Editing DFM's as simple text

[mok]

Hi all,

Congrats for your wonderful tool!

The feature I was expecting to see is being able to edit directly any resource, as simple text buffers, without having to use the corresponding resource editor.

For example when opening a delphi .exe binary, I want to browse the RC_DATA resources and directly edit the DFM's as a text in the window on the right.  Then I would like Resource Tuner to apply the changes I brought as it does in the resource editors (Apply button)...

Is it something that could be done ?

Thanks!
Mok

[TechMan]

Yes, I can say for sure that we're going to come up with a more robust and flexible editor in the version 2, with an option to directly edit almost any resources.

However, the RC Data resource is a tough one. It's ok if the direct changes you made are correct. But what if not? How is Resource Tuner supposed to perform error checking? And there isn't much of a reason to allow making changes without being able to roll back, etc. So this question is still open.

[mok]

(TechMan @ Mar. 02 2006, 10:12)

QUOTE

Yes, I can say for sure that we're going to come up with a more robust and flexible editor in the version 2, with an option to directly edit almost any resources.

However, the RC Data resource is a tough one. It's ok if the direct changes you made are correct. But what if not? How is Resource Tuner supposed to perform error checking? And there isn't much of a reason to allow making changes without being able to roll back, etc. So this question is still open.

I understand :-) In fact just to let you know why this feature is important to me: I want to localize a .exe into which there are ~50 DFMs with ~100 strings to translate by DFM.

I want to update all the DFMs (the only changes are the Caption = 'blahblah' ; tags) without having to edit every object... Being able to copy/paste the DFM sources would save a lot of time...

Thanks for the response anyway

[TechMan]

Thanks for sharing this. Then there could be a more elegant solution, like an advanced search and replace feature. Updating captions manually in 50 DFM sources can be still time-consuming, and you would rather not have to do it every time you build a new release. So it must be something similar to what we offer in Resource Tuner Console for high-volume string processing. What do you think?

[mok]

Does your Resource Tuner Console allows to simply:

1. - unpack a .exe in a directory
(2. - change some resources using a text editor)
3. - repack the .exe ?

This would be enough for our needs,

Thanks!

[TechMan]

1. and 3. - no. It can be done somehow with a batch file, or by using VBScript.

2. Yes, but not for DFMs. At this time Resource Tuner Console supports changing String and Message Tables, icons, version info, and - bitmaps in the upcoming update. More on RTC: http://www.reseditor.com

Though we may add support for replacing the DFM sources from internal text files in RTC, we do not have a date for when this option may become available. As always, the devil is in the details.  '>  If you are interested, please contact me at support -at- heaventools.com or through the web form : http://www.heaventools.com/support.htm

[Adept]

Are you planning in ver. 2 a visual displaying of DFM's? (maybe without WYSIWYG editing)

[TechMan]

We would love to, but there is no universal solution. We can visualize the standard components on the form, but the viewer will fail on rendering the third party VCL components. Since the Delphi programmers love to use the third party libraries, the result will be unpredictable based on how many components used, but probably not very good.