Customizing the Development Environment Previous Up One Level Next
Customizing the Development Environment



Dialog Definition Files

The structure of the markuptags.vtm and expressionelements.vtm files is very simple. They both contain a set of category and element tags. Category tags can contain any number of elements or other nested category tags.

<CAT ... main category>



<CAT ... sub-category No.1>

            <E ... >

            <E ... >

            <E ... >

    </CAT>

    <CAT ... sub-category No.2>

            <E ... >

            <E ... >

    </CAT>



</CAT>

The following section explains how to create and update CATEGORY and ELEMENT tags.

Category tag

The CAT tag defines a category in the Category tree. The Category tree populates the left pane of the Tag Chooser and Expression Builder dialog boxes.

The following table describes the CAT tag:

Category Tag <CAT .../> 
CAPTION The caption of the category.
DESC The contents of the HTML Help for the category. Notice that the HELPFILE attribute can be used to specify the Help as a separate file.
HELPFILE The relative path to the HTML Help for the category. (HELPFILE = "Docs/MyTag.htm")
ICON "Folder"|"Elements"|RelativeFilePath. Defines the icon used for the category. You can use a predefined Folder or Elements category. In addition, a relative file path can be provided to a custom BMP image (ICON ="images/custom.bmp"). By default, the Folder icon is displayed.
EXPANDED YES/NO Indicates that the category tree-item should be expanded the first time the dialog box is displayed. By default this value is set to NO.
SHOWSUBELEMENTS YES/NO. Indicates that when selected the elements of its sub-categories will also be displayed on the right-hand side. For example, when the "HTML Tags" category is selected the right hand side displays all the tags included in all the HTML tag sub-categories. By default, this value is set to YES.

Element tag

The E tag defines elements within a category. These elements populate the right pane in the Tag Chooser and the Expression Builder.

The following table describes the E tag.

Element Tag <E .../>
CAPTION The caption of the element.
TYPE Used only for elements in Expression Builder which describe a function. Launches Function Insight.
VALUE Tag Chooser -- This value represents the tag string pasted when the tag is selected. If a visual editor exists for the tag, an incomplete tag string should be used to invoke the editor. For example, VALUE="MATED" invokes the visual tag editor for MYTAG stored in mytag.vtm. Expression Builder -- This value represents the syntax of the expression element to be pasted into the expression text box.
DESC The contents of the HTML Help for the element. Notice that the HELPFILE attribute can be used to specify the Help as a separate file.
HELPFILE The relative path to the HTML Help for the element. (HELPFILE = "Docs/MyTag.htm")


Copyright © 2000, Allaire Corporation. All rights reserved. Previous Up Next