1VB(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation VB(1)
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6 VB - Visual Builder for the Prima toolkit
7
9 Visual Builder is a RAD-style suite for designing forms under the Prima
10 toolkit. It provides rich set of perl-composed widgets, whose can be
11 inserted into a form by simple actions. The form can be stored in a
12 file and loaded by either user program or a simple wrapper,
13 "utils/prima-fmview.pl"; the form can be also stored as a valid perl
14 program.
15 A form file typically has .fm extension, an can be loaded by using
17 Prima::VB::VBLoader module. The following example is the only content
18 of "prima-fmview.pl":
19 use Prima qw(Application VB::VBLoader);
21 my $ret = Prima::VBLoad( $ARGV[0] );
22 die "$@\n" unless $ret;
23 $ret-> execute;
24 and is usually sufficient for executing a form file.
26
28 The builder provides three main windows, that are used for designing.
29 These are called main panel, object inspector and form window. When the
30 builder is started, the form window is empty.
31 The main panel consists of the menu bar, speed buttons and the widget
33 buttons. If the user presses a widget button, and then clicks the mouse
34 on the form window, the designated widget is inserted into the form and
35 becomes a child of the form window. If the click was made on a visible
36 widget in the form window, the newly inserted widget becomes a children
37 of that widget. After the widget is inserted, its properties are
38 accessible via the object inspector window.
39 The menu bar contains the following commands:
41 File
43 New Closes the current form and opens a new, empty form. If the
44 old form was not saved, the user is asked if the changes made
45 have to be saved.
46 This command is an alias to a 'new file' icon on the panel.
48 Open
50 Invokes a file open dialog, so a .fm form file can be opened.
51 After the successful file load, all form widgets are visible
52 and available for editing.
53 This command is an alias to an 'open folder' icon on the panel.
55 Save
57 Stores the form into a file. The user here can select a type of
58 the file to be saved. If the form is saved as .fm form file,
59 then it can be re-loaded either in the builder or in the user
60 program ( see Prima::VB::VBLoader for details ). If the form
61 is saved as .pl program, then it can not be loaded; instead,
62 the program can be run immediately without the builder or any
63 supplementary code.
64 Once the user assigned a name and a type for the form, it is
66 never asked when selecting this command.
67 This command is an alias to a 'save on disk' icon on the panel.
69 Save as
71 Same as Save, except that a new name or type of file are asked
72 every time the command is invoked.
73 Close
75 Closes the form and removes the form window. If the form window
76 was changed, the user is asked if the changes made have to be
77 saved.
78 Edit
80 Copy
81 Copies the selected widgets into the clipboard, so they can be
82 inserted later by using Paste command. The form window can not
83 be copied.
84 Paste
86 Reads the information, put by the builder Copy command into the
87 clipboard, and inserts the widgets into the form window. The
88 child-parent relation is kept by names of the widgets; if the
89 widget with the name of the parent of the clipboard-read
90 widgets is not found, the widgets are inserted into the form
91 window. The form window is not affected by this command.
92 Delete
94 Deletes the selected widgets. The form window can not be
95 deleted.
96 Select all
98 Selects all of the widgets, inserted in the form window, except
99 the form window itself.
100 Duplicate
102 Duplicates the selected widgets. The form window is not
103 affected by this command.
104 Align
106 This menu item contains z-ordering actions, that are performed
107 on selected widgets. These are:
108 Bring to front Send to back Step forward Step backward Restore
110 order
111 Change class
113 Changes the class of an inserted widget. This is an advanced
114 option, and can lead to confusions or errors, if the default widget
115 class and the supplied class differ too much. It is used when the
116 widget that has to be inserted is not present in the builder
117 installation. Also, it is called implicitly when a loaded form does
118 not contain a valid widget class; in such case Prima::Widget class
119 is assigned.
120 Creation order
122 Opens the dialog, that manages the creation order of the widgets.
123 It is not that important for the widget child-parent relation,
124 since the builder tracks these, and does not allow a child to be
125 created before its parent. However, the explicit order might be
126 helpful in a case, when, for example, "tabOrder" property is left
127 to its default value, so it is assigned according to the order of
128 widget creation.
129 Toggle lock
131 Changes the lock status for selected widgets. The lock, if set,
132 prevents a widget from being selected by mouse, to avoid occasional
133 positional changes. This is useful when a widget is used as owner
134 for many sub-widgets.
135 Ctrl+mouse click locks and unlocks a widget.
137 View
139 Object inspector
140 Brings the object inspector window, if it was hidden or closed.
141 Add widgets
143 Opens a file dialog, where the additional VB modules can be
144 located. The modules are used for providing custom widgets and
145 properties for the builder. As an example, the
146 Prima/VB/examples/Widgety.pm module is provided with the
147 builder and the toolkit. Look inside this file for the
148 implementation details.
149 Reset guidelines
151 Reset the guidelines on the form window into a center position.
152 Snap to guidelines
154 Specifies if the moving and resizing widget actions must treat
155 the form window guidelines as snapping areas.
156 Snap to grid
158 Specifies if the moving and resizing widget actions must use
159 the form window grid granularity instead of the pixel
160 granularity.
161 Run This command hides the form and object inspector windows and
163 'executes' the form, as if it would be run by
164 "prima-fmview.pl". The execution session ends either by
165 closing the form window or by calling Break command.
166 This command is an alias to a 'run' icon on the panel.
168 Break
170 Explicitly terminates the execution session, initiated by Run
171 command.
172 Help
174 About
175 Displays the information about the visual builder.
176 Help
178 Displays the information about the usage of the visual builder.
179 Widget property
181 Invokes a help viewer on Prima::Widget manpage and tries to
182 open a topic, corresponding to the current selection of the
183 object inspector property or event list. While this manpage
184 covers far not all ( but still many ) properties and events, it
185 is still a little bit more convenient than nothing.
186 Form window
188 The form widget is a common parent for all widgets, created by the
189 builder. The form window provides the following basic navigation
190 functionality.
191 Guidelines
193 The form window contains two guidelines, the horizontal and the
194 vertical, drawn as blue dashed lines. Dragging with the mouse can
195 move these lines. If menu option "Snap to guidelines" is on, the
196 widgets moving and sizing operations treat the guidelines as the
197 snapping areas.
198 Selection
200 A widget can be selected by clicking with the mouse on it. There
201 can be more than one selected widget at a time, or none at all. To
202 explicitly select a widget in addition to the already selected
203 ones, hold the "shift" key while clicking on a widget. This
204 combination also deselects the widget. To select all widgets on the
205 form window, call "Select all" command from the menu. To prevent
206 widgets from being occasionally selected, lock them with
207 "Edit/Toggle lock" command or Ctrl+mouse click.
208 Moving
210 Dragging the mouse can move the selected widgets. The widgets can
211 be snapped to the grid or the guidelines during the move. If one of
212 the moving widgets is selected in the object inspector window, the
213 coordinate changes are reflected in the "origin" property.
214 If the "Tab" key is pressed during the move, the mouse pointer is
216 changed between three states, each reflecting the currently
217 accessible coordinates for dragging. The default accessible
218 coordinates are both the horizontal and the vertical; other two are
219 the horizontal only and the vertical only.
220 Sizing
222 The sizeable widgets can be dynamically resized. Regardless to the
223 amount of the selected widgets, only one widget at a time can be
224 resized. If the resized widget is selected in the object inspector
225 window, the size changes are reflected in the "size" property.
226 Context menus
228 The right-click ( or the other system-defined pop-up menu
229 invocation command) provides the menu, identical to the main
230 panel's Edit submenu.
231 The alternative context menus can be provided with some widgets (
233 for example, "TabbedNotebook" ), and are accessible with "control +
234 right click" combination.
235 Object inspector window
237 The inspector window reflects the events and properties of a widget.
238 To explicitly select a widget, it must be either clicked by the mouse
239 on the form window, or selected in the widget combo-box. Depending on
240 whether the properties or the events are selected, the left panel of
241 the inspector provides the properties or events list, and the right
242 panel - a value of the currently selected property or event. To toggle
243 between the properties and the events, use the button below the list.
244 The adjustable properties of a widget include an incomplete set of the
246 properties, returned by the class method "profile_default" ( the
247 detailed explanation see in Prima::Object). Among these are such basic
248 properties as "origin", "size", "name", "color", "font", "visible",
249 "enabled", "owner" and many others. All the widgets share some common
250 denominator, but almost all provide their own intrinsic properties.
251 Each property can be selected by the right-pane hosted property
252 selector; in such case, the name of a property is highlighted in the
253 list - that means, that the property is initialized. To remove a
254 property from the initialization list, double-click on it, so it is
255 grayed again. Some very basic properties as "name" can not be
256 deselected. This is because the builder keeps a name-keyed list;
257 another consequence of this fact is that no widgets of same name can
258 exist simultaneously within the builder.
259 The events, much like the properties, are accessible for direct change.
261 All the events provide a small editor, so the custom code can be
262 supplied. This code is executed when the form is run or loaded via
263 "Prima::VB::VBLoader" interface.
264 The full explanation of properties and events is not provided here. It
266 is not even the goal of this document, because the builder can work
267 with the widgets irrespective of their property or event capabilities;
268 this information is extracted by native toolkit functionality. To read
269 on what each property or event means, use the documentation on the
270 class of interest; Prima::Widget is a good start because it encompasses
271 the ground "Prima::Widget" functionality. The other widgets are (
272 hopefully ) documented in their modules, for example,
273 "Prima::ScrollBar" documentation can be found in Prima::ScrollBar.
274
276 Prima, Prima::VB::VBLoader
277
279 Dmitry Karasik, <dmitry@karasik.eu.org>.
280
282 This program is distributed under the BSD License.
283perl v5.38.0 2023-07-21 VB(1)