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- July, 1991
-
- D-Flat Version 6
-
- The source files in the DFLAT archive constitute the D-Flat windowing
- system. This is public domain code. You may use it in your
- applications without restriction. You may freely distribute source
- code. It would be nice if you would give credit to Dr. Dobb's Journal
- as the original publisher of the source code.
-
- The software build procedure makes a program named memopad.exe. It is
- a multiple-document notepad program. Observe the #define VERSION
- statement in dflat.h. The version number should correspond with the n
- in the DFLATn.ARC and DFnTXT.ARC filenames that you downloaded. Check
- the uploads periodically to see if there is a more recent version
- available.
-
- My CompuServe ID is 71101,1262. I monitor the DDJFORUM every day and
- prefer that you discuss D-Flat there so that every one can benefit
- from your comments.
-
- ======== Turbo C 2.0 =========
-
- To build with the Turbo C 2.0 make utility, change the
- three lines in the makefile so that they look like this:
-
- MSC = 0
- BORLAND_CPP = 0
- TURBOC = 1
-
- Set the DRIVE macro in the makefile to the drive where your compiler
- is installed.
-
- Type this command:
-
- C>make
-
- ============== Microsoft C 6.0
-
- To build with the Microsoft C nmake utility, make the first three
- lines of the makefile look like this:
-
- MSC = 1
- BORLAND_CPP = 0
- TURBOC = 0
-
- Set the DRIVE macro in the makefile to the drive where your compiler
- is installed.
-
- Type this command:
-
- C>nmake
-
- ========== Borland C++ 2.0 ============
-
- To build with the Borland C++ 2.0 make utility, make the first three
- lines of the makefile look like this:
-
- MSC = 0
- BORLAND_CPP = 1
- TURBOC = 0
-
- Set the DRIVE macro in the makefile to the drive where your compiler
- is installed.
-
- Type this command:
-
- C>make
-
- ========== WATCOM C 8.0 ============
-
- To build with Watcom C 8.0, type this command
-
- C>wmake /f makefile.wat
-
- =======================================================
-
- D-Flat uses Compressed help files. It uses an adaptation of the
- Huffman compression programs from the Dr. Dobb's Journal C
- Programming Column of early 1991. If the program finds the compressed
- MEMOPAD.HLP, it loads it. Otherwise, it looks for MEMOPAD.TXT, the
- ASCII version of the file, and loads that file instead. When you
- execute the Reload Help command on the Help menu, the program loads
- the same way. To test changes to the help file that you make from the
- MEMOPAD program, delete the MEMOPAD.HLP file so that the reload
- command loads the MEMOPAD.TXT file. You can compress MEMOPAD.TXT into
- MEMOPAD.HLP later. The program starts faster without compressed
- help.
-
- To compress the help file type this on the command line:
-
- C>huffc memopad.txt memopad.hlp
-
- ===============================================
-
- This is version 6. It includes these improvements:
-
- 1. Modeless dialog boxes work properly now.
-
- 2. Cascaded pull-down menus. The Tabs selection on the Options menu
- is now a cascaded pull-down. You can have up to three cascaded
- pull-down menus--that is, two cascades off of a selection on a
- pull-down menu.
-
- 3. You can set a window's colors to other than those defined for its
- class by using new API calls. See DFLAT.DOC.
-
- 4. The File menu has a Delete command, which will delete the file
- that is in the current text window.
-
- 5. Scroll bars work better and are more like the CUA specification.
-
- 6. D-Flat now tells the mouse to change its travel maximums when the
- screen size changes. Some mouse drivers do not automatically
- adjust.
-
- 7. Can use 40 and 132-column mode. The video system must be in that
- mode when you start the program. The mouse does not work in 132 col
- mode. No way yet to change to 132-column mode from a menu because I
- do not know the standard way to do that with a VGA. Some of the
- memopad windows and dialog boxes do not display properly in 40-column
- mode because they are too wide. An application that expects to run in
- 40-column mode would not define menus and windows that are too
- wide.
-
- 8. This version adds the BOX control window to dialog boxes to allow
- a labeled box to surround button groups. See the Options/Display
- command and the DisplayVGA, etc. dialog boxes to see how it works.
-
- 9. You can use the up and down arrows to move around the control
- windows on a dialog box. You can use the Shift+Tab key to back out of
- a single-line editbox control window on a dialog box.
-
- 10. Watcom C now supported.
-
- 11. You can Tab through the check boxes and radio buttons on a dialog
- box. Use the Options/Display command to see how it works. Press Tab
- or Shift+Tab repetitively to see the focus move among the buttons.
- Press Enter or the spacebar to toggle a selected check box or press a
- selected radio button. Up and down arrows are the same as Tab and
- Shift+Tab.
-
- 12. The DFLAT_APPLICATION #define in dflat.h is replaced with an
- external character array named DFlatApplication. The application code
- must declare the array with a value that will be used in messages and
- to build file names. See memopad.c for an example. This change allows
- you to build D-Flat into a library that more than one application can
- use.
-
- 13. This version includes a number of changes to reduce the amount of
- initialized data space (DGROUP) that D-Flat uses. The large memory
- model restricts that use to 64K, and D-Flat was using a lot of it for
- dialog box and menu tables.
-
- Al Stevens
-