Welcome to the world of ViewIt‚Ñ¢. The "Startup" topics contain basic information that you should only need to learn once. Please read all of the information presented here before you attempt to read other on-line help or make use of ViewIt to open windows within your programs.
What Is ViewIt?
The ViewIt product is shipped with three main or "core" programming modules: ViewIt‚Ñ¢, FaceIt‚Ñ¢, and UtilIt‚Ñ¢.
The ViewIt module is one of the most powerful and elegant Macintosh programming tools available for creating and supporting sophisticated windows. A review of the many features of ViewIt is presented in the "Introduction" topic in the ViewIt Guide (see "ViewIt" menu above).
Use of the FaceIt module makes it easy to also support modeless windows, the main menu bar, floating palettes, background processing, and other features. Alternatively, ViewIt windows can be made to work in other Macintosh programming environments without requiring FaceIt.
The third core module, UtilIt, contains low-level utility routines that are required by ViewIt, FaceIt, and many other FaceWare modules. UtilIt routines can also be called directly by your programs.
About On-Line Help
This window presents on-line documentation or "help" in a "control" that is part of a ViewIt window. The help control in this window consists of the box containing this text and the scroll bar at the right. The other controls at the top of this window display icons or text that support pull-down menus. These menus contain standard items such as "Save", "Cut", etc., and other items that can be used to display other topics in this help control.
All ViewIt documentation is presented in help controls like this one. This help can be easily printed to produce printed manuals (use "Print All" to print all topics). The use of on-line help (versus printed manuals) allows us to more quickly respond to your suggestions and changing needs, and also supports features such as searching (try "Find..." item above) and context-sensitive help that cannot be done with printed manuals.
NOTE: As shown by the lock icon at the top, right of this help control, this help text is not editable, although you can change fonts and styles to enhance printed output. Many of the disabled editing options in this window's menus were kept to make it easier for us to edit this help and are not intended for your use. When using help controls in your own programs, you can choose to make text editable or not.
Read Startup Topics
The above "Startup" menu can be used to open other help topics dealing with getting started. Topics 2-5 present basic information about FaceWare modules, 6-10 describe the minimum code needed to open a ViewIt window in a FaceIt-based program, and the "Summary" topic presents an overview of the entire process of creating or modifying programs to make use of ViewIt, FaceIt, and other modules.
Other features of ViewIt, FaceIt, and UtilIt are described in the topics listed in the other pull-down menus. Resist trying to read this more detailed help until you understand the information presented in the startup topics.
Recompiling Demos
Once you've read the startup topics, a good first step is to attempt to recompile and run one of our demo programs. Some typical problems encountered include:
• PROBLEM: Message "FCMD/FACE 1110 v2.0 not found..." appears indicating that the UtilIt module (FCMD 1110) was not found. CAUSE: The "FaceWare" file was not placed in a spot where the program could find it.
• PROBLEM: The program immediately quits back to the Finder when launched. CAUSE: LoadIt could not be found, usually because the program's ".Rsrc" file was not found.
• PROBLEM: The program immediately crashes when launched under System 7 or MultiFinder. POSSIBLE CAUSE: The program's partition size is too small. FaceWare modules use heap memory in addition to that used by the main program.
Once you have gotten one of the demo programs to compile and run, then it is easy to either add your own code to it, or to add the little code needed to support FaceWare modules to existing programs.
Shareware Limits
If working with the shareware version, please choose the "Legal Stuff" item from the "Startup" menu above to learn about what you can and cannot do with this version.
In addition to the limits on how programs developed with the shareware version can be distributed, and on the level of support provided by FaceWare, the shareware version is missing several files that are included with the purchased version of ViewIt. Most of these files, however, deal with the final stages of developement and the creation of truly stand-alone applications, so you won't find yourself limited in any important way when trying the shareware version.
The files missing include:
- the non-editing version of the FaceWare file discussed in the "Resources" topic of the ViewIt Guide
- the "ShellCt.pas" and "FaceStorLP2.pas" files discussed in the "Override" topic of the ViewIt Guide
- the "fDemoLP+" and "Finder.Rsrc" files discussed in the "Finder Resources" topic of the FaceIt Guide
- the files from the "FaceStub" folder discussed in the "Hybrid Programs" topic of the FaceIt Guide
- the "hmnu TMPL" file used to create menu item balloon help discussed in the "Menu Handling" topic of FaceIt Guide
- MacFortran 020 v. 2.4 example projects
- upgrade notes for those upgrading from previous versions
- upgraded versions of the old TextIt, GrafIt, and ShowIt modules whose windows can be mixed with ViewIt windows
