more: Codeproject
GUI Editor
Diagram Editor
Note: In this article, I am using XUIxxx but I have still not renamed all my classes so actually you have to translate it in GUI or Dyn. In any case, if you are not interested in the whole project you may find some interesting parts like the use of CxImage to display pictures in the widgets folder. ArchitectureThis project tries to use an OO approach and could be described in modules. I tried to use platform independent libraries and in particular the widget manager uses the STL.There are mainly four parts: An XML parser: I am using TinyXml because it is portable (Windows XP/CE, Unix) and uses a logical approach. XML is used to save and load widget properties. For instance, if you put a Static in the form with a red background color, it will be saved as:
The format used looks like the one in use in WxWidgets and it's not surprising because my main goal is to do the porting to this framework. A class to handle settings (CSettings): Actually this class is what is called a Singleton in design patterns and it means that you can instantiate it only once. You can call a pointer on it from everywhere you want in your code as long as you include its header file (it's a kind of improved global variable, I am saying that for people coming from C). I am talking about this class, but in this project I am not using it.
A properties manager using PropertyViewLib: This class is used to display widget properties. To do so, each widget derives from it and implements two methods: GetProperties() and PropertyChanging(). GetProperties(...) is used to add/remove fields from the properties toolbar while PropertyChanging is called every time you modify a property. Read more: Codeproject
P.S. I just love the name !!! Use it everyday !
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