Hi Robert (and everyone else) -- Thanks for taking the time to give me such a long and welcoming message. Like you, I'm depending on lists as my only contact with other programmers--first for Python, then VB .NET, and now finally for Delphi (...the best of the three languages for my purposes, much as I liked Python :-)
I thought you provided a nice rationale for the advantages of separating the GUI from the business class(es) (or custom made components) of an app. I was sold before--and now I'm even more sold! I'm curious about some of the specifics people use to exchange information between the separate classes/components. At the level where I am now, I tend to think about getting info from the GUI object to the business object by just directly accessing one or more of the business class's variables or properties. Similarly, I think about info going the other way by just writing functions in the business class which return info ready to be used by a GUI element. For both data input and output in the business class I tend to make these variables have class level scope, so they can easily be manipulated by any procedures/functions I write. Still, it doesn't always go smoothly--that's why I'm curious about what other people do. What if, for example, I need a business class function to return multiple kinds of data? (...I guess I'm not totally up on all the possible data types that a function can return). Here's another example: I've got some code that I almost automatically copy and paste into everything I do so that the application will create an .ini file to store window position and size. I often make other entries in the code before I'm finished--if I'm writing a game, for example, I might want to store a high scores table, or another application might include a most recently used file list. Even if I concentrate only on the code common to all my apps, I haven't fully figured out how to put the code into a separate class/component that I could reuse, because the procedure stores (or sets) settings for the main form, e.g., Form1. To put this kind of code in a separate class, wouldn't you need to pass in Form1--or a reference to every Form1 property that's being saved in the .ini file? ... Seems like it's more efficient to just copy and paste the code from one app to the next. What do you think? Thanks again for your response; I think I'm going to like this group :-) -- Al _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list -> [email protected] http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi
