CodeProject: CodePlotter Remoded 1.6 - A standalone version for VC6, .NET, Delphi, C++ Builder and VB coders. Free source code and programming help

To preempt those who may complain that this is not a new project (for whatever reason) I have the following three points to make:

Introduction

When I first wrote CodePlotter as a VC6 addin I was very aware that .NET users might also be interested in a similar tool.

At the time however I did not see an easy way to resolve this except by writing a .NET specific addin.

So in the best tradition of ostrichs I ignored the issue and waited until I was forced to deal with it.

In due time one or two .NET users posted comments expressing an interest in a CodePlotter addin for VC7/.NET and I knew that I would have to deal with it, especially since so many people were voting it up.

Now, I had already made a short foray into VC7 addins when I tried to port ProjectZip to .NET and wasn't that a scary experience!

I don't know what Microsoft thought they were up to when they redesigned the plugin architecture for VC7 but it certainly was not portability of VC6 addins - I could not make head nor tail of the object model in the short time that I tried.

Fortunately, a C++ Builder coder who also dabbles in VB and Delphi came to my rescue and asked for a standalone executable .

This, I thought, smells like an opportunity not to be missed; and may yet save me from having to write a .NET port.

Still another poster asked for the modal dialog in the CodePlotter addin to be made modeless so that he could scroll his code as he drew the diagram. This however generates another problem because the addin relied on the selection not changing so that it could paste the edited diagram over the top of the original diagram.

An executable was therefore beginning to look like an excellent solution, since although it would lose its tight coupling with VC6, this would more than be made up for by the considerably greater flexibility of a standalone application.

CodePlotter Remoded

This was okay I thought but lacked some of the finesse of the VC6 addin which was much slicker in how it used the selection mechanism of the object model to both select and replace the code diagram (a feature that in retrospect, was also its greatest constraint since the user has no scope for inserting the diagram at any other place in the code except by manually copying and pasting it afterwards) .

I left it for a bit and later when I got to thinking about it some more I found that my brain had made the link between 'copying and pasting' and the 'clipboard'.

Not a tremendously exciting or impressive leap but a valuable one nonetheless since it allowed me to postulate the programmatic use of the clipboard as the final piece in the puzzle; the piece that would possibly give it the slickness it was so far missing.

So I searched back through all my old code to see if I had something to get me started and I came across the following fragment:

Gee, I though, surely it can't be this easy (and I'm sure some of you will be itching to tell me just how difficult it really should be), but it was.

So all I had to do then was ensure CodePlotter was notified whenever the clipboard contents changed, via SetClipboardViewer(), and I was set.

One final matter that was not discovered until I had the basic implementation up and running was how to prevent the user from having to run CodePlotter manually every time they wanted to edit a diagram, whilst at the same time not having it take up valuable space in the taskbar.

Installing CodePlotter is as easy as...

Using CodePlotter

For a short tutorial on using CodePlotter I will refer you to this same section in the original article.

Inside CodePlotter

This section too is essentially unchanged from the original article except that in order not to have to copy the code, the CodePlotter exe borrows heavily from the Addin project.

This is more significant than it sounds because I also use Visual SourceSafe (VSS) at home.

The beef here is that VC6 when integrated with VSS does not allow more than one project to reside in the same hard drive directory (I had anticipated simply having two .dsp files in the same folder and share the code freely).

I know, I thought, I'll be really tricky and use VSS's share functionality to have a copy of the shared code in each of the project folders. That way each project will appear to have its own copy whilst in fact they are the same VSS file.

Half an hour later I remembered why this is a really bad idea � if the file is checked out to one folder and you check it back in from the other then it really easy to lose changes and end up completely b****red (that's 'battered' to you folk out there who were wondering if I was swearing).

So after about 3 false starts I decided for the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) approach � the CodePlotter executable project would share files from the addin project by including them in the Workspace|Files tab in VC6.

Well, standard source files are ok, we do that all the time, but it was the first time I'd tried sharing an .rc file.

I knew already that VC6, except under considerable duress and with much incanting of spells and funny handshakes, will not let you have two .rc files in the same project so I just checked away the default one and added the addin's .rc file just as I had the other shared source files.

But then I hit another snag, the .rc2 file (just what is the point of that file anyway. I know what its intention is but I swear I have never seen an app use it � please someone show me a bonafide use for it).

The problem is that the .rc file includes this by relative path � relative to the project root that is � so although i was compiling the addin's .rc file in its original location the preprocessor wanted to locate CodePlotterAddin.rc2 in the standalone's folder.

So I did what any good hacker does. That's right, I simply deleted it to make it go away, and surprisingly enough it worked. More or less.

A bit more bodging of the .rc file to remove all references to it was required, as was a dummy .tlb file to stop the preprocessor from spitting the dummy (the .tlb file is the type library without which the addin would not export the necessary interfaces to communicate with VC6 � I know this because I tried deleting it too!)

Further Work

The code is supplied here for you to use and abuse without restriction, except that you may not modify it and pass it off as your own.

History