Re: [wxCode-users] How to provide dialogs in components

[John L. <jla...@gm...>]

On 6/24/05, Francesco Montorsi <f18...@ya...> wrote:
> Hi,
>     since I'm working on the "webupdate" component which will provide a
> dialog for updating your app, the following question raised:
>=20
> how should we provide dialog windows in our components ?
> Using XRC files, or just hard-coded classes that build the UI ?

I hard code them, the complicated pages are created using wxDesigner.
I try to make them reasonably extensible if at all possible. For
example, in wxStEdit I have a preferences dialog with 7 notebook
pages. Each page can be used independently of the others and of the
dialog that contains them. All I do is forward the Ok, Cancel, etc
buttons to the page before the dialog deals with them and if the page
handles it fine, if not, fine too.
=20
I think it's a good idea to at least separate the "page(s)" of the
dialog from the dialog since then it'll be reusable. You can also
provide flags to make it possible for users to get different varieties
or add a virtual function "CreateDialog" (or whatever) so that people
can subclass it and override it's behavior. In this case everyone will
have to call the "CreateDialog" function after creation (you can't
have virtual functions in the constructor).

XRC makes your user link to the XRC lib so I prefer not to use that.
It also won't make it any easier for them to reuse or change things
anyway.

> I've never used the XRC system before and all my components (but
> actually only keybinder has a dialog) do not use it.
>=20
> What is the "right" approach ?

Whatever makes you happy? Seriously though, maybe someone has better
suggestions.

Regards,
    John Labenski