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Has anyone done any 'advanced' Dialogs in PC-DMIS Basic?

I'm struggling with trying to produce an advanced dialog in PC-DMIS Basic, i.e. one where entry fields are turned on/off when certain radio buttons are clicked, data entry fields filled when selecting a feature in a combo box, etc. etc.

The Help isn't very helpful, and sometimes obviously wrong - unfortunately that help comes verbatim from the Cypress Enable product which is used in PCD, and googling doesn't help...

I've come quite far, but am having large problems with radio groups, as each radio group has it's items numbered 0-N, but the click event doesn't tell me which group has been clicked, just the number and (mangled) caption of the item, which means that I can only have one radio group in each dialog!? Button clicks give me the wrong button caption (I get "Cancel" when I click the "OK" button, and an empty string when clicking the "Cancel" button).

Also, I haven't managed to set the selected value of a listbox or radio group programmatically (DlgText, DlgValue, nothing happens) while the dialog is active.

It's not that I have to do it, it started as a way to try to learn using Dialog events in Basic, hopefully to be able to tell others how to do it, but I'm on the brink of giving up now after two days of experimentation (OK, I've done some SW support during those days, too) and frustration.

Has anyone fiddled with this? Any insights? Examples?
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  • Can you explain to me why you even want to use advanced dialogs? What can they do that Forms can't do more easily?


    Well, I'm like the mountain climber - "Because it's there!". And, as I said in the first post:

    It's not that I have to do it, it started as a way to try to learn using Dialog events in Basic, hopefully to be able to tell others how to do it


    Being Software Support means I have to answer questions, and to do that I need the answers myself. Sometimes the answer will be "Don't do it!", which is the direction this question goes for the moment...

    Additionally, I'm not a big fan of Forms, where you need to learn yet another variant of [not very documented] Basic if you want to do something fancy. To be honest, neither Forms nor PCD Basic will be my choice if I have the power to choose - it will be my faithful [Borland] Delphi 5.0 (Or Delphi X if the customer wants it to look 'modern'), as I can whip up a mockup for discussions in ten minutes, and a complete, working, fancy dialog/form, with error handling, default values, and everything (including the kitchen sink!) in an hour or two, with that tool (it takes a bit longer with the Delphi X, that's why I prefer the old 5.0). Making the dialogs/forms as 3:rd party .exe files also means that I can run with PC-DMIS completely hidden, if need be.
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  • Can you explain to me why you even want to use advanced dialogs? What can they do that Forms can't do more easily?


    Well, I'm like the mountain climber - "Because it's there!". And, as I said in the first post:

    It's not that I have to do it, it started as a way to try to learn using Dialog events in Basic, hopefully to be able to tell others how to do it


    Being Software Support means I have to answer questions, and to do that I need the answers myself. Sometimes the answer will be "Don't do it!", which is the direction this question goes for the moment...

    Additionally, I'm not a big fan of Forms, where you need to learn yet another variant of [not very documented] Basic if you want to do something fancy. To be honest, neither Forms nor PCD Basic will be my choice if I have the power to choose - it will be my faithful [Borland] Delphi 5.0 (Or Delphi X if the customer wants it to look 'modern'), as I can whip up a mockup for discussions in ten minutes, and a complete, working, fancy dialog/form, with error handling, default values, and everything (including the kitchen sink!) in an hour or two, with that tool (it takes a bit longer with the Delphi X, that's why I prefer the old 5.0). Making the dialogs/forms as 3:rd party .exe files also means that I can run with PC-DMIS completely hidden, if need be.
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