Welcome to Dialog Design 4.0, your Dialogbox design program for Borland's
Turbo Vision.  With Dialog Design, you can:

  1. Lay out your dialogbox on screen using your mouse to locate and size
     controls.

  2. Test the dialogbox to see how it will eventually act in your program.

  3. Generate Pascal or C++ source code or dialog resources to be
     incorporated in or used by your program.


REQUIREMENTS

Borland Pascal 7.0 and/or Borland C++ 3.1

An older version of Dialog Design (V2.2) is still available for Turbo Pascal
6.0 users.


WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 4.0

Version 4.0 has many new features, changes, and bug fixes.  Listed here are
the major changes.

  1. One program now supports both Pascal and C++.

  2. All source code and resource generation is now done by external programs
     called from Dialog Design.  Communication between Dialog Design and the
     conversion programs is via an ASCII script file.  Since source code
     is provided for the conversion programs, modifications can be made to:

       a. Customize the source code generated.
       b. Incorporate custom controls into the source or resources generated.

  3. A toolbox is now provided to enable easy selection and placement of
     controls.

  4. In addition to Pascal resources, C++ dialog resources can now be
     generated.

  5. Pascal (only Pascal) dialog resources can now be read allowing Dialog
     Design to edit and use dialogs designed elsewhere.  In particular,
     Dialogs can be input from Blaise' Turbo Vision Development Toolkits's (tm)
     .BRS files.


FILES SUPPLIED

  DLGDSN.EXE      EXE file for Dialog Design
  DLGHLP.HLP      Help file for Dialog Design

     Documentation
  DLGDSN.DOC      DOC file for Dialog Design.  Read this one.
  SCRIPT.DOC      Script file explanation.  Read this when it comes time to
                  modify something.
  OPBUTTON.DLG    A demo dialog showing how to handle a non standard button.
                  See SCRIPT.DOC.

     Pascal Conversion Files
  PASSRC1.PAS     Converts script file to Pascal Source (type 1)
  PASSRC2.PAS     Converts script file to Pascal Source (type 2)
  SKEL.DAT        Used by PASSRC2
  PASRSRC.PAS     Converts script file to Pascal Resources
  READSCPT.PAS    Reads script files--used by above
  PAS.MAK         Make file to generate Pascal conversion EXE's

     C++ Conversion Files
  CPPSRC1.CPP     Converts script file to C++ Source (type 1)
  CPPSRC2.CPP     Converts script file to C++ Source (type 2)
  CPPSKEL.DAT     Used by CPPSRC2
  CPPRSRC.CPP     Converts script file to C++ Resources
  CPP*.PRJ        Project file for above
  READSCPT.CPP    Reads script files--used by above
  READSCPT.H      Header file for above
  CPP.MAK         Make file to generate C++ conversion EXE's

     Pascal special controls, etc.
  COLORTXT.TPU    TPU for TColoredText
  COLORTXT.INT    Doc and partial source for TColoredText
  INPLONG.PAS     Doc and source for TInputLong
  TESTCASE.PAS    Program to test Pascal code generated by Dialog Design

     C++ special controls, etc.
  TCOLORTX.H      Header file for TColoredText
  TCOLORTX.OBJ    Object for TColoredText
  SCOLORTX.CPP    Registration object for TColoredText
  TCOLORTX.DOC    Doc and partial source for TColoredText
  TINPLONG.H      Header file for TInputLong
  SINPLONG.CPP    Registration object for TInputLong
  TINPLONG.CPP    Doc and source for TInputLong
  TESTCASE.CPP    Program to test C++ code generated by Dialog Design
  TEST.PRJ        Project file for TESTCASE.CPP

INSTALLATION

Probabaly the easiest installation is to put all files in one working
directory.  More appropriate might be to put C++ files in one directory,
Pascal in another, and DLGDSN.EXE in a directory on your path.  The help
file, DLGDSN.HLP should be in the same directory as DLGDSN.EXE.

In order to save download time, the EXE files for the conversion programs
have not been included in this file.  These are available in a separate file
which may also be downloaded (named DLGEXE.ZIP or something similar) but
it's probably easier to generate them yourself from the included source code.
Make files are provided for this.  Assuming Borland's MAKE.EXE is on your
path,

   MAKE -f pas.mak

will construct the three Pascal conversion files, and,

   MAKE -f cpp.mak

will construct the three C++ conversion files.  Note that the "-f"
must be lower case.  These two files assume the standard Borland
directory setups.  If you have trouble when running MAKE you may need
to alter the .MAK files to specify your own directory locations.


CONFIGURATION

When you first run Dialog Design, a configuration dialog will come up.
Be sure and select your choice of languages.  You should also add the
path where the conversion programs are located to the conversion filenames
already listed.  Once you select OK on this dialog, you will be asked if you
want to save it to disk (DLGDSN.CFG).

Once it's saved to disk, you won't see this dialog on startup, but you can
access it at any time from the menu (Options/Configure...) to make
configuration changes.