DFMEdit - Forms

I. Main-Form
II. Add/Modify-Form
III. Preview / Menu-Editor
IV. Objectinspector
V. Component-Palette
VI. Options

I. Main-Form

Toolbar and Mainmenu
Object-list
Treeview
basic object/property-manipulation
Search node
Statusbar
Button for importing text from source-memo
Sourcememo (output-memo)
Search/Replace

1. Toolbar and Mainmenu / Key bindings

icon	description	shortcut
	creating a new form	Ctrl+N
	open existing DFM-file	Ctrl+O
	converting multiple files from binary to text and vice versa	Ctrl+Shift+C
	load a DFM-definition from an exe or dll	Ctrl+R
	indicates that loaded form is binary or not, also used for saving (not for lfm)	Ctrl+B
	save DFM-file (different options in menu)	generate from tree: Ctrl+S save output: Ctrl+Alt+S saving DFM back to binary: Ctrl+Shift+S
	create or modify pas-file (unit)	Ctrl+U
	generate runtime-code from selected dfm-node	Ctrl+G
	generate DFM-data for preview and show the form	Ctrl+P
	show form using DFM-data in output-memo	Ctrl+Shift+P
	if activated set (tab)visible-property for all components in preview to true	Ctrl+H
	if activated set enabled-property for all components in preview to true	Ctrl+E
	add a new component in the selected	Ins
	add new property for selected component/item	Ctrl+Ins
	add new subitem (TCollection), e.g. used for TStatusbar.panels	Shift+Ins
	edit selected component/property	Return
	delete selected component/property	Del
	move selected component/property/item 1 step up	Ctrl+Up
	move selected component/property/item 1 step down	Ctrl+Down
	move selected component/property/item to first possible position	Ctrl+Shift+Up
	move selected component/property/item to last possible position	Ctrl+Shift+Down
	show Menu-Editor	Ctrl+M
	remove unwanted properties	Ctrl+Shift+U
	check for newer versions (click on arrow to check also for new beta-versions)	Ctrl+I
	show program-informations or helpfile	Shift+F1 / F1
	show options-dialog	Ctrl+Alt+O
Shortcuts without toolbar-button
	search again (in memo)	F3
	Select all (in memo)	Ctrl+A
	delete selected control (in preview)	Del
	insert new control (in preview)	Ins
	copy selected control (in preview)	Ctrl+C
	cut selected control (in preview)	Ctrl+X
	paste cutted/copied control (in preview)	Ctrl+V

This list is similar to the List in delphi's object-inspector, containing all objects of current form.
Select an entry to jump to the corresponding treenode.
If Preview is visible, the component a control and visible then it will be selected in preview

3: Treeview

The Treeview shows the hierarchic structure of the form.

identifies an object
identifies a property
identifies an item (TCollection e.g. TStatusbar.Panels)

You can select an node to access the specific functions (objects can contain properties and sub-objects).
The parent-property of objects is not stored in DFM, it is defined by structure, change it by dragging an object-node to another object.
Moving objects in the same level will change the order of creation. If you have overlapping objects the last created is on top.

4. basic object/property-manipulation

This is for textual direct-editing (componentname/-type, propertyname/-value)

5. search node

here you can search for a node with partial text

6. Statusbar

shows the filename current dfm-definition
the second panel gets a progressbar when generating dfm-data (for saving and preview)

7. Button for importing text from source-memo

this is for those who want to writing or pasting a dfm-definition to source-memo and importing this to treeview

8. Sourcememo (output-memo)

the both memos holding dfm-data which is loaded from file, pasted, written by hand (source-memo) or generated by dfmedit (output-memo).
there are some hints for writing/editing:

autoindent (indent next line on return)
tab/backtab for manual indent, also for selection (multiple lines)
adding end-tag when pressing return on line beginning with "object" (after spaces)

9. Search/Replace

this Pagecontrol holds controls for

goto a given line,
search text (case-insensitive),
show linenumber and columnnumber (cursor-position),
replacing text (search case-insensitive, * in replace-edit is placeholder for searchtext)

II. Add/Modify-Form


component	set-property	enum-types

		Colors Cursors
single image-Properties	imagelists

Adding Components (screenshot #1):
if dfmedit knows the class it displays the inheritance hierarchy in a multiline textfield below the class.
you can create multiple components in 1 step, change the field "count"
dfmedit can also add/change the caption-property of each created component to its name, simply set the checkbox

edit basic properties
	to change integer-values
	to edit multiline-strings
	to display a colordialog
edit images
	Select a image you want to assign to the image
	Save currently loaded image to a file
	create dfm-data of the image loaded
edit imagelists
	adding a new image to the list
	deleting image defined by the single spinedit (first image = index 0)
	clear all images in imagelist
	Save image defined by the single spinedit to a file
	move image with index of the first spinedit to the position in spinedit 2
	swapping 2 images defined by the 2 spinedits
	create dfm-data of the imagelist

Hint: When editing imagelists: click on a image to get its index to the active spinedit
Note: You have to create DFM-data first

before you click "OK" else the image/imagelist is not be changed!

III. Preview / Menu-Editor

Preview:

This form is used to show your loaded form.
Clicking on a control adds blue size-handles and selects the object-node in treeview.
You can select multiple controls pressing the shift-key while selecting

In the Form-preview you can do several things:

change position of controls
change size
deleting controls (pressing del-key)
add controls
change control's name
bring to top/send to back overlapping controls with popupmenu
copy/move controls (ctrl+C/X/V)

Note: This form is not updated when you change something in treeview!

You have a popupmenu that appears on rightclick:

keep Z-Order: if keep Z-Order is not checked then the position is changed in treeview when using BringToFront/SendToBack
BringToFront/SendToBack: change the z-order of overlapping controls
edit: shows the edit object-dialog, where you can change the name
delete: deletes the control(s) (also in treeview)
add new object: adding a new Object
copy: copy the selected control(s), the border will change to green, use paste to insert
cut: copy the selected control(s), the border will change to red, use paste to insert
paste: insert the copied/cutted control(s)
close form: close preview-form

On Multiselection:
if all selected controls are the same class you can set all the properties from this class
for all controls except the name-property.
if the classes do not match you can only set height,left,top and width for all controls

Menu-Editor:

You can add/delete Items/Sumenus with the contextmenu.
also Drag&Drop of Items is supported.

IV. Objectinspector

here you can change the properties of the selected control or form.
in the panel below you see the name of the current control.
enter new value for a property and press <enter> or select other cell to apply new value
<esc> restores old value
you can move to next property pressing TAB and to previous with SHIFT+TAB
when you doubleclick on cell the change-property-dialog appears.
Note: Integerlist- and TCollection-Properties are not supported

V. Component-Palette

simply click on the toolbutton with the control you want to add. It will be created inside the current selected control (if it allows subcontrols, else in its parent)
action-button: show the menu of the sizecontrol also when nothing is selected.

VI. Options

Tab "main-configuration":

language: here you can set your language
See language-files for more
export to binary: set the toolbar-button in mainform down if checked
show hidden controls: set the toolbar-button in mainform down if checked
enable disabled controls: set the toolbar-button in mainform down if checked
open created pas-file: open pas-file after creation
open modified pas-file: open pas-file after modification
ask for open: before opening the pas-file ask if the user want to open it
external editor: you can define an external editor to view pas-files. Leave the field blank to open the files with the default application.
grid-size: controls in preview can be aligned on a grid for easier moving, 0 deactivates grid, default 4px
lazres: if you want to save lazarus-forms, dfmedit needs lazres.exe to create a lrs-file
you can use the version shipped with dfmedit or compiling it from the tools-directory of your lazarus-installation
lazarus-extension: you can choose between .pas and .pp for lazarus-unit-files

Tab "packages":

here you can set up to 10 package-files (*.dpl / *.bpl). These packages extending
the internal vcl of dfmedit
you find a testpackage.zip which shows how to create a package for dfmedit

Tab "edit-dialog":

here you can define the Components listed in the edit-dialog, the properties
added when adding a component (default-values), unknown properties (type setting)
and delete-rules for unwanted properties

special property-names
<isControl>	if set to 1 defines that a unknown component is a control (adding properties from control-section)
<replace>	you can set here a classname which will be used if the actual class is not known by dfmedit
<ignore>	a comma-separated list of properties which will be ignored in preview when component-class is replaced
<hide>	if set to 1 this component isn't shown in the component-list (useful for replaced classes)
delete rules
*	always delete this property
value	delete this property if it is set to the given value
property2=value	delete this property if property2 is set to the given value
[value1,value2]	delete this property if it is set to value1 or value2
property2=[value1,value2]	delete this property if property2 is set to value1 or value2

Tab "position and size":

you can set default-positions and sizes for each windows of dfmedit except:

Position and Size of Preview-Form, because this should be defined by your dfm-file
Size of windows which can't be resized (Preferences, About)
Position of inspector, because it's moved by preview-form

you see the min-sizes in the screenshot above.

Tab "customize":

you can hide MenuItems and Toolbar buttons here, simple remove the check.