To Preview a Dialog Box (Visual LISP IDE/DCL)

Visual LISP provides a tool for previewing dialog boxes defined with DCL.

Note: DCL support in AutoLISP and Visual LISP are limited to Windows only.

Follow these steps to see how to preview a dialog boxed in the Visual LISP Editor.

  1. In the Visual LISP Editor, click File Open File.
  2. In the Open File to Edit/View dialog box, in the Files of Type drop-down list, select DCL Source Files. Browse to and select the DCL file you want to preview. Click Open.
  3. Click Tools Interface Tools Preview DCL in Editor to display a list of all the dialog boxes defined in the current text editor window.
  4. In the Enter the Dialog Name dialog box, select the dialog box name from the drop-down list that you want to preview and click OK.
  5. Click the OK or Cancel button to complete previewing the dialog box.

Example

  1. Copy the following code to the clipboard.

    Highlight the DCL code and press Ctrl+C, or right-click and click Copy. 

    hello : dialog {
  label = "Sample Dialog Box";
  : text {
    label = "Hello, world";
  }:
  button {
    key = "accept";
    label = "OK";
    is_default = true;
  }
}
  2. In the Visual LISP Editor, click File New File.
  3. In the new editor window, press Ctrl+V, or right-click and click Paste.
  4. Click File Save As. In the Save-as dialog box, Save As Type drop-down list, select DCL Source Files. In the File Name field, enter hello.dcl. Browse to a location to store the DCL file and click Save.
    Note: You must include the file extension when you specify the file. Visual LISP does not automatically add a .dcl file extension for you.
  5. Click Tools Interface Tools Preview DCL in Editor to display a list of all the dialog boxes defined in the current text editor window.
  6. In the Enter the Dialog Name dialog box, select Hello from the drop-down list and click OK.
  7. Click OK to complete previewing the dialog box.

    Note how the text editor color codes the statements in the DCL file. The default color coding scheme is shown in the following table:

    DCL default color coding

    DCL element

    Color

    Tiles and tile attributes

    Blue

    Strings

    Magenta

    Integers

    Green

    Real numbers

    Teal

    Comments

    Magenta, on gray background

    Parentheses

    Red

    Preprocessor

    Dark blue

    Operators and punctuation

    Dark red

    Unrecognized items

    (for example, user variables)

    Black

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