User guide

Eighteen chapters, adapted from the Borland Turbo Vision guide and rewritten against the Rust API. The first six build one application from nothing. The next three explain how the framework works underneath. The rest are reference chapters, one per object family.

Building an application

Work through these in order. Each chapter starts from where the last one finished.

• 1. Stepping into Turbo Vision

  An empty desktop, a status line, a menu bar. What Application does when it starts.

• 2. Responding to commands

  Commands, the command set, enabling and disabling items, and the handler that receives them.

• 3. Adding windows

  Windows on the desktop, frames, z-order, dragging, resizing and closing.

• 4. Persistence and configuration

  Saving what the user set up and reading it back on the next run.

• 5. Creating data-entry forms

  Dialogs, input lines, clusters, buttons and the modal loop that runs them.

• 6. Managing data collections

  List boxes, sorted collections and the viewers that scroll them.

How the framework works

• 7. Architecture overview — the layers, and what replaced the C++ class tree.
• 8. Views and groups — the View trait, GroupLike, WindowLike, and owner-relative coordinates.
• 9. Event-driven programming — the three-phase dispatch, focus, broadcasts and how a handler consumes an event.

Object reference

Chapter	Covers
10. Application objects	Application, the desktop, the modal loop, idle handling
11. Windows and dialogs	Window, Dialog, frames, CloseOn, end states
12. Control objects	Buttons, input lines, clusters, scroll bars, list and combo boxes
13. Data validation	Filter, range and picture validators
14. Palettes and colour	The palette chain and the Borland colour tables
15. Editor and text views	The editor, file editor, selection, clipboard and undo
16. Collections and streams	Collections, sorted collections, iteration
17. Streams and persistence	Serialising a view tree and reading it back
18. Resources	Resource files and string tables