Provided by: libprima-perl_1.28-1.4_amd64 
NAME
VB - Visual Builder for the Prima toolkit
DESCRIPTION
Visual Builder is a RAD-style suite for designing forms under the Prima toolkit. It provides rich set of
perl-composed widgets, whose can be inserted into a form by simple actions. The form can be stored in a
file and loaded by either user program or a simple wrapper, "utils/fmview.pl"; the form can be also
stored as a valid perl program.
A form file typically has .fm extension, an can be loaded by using Prima::VB::VBLoader module. The
following example is the only content of "fmview.pl":
use Prima qw(Application VB::VBLoader);
my $ret = Prima::VBLoad( $ARGV[0] );
die "$@\n" unless $ret;
$ret-> execute;
and is usually sufficient for executing a form file.
Help
The builder provides three main windows, that are used for designing. These are called main panel, object
inspector and form window. When the builder is started, the form window is empty.
The main panel consists of the menu bar, speed buttons and the widget buttons. If the user presses a
widget button, and then clicks the mouse on the form window, the designated widget is inserted into the
form and becomes a child of the form window. If the click was made on a visible widget in the form
window, the newly inserted widget becomes a children of that widget. After the widget is inserted, its
properties are accessible via the object inspector window.
The menu bar contains the following commands:
File
New Closes the current form and opens a new, empty form. If the old form was not saved, the user is
asked if the changes made have to be saved.
This command is an alias to a 'new file' icon on the panel.
Open
Invokes a file open dialog, so a .fm form file can be opened. After the successful file load,
all form widgets are visible and available for editing.
This command is an alias to an 'open folder' icon on the panel.
Save
Stores the form into a file. The user here can select a type of the file to be saved. If the form
is saved as .fm form file, then it can be re-loaded either in the builder or in the user program
( see Prima::VB::VBLoader for details ). If the form is saved as .pl program, then it can not be
loaded; instead, the program can be run immediately without the builder or any supplementary
code.
Once the user assigned a name and a type for the form, it is never asked when selecting this
command.
This command is an alias to a 'save on disk' icon on the panel.
Save as
Same as Save, except that a new name or type of file are asked every time the command is invoked.
Close
Closes the form and removes the form window. If the form window was changed, the user is asked if
the changes made have to be saved.
Edit
Copy
Copies the selected widgets into the clipboard, so they can be inserted later by using Paste
command. The form window can not be copied.
Paste
Reads the information, put by the builder Copy command into the clipboard, and inserts the
widgets into the form window. The child-parent relation is kept by names of the widgets; if the
widget with the name of the parent of the clipboard-read widgets is not found, the widgets are
inserted into the form window. The form window is not affected by this command.
Delete
Deletes the selected widgets. The form window can not be deleted.
Select all
Selects all of the widgets, inserted in the form window, except the form window itself.
Duplicate
Duplicates the selected widgets. The form window is not affected by this command.
Align
This menu item contains z-ordering actions, that are performed on selected widgets. These are:
Bring to front Send to back Step forward Step backward Restore order
Change class
Changes the class of an inserted widget. This is an advanced option, and can lead to confusions or
errors, if the default widget class and the supplied class differ too much. It is used when the
widget that has to be inserted is not present in the builder installation. Also, it is called
implicitly when a loaded form does not contain a valid widget class; in such case Prima::Widget class
is assigned.
Creation order
Opens the dialog, that manages the creation order of the widgets. It is not that important for the
widget child-parent relation, since the builder tracks these, and does not allow a child to be
created before its parent. However, the explicit order might be helpful in a case, when, for example,
"tabOrder" property is left to its default value, so it is assigned according to the order of widget
creation.
Toggle lock
Changes the lock status for selected widgets. The lock, if set, prevents a widget from being selected
by mouse, to avoid occasional positional changes. This is useful when a widget is used as owner for
many sub-widgets.
Ctrl+mouse click locks and unlocks a widget.
View
Object inspector
Brings the object inspector window, if it was hidden or closed.
Add widgets
Opens a file dialog, where the additional VB modules can be located. The modules are used for
providing custom widgets and properties for the builder. As an example, the
Prima/VB/examples/Widgety.pm module is provided with the builder and the toolkit. Look inside
this file for the implementation details.
Reset guidelines
Reset the guidelines on the form window into a center position.
Snap to guidelines
Specifies if the moving and resizing widget actions must treat the form window guidelines as
snapping areas.
Snap to grid
Specifies if the moving and resizing widget actions must use the form window grid granularity
instead of the pixel granularity.
Run This command hides the form and object inspector windows and 'executes' the form, as if it would
be run by "fmview.pl". The execution session ends either by closing the form window or by
calling Break command.
This command is an alias to a 'run' icon on the panel.
Break
Explicitly terminates the execution session, initiated by Run command.
Help
About
Displays the information about the visual builder.
Help
Displays the information about the usage of the visual builder.
Widget property
Invokes a help viewer on Prima::Widget manpage and tries to open a topic, corresponding to the
current selection of the object inspector property or event list. While this manpage covers far
not all ( but still many ) properties and events, it is still a little bit more convenient than
nothing.
Form window
The form widget is a common parent for all widgets, created by the builder. The form window provides the
following basic navigation functionality.
Guidelines
The form window contains two guidelines, the horizontal and the vertical, drawn as blue dashed lines.
Dragging with the mouse can move these lines. If menu option "Snap to guidelines" is on, the widgets
moving and sizing operations treat the guidelines as the snapping areas.
Selection
A widget can be selected by clicking with the mouse on it. There can be more than one selected widget
at a time, or none at all. To explicitly select a widget in addition to the already selected ones,
hold the "shift" key while clicking on a widget. This combination also deselects the widget. To
select all widgets on the form window, call "Select all" command from the menu. To prevent widgets
from being occasionally selected, lock them with "Edit/Toggle lock" command or Ctrl+mouse click.
Moving
Dragging the mouse can move the selected widgets. The widgets can be snapped to the grid or the
guidelines during the move. If one of the moving widgets is selected in the object inspector window,
the coordinate changes are reflected in the "origin" property.
If the "Tab" key is pressed during the move, the mouse pointer is changed between three states, each
reflecting the currently accessible coordinates for dragging. The default accessible coordinates are
both the horizontal and the vertical; other two are the horizontal only and the vertical only.
Sizing
The sizeable widgets can be dynamically resized. Regardless to the amount of the selected widgets,
only one widget at a time can be resized. If the resized widget is selected in the object inspector
window, the size changes are reflected in the "size" property.
Context menus
The right-click ( or the other system-defined pop-up menu invocation command) provides the menu,
identical to the main panel's Edit submenu.
The alternative context menus can be provided with some widgets ( for example, "TabbedNotebook" ),
and are accessible with "control + right click" combination.
Object inspector window
The inspector window reflects the events and properties of a widget. To explicitly select a widget, it
must be either clicked by the mouse on the form window, or selected in the widget combo-box. Depending on
whether the properties or the events are selected, the left panel of the inspector provides the
properties or events list, and the right panel - a value of the currently selected property or event. To
toggle between the properties and the events, use the button below the list.
The adjustable properties of a widget include an incomplete set of the properties, returned by the class
method "profile_default" ( the detailed explanation see in Prima::Object). Among these are such basic
properties as "origin", "size", "name", "color", "font", "visible", "enabled", "owner" and many others.
All the widgets share some common denominator, but almost all provide their own intrinsic properties.
Each property can be selected by the right-pane hosted property selector; in such case, the name of a
property is highlighted in the list - that means, that the property is initialized. To remove a property
from the initialization list, double-click on it, so it is grayed again. Some very basic properties as
"name" can not be deselected. This is because the builder keeps a name-keyed list; another consequence of
this fact is that no widgets of same name can exist simultaneously within the builder.
The events, much like the properties, are accessible for direct change. All the events provide a small
editor, so the custom code can be supplied. This code is executed when the form is run or loaded via
"Prima::VB::VBLoader" interface.
The full explanation of properties and events is not provided here. It is not even the goal of this
document, because the builder can work with the widgets irrespective of their property or event
capabilities; this information is extracted by native toolkit functionality. To read on what each
property or event means, use the documentation on the class of interest; Prima::Widget is a good start
because it encompasses the ground "Prima::Widget" functionality. The other widgets are ( hopefully )
documented in their modules, for example, "Prima::ScrollBar" documentation can be found in
Prima::ScrollBar.
SEE ALSO
Prima, Prima::VB::VBLoader
AUTHOR
Dmitry Karasik, <dmitry@karasik.eu.org>.
COPYRIGHT
This program is distributed under the BSD License.