Including Dialogs in an Application

You can work on more than one dialog at a time in the Dialog Editor. Keep all the dialogs for an application together. See the preceding section for an overview of designing dialogs for an entire application.

When you save a dialog or dialogs, the editor normally creates three files:

The .RES (resource) file, a resource file dedicated only to the Dialog Editor.

The .DLG (dialog) script, a text file containing DIALOG and CONTROL statements that the Resource Compiler interprets.

The .H (include) file, a text file containing #define statements associated with the symbolic names of controls in dialogs. (If you haven't defined any symbolic names in your dialogs, then the editor won't create an .H file.)

By default, the editor uses the same base name for all three files. Thus, if you use the editor's suggested default name of DIALOGS, the editor writes DIALOGS.RES, DIALOGS.DLG, and DIALOGS.H.

See page 14 for an illustration of the way in which the Dialog Editor works with files.

Take these steps to include the dialogs in your application:

1.Use #include statements to include DIALOGS.H and DIALOGS.DLG in your application's resource script (.RC) file. Place DIALOGS.H before DIALOGS.DLG.

#include "dialogs.h"

#include "dialogs.dlg"

2.Include DIALOGS.H in your source code.

3.Write a dialog procedure for each dialog to initialize controls and process their messages. Place each dialog procedure name in the module definition file.

4.Compile your source code, and use the Resource Compiler with the /R option to compile the .RC file to produce the application's .RES file. Link the .RES file into your application's .EXE file.