Borland Visual Solutions Pack
Click a topic listed below to see information about that topic. Read Essentials if you are new to the Borland Visual Solutions Pack.


Essentials

Welcome to the Borland Visual Solutions Pack, a powerful companion product for any development tool that supports VBX files, including Borland C++ 4.0, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Microsoft Visual C++.  The Borland Visual Solutions Pack consists of more than 25 custom controls providing a wide range of capabilities: from databases, spreadsheets, and word processors to communications, 3-D charts, and image editors.

Custom controls blend seamlessly into a supported programming environment, providing powerful, pre-built application components to the developer's tool set.

Using Borland C++ 4.0

Under Borland C++ 4.0, custom controls are accessed from within Resource Workshop when creating a dialog box and are represented by icons on the Tools Palette.  Click a topic below for more information about using custom controls in Borland C++ 4.0.

Installing a Custom Control

Using a Custom Control

Adding Event Handlers

Using Other Development Tools

Please consult the respective documentation for information about using custom controls in other development environments.


Custom Controls

Custom controls are pre-made, reusable application components that allow developers to visually add extensive functionality to their windows applications with virtually no coding required, saving days or even weeks of programming time.


Installing a Custom Control in Borland C++ 4.0

In Borland C++ 4.0, you invoke a custom control by first loading the corresponding custom control file.  You need only do this once for each control.

From Resource Workshop, select File | Install control library and choose a custom control file from the file list.  Custom control files are those with .VBX extensions.  Note that the installation program places all custom controls and associated DLLs in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.

After making your selection, an icon representing the control is added to the Tools Palette.  All the controls that are included with the Borland Visual Solutions Pack are shown below.  Click the name of a control to find out what you can do with it.


Using a Custom Control in Borland C++ 4.0

To use a custom control in Borland C++ 4.0, click on the icon and drop it onto a dialog box just as you would with the standard Borland controls.  To change the properties associated with the control, such as background color or font type, double click the control and a list of properties is displayed.

Properties can be changed either at design time using Resource Workshop or at run time using the TVBXControl class if you are creating an ObjectWindows 2.0 application.  See Adding Event Handlers.


Adding Event Handlers in Borland C++ 4.0

Event handlers can be added for any custom control event.  If your application was developed using the AppExpert, adding a handler involves simply right clicking the custom control to bring up the ClassExpert.

ObjectWindows 2.0 provides a TVBXControl class that encapsulates the retrieving and setting of properties for VBX custom controls.  This is further facilitated by a utility called VBXGen, which is located in the Borland C++ 4.0 BIN directory.  VBXGen derives a class from TVBXControl for the custom control selected and then generates member functions for modifying all the properties associated with the control, making it much easier to use.  A header file is created that contains the class definition.  These header files have been created for you and reside in BVSP\INCLUDE.

With Borland C++ 4.0, you can use either C or C++ to access control properties.


Database

Drop in database front ends that access dBASE and Paradox tables with Query By Form and support for multiple users.


Spreadsheet

Create full-featured spreadsheets that display and calculate data.


Notebook Tabs

Organize your applications with notebook tabs, especially when a selection is to be made among a number of windows.


Word Processor

Add WYSIWYG word processors with multiple typefaces, fonts, and point sizes, and a formatting ruler for setting margins, tabs, and spacing.


Communications

Create sophisticated communications interfaces with TTY and ANSI terminal emulations, as well as XModem file transfers.


Image Editor

Display up to 24-bit graphic images in a variety of file formats, which can be zoomed, panned, cropped, sharpened, and softened.


3-D Charts

Drop in over 30 3-D and 2-D styles of charts that can be rotated, resized, and formatted with virtually every option imaginable.


Gadget - Animated Button

Enhance the look and feel of your buttons by making them perform an animated flic when clicked - just one of the many exciting gadgets included.


Other Gadgets

Select from a host of eye-catching gadgets to give your user interfaces a professional look such as animated buttons, gauges, spinners, sliders, marquees, clocks, alarms, and even dice and cards for the gaming enthusiasts.


Brief Description of Controls

The Borland Visual Solutions Pack includes more than 25 custom controls that were created by a broad group of third party vendors.  Click a topic below for a brief description of each control.  For further information regarding each of the controls, please refer to the User's Guide.

Database

Spreadsheet

Notebook Tabs

Communications

Word Processor

Image Editor

3-D Charts

Gadgets


Database

The database controls consist of a set of 12 controls that enable developers to add sophisticated database front-ends quickly and with virtually no coding.  The custom controls encapsulate substantial database functionality, including the ability to visually generate simple or master-detail forms, bind fields to database columns, and perform Query By Form.  You simply drag and drop these controls onto a dialog box and set their properties.  Applications built using these controls work with dBASE and Paradox tables.

The 12 database controls can be divided into two main groups, 4 Architecture Controls and 8 Visual Controls.  The Architecture Controls help you organize the structure of a database application, converting the programming environment into a visual database workbench. The Visual Controls contain special database properties that include the ability to bind directly to columns in database tables.

These controls were created by:

Coromandel Industries, Inc.

70-15 Austin St., Third Floor

Forest Hills, NY 11375

718-793-7963

718-793-9710 Fax


Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet control creates a full-featured spreadsheet that can accept tabular input and display data.  The major features of the control include:

--	Four cell types are supported: Float, Static Text, Edit, and Picture.

--	A powerful calculation engine is provided that allows formulas to be entered into individual cells either by the application or by the end-user.

--	Supports multiple fonts and colors that can be applied to entire rows and columns

The control provides more than 60 properties to format and tailor the spreadsheet according to your application's specific needs.

The control was created by:

FarPoint Technologies, Inc.

569 Southlake Boulevard

Richmond, VA 23236

804-378-0432

804-378-1015 Fax


Notebook Tabs

The tabs control displays a number of notebook tabs and is useful whenever a selection is to be made among a number of windows, such as in an address book.  When one of the tabs is clicked, its state is changed to "active," and a Click event is generated.  Event handling code can then be added to take the appropriate action. The ActiveTab property is used to identify the tab that was clicked.

The control was created by:

Sax Software

203 Bellevue Way, Suite 217

Bellevue, WA 98004

1-800-MIKE SAX

202-785-3607 Fax


Word Processor

The word processor control allows the creation of a full-featured WYSIWYG word processor. In addition to basic text editing, the control includes the following features:

--	Supports multiple fonts, sizes, and styles, such as Courier, Times Roman, Bold, and Italic.

--	Provides a ruler along the top of the control that allows users to set margins, tabs, and spacing without any effort from the programmer.

--	Reads and writes Rich Text Format (RTF) files.

--	Passes ANSI text through the clipboard.

The ruler bar provides the standard functions commonly found on rulers in other word processors.  The control responds automatically to mouse clicks on the ruler bar.

The control was created by:

Access Softek

2550 9th St., Suite 206

Berkeley, CA 94710

510-848-0606

510-848-0608 Fax


3-D Charts

The 3-D chart control allows developers to add impressive charts to their applications.  It can serve either as a regular charting tool or as a database front-end for displaying data.  The control provides the following features:

--	More than 30 2-D and 3-D charts (area, line, bar, pie and column charts).

--	More than 50 different styles (legend styles, label styles, axes styles, chart title, etc.).

--	Supports rotation for 3-D charts so that charts can be viewed from different angles.  To facilitate 3-D rotations, an automatic self-rotation about the y axis is also implemented.

--	Supports scrolling along the x axis ( y axis for bar charts ), which is useful when there is a large set of data points to be displayed.

If the chart is used as a database front-end, a memory cache of a range of data will be used.  The control automatically retrieves data from the database and will prompt the application for more data only when needed.  If the chart is used as a regular plotting device, all data will be kept in memory.

The control was created by:

Kansmen Corporation

558 Valley Way

Milpitas, CA 95035

408-263-9881

408-263-9883 Fax


Communications

The communications control integrates serial communications, terminal emulation, and binary file transfers in your Windows applications, so that you can drop in sophisticated communications interfaces in a matter of minutes.  It supports TTY and ANSI terminal emulations, as well as XModem file transfers.

The Port property specifies the comm port you want to open.  By setting AutoReceive and AutoSend  to TRUE, the control automatically processes serial characters that arrive at the serial port, and sends characters typed at the keyboard to the port when your communications terminal window has the input focus.

Since TTY is a subset of ANSI emulation, there is no need to set a property to switch between the two emulations.  Both are active simultaneously.

The Download and Upload properties manage binary file transfers using the popular XModem protocol.  When you assign a filename to these properties, a file transfer is started and a dialog box is displayed containing transfer status information.

The control was created by:

Sax Software

203 Bellevue Way, Suite 217

Bellevue, WA 98004

1-800-MIKE SAX

202-785-3607 Fax


Image Editor

The image editor control displays and edits graphic images, allowing you to easily build professional graphics handling and image processing capabilities into your applications.  The control includes the following features:

--	Displays true color (24-bit), SVGA (8-bit), & VGA (4-bit) images.

--	Supports BMP, PCX, DIB and TGA file formats.

--	Allows image rotation, zooming, panning, cropping, as well as sharpening and softening.

--	Provides powerful functions to program advanced graphics capabilities.

The properties and functions can be combined into simple, yet powerful assignment statements. You can transfer entire images between multiple instances of the controls, transfer source images over portions of destination images, and resize source or destination images. By using one of the functions, you can process the image at the same time. The coding complexity of many applications can be greatly reduced through creative use of assignment statements. For example, a single assignment statement can be used to clip a section of a graphic, resize and color reduce the clip, and then paste the clip into another graphic.

The control was created by:

Media Architects

1075 NW Murray Rd. Suite 230

Portland, OR 97229

503-297-5010

503-297-6744 Fax


Gadgets

Nine Gadget Controls are included to help developers spruce up their applications and give their user-interfaces a professional look: animated buttons, gauges, spinners, sliders, marquees, clocks, alarms, dice, and cards.

Animated Button

Other Gadgets


Gadgets - Animated Button

The animated button control allows you to make a wide variety of button controls:

--	Animated Buttons -- Define a sequence of images to form an animated flic that will play each time you click on a button.  Four different animation cycles are available.

--	Multistate Buttons -- A Multistate button can have any number of states, each with its own unique image.

--	2-State Animated Buttons -- A button that supports two states (like a checkbox) except that the transition between the two states can be fully animated.

--	Enhanced Standard Buttons -- Enhanced versions of the checkbox and option button controls.  You can define the appearance of a button in both pressed and unpressed states.

--	Toolbar Buttons -- Create a toolbar similar to those found in other Windows applications.

The control was created by:

Desaware

5 Town & Country Village, Suite 790

San Jose, CA 95128

408-377-4770

408-371-3530 Fax


Other Gadgets

The other gadgets include:

--	Gauge Control -- Displays your choice of linear (filled), needle or bitmap style gauges.  It can also use custom bitmaps of gauges that you create, instead of the bitmaps supplied.

--	Spin Control -- Used to increment or decrement values and comes with an optional label and 3-D appearance.

--	Slide Control -- A scrollbar-like control used to display a custom scale and button. You move the slide's button to set the value of the control.

--	Marquee Control -- An enhanced label control that can show a moving banner of text, with or without a set of "moving" bitmaps.

--	Clock Control -- Displays a clock in digital or analog form.  It also has an alarm feature. You can use the default clock images or your own bitmaps.

--	Alarm Control -- An audio-visual "attention getter" that comes in three default styles: telephone, alarm clock or wrist alarm. You can also define your own images.

--	Dice Control -- A specialized picture box control that displays dice.

--	Card Control -- Lets you display any card from a standard 52-card deck of playing cards.

The controls were created by:

MicroHelp, Inc.

4359 Shallowford Industrial Parkway

Marietta, GA 30066

404-516-0899

404-516-1099 Fax