Developers Guide 2.1

REALbasic Developer’s Guide Documentation by Geoff Perlman and David Brandt. © 1999-2000 by REAL Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. Mailing Address REAL Software, Inc. 3300 Bee Caves Road Suite 650-220 Austin, TX 78746 Web Site http://www.realsoftware.com ftp Site ftp://ftp.realsoftware.com Support support@realsoftware.com Bugs/ bugs@realsoftware.com Feature Requests Sales sales@realsoftware.com Phone 512-263-1233 Fax 512-263-1441 V2.1, April, 2000 Contents CHAPTER 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Welcome to REALbasic . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Installing REALbasic . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Where to Begin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Documentation Conventions . . . . . . . . 12 Using the On-Line Help . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Other Helpful Resources . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Contacting REAL Software . . . . . . . . . 20 CHAPTER 2 Getting Started with REALbasic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Development Environment . . . . . . . 26 Working with Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 CHAPTER 3 Building a User Interface . . . 35 Working with Windows . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Interacting with the User Through Controls 43 Object Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Adding Menus and Menu Items . . . . . . 118 Apple’s Macintosh User Interface Guidelines. 125 REALbasic Developer’s Guide iii Contents CHAPTER 4 BASIC Programming Concepts 127 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 BASIC versus REALbasic . . . . . . . . . . 128 Storing Values in Properties and Variables 129 Executing Instructions with Methods . . . 142 Comparison Operators . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Executing Instructions Repeatedly with Loops 149 Making Decisions with Branching . . . . . 156 CHAPTER 5 Programming with Events and Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Understanding Event-Driven Programming 162 Using The Code Editor . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Printing Your Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Importing and Exporting Your Clas…