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Mid-Michigan Computer Consultants, Inc. 509 Center Bay City, Michigan Sales (989) 892-9242             Support (989) 686-8860 ANSI Standard PL/B Language RESOURCES NOTE TO OUR READERS This web resource is written for our own use. But we feel strongly that the PL/B language should be shared with the software community. So feel free to use this at will! BUT PLEASE... if you find errors or omissions or have a better way to do something. TELL US! Dialog helps us all. Send e-mail to: support@mmcctech.com

RESOURCES

This is a PRELIMINARY discussion based on a phone conversation with Matthew Lake 10/9/2002. A lot more needs to be added.

Resources are a collection of things like pictures, sounds, etc. which you want to embed into a PLC.

You can create your own set of resourses in the Forms Designer using the RESOURCES item on the TOOLS menu.

There is one list of resources with the PLFORM. That list, however, can be used for anything within the program that includes the form. For example, you could create a little objects only PLFORM that has no objects, but DOES have a resource list. Now include that PLFORM into the program, but never FORMLOAD it or anything else. You can still use the resources for any other objects within that program.

There is only ONE resource list for each PLFORM. Nobody seems to know what would happen if you had several PLFORMS in the same program and each had a resource list. Perhaps you could qualify the resource list by form name.

From the discusson of ICONS in the PLB reference we learn that "A set of standard icons has been provided. The resource numbers 10,000 to 11,500 have been reserved for these icons."

When you create the resource the designer gives you the panel shown at the right. Click TOOLS / RESOURCES to get this panel.

You start with an empty list. Click NEW and you'll get a file open dialog so you can browse for the file you want to insert.

When you're satisfied with the list, click DONE to close and save.

WARNING: The SAVE AS button doesn't do what you might think. It EXTRACTS the selected item from the resourse list and saves it to disk. If you're not careful, you can empty your list like that!

A resouce can be an ICON, PICTURE or SOUND file. Your program can have all of these.

WARNING: When you click on the radio button for ICON, PICTURE or SOUND you get a new list of resources. Each list starts at resource ID 1. This will cause an overlap of resource ID's. You need to manually manage this by assigning your own resource ID's if you are going to have a mixture.

See also:

• IMAGE LISTS.
• RESOURCES.
• ICONS where resources are used.
• BUTTONS where resources are used.
• Tool Bars where an image list is used.
• ICON/RESOURCE summary.