I'm looking for a VCL component for C++ builder. It should preferably have a toolbar with drag & drop functionality.
I want to define a building or area (which might not be rectangular) and split it into "rooms" (or areas, or whatever you want to call them). And I want to be able to put "doorways" (or passages, etc) from a room into its neighbours.
is there such a thing? Preferably free.
Thanks.
In case anyone wants to know the answer, I have verified with TMS that the diagram studio can indeed do this.
Although they said "You can use TMS Diagram Studio for that, it’s not that complicated to create new custom blocks, like L-shaped rooms", so I still need to verify that it can handle triangles & lost parrots (polygons).
Not that it is specifically built for room designing, but my best guess is that it is the closes you'll get without having to create the components yourself. Anyway TMS have a component pack called Diagram Studio. This allows you to add functionality to your application that somewhat simulates that of Microsoft Visio and other programs.
I don't know if this was truly what you wanted, but even though I haven't tried it myself my guess is that you can create your own room and door like shapes to be placed. It might worth a look. Atleast the feature list has this:
Related
I was looking into creating iOS-apps (especially for the iPad) with the Adobe-Flex framework. It looks very promising to code apps this way.
Is it possible to create own controls/widgets? In the far future I might want to create my own kind of gantt-calender or whatever. Is something like this possible and are there any good tutorials/book out there?
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: I want to create iOS Components that I can use in Flex. Controls, that are not aviable by default in Flex. Is that possible? By derivating or something?
UPDATE 2: In the meanwhile I found FlexLib to be useful. How hard is it to create stuff like this on your own? Especially for mobile devices. Are there any good tutorials, books, etc. out there?
Yes, you can create your own Controls in Flex. They are commonly called Components. I suggest you start by reading the Flex Docs on how to do so. There are also plenty of other resources out there. One is a screencast series that I created for The Flex Show. Here is episode 1.
You had asked:
How hard is it to create stuff like this on your own?
It depends on what the component wants to do. The commercial components we've built at www.flextras.com have taken from three to twelve months to build. Our Calendar is built from scratch, but most of the other components extend existing Flex Framework components.
The Flextras stuff are architected for reuse. A "single use" component for a specific app can be built in 1 hour [and up].
Once again, the purpose of a component will affect how long it takes to build.
#chiffre
Ok, maybe I am guessing wrong but "iOS controls" makes me think not to "flex controls".
Anyway with Flex 4.5.1 you can add any controls you want, the only thing that you must count (and this counts a lot) is performance.
Read especially about item renderers since scrolling list is not so fast on iOS and how you can make use of cacheAsBitmap.
Also keep in mind to always use light controls when needed if not extend base controls like UIComponent or Sprite and not Button if you just need a rectangle.
Here are some links
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/06/adobe-air-2-7-now-available-ios-apps-4x-faster.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/mobile-development-flex-flashbuilder.
I need to improve a screen in our Application that presents an HMI (Human Machine Interface) display embedded in our Delphi code. This screen provides our customer with the ability to perform a range of actions (run test, product report etc) and to expose and view key named data values. This customisation is required because our Application controls machinery that might be operated by a range of skill levels from simple operator (may not speak English and must have very limited control) through to a power user who wishes to 'see everything' and have max control.
Some years back I created a solution based on an embedded HTML viewer (Turbopower's as it was then) and TPageProducer to dynamically tweak an HTML template (that the user could customise) and which would display a simple set of controls and data tables. This works fine but is slow to edit (you have to tweak the template and look-see the effect) and I'm sure there are better ways now.
What I need is similiar to a Delphi form that can be customised at runtime. I need: buttons, labels and edits. Editable shapes and arrows are desireable as are fixed images over which controls and text can be laid. The layout should be saveable (like a DFM file) and text labels should be of two types - fixed text and those which update to display key values on an update notification (like a DB control would). The final layout should zoom its scale to fit a resizable layout.
This question is about the best tool for the job and I'm not coming into this totally cold, I've experimented with Greatis Form Designer and obtained a working solution but before I commit, I would apprecaite comments about whether a report tool (with built-in report editor) would be possible / useable / better since a print dump feature would also be useful. (Fast Reports? Quick Report etc?). Note though that this is a display requirement primarily. Comments re newer embedded HTML solutions would also be welcome as would anything to ensure max future-proofing of the layout format.
Any solution should be useable in Dephi 7 (for now!) and does not need to be unicode as long as there is a migration path to this for newer Delphi's.
Any other comments or observations would be very welcome. Thanks.
Have you looked first at the free JVCL stuff? There's a JvInspector (RTTI component property inspector, just like Delphi property inspector), and a form designer, and so on. You could roll your own solution based on these, and even use JvInterpreter for some scripting capability.
Secondly, if you can support ANY control that you have, in your designer, and you need some HMI specific stuff, check out IOCOMP: http://www.iocomp.com/
TMS Scripter Studio Pro provides a Delphi-like IDE and form designer with scripting, but it maybe overkill for your requirements.
What's the best way to draw shapes interactively at run time using Delphi? I need to be able to select, drag and resize the shapes. This will be used to mark up existing images and documents.
This looks like a good starting point, but I'm wondering if there's a more complete library (preferably free) available that will save some time.
Update:
If you're going with a custom solution from scratch, I've seen another example on Delphi Central that might be an even better starting point.
I will recommend you, read some links on my site. Are explained and all the source code is available; You can see and get some usefull for you.
Plugin system in Delphi - Part 2
Not directly what you need, is a plugin system for Delphi. But all the samples are based on a drawing tool that uses Shapes (Creating, selecting, resizing). You can review the code and extract what you need.
Sample manipulating of "Maps and Figures"
Sample of how to create, select and move components at runtime (in this case with TImage).
- Select shapes visually: Shows different ways to select shapes visually.
The web is in Spanish, but you can generate an authomatic translation on the web itself.
Anyway the code is commented.
Regards.
Excuse-me for my bad english.
One freeware option would be TssControlSizer. Just change the "control" property to the control you want to manipulate resize/move.
Not sure if you've moved on now with this Bruce but if you haven't, it might be worth looking at TMS Components Diagram Studio - it's certainly cheap, and looks quite powerful from the demo.
I would use Flex Graphics (commercial, $499 for one developer, with sources, $1500 for site-license, with source code). When I bought it, it was a lot less than that. So I guess, I wouldn't pay that now. It's a lightweight 'drawing/cad' package.
But as I already own it, I could import a page from the original document as an image, perhaps rendered in PNG or WMF, and then mark it up with lines, etc.
You could think of it as a light "cad" package. It has most primitive shapes, and you can easily create your own new objects or shapes in Delphi classes, that could be "smart shapes" like the ones in Visio.
http://www.flex-graphics.com/
Another commercial component set that I have heard only good things about is TRichView. They have a TRichViewEdit that looks like you could emulate a document markup environment easily with it.
Please check here:
TCAD -2d graphics component for delphi
http://www.codeidea.com
wish can help you.
I am looking to build my own component and have no idea where to begin. I have some Delphi books but they are old and outdated, and am looking for some recommendations on tutorials/books to help me do this. The component will be pretty simple, basically 2 labels and an image. I need hundreds of these in an array, so I thought a component would be the best route. The text will adjust based on width etc, and have some mouseover events. So basically, where do I begin?
I am using Delphi 2009, this will be a win32 app.
Thanks!
You can order Ray Konopka's book Dev. Custom Delphi 3 Components - PDF for 25$. It's a specialized book on the subject and very good for a beginner too.
The main principles behind developing components is:
Whether the component is visual or
not (Does it need a Canvas to paint on)
Does it need a window handle or not (visual or non-visual)
Once you answered those questions you can look at Delphi's source code for examples.
As far as I know, Delphi Component Design, by Danny Thorpe, is still the best book on the subject. Component design hasn't changed significantly in the last 15 years, so whatever books you have probably aren't as outdated as you think. There are three things to keep in mind while reading older references:
Names of certain units have changed. There's no DsgnIDE anymore, for example. It's DesignIDE instead.
Design-time code is strictly separated from run-time code now. This means you can't use DesignIDE in your component's unit, or else you're barred from using run-time packages. Older Delphi versions didn't have this technical restriction (although it's always been a legal restriction), so old code examples you find might need to change a little bit.
Strings are Unicode now, so as with all old code examples you find, there might be some invalid assumptions about character sizes that you'll need to recognize.
The biggest obstacle to writing components is that you're expected to use various protected members of the classes you descend from, but those frequently aren't documented, so you'll have to be much more willing to go read the VCL source code for examples of how various methods are used.
The easiest way to do what you want is to create a new form. Drop the labels and image and arrange them the way you want; if it suits your need, put them on a panel so they can be moved around as a unit.
Select all the components you want included (and including the panel if you chose to use one), and then click the Component item on the IDE's main menu, and select the "Create Component Template". (It's only enabled if you have selected components on the current form.) A dialog will appear asking you for a name for the new component, and the Component Palette page on which you want it to appear.
Take a look at this article, which describes how to build new components made up of a group of existing components.
Don't worry about your books being old.
Just about everything from the old days still works fine and what little doesn't is generally due to name conflicts or the addition of Unicode in the 2009 version.
They aren't Microsoft, they don't go breaking old code without good reason. In fact, take some code from the old DOS days--assuming it doesn't try to manipulate the screen it's likely to run with minimal fixup.
Don't worry about your old books! Since v3, Delphi hasn't changed much. This is why most of the programs compiled with D3 still compiles in D7 or even newer versions. And if it doesn't compile, probably you need to change a line or two, here and then.
I would recommend you to search other VERY simple components on Internet and see how they are made. Then make your own and post it here. Let other take a look at it and suggest improvements or spot bugs.
About your control's design:
1) maybe you DON'T need those two labels. You can just paint the text directly on the image. If you have lots of those components as you say, you may save a little bit of memory.
2) you may NOT want to have lots and lots and lots of images loading in one form. The overhead may be significant. What you can do is to load the pictures ONLY in images that are visible on screen - and you will put on screen ONLY 5-10 images (or whatever number of images you can show on the form without going out of screen). As the user scrolls down, you keep the same same TImage controls on screen but you load new (next) images in them.
3) You may not want to store labels and TImage in an array (I suppose it is an TImage because it seems you want to show them on the screen else you won't need labels - you need to explain your problem in more details if I got it wrong). But you can store a TBitmap and the text (that you want to display in labels) instead.
So, you may need to calculate how much CPU/disk overhead your hundreds of controls will create and how much memory they need. If you stay well under 1GB and the loading time is under 10 seconds, then it is relatively ok. IF not, you may want to think about your control's design before starting to actually implement it.
Hope this was helpful.
See ya.
I've been using Balsamiq to create mockups. I'm using the trial version, so I have all screens in one mockup instead of multiple files. I want to send an export of these mockups to my team so they can comment on them. They need to be able to easily add arrows, callouts, text, etc. I know you can do some of that in Balsamiq, but it isn't really made for these types of comments. I have used Paint.net and added these in separate layers, but it isn't the most easy to use application for some non-technical people. I like the editor in Snagit as it easily allows mark up an image, but that is a paid app and I am looking for a free tool (that runs on Windows).
This tool doesn't necessarily need a screenshot capture tool as there are plenty of options available, but this wouldn't preclude a tool.
The things I would like to be able to easily do are:
Add arrows to show what button was clicked to move from one screen to another
Add callout text to offer suggestions to reword a section or move an item
Use different color/size markup items
I've found Pencil, but that seems like overkill - I don't need full image editing, just the ability for someone to quickly and easily provide feedback.
Maybe you can try ForeUI, if you like it, please drop me a mail to vivi[at]foreui.com, I can send you a license for free :-)
Not free but if you already have MS Office with OneNote installed it's great for stuff like this imho. I think there's a free reader as usual.
If you really want quick and easy feedback use a pen and paper.
Print the screens and hand them out those on the team that need a say in the UI. Have them markup to their heart's content and hand them back to you. I know it makes me sound like a luddite, but it really is the most effective way.