I am uploading Alpha 8 shortly. While it is building, I want to explain briefly what I've done.
1) I've eliminated the tab page name from the "control path". Since only one tab page can be active at a time, this should be fine for the time being, and it eliminates a major backward compatibility roadblock.
2) The editor and the ARX no longer update the VarName property when a project is loaded. Therefore, what you see is what you get.
3) If the VarName property is not empty, it will be used for the lisp symbol name (ignoring the project key-name). If it is empty, the symbol name for a control will be <project-key-name>_<form_key_name>_<control-key-name>, and for a form will be <project-key-name>_<form-key-name>. the key name for forms and controls is their Name property. These must be unique (although uniqueness is not currently validated or enforced).
4) When you SaveAs a project, its forms and controls will be recursively traversed and their VarName property updated, overwriting any changes you had made. This is not satisfactory, but it will have to do for now. A better solution is defaulting to a blank symbol name, and relying on the key-name system. With empty names, no changes are required during SaveAs, but it will still be possible to specify a custom name if desired.
5) The ability to specify a key name as a third argument to (odcl_project_load) is working, but not quite the way it was designed to work. Unless VarNames are empty, the key name is ignored when setting lisp symbols, therefore it is only useful when VarNames are empty -- except when used to identify a project. The project key name can be used to identify the project file to the new odcl_project_unload function, for example.
6) IMPORTANT! In order to make things work as they are, I had to change some code structure in the editor code. The changes I needed to amke really require some thought and a week or so of work to do correctly. Since I don't have the luxury of spending that much time, I had to kludge it. You will see some funky behavior in the editor, like being able to open a new odc file while leaving a form from the previous file on the screen. Just ignore this for now, and try not to confuse the editor too much.
7) The one stop shopping demo example is very nice! So nice that I removed everything else and put the new demo sample into this build. Good job Barry. This will help me a lot with debugging and regression testing.
8) And last but not least, I had to change the file format in this build. Not because of the symbol names, but because I found that it was not possible to safely save some of the new style collections of property values in the old format (thus the reported bug about a grid control project becoming un-openable after saving with the new editor). Crossing that bridge is a bit of a relief; now I can steam ahead and damn the torpedoes -- unfortunately those of you who need to support AutoCAD 2000 - 2002 will not be able to do it with the new format unless I figure out how to provide a 2000 format ARX without opening the source code of my handy dandy AutoCAD version-independent ARX library.
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hey, just noticed you changed the odc format! Maybe that explains some things...my UserInfo prog posted needs to have the odc file opened and saved as new format.
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James and others, yes I did change the format, but your old ODC files should still work. There is no reason to change them just for the sake of changing (the new format is slightly more compact, but not enough of a difference to notice).
I did find an Alpha 8 bug today thanks to David Robison wherein some project data (in this case OLE objects, although image lists are also a potential problem that I am investigating right now) was being saved in the new format while still marked as the old format, thus resulting in errors when trying to read the new file. As a result, Alpha 8 is not creating correct ODC files in some cases, and you should wait until Alpha 9 (or Alpha 10 to be safe) before relying on correct ODC files being written from the new editor.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I am uploading Alpha 8 shortly. While it is building, I want to explain briefly what I've done.
1) I've eliminated the tab page name from the "control path". Since only one tab page can be active at a time, this should be fine for the time being, and it eliminates a major backward compatibility roadblock.
2) The editor and the ARX no longer update the VarName property when a project is loaded. Therefore, what you see is what you get.
3) If the VarName property is not empty, it will be used for the lisp symbol name (ignoring the project key-name). If it is empty, the symbol name for a control will be <project-key-name>_<form_key_name>_<control-key-name>, and for a form will be <project-key-name>_<form-key-name>. the key name for forms and controls is their Name property. These must be unique (although uniqueness is not currently validated or enforced).
4) When you SaveAs a project, its forms and controls will be recursively traversed and their VarName property updated, overwriting any changes you had made. This is not satisfactory, but it will have to do for now. A better solution is defaulting to a blank symbol name, and relying on the key-name system. With empty names, no changes are required during SaveAs, but it will still be possible to specify a custom name if desired.
5) The ability to specify a key name as a third argument to (odcl_project_load) is working, but not quite the way it was designed to work. Unless VarNames are empty, the key name is ignored when setting lisp symbols, therefore it is only useful when VarNames are empty -- except when used to identify a project. The project key name can be used to identify the project file to the new odcl_project_unload function, for example.
6) IMPORTANT! In order to make things work as they are, I had to change some code structure in the editor code. The changes I needed to amke really require some thought and a week or so of work to do correctly. Since I don't have the luxury of spending that much time, I had to kludge it. You will see some funky behavior in the editor, like being able to open a new odc file while leaving a form from the previous file on the screen. Just ignore this for now, and try not to confuse the editor too much.
7) The one stop shopping demo example is very nice! So nice that I removed everything else and put the new demo sample into this build. Good job Barry. This will help me a lot with debugging and regression testing.
8) And last but not least, I had to change the file format in this build. Not because of the symbol names, but because I found that it was not possible to safely save some of the new style collections of property values in the old format (thus the reported bug about a grid control project becoming un-openable after saving with the new editor). Crossing that bridge is a bit of a relief; now I can steam ahead and damn the torpedoes -- unfortunately those of you who need to support AutoCAD 2000 - 2002 will not be able to do it with the new format unless I figure out how to provide a 2000 format ARX without opening the source code of my handy dandy AutoCAD version-independent ARX library.
hey, just noticed you changed the odc format! Maybe that explains some things...my UserInfo prog posted needs to have the odc file opened and saved as new format.
James and others, yes I did change the format, but your old ODC files should still work. There is no reason to change them just for the sake of changing (the new format is slightly more compact, but not enough of a difference to notice).
I did find an Alpha 8 bug today thanks to David Robison wherein some project data (in this case OLE objects, although image lists are also a potential problem that I am investigating right now) was being saved in the new format while still marked as the old format, thus resulting in errors when trying to read the new file. As a result, Alpha 8 is not creating correct ODC files in some cases, and you should wait until Alpha 9 (or Alpha 10 to be safe) before relying on correct ODC files being written from the new editor.
hi Owen.
. . . but the odc I sent you still give me an "unhandled exception . . ."
ciao
domenico
Domenico, please test your file again with Alpha 9. It should display correctly now.