PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 1/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info Borland Visual Solutions Pack Version 1.0 A Reviewer's First Look Borland International, Inc. 100 Borland Way PO Box 660001 Scotts Valley, CA 95067-0001 Table of Contents Introduction 1 What are Custom Controls? 1 Product Overview 1 System Requirements 2 About Borland 2 Using Custom Controls in Resource Workshop 3 Installing a Custom Control 3 Using a Custom Control 4 Adding Event Handlers 5 Detailed Description of Controls 6 Database 6 Spreadsheet 7 Tabs and Communications 8 Word Processor 9 Image Editor 10 3-D Charts 11 Gadgets 12 Conclusion 16 Introduction Welcome to the Borland Visual Solutions Pack reviewer's guide. The Borland Visual Solutions Pack is the main companion product for Borland C++ 4.0. This guide will give you an overview of the features you'll find in this exciting new extension of Borland's award-winning line of compilers. This guide assumes familiarity with Borland C++ 4.0 and its support for VBX custom controls. If you are not PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 2/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info familiar with Borland C++ 4.0, we would be happy to provide you with an in-depth reviewer's guide. What are Custom Controls? Custom controls are pre-made, reusable application components that allow developers to visually add extensive functionality to their Windows applications with virtually no coding required, saving days or even weeks of programming time. Custom controls integrate seamlessly into a supported programming environment, providing software developers with a myriad of drop-in custom solutions such as database front ends and 3-D graphics. Custom controls were originally developed for Microsoft Visual Basic by a wide range of third party vendors. Hence, the term VBX, which stands for Visual Basic eXtension, is often used when referring to these Windows-based application components. With the advent of Borland C++ 4.0, these powerful custom controls are now available to Borland developers, underscoring Borland's continued commitment to providing the latest in technology to our valued customer base. Product Overview The Borland Visual Solutions Pack is a powerful and comprehensive set of more than 25 custom controls. With the Borland Visual Solutions Pack, developers can drop in: - Database front ends that access dBASE and Paradox tables with Query By Form and support for multiple users. - Full-featured spreadsheets that display and calculate data. - Notebook tabs that that can be used whenever a selection is to be made between a number of windows, such as in an address book. - WYSIWYG word processors with multiple typefaces, PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 3/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info fonts, and points sizes, and a formatting ruler for setting margins, tabs, and spacing. - Communications interfaces with TTY and ANSI terminal emulation, as well as XModem file transfer. - Image editors that display graphic images in a variety of formats. Images can be zoomed, panned, cropped, sharpened, and softened. - Over 30 3-D and 2-D chart types that can be rotated, resized, and formatted with virtually every option imaginable. - A host of eye-catching gadgets to give your user interfaces a professional look such as animated buttons, gauges, spinners, sliders, marquees, clocks, alarms, and even dice and cards for the gaming enthusiasts. System Requirements The Borland Visual Solutions Pack is designed to be used by any development tool that supports VBX file formats, including Borland C++ 4.0, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Microsoft Visual C++. We recommend approximately 10 Mb of free disk space for installing all the controls. About Borland For millions of software developers and end users worldwide, Borland International Inc. is the leader in application development software. A pioneer in the use of object-oriented technology, Borland is committed to offering the world's best database management, programming languages, development tools, spreadsheets and applications software. Borland's products include dBASE, Paradox, InterBase, Quattro Pro, Borland C++, and Borland Pascal with Objects. Founded in 1983 by Phillipe Kahn, Borland is headquartered in Scotts Valley, California. Borland is a publicly held company. Its stock is traded over the counter on NASDAQ under the symbol BORL. PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 4/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info Using Custom Controls in Resource Workshop Custom controls blend seamlessly into the Borland C++ 4.0 programming environment, providing powerful, pre- built application components to the developer's tool set. These controls are accessed from within Resource Workshop when creating a dialog box and are represented by icons on the Tools Palette. For information on using the controls from within Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C++, please refer to their respective documentation Installing a Custom Control After installing the Borland Visual Solutions Pack on your computer with the accompanying software diskettes and installation instructions, you invoke a custom control by first loading the corresponding custom control file. From Resource Workshop, select File | Install control library and choose a custom control file from the file list. Custom control files are those with .VBX extensions. Note that the install program places all custom control files and associated DLLs in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. After making your selection, an icon representing the control is added to the Tools Palette. After installing all the controls from the Borland Visual Solutions Pack and adding them to the Tools Palette, the size of the standard Tools Palette accompanying Borland C++ 4.0 is effectively doubled. Using a Custom Control To use a custom control, click on the icon and drop it onto a dialog box just as you would with the standard Borland controls. To change the properties associated with the control such as background color or font type, double click the control and a list of properties is displayed. Properties can be changed either at design time using Resource Workshop or at run time using the PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 5/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info TVbxControl class if you are creating an ObjectWindows 2.0 application. (See Adding Event Handlers below). Adding Event Handlers Event Handlers can be added for any VBX control event. If your application was developed using the AppExpert, adding a handler involves simply right clicking the custom control to bring up the ClassExpert. ObjectWindows 2.0 provides a TVbxControl class that encapsulates the retrieving and setting of properties for VBX custom controls. This is further facilitated by a utility called VBXGen, which is located in BC4\BIN. VBXGen derives a class from TVbxControl for the custom control selected and then generates member functions for modifying all the properties associated with the control, making it much easier to use. A header file is created that contains the class definition. With Borland C++ 4.0, you can use either C or C++ to access control properties. Detailed Description of Controls The Borland Visual Solutions Pack includes over 25 custom controls that were provided by a broad group of third party vendors. This section gives a detailed description of each control contained in the product. For further information regarding each of the controls, please refer to the User's Guide Database The Database Controls consist of a set of 12 controls that enable developers to add sophisticated database front ends quickly and with virtually no coding. The custom controls encapsulate substantial database functionality, including the ability to visually generate simple or master-detail forms, bind fields to database columns, and perform Query By Form. You simply drag and drop these controls onto a dialog box PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 6/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info and set their properties. Applications built using these controls work with dBASE IV and Paradox (version 3.5) file formats. The 12 Integra VBX Controls can be divided into two main groups, four (4) Database Architecture Controls and eight (8) Database Visual Controls. Database Architecture Controls help you organize the structure of a database application, converting the programming environment into a visual database workbench. These include the following controls: Application Control -- sets global application properties like the type of error handling and debug mode. By setting a single property, you can have errors displayed in a text field. By setting another property you can enable the trace and obtain SQL statements and diagnostic information that are dumped into a file. Data source Control -- represents a connection to a data source. The properties of this control specify how connections are established, the logical name of the connection, and the connection string for establishing the connection with a database engine. Query Control -- includes properties to interactively build queries and generate SQL statements, and specify complex cascading master-detail relationships between tables. Form Definition Control -- binds fields to database columns. Database Visual Controls contain special database properties that include the ability to bind directly to columns in database tables. They consist of the following controls: Operation Control -- similar to a button control with a set of extended properties that decide which database operations (e.g., fetch next record, update record, PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 7/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info Query By Form, etc.) is initiated when the button is activated. Grid Control -- optimized for data access and is read only The rest of the controls are analogous to those found in Resource Workshop but include the ability to bind directly to database columns: Check Box Control Combo Box Control Frame Control List Box Control Radio Button Control Text Control Spreadsheet The Spreadsheet Control creates a full-featured spreadsheet that can accept tabular input and display data. The major features of the controls are: Four cell types are supported: Float, Static Text, Edit, and Picture. A powerful calculation engine is provided that allows formulas to be entered into individual cells either by the application or by the end-user. Supports multiple fonts and colors that can be applied to entire rows and columns The control provides more than 60 properties to format and tailor the spreadsheet according to your application's specific needs. Among the more powerful properties are the AutoCalc and the CalcDependencies properties which manage auto-recalculations of relevant data changes, and dependency tables, which are built each time a formula is added and are maintained internally to perform auto-calculations. The Formula property supports nine mathematical operations and up to eight functions. PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 8/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info Communications Control The Communications Control integrates serial communications, terminal emulation, and binary file transfers in your Windows applications, so that you can drop in sophisticated communications interfaces in a matter of minutes. It supports TTY and ANSI terminal emulation, as well as XModem file transfer. The Port property specifies the comm port you want to open. By setting AutoReceive and AutoSend to TRUE, the control automatically processes serial characters that arrive at the serial port, and sends characters typed at the keyboard to the port when your communications terminal window has the input focus. Since TTY is a subset of ANSI emulation, there is no need to set a property to switch between the two emulations. Both are active simultaneously. The Download and Upload properties manage binary file transfers using the popular XModem protocol. When you assign a filename to these properties, a file transfer is started and a dialog box is displayed containing transfer status information. Tabs Control The Tabs Control displays a number of notebook tabs. It can be used whenever a selection is to be made between a number of windows, such as in an address book. When one of the tabs is clicked, its state is changed to "active," and a Click event is generated. Event handling code can then be added to take the appropriate action. The Active Tab property is used to identify the tab that was clicked. Word Processor The Word Processor Control allows the creation of a full-featured WYSIWYG word processor. In addition to basic text editing, the control includes the following features: PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 9/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info - Supports multiple fonts, sizes, and styles, such as Courier, Times Roman, bold, and italic. - Provides a formatting ruler along the top of the control that allows users to set margins, tabs, and spacing without any effort from the programmer. - Reads and writes Rich Text Format (RTF) files. - Passes ANSI text through the clipboard. The ruler bar provides the standard functions commonly found on rulers in other word processors. The following figure shows which parts of the ruler control margins, indentation, justification, and tabs. The control responds automatically to mouse clicks on the ruler bar. Image Editor The Image Editor Control displays and edits graphic images, allowing you to easily build professional graphics handling and image processing capabilities into your applications. The control includes the following features: Displays true color (24-bit), SVGA (8-bit), & VGA (4- bit) images. Supports BMP, PCX, DIB and TGA file formats. Allows image rotation, zooming, panning, cropping, as well as sharpening and softening. Provides powerful functions to program advanced graphics capabilities. The properties and functions can be combined into simple, yet powerful assignment statements. You can transfer entire images between multiple instances of the controls, transfer source images over portions of destination images, and resize source or destination images. By using one of the functions, you can process the image at the same time. The coding complexity of many applications can be greatly reduced through creative use of assignment statements. For example, a single assignment statement can be used to clip a section of a graphic, resize and color reduce the clip, and then paste the clip into another graphic. PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 10/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info Figure 11. Image Editor Control 3-D Charts The 3-D Chart Control allows developers to add impressive charts to their applications. It can serve either as a regular charting tool or as a database front-end for displaying data. - More than 30 2-D and 3-D charts (area, line, bar, pie and column charts). - More than 50 different styles (legend styles, label styles, axes styles, chart title, etc.). - Supports rotation for 3-D charts so that charts can be viewed from different angles. To facilitate 3-D rotations, an automatic self-rotation about the y axis is also implemented. - Supports scrolling along the x axis ( y axis for bar charts ), which is useful when there is a large set of data points to be displayed. If the chart is used as a database front-end, a memory cache of a range of data will be used. The control automatically retrieves data from the database and will prompt the application for more data only when needed. If the chart is used as a regular plotting device, all data will be kept in memory. Gadgets Nine Gadget Controls are included to help developers spruce up their applications and give their user- interfaces a professional look: Animated Buttons, Gauges, Spinners, Sliders, Marquees, Clocks, Alarms, Dice, and Cards. The Animated Button Control allows you to make a wide variety of button controls. For example: - Animated Buttons -- Define a sequence of images to form an animated flic that will play each time you click on a button. Four different animation cycles are available. - Multistate Buttons -- A Multistate button can have any number of states, each with its own unique image. PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 11/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info - 2-State Animated Buttons -- A button that supports two states (like a checkbox) except that the transition between the two states can be fully animated. - Enhanced Standard Buttons -- Enhanced versions of the checkbox and option button controls. You can define the appearance of a button in both pressed and unpressed states. - Toolbar Buttons -- Create a toolbar similar to those found in other Windows applications. In addition, the control supports the following features: - Flexible Text Placement -- The button caption can be placed on any side of the image or positioned anywhere on the image. - Save/Load to File -- Image sequences and properties can be saved to files to create libraries of custom controls. - Runtime Configurable -- Most properties (including images) can be changed under program control at runtime. - No Special Programming -- Buttons are created interactively at design time. No special programming is required to create or use the control. - Adjustable Animation Speed The other gadgets are: Gauge Control -- Displays your choice of linear (filled), needle or bitmap style gauges. It can also use custom bitmaps of gauges that you create, instead of the bitmaps supplied. Spin Control -- Used to increment or decrement values and comes with an optional label and 3-D appearance. The default control is shown below: Slide Control -- A scrollbar-like control used to display a custom scale and button. You move the slide's button to set the .value of the control. It provides four different slides you can use in your program, or you can create your own slides. The default slide is shown below: PRODUCT : Borland C++ NUMBER : 1743 VERSION : 4.0 OS : WIN DATE : December 20, 1993 PAGE : 12/12 TITLE : Visual Solutions Pack Review Info Marquee Control -- An enhanced label control that can show a moving banner of text, with or without a set of "moving" bitmaps. Clock Control -- displays a clock in digital or analog form. It also has an alarm feature. You can use the default clock images or your own bitmaps. Alarm Control -- an audio-visual "attention getter" that comes in three default styles: telephone, alarm clock or wrist alarm. You can also define your own images. You can display Alarm controls on your forms and use the associated bitmaps in place of your form's icon when the form is minimized.: Dice Control -- A specialized picture box control that displays dice. Card Control -- Lets you display any card from a standard 52-card deck of playing cards. Conclusion The Borland Visual Solutions Pack is a significant new companion product for Borland C++ 4.0, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Microsoft Visual C++. The controls included in the product represent a wide range of solutions that address real world problems. From database front ends and spreadsheets to word processors and 3-D charts, no other product today offers this breadth of functionality all in one box. We are confident that you will share our enthusiasm for this newest edition to our award winning line of development tools. If you have any questions about this product, please feel free to contact us. Copyright 1993, Borland International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.