Teach Yourself Borland C++ in 14 Days - portal

Creating Applications in C++Builder
of bitmaps that can be loaded as resources for the fastest possible execution speed. In this kind
of situation, you are going to need to know how to bind the resources to your C++Builder
program file.
The act of binding the resource file to the executable is trivial, actually. It’s much more
difficult to actually create the resources. Creating basic resources such as bitmaps, icons, and
cursors is not difficult with a good resource editor, but creating professional-quality 3D
bitmaps and icons is an art. How many times have you seen a pretty decent program with
really awful bitmap buttons? I’ve seen plenty. (Oops, looks like I’m getting off track here.)
You can create bitmaps, icons, and cursors with the C++Builder Image Editor. If you are
going to create string resources, user data resources, wave file resources, or other specialty
resources, you will probably need a third-party resource editor.
NOTE
If you have Borland C++, you can use the Resource Workshop from
that package to edit specialty resources. After creating the resources,
you will have an .rc file that you can either add to your C++Builder
project directly or compile into a .res file using the Borland Resource
Compiler (BRCC32.EXE). The Borland Resource Compiler comes with
both Borland C++ and C++Builder. Technically, you could create the
.rc file with any text editor and compile it with the Resource Compiler,
but in reality it is much easier to use a resource editor.
You can add either a .res file or an .rc file to your project via the Project Manager. To add
a resource file to a project using the Project Manager, you first choose View | Project Manger
from the main menu. When the Project Manager dialog box is displayed, click the Add To
Project button. When the File Open dialog box appears, select the resource file you want to
add to the project and click OK. The resource file shows up in the Project Manager with the
rest of the application’s files. I’ll discuss the Project Manager in more detail tomorrow.
Listings 9.2 and 9.3 contain the header and main form unit for a program called Jumping
Jack. This program shows a simple animation with sound effects. The main form contains
just two buttons, an Image component, and a Label component. The Jumping Jack program
illustrates several aspects of using resources in a C++Builder application. (The program can
be found at http://www.mcp.com/sams/codecenter.html.) Specifically, it shows how to load
a bitmap stored as a resource, how to load and display a string resource, and how to play wave
audio contained as a resource. Listing 9.4 is a partial listing of the resource file that is used
by the Jumping Jack program. Examine the listings, and then we’ll discuss what the program
does.
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