Workspace

The EPL Workspace provides very useful & important tabs, and that’s Application, Property and Library. They all locate in the left side of main IDE. See picture below

 

You can click “View” -> “Toolbar” -> “Workspace” menu to show or hide the workspace. See picture below

Application Tab

The Application tab is elements manager of the application in fact, all the elements is listed as an item in the tree, include Module, Class Module, Global Variable, Data Type, Dll Function, Form, Constant and Resource. Actually, you can use the Application Tab to view & switch each element’s editing interface to edit the application.

Module & Class

The functions of module & class are all listed under their parent items. To activate a function to edit, you can double-click on the function item, or right click on the function item and click “Go To” on the popup menu. To activate a module or class, it’s same as activate a function and you should double-click the corresponding item.

To insert a new module, you can click “Insert” -> “Module” menu.

To insert a new class, you can click “Insert” -> “Class Module” menu.

To insert a new function to a module, you can activate the module first, and click “Insert” ->”Function” menu.

To insert a new method to a class, you can activate the class first, and click “Insert” -> ”Function” menu.

Global Variable

All the definitions of global variables of an application are in Global Variable table, to activate it to edit all global variables, you can double-click on Global Variable item.

To insert a new global variable to application, you can click “Insert” -> “Global Variable” menu, or you can also right click on Global Variable item and click “Insert New Global Variable” item on the popup menu.

Data Type

All the definitions of user-defined data types of an application are in Data Type table, to activate it to edit all data types, you can double-click on Data Type item.

To insert a new user-define data type to application, you can click “Insert” ->”Data Type”, or you can also right click on Data Type item and click “Insert New Data Type” on the popup menu.

DLL Function

All the declarations of dll function of an application are in DLL Function table, to activate it to edit all DLL functions, you can double click on DLL function item.

To insert a new dll function to application, you can click “Insert” ->”DLL Function” menu, or you can also right click on DLL Function item and click “Insert New DLL Function” on the popup menu.

Form

All the windows forms are listed under Form parent item. To activate a form to edit, you can double-click on the form item, or right click on the form item and click “Go To” on the popup menu.

To insert a new form, you can click “Insert” ->”Form” menu.

To delete a form, you can right click on the form item and click “Delete Form” on the popup menu.

Constants

All the constants of an application is in Constants table, to activate it to edit all Constants, you can double-click on Constants item.

To insert a constant to application, you can click “Insert” ->”Constant” menu, or you can also right click on Constants item and click “Insert New Constant” on the popup menu.

Resource

All the resources of picture, picture list and audio are in their corresponding Resource tables, to activate them to edit resource, you can double click on the corresponding items.

To insert a picture, picture list or audio resource to application, you can click “Insert” ->”Resource” -> Corresponding menu, or you can also right click on corresponding resource item and click “Insert New” on the popup menu.

Property Tab

Property Edit

The property tab let you to view & edit properties of current activated form.

For Number and String type properties, if no drop-down list was provided, you can directly edit the property item of white text box.

 

For the properties that has drop-down list, such as Boolean type properties, you can simply select an item to set the property value. See pictures below

For the properties that need to open a file to indicate, such as Picture, Music, you can click the button on the property to open dialog to set the property. See picture below

 

Activate Event Function

In the bottom of the property list, there’s a drop-down list to list all the events for current activated form or control. You can select an item in the list to activate the event to edit in code editor. The already activated event will be add a “*” mark before the event name. See picture below

 

After selected “MouseMove” event in the list, the following code will be generated in code editor automatically as event prototype, then you can edit the event process function, remember don’t change the declaration of the event function, whatever function name, parameter, return value and all others, just keep as original. See picture below

Library Tab

The library tab presents a tree to list all the available programming elements of current selected EPL libraries. You can expand & shrink tree items to view function, object and all other EPL programming elements. To get instant help of programming elements, such as functions, objects, methods, properties, events and all other programming elements, you can click and press F1 on the specified tree item to popup a dialog to show the corresponding help contents. See picture below

All the selected EPL libraries, COM components, ActiveX controls, Type libraries will be listed under the tree. To select/unselect an EPL library, COM components, ActiveX controls and Type libraries, you can click “Tools” ->”Library Options” and check and uncheck an option to select and unselect.

All the EPL libraries, COM components packages, ActiveX controls packages are stored under “Lib” directory of EPL installation path.

Right-Click Menu

The right-click menu of library tab provides some useful functions. See picture below

The “Copy Help Text” let you copy the content of current selected item to clipboard.

The “Output Help Text” let you save the content of current selected item to a file.

The “Refresh List” let you reload all libraries.

The “Sort” let you sort all the tree items by name.