The Dialog Procedures are a set of AMOS(Pro) procedures which make creating Workbench style interfaces really easy. All the standard gadgets are available: buttons, switch buttons, tick boxes, cycle, radio, text input and slider. If you wanted to, for example, create a cycle gadget to switch between 'Text 1', 'Text 2' and 'Text 3', you would use something like this:
You can check your buttons by calling the _CHECKBUTTONS procedure in your main loop. This also takes care of the indentation when you click on a gadget. Note that cycle, radio and input buttons take a bit more handling, but are still easy to implement.
One interesting point is that the created buttons do not make use of the AMOS Zone instructions, but instead store the gadget definitions in a variable string called _DIALOGBUTTON$. This means that you can quickly store and recall entire interfaces without having to completely redefine it (if you temporarily opened up a new window or screen, for example).
There are also more specific procedures that do things like displaying Alert Requesters and File Requesters, and so on. As far as windows goes, you can open one up, but you cannot have more than one on screen, so this feature is limited.
There are things to consider, however; the Procedures take up around 60k, and although you can delete the ones you don't use, it means even the 'smallest' of programs become large.
Also, remember that these procedures only simulate the Intuition gadgets; they won't allow you to create OS friendly software! (I'm still trying to find out about the AMOS Pro OS Dev Kit which allows you to do this.)
Having said that, the Dialog Procs make creating great looking interfaces fun and easy; before I used them, I used to hate writing interfaces! I can easily recommend this to anyone writing more than just shoot 'em ups, especially at the bargain price of #À4! And yes, they were used to create this DiskMag, you can see what they're capable of.
