Overview

3 Eloquence Graphical User Interface

Overview

You may simply activate a driver using one of the following DLG SET statements:

   DLG SET ".driver","motif"
   DLG SET ".driver","alpha"

The first example above will redirect all DLG statements to the motif driver, while the second example will redirect all DLG statements to the alpha driver.

   DLG SET ".driver","@client"

The example above will redirect all DLG statements to the network driver running on the system named client.

NOTE: Using the network driver requires the RUNSRV utility to be running on the client system.

NOTE: Although it's possible to use Eloquence dialog files (they are converted internally at runtime) it's strongly recommended to convert them to Dialog Manager format due to performance considerations.

Once converted, you're able to change the layout with the Dialog Manager graphical editor.

The Dialog is converted using the CVDLG utility:

   cvdlg -driver motif sample.idm sample.dlg

This will convert the Eloquence dialog file sample.dlg to Dialog Manager dialog file sample.idm using the motif driver.

It's also possible to compile a Dialog Manager dialog file. This has some additional performance advantages during dialog file load time. Compilation is done through the Dialog Manager idm utility.

For Example:

   idm +writebin sample.idc sample.idm

This will compile the Dialog Manager dialog file sample.idm into a file sample.idc.

Compiled Dialog Manager files are platform dependent.

NOTE: The idm utility program is not included with Eloquence. You must purchase the Dialog Manager product to be able to compile dialog files.

The DLG LOAD is able to automatically select the appropriate dialog file if a dialog driver has been activated. If you specify a file extension of ".dlg", DLG LOAD will look for the following files (in this order):

.idc compiled Dialog Manager file
.idm Dialog Manager file
.dlg Eloquence dialog file

.idc	compiled Dialog Manager file
.idm	Dialog Manager file
.dlg	Eloquence dialog file

The file extensions may be customized in the eloq.ini configuration file.

For Example:

   DLG LOAD "sample.dlg"

will try to load "sample.idc" first, then "sample.idm" and at last "sample.dlg".

NOTE: If we talk in the following documentation about dialog server we talk about software that runs on the system on which the user interface should be displayed. The dialog client is the Eloquence application, because it sends requests to the dialog server to handle the user interface.

NOTE: If we talk about systems, the server system is the system on which the Eloquence application runs, while the client is the system on which the user interface is displayed.

Eloquence Dialog Manual - 19 DEC 2002