ASCII DLG Plug-In Application Properties

The integrated dialog editor uses plugin modules to handle various dialog formats. A plugin is responsible for loading and storing the resource file and translate it into or from the internal editor format. When the IDE is started, it locates the available plugins. This dialog provides access to plugin version information and plugin specific configuration settings.

Supported file types

The ASCII DLG Plug-In supports two different file formats:

• DLG Files (Extension: .dlg)
  This is the standard ASCII DLG file format and can be used for loading and saving files.

• FORM Files (Extension: .form)
  FORM Files are actually Eloquence program files which contain structured display information. The ASCII DLG Plug-In can load any FORM file and convert it automatically into the DLG format. Thus, the FORM file format can be used only for loading files. The file extension will be changed to .dlg immediately after loading.

The ASCII DLG Plug-In Setup Dialog

Nested object indention

When saving a dialog file, object definitions can be indented depending on the nesting level. This setting defines the the number of columns a nested object is indented. Sensitive settings are 1 (default) or 0 if you don't care.

Object separation

This defines if an empty line is inserted before each object definition when saving the dialog file. Sensitive values are 1 (default) or 0 if you don't care.

Dialog Templates

Dialog objects can be "cloned" (copied) from another object at runtime. This can be used to create your dialog objects from pre-defined templates. To enable the integrated dialog editor to handle dialog files containing references to template obects, any dialog template files can be defined here. They are loaded automatically by the dialog plugin.

• To add a new template file, select the Add Template file push button.
• To delete an existing template file, select the template file in the list and select the Remove Temlate File push button.

The following dialog is used to define a new template file:

Configuring the New-Dialog Template File

When a new ASCII DLG file is created, either using the File New command or typing a new file name in the Explorer Window, the ASCII DLG plugin loads a template file which normally provides an empty dialog window.

If you have special requirements what a new dialog file should contain, you can easily customize the template file.

The template file is called ide-adlg.dlg. It is located in the etc subdirectory below the Eloquence installation directory, e.g. C:/Program Files/Hewlett-Packard/Eloquence/etc/ide-adlg.dlg.