Mark Morgan Lloyd schrieb:
Mattias Gaertner wrote:
Mark Morgan Lloyd <[email protected]> hat am 27.
Maybe the source editor of the lfm should be made readonly while the
form is
open, although I found the current state useful a few times and no one
has
complained yet.
Maybe. I think some way of locking the form down would be useful, as
supported by (at least some versions of) Delphi. I'm not so much
complaining now that I've a better understanding of why I was seeing
problems... except that I think setting one representation of a unit or
form r/o and still being able to change it via other representations or
windows is undesirable.
+1
A form can not really be made readonly because some things are not
controlled by
the IDE. For example the window manager and theme changes. And some
things have
cross-form side effects. For example editing the ancestor of a form.
Maybe a form can be marked as 'ask before saving changes'. But I
wonder if this
setting should really be per-form or if it would be better defined in
categories, like all forms in a directory, or forms not belonging to the
project.
My recent (bad) experience from working with D5 is, that the form layout
should be protected better against inadvertent changes, at least in
Lazarus. When my VM window was shrunk recently, all open forms were
resized, even if only the .pas file was open, and this change made them
unusable at runtime :-(
I'd really like an *option* (project setting!) to open a project with
all forms locked. Then it would be possible to e.g. fix bugs in a
project without risking changes to the DFM/LFM files. In a long-term
(commercial...) project *no* single developer, and *no* IDE, should be
allowed to change the *appearance* of the program accidentally.
In the best case it should be possible to preserve all control and form
*sizes and positions*, while changes to control properties (list styles,
handlers...), using OI and property editors, should be allowed.
Eventually a project (or form) layout file can be used, or another set
of form and control bounds, allowing to restore the actual bounds to
exactly these values. Something like "Save/Restore Layout" (or
Appearance) menu items. In a business project the forms' layout should
be password protected, so that only selected developers can change the
appearance of a released program *willingly*; in fact every make/build
should use the acknowledged project size/position values, regardless of
eventual changes to individual forms.
But while things like size changes apply to the content of a form, theme
changes wouldn't- only to its presentation during design.
+1
I accept that I'm very much in a minority here.
I'm not so sure. I don't think that the silent majority would have
objections against better protection of a project's appearance, against
inadvertent or automatic changes.
I wouldn't really have
noticed anything if I didn't have a very small number of programs that
I'm trying to keep working from everything like GTK1 and NT4 onwards: in
general experience suggests that that sort of effort is more hassle than
it's worth.
There exist many more scenarios, where changes to the layout of a
program GUI are undesireable, e.g. when a developer is hired to work on
an existing business program. I consider to implement a tool for
beforementioned save/restore functionality, usable with Delphi projects.
I really don't want to be guilty when a customer cannot use a program
any more, because some non-resizeable forms have been resized by some
accident on my machine :-(
DoDi
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