FroG: Create new frontends
Tags
*.frontend-files are xml-formatted files, that are built after an easy scheme. To create a single control a *.frontend-files looks like this:
<form>
<control>
</control>
</form>
Attributes
Of course the tags have to be specified by attributes:
<form caption="programname" program="path\program.exe">
<control type="checkbox" caption="Hello, World" commandline="-w">
</control>
</form>
When you start this frontend, you'll see a form with one checkbox carring the caption Hello, World. If you check the checkbox you'll recognize the switch -w after the path\program.
Attributes can have different values. There can be strings, integer, boolean or some special values like bold or italic.
Nesting
XML lets you nest elemtents. In case of a *.frontend-files only controls can be nested where it makes sense. That's for example the <control type="tabset">, groupset and columnset. It can look like this:
<form caption="programname" program="path\program.exe">
<control type="groupbox">
<control type="checkbox" caption="Hello" commandline="-h">
</control>
<control type="checkbox" caption="World" commandline="-w">
</control>
</control>
</form>
With tabset and columnset corresponding divisions are need (tabsheet, column).
<form caption="programname" program="path\progrmm.exe">
<control type="tabset">
<tabsheet caption="Tab1">
<control type="checkbox" caption="Hello" commandline="-h">
</control>
</tabsheet>
<tabsheet caption="Tab2">
<control type="checkbox" caption="World" commandline="-w">
</control>
</tabsheet>
</control>
</form>
Abbreviations
Tags have to be closed according to the xml rules (<control></control>). If a tag does not enclose other tags you can use the following abbreviation: <control/>. Assinged to the first example it can look like this:
<form caption="programname" program="path\program.exe">
<control type="checkbox" caption="Hello, World" commandline="-h"/>
</form>
Special Chars
If special characters are used in an frontend, they have to be encoded in the following way: &#xIIII; the IIII stands for the four digit unicode value.
© = ©
This way you can use characters wich would let the xml fail to compile:
" = " < = <