We've been thinking about this sort of thing ourselves lately, and
one technique we've explored (but haven't done yet) is to render our
forms in HTML, then use Dave Baldwin's HTMLviewer (www.pbear.com) to
execute the form. This way we can load whatever form we want, even
cater to different customers wanting completely different
layouts. (We're using HTMLviewer for other purposes now, so are
pretty familiar with it.)
This may be much more work than you want to do, but it's a thought.
Another advantage of this is that many people are used to the
look-and-feel of HTML forms because of ubiquitous browser use.
BTW, one of the things we also found in experimenting is that since
HTMLviewer source code can be purchased, it's possible to add
components other than the HTML ones, for example HTML only supports a
tComboBox with style=dsDropDownList, but it's a fairly easy matter to
add support for style=dsDropDown in HTMLviewer. We also have changed
<textarea> so it uses tRichEdit instead of tMemo, and allow the user
to right-click on a <textarea> and bring up a richedit editor. Many
other flexible things are possible.
At 12:23 AM 2/23/2006, John Dammeyer wrote:
>The problem appears to be that Delphi implicitly insists that the .dfm file
>have the same name. What does work at the compile level is to use:
>
>{$IFDEF LARGE_SCREEN}
>{$R PlotScreenBIG.dfm}
>{$ELSE}
>{$R PlotScreenSMALL.dfm}
>{$ENDIF}
>
>But then Delphi doesn't know how to load the form for editing. Probably
>because it doesn't parse the file looking for the *.dfm name and just
>assumes it's the same.
>
>Same name and different path means I still end up with two .pas files which
>is what I don't want.
>
>I'll probably just have to initialize every single width, height, top and
>left for each object based on the values in the .dfm text file. Or write a
>parser that creates the init code from the two separate .dfm files.
>
>John Dammeyer
>
>
> > Just a thought...
> >
> > Or maybe with the same name and a different path.
> >
> > 2 cents
> >
> >
> > What I'd like to be able to do is have PlotScreen.frm become
> > PlotScreenBIG.dfm and PlotScreenSMALL.dfm but keep the
> > PlotScreen.pas file
> > name. Is there a way to convince Delpi 5 to use a .dfm file
> > different from
> > the name of the unit during compilation. Then I could just...
> >
> > {$IFDEF LARGE_SCREEN}
> > ... Somehow use PlotScreenBIG.dfm
> > {$ELSE}
> > ... Somehow use PlotScreenSMALL.dfm
> > {$ENDIF}
>
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Regards,
Sid Gudes
PIA Systems Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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