String Studio Add-In for Visual Basic 4.0 Version 1.0 - Shareware Copyright (C) 1996, Samuel J. Prosser. All Rights Reserved. Contact Samuel Prosser via Internet email at: samuel_p@msn.com String Studio brings the power of C-like String Tables to Visual Basic, and the ease of use of visual String, MsgBox, and InputBox editors, with absolutely no manual coding required. Visually create, edit, browse, and organize every String, MsgBox, and InputBox in your project from one location, or from your source code with the click of a button. STRING STUDIO'S FEATURES: ------------------------- - Create, edit, browse, and manage all of your project's String Constants, MsgBoxes, and InputBoxes from one central interface. You no longer have to search through your source code to find these items! - Organize your project's String Constants, MsgBoxes, and InputBoxes together into Groups of related types to aid in locating and managing those items. You can create, remove, and rename Groups. You can also import Groups from other projects, instead of recreating all of those common Strings, MsgBoxes, and InputBoxes in every new project. - PowerEdit! Use PowerEdit to "automagically" insert the necessary code into your code window. Or, click the name of any item tracked by String Studio right in your source code window, such as a MsgBox, and then click the PowerEdit button-and bingo! A visual MsgBox editor opens with the contents of your MsgBox displayed and ready to Preview. Make your changes, click OK, and bingo! Your changes have been saved. - Encapsulates complicated MsgBox and InputBox calls so that your source code does not show all those messy arguments and parameters. Simplify your source code! - Easily Duplicates and Converts items. You can convert, for example, a MsgBox into an InputBox, or an InputBox into a standard String Constant, or whatever combination you desire. - Flexible "Pipe Codes" allow you to easily insert any variable text into your Strings, MsgBoxes, and InputBoxes so that variable information can be displayed at run-time. DISTRIBUTION NOTES: ------------------- Please distribute the original ZIP archive of String Studio only, which should be called "SSTUDIO.ZIP". Your archive should contain the following files: FILE_ID.DIZ - Description file for System Administrators, SysOps, etc. README.TXT (Or "Read Me!.txt") - This file SSTUDIO.DOC (Or "String Studio Manual.doc") - Manual viewable from Microsoft Word and WordPad. SUPPORT.EXE (Or "Support Studio.exe") - Application support tool. Use this for support, bug reports, etc. SSTUDIO.EXE - String Studio Please read this file for installation instructions. REQUIREMENTS: ------------- String Studio requires an installed 32-bit version of Visual Basic 4.0. Basically, if you're running a 32-bit version of Visual Basic, you have everything you need. String Studio runs best in resolutions higher than 640x480, such as 800x600 and 1024x768. INSTALLATION: ------------- After unzipping the String Studio archive into a directory on your hardrive or to diskette, run the Setup application (SETUP.EXE) to install it and follow the on-screen instructions. Setup will install String Studio into the directory of your choice and add shortcuts to your Start Menu for its documentation and Support Studio. String Studio will add itself to Visual Basic's list of available Add-Ins, after which it will be available from Visual Basic's Add-In Manager. Enabling it from Visual Basic's Add-In manager will add String Studio to Visual Basic's Add-In menu itself. If for some reason String Studio is removed from your list of available Add-Ins, simply run String Studio itself (SSTUDIO.EXE) from Explorer, the Run command-line, or from a DOS window, and it will add itself to Visual Basic's list of available Add-Ins again. You may UNINSTALL String Studio via the Add/Remove Control Panel. INTERNATIONAL USERS: -------------------- String Studio was not officially tested on non-English or non-North American versions of Windows, so no assessment can be made of its fitness on these platforms. There may be problems with code pages and ASCII codes. KNOWN ISSUES: ------------- - Visual Basic contains a bug that stops it from properly updating the currently selected component in the Project Window. Since PowerEdit depends on Visual Basic's updating of this data structure, you may sometimes get a message asking you to open and select a code window before you use PowerEdit when you do, in fact, have a code window open and selected. The only work around, currently, is to ensure that the proper component is selected in your Project Window. This will update Visual Basic's internal data structures and pass the correct values to String Studio. - In Group Manager, if you rename the Group that is currently open in the main window, that Tab will close. Otherwise, there is no known problems with renaming Groups.