Introduction to Devguide

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You can use Devguide to create user interfaces that conform to the OPEN LOOK user interface. Assemble the elements of a user interface by dragging visual representations of the elements onto the workspace of the monitor screen and putting the elements together. You can assemble windows, control areas, panes, buttons, menus, sliders, and other OPEN LOOK UI elements in your interface and then test their operation together while still using Devguide.

Available Companion Tools

Devguide works with two toolkits: the XView toolkit, and the OPEN LOOK Intrinsics Toolkit (OLIT). The Devguide software you receive includes toolkit code generators that you can use with Devguide. The code generators are:

GXV - Use GXV when you want to generate an XView application.
GOLIT - Use GOLIT when you want to generate an OLIT application.

How the Tools and Devguide Fit Together

When you finish assembling the elements of a user interface, save the interface into one or more Guide Interface Language (GIL) files. You can recall the GIL files later for modification or to generate source code. Use one of Devguide's companion programs (GXV or GOLIT) to generate window system code from GIL files. Then add your code to complete your application.

Naming Conventions

As you create elements in Devguide, each interface element stored in a single GIL file must have a unique name. It's very important that you don't assign the same name to more than one element in the interface--if you do, you'll have problems with name clashing (multiply defined symbols) during the compile. You can, however, use the same element name in separate GIL files as long as the name occurs only once in each GIL file. Because windows tend to include parallel elements, it's often easy to give those elements the same name. If you store each window in a separate GIL file, you can use the same name within each window without worrying about compiler errors.

The connections you specify for interface elements are global to an application, and must each have a unique name. A connection should be called by the same name every time you use it, whether it occurs in the same GIL file or across two or more GIL files. See "Handling Events Using Connections" on page 81 for further details on connections.