File: InterfaceElements0.97.zip
Author: Attila Mezei (amezei@mail.datanet.hu)
Release: 0.97 (Jun. 26th, 1997)
Compatibility: AADR9
Location: contrib/develop
Description: Resource&GUI editor
Notes: 

Interface Elements is a resource & GUI editor with add-on and drag&drop support.
You can design the user interface of your program in minutes, and then
generate the sources of your classes. You will not need to modify these classes, 
but inherit from them, putting your tasks in the derived class. For your convenience 
the skeleton of the derived classes are also generated with the possible methods 
which you have to implement, but these classes are not maintained or overwritten 
by Interface Elements. This way the generated source is separated from the
user written source. It is possible to add/remove/modify menu items and views even 
after compilation without recompiling the sources.

Interface Elements uses this principle: the GUI elements (gadgets/widgets/whatever you call them) 
are not just empty graphical objects but behind each element there is a variable 
(or class/structure...) which the element can read from/control/write to. For example 
if you create an 'Editable Text' and specify the text as "%.3f", and the variable 
as type float, the 'Editable Text' will know how to initialize the BTextView, 
and how to put the result back to the variable, you just need to specify the address 
of that float variable. This is all you need to do, and the rest are handled
by the IE classes, the generated classes, and the add-ons.

Advantages:

-  Edit resource files, providing copy&paste and drag&drop operations.
-  Show a live clipboard.
-  Create and modify the GUI of your application quickly and easily
-  Generate C++ source, and IE maintains the (window/menu..) sources it creates 
   through the project lifetime
-  You can add/remove/modify menu items and views without needing to recompile your sources
-  Provides classes for accessing and instantiating windows and menus.
-  Low overhead; the size of the generated classes 
   and the files you have to include in your project is only a few kilobytes.
-  You can write new resource editor add-ons and GUI element add-ons 
   which are capable of emitting C++ source fragments for quick application prototyping.



Disadvantages:

-  The GUI editing part of Interface Elements is not suitable for command line 
   utilities or programs using only BWindowScreen
-  Interface Elements does not use or even realize other classes in your project.