On Feb 4, 2006, at 4:34 PM, Joe Cabrera wrote:
I have a CrosswordClass which I use for making crosswords. Currently I have one window in which you enter the dimensions of the puzzle, then press the push button, and that window will go away while a new one is created with a blank grid to your specified dimensions.
That sounds like a traditional approach. This window, maybe call it SetUp, should have some representation of the puzzle itself so that the casual user understands the parameters that he/she is setting. For example, a small image showing dimension A, dimension B, etc. You would also have default settings in place on initial startup, and you would save the user's last settings in your preferences file and restore them in subsequent starts.
Should I instead be doing all this in _one_ window, just turning various items invisible/visible as I need them?
Why not get the first approach working in all aspects, then assess whether a one window approach provides a worthwhile benefit.
I like separate windows because it's just easier dealing with the window layout that way.
Definitely, and your SetUp window doesn't have to Close. If you wish, you can keep it open, then hide and show it when appropriate while maintaining the user's settings in properties.
Plus I just instantiate the crossword just the one time this way and everyone's working from the same crossword; otherwise, wouldn't the first window have to pass the grid size info to the second (using global variables I guess), so that the second window could instantiate the crossword with the speciified dimensions?
I'm unclear what you mean here because I don't know the details of your approach, so I'll ramble. SetUp will instantiate a new Crossword instance, and pass the user defined parameters in a constructor or call an Init method belonging to Crossword. CrossWord will have properties that accept and hold these parameters, and methods to implement the puzzle configuration accordingly.
It's likely that CrossWord will enable a menuitem for SetUp when it opens so that the user can revise the configuration at this point, probably before providing input into the puzzle.
Your File menu may also have a New Puzzle menu item with a menuhandler in App. When this is selected you would instantiate a new Crossword instance, using the current user settings from SetUp.
But if I should keep everything in the same window, is there an easier way to play with the overlapping layouts? It would be great if the RB IDE had something like Photoshop layers that I could turn on and off to visualize things more easily, assume that function isn;t there.
You might look at PagePanels. Best, Jack _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
