Dialog Controls

Each dialog control in a dialog box has a unique integer identifier and name. You specify the name in the Properties box for each control within the Resource Editor, and the Resource Editor assigns the PARAMETER attribute and an integer value to each control name. You can refer to a control by its name, for example IDC_SCROLLBAR_TEMPERATURE, or by its integer value, which you can read from the include (.FD) file.

Each dialog control has one or more variables associated with it, called control indexes. These indexes can be integer, logical, character, or external. For example, a plain Button has three associated variables: one is a logical value associated with its current enabled state, one is a character variable that determines its title, and the third is an external variable that indicates the subroutine to be called if a mouse click occurs.

Dialog controls can have multiple variables of the same type. For example, the scroll bar control has four integer variables associated with it:

• Scroll bar position
• Scroll bar minimum range
• Scroll bar maximum range
• Position change if the user clicks on the scroll bar space next to the slide (big step)

Dialog controls and their indexes are discussed in:

• Control Indexes
• Available Indexes for Each Dialog Control
• Specifying Control Indexes