Dialog handling

Wihtin the exom framework dialogs are used to display information and give users the possibility to control the application. Handling user input is explained in section Supported Operating Systems. The data accessible within a dialog will be provided by an XmObject derived class attached to the dialog. So the dialog itself usually contain no data (and normally there is no need to derive a dialog, however it is possible).

The representaion of a dialog in application code is done via the class exom::XmDialog. After creating an instance of XmDialog a class derived from exom::XmObject have to be attached to it. This will normally be done by calling exom::XmDialog::DoModalObj() or exom::XmDialog::DoModalPath() like in the following sample:

    MyClass myClass;
    XmDialog dlg ("MyDialog", 0);
    dlg.DoModalObj (myClass);

Within the call of DoModalObj() an instance of exom::XmUIDialog will be created, which is counterpart of the dialog within the UI subsystem. DoModalObj() will be finished after the dialog is closed. To ensure the independance to the UI subsystem the application have only access to the exom::XmDialog by default. If it is necessary to support additional dialog features you can use a derivation of XmDialog within your application.

The following screenshots show the representaion of a dialog in different UI subsystems.

Default Win32 dialog

The implementation of a command line dialog is part of the exom core. The following console application use exom::XmCmdline for a command line interface.

Console dialog

Customized Win32 dialog

All these dialogs provide the same possbility of interaction for a user, using the same implementation within the application library.