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Dime
Dialogs Made Easy
NOTE: Dime has been replaced by Adime
Adime is the same library as Dime but a newer version.
The reason why I had to change the name of the library from Dime to
Adime is that there is another library called Dime (which is bigger
and has been around longer) so it caused a conflict. The document
describing
how to move from Dime to Adime
is also in the latest release of Adime.
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Introduction
Dime, version 1.2.4, 15 december 2001
Dime is a portable add-on library for Allegro with functions for generating
Allegro dialogs in a very simple way. Its main purpose is to give as easy an
API as possible to people who want dialogs for editing many kinds of input
data.
It currently works with Linux, DJGPP, MinGW32, MSVC and Watcom.
Help with porting to generic Unix and BeOS would be very appreciated!
The sourceforge project page is at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dime/
Licence
The ZLIB/LIBPNG licence.
Download
Source of Dime 1.2.4 (166 kB)
This is, like Allegro, a source only distribution, so you will have to build
it after unzipping the archive. Installation instructions can be found in
readme.txt. Requires Allegro version 3.9.38 or later, and compiles under
Linux, DJGPP, MinGW32, MSVC and Watcom.
The WIP page
The Work In Progress version is unstable (don't use except for testing!)
but contains new features.
Help in Windows format (25 kB)
All the help compiled into windows help format, provided by Mike Greubel.
This is from version 1.2.1b so it is (slightly) outdated.
You can also get old versions of Dime.
Detailed Features
- Only one function call to create a whole dialog, using a format
string.
- 3d look and feel.
- No need to calculate object coordinates by hand. All such things are
handled completely automatically.
- Uses Allegro's gui in the bottom, so it supports Unicode and is
potentially portable to any system supported by Allegro (though I have
not created makefiles for all).
- The format string supports the following kinds of input:
- Text input.
- Number input, supporting double, float and signed or unsigned
char, short and int. Thanks to the expression evaluator for Egg
(written by Shawn Hargreaves), it has a built-in calculator so that the user
can enter mathematical expressions.
- Selection of a filename, using Allegro's file selector.
- Boolean input, using a checkbox.
- Selection of a string from a list box.
- A new dialog recursively opened when the user clicks a button.
- Highly customizable look, using global variables for the fonts,
colors and measurements of the dialogs.
- The kernel is flexible enough to allow you to register your own
format strings at runtime.
- 3d versions of the following Allegro gui functions:
d_edit_proc()
,
d_list_proc()
,
d_button_proc()
,
d_check_proc()
and
d_text_list_proc()
.
Gui functions for edit boxes with mathematical
expressions and a multi-line version of
d_text_proc()
.
- The format string is carefully checked for any possible errors, thus
minimizing the risk for you to make mistakes.
- Help compiles into txt, info, man, html and rtf formats.
- Two example programs.
Screenshot
Here is a typical example of what a dialog can look like:
This dialog was generated with the single function call:
dialogf("dialogf() example",
ALIGN_CENTRE, ALIGN_CENTRE, 200,
"Required Information%line[]"
"Name:%string[256]"
"Age:%int[0,140]"
"Married:%bool[]"
"Optional Information%line[]"
"Shoe size (Swedish units):%float[10,60]"
"Favourite text file:%filename[256,txt,Select a text file]"
"Language:%list[,English;Lojban;Swahili;Swedish]",
name, &age, &married, &shoe_size, &filename, &language_index);
Documentation
This is the documentation from the zip.
Readme - Installation instructions and some more.
Changes - Differences between versions.
Thanks - People who have contributed.
API Reference - How to use Dime.
How The Expressions Work - Description of the
syntax in the expression evaluator, written by Shawn Hargreaves.
Internal API Reference - Some inner workings that
you only need to know if you want to extend Dime.
Wish List - Things that would be nice to have.