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DLG Setup

In order to make yourself DLG to an effective tool for production, you should know a few details:

After each answer we provided bookmarks at the right edge of the screen. You can jump back to the top by clicking on it.









Delivery

When you download our software, you receive a compressed software in self-extracting and self-installing format. Just activate this executable and follow the prompts appearing on screen.

In the self-extracting package there is, along with the DLG software, a documentation in PDF-format ('portable document file' format) . This is the most universal document format available today. If you need a PDF- Reader for printout, you can download it free of charge from http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html .

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Install

When you download our software, you get a self-extracting package. During the self-extraction process you will be asked where to "extract to". Type in the name of the directory you want to become your future DLG default directory (or simply use the proposed default name.) If this directory does not exist yet, it will be created.
In the DLG default directory all your bitmap files will be stored. Thus you can develop all your projects in different sub-directories. Still you are able to access from a central pool of files all the bitmap files you need. (DLG is designed such that all these files are expected in the DLG default directory, unless otherwise specified.)

We recommend to keep a copy of the downloaded package on diskette and to keep it in a safe place. (The same you should do every time you upgrade to a higher DLG grade.) Should you need to re-install DLG some time later (due to a hardware failure, a modification in your development system, etc.) you can save some time if you don't need to download it again.

Before Install

Make sure that your development system is installed before you install DLG. (If it is not, install it first.)
By the DLG installation program you will be asked for the sub-directory where to store the DLG library to. Usually this will be a sub-directory under the main directory of your development system named "LIBRARY", "LIB" or similar. Look where all the other libraries are stored. You can find it easily by searching for  *.lib  in your Explorer, starting from the main directory of the development system.
You will also be asked where to store the DLG header file to. Search for  *.h  in your Explorer, starting from the main directory of your development system. Usually it will be named "INCLUDE", "INCL" or similar.

The DLG's can be installed/upgraded in any order you like,
only  Dlg Basic  must be installed first.

If you have troubles,
run  Uninstall.exe  (part of  DLG Basic  download)
and install all over again.

Install Dialog

After self-extraction, our installation program will present a dialog with the two questions mentioned above. Type in your responses. (Or simply click the "Browse" button. Then you can select the LIBRARY and the INCLUDE sub-directory visually.)
Have a look at our installation dialog: This is how you, too, can make your dialogs very user-friendly. All you need to do that are some higher DLG grades.
When you are done with all the inputs, click the "OK" button (or press the ENTER-key).

After closing the dialog, a message box will come up summarizing all the inputs done so far (DLG default directory, LIBRARY directory, INCLUDE directory). You will be asked:  "Is this correct?" 
- If you click the  Yes  button, installation will proceed.
- If you respond  No , the dialog will be repeated. So you can modify your inputs as often as you need.
- Or you can click  Cancel . Then the installation will be aborted altogether.
Our installation program will remain stored in the DLG default directory, so you can activate it later at any time.

If you click  Yes  in the message box, the installation process begins.

Files being Installed

First a new file  Dlg.ini  will be created. In it all the access paths to system resources (e.g. for multimedia support), to your LIBRARY and INCLUDE directory, etc. will be stored.
Before storing it to disk, the installation checks whether there is already an old file  Dlg.ini. If an old file is found, you will be asked  File 'Dlg.ini' already existing - overwrite?  We provided this message to help you not to overwrite your old file inadvertently. If you want to do a complete re-installation, you should reply  Yes . If you did some modifications in your .ini-file that you don't want to lose, you should reply  No . The dialog process will continue normally then.

The next installation step is, to copy the DLG-library  Dlg.lib  to the directory you determined to be your LIBRARY directory. To that end, it is checked first whether there is already a file with the same name but an earlier creation time. If found, it is overwritten by the newer library. (Thus you can be sure always to have the most up-to-date file in your DLG.) The downloaded file is copied to the DLG default directory.

The next step tries to do the same with copying the DLG header file  dlg.h  to the directory you determined to be your INCLUDE directory. Again, if an older file with the same name is found, it will be overwritten. The original file will again be copied to the DLG default directory.

Final Install Steps

Finally another message confirms  "DLG installation successful"  if all new files could be copied correctly. Now you will be asked whether you want to read a short text summarizing what you should modify in your development system to fully integrate DLG. It might be helpful if you never used DLG before. If this is a re-installation, you won't need it. (If you would like to have a hardcopy of this text, you can print it right away: click the "Print" item in the "File" menu. Later on, you can revisit this text in the file  Readme.txt  in your DLG default directory.)
If, however, you responded  No  to the question  "... - overwrite?"  or if any of the files could not be copied successfully, the final message reads  "Installation incomplete or not successful" .

If anything unusual happened during Installation, you should consider to copy the files manually:
Dlg.h to your INCLUDE directory,
Dlg.lib to your LIBRARY directory.

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Using DLG in your Application

In the source code of your application, be sure to #include header file  dlg.h  and to call  InitDLG()  before the first DLG feature is called. From now on you can use all DLG features that are available in your DLG, just like any of the standard C/C++ runtime procedures.

If you want to have the same graphic symbols in your application's debug list as we used in our samples, in the .rc-file of your application you should provide a line

IDR_SCTLTYPES BITMAP DISCARDABLE "<path to DlgDefDir>\Sctltypes.bmp"

That's why file  Sctltypes.bmp  came along when you downloaded  Dlg10.exe .

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Re-install

If you later need to re-install DLG for any reason,  DLG Basic  provides only controls of Windows 3.1 type ('Static', 'Edit', 'Button', 'ListBox' and 'ComboBox') plus a DLG-specific control 'DirSelect'. Upgrading to higher DLG's can also be done by  Install  programs you will find in your DLG default directory. When finished, be sure to have again all your header files  dlgx.h  in your INCLUDE and the latest library file  dlgx.lib  in your LIBRARY sub-directory.

An easier way to maintain your data security is to run a  full-backup  regularly. Then you should make sure that all sub-directories of your development system are backed up, as well as the DLG default directory. (If you can restore your development system from your regular full-backups, you don't need all that re-installation and re-upgrading, even after a major system breakdown.)

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Upgrade

In  DLG Basic  only controls of Windows 3.1 type ('Static', 'Edit', 'Button', 'ListBox' and 'ComboBox') plus a DLG-specific control 'DirSelect' are available. If you want to have more DLG features available, buy higher DLG's additionally.

When you download a higher DLG, you get a self-extracting package, consisting of a program  Installxx.exe  and, with higher DLG's (DLG Launching and above), also a file  dlgx.h . Occasionally there will also be a new library  dlgx.lib  in the package.

We recommend to download it to the DLG default directory. When you activate it, it self-extracts and automatically enhances the availability of your DLG. If there are files  .h ,  .lib  in the package, they are automatically copied to the sub-directories you designated to be the LIBRARY and the INCLUDE directory of your development system, when you installed DLG for the first time. The downloaded files (if any) always remain in your DLG default library. Thus, if anything goes wrong with upgrading, you still have the backups in your DLG default library.
(If you changed your DLG default directory meanwhile or the structure of your development system, you should update the lines  DLGdefDir= ,  LIBsubDir=  and  INCLsubDir=  accordingly. You find these lines in the file  Dlg.ini  in the Windows-directory. The same trick you can use if any of the system resources used by DLG has changed.)

Normally there will be nothing more you need to care about Upgrading your DLG. Usually, the only message box you will see is  "Upgrading successful"  at the end of Upgrading. If you should get some other message (and consequently  "Upgrading not successful" ), look into the DLG default directory. If you determined another directory to be the destination of  "Extract to:"  at begin of self-extraction, look there: Are there some new files  .h ,  .lib  that seem to have come by Upgrading? If yes, you can help yourself by copying them manually to the LIBRARY or the INCLUDE directory of your development system.

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Upgrade on Re-install

With the modern operating systems even a full backup is of limited use only. Now and then you will have no other choice than complete re-installation of all your system. With DLG we wanted to make things easy for you. That's why we provided the DLG installation program with command line parameters that are not needed normally. Yet, if you need it again for re-installation, they will help you.

The command line parameters are one character only:



  ? If you find an old file  Install.exe  and you would like to know what it would do to your DLG, call it with  '?'  in the command line. Then it will display what keywords would be added to the Availability and what  .lib  and  .h -file(s) would be copied to your development system.
  ! It might be nice to be warned on first upgrading, if a  .lib  or  .h  file is about to be overwritten. Yet, for re-installation it would just be tedious. So, if you know that an upgrading will result in overwriting, you can switch off that warning by calling  Install.exe  with  '!'  in the command line. So, overwriting will be done right away. Only the final summary  available now:  will be displayed.
  - If you want to do a string of upgrades, it would just be bothersome if you get a summary after each upgrading step. You might consider to pack all of the upgradings into one batch file, each (except the last one) with  '-'  in the command line. Then you will get only one summary by the end.

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Un-install

In DLG it is not left up to the applier to remove the software from the harddisk. After all, DLG comprises a number of files stored in various directories. If you had to delete all of them manually, it would be quite some work.
When you activated the self-extracting package  DLG10, one of the files extracted to your DLG default directory was  Uninstall.exe .
When you activate it, you are asked first:

 Do you really want to
uninstall DLG? 

This question is useful with all programs that could cause quite some harm if they are executed erroneously.
If you respond  Yes  to this question, all the files stored upon installation and all upgradings are deleted. (You want to know HOW? - Every time a new file was stored to your  LIB  or  INCL  directory,  Upgrade  memorized the file name in  Dlg.ini . Thus it is easy to delete each one now.)
As the last uninstall step, all the files in the DLG default directory are deleted and the directory removed.

Here you will get a warning, if you executed  Uninstall.exe  right from the DLG default directory: An executable cannot delete itself from harddisk. The operating system will simply deny access to the file. Therefore,  Uninstall.exe  will come up with a warning message like:
 Could not delete
Uninst~1.exe
(access denied) 

Consequently, there will be a second warning when trying to remove the DLG default directory, like:

 Could not remove DLG default directory
(not empty) 

Finally, you will be reminded that Uninstall could not clean up your harddisk completely:

 Manual rework might be required
for complete Uninstall 

If, however, you started  Uninstall.exe  from another directory, you will get a success message at the end:

 Uninstall successful.
Your harddisk is clean now. 

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