Patrick,
> The ones that Delphi creates for us look like
>
> type X = class(TForm)
> A
> B
> C etc
> public
> ...
> private
> ...
> end;
>
> According to the Help the first part (before public) is
> reserved for the
> form designer. There seems to be a bit more to it than that:
> any object that
> is put in here will be created automatically whereas any
> object declared
> under public, private or whatever has to be explicitly created by the
> programmer in code. Is that the case?
This should go into an FAQ, if there is one...
Anyway, the section in question will generate class members who are either
public or published. This depends on a compiler switch. The catch is if a
class has that switched to published, all of its descendants will "inherit"
that behaviour. By default TPersistent, has that switch to published - this
makes most classes in Delphi behave this way.
Now, to answer your question, the answer is maybe. In the case of a form,
the IDE "drops" the declarations for all components owned by the form into
that section. When the form is created, the constructor calls
InitInheritedComponent (I think) which will initialise all components in the
inheritance tree. It does this by first reading the DFM file from a
resource of the same name stored in the module (you can see a text version
of this resource when you click ALT+12 when the focus is on a form in the
IDE). The resource specifies the properties of the form, plus all owned
components to create (and their properties as well). The owned components
must first be registered by a call to RegisterClass. Because the components
are owned, you do not to free them explicitly - the destructor of your form
does that for you. Actually, you don't need a form to take advantage of
this. Any TComponent descended will do. Hope this answers your question.
Regards,
Dennis.
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