Reply To: Create Registration Form

[Derek Read]

There is another option and that is to create your “form” as an EXE or DLL using whatever tool and language you wish (Visual Basic or C++ for example). You might also create a Windows “HTA”. Or you could use Java or some other runtime language that is not native to Windows (all your users will need to have the runtime installed in this case). You can then launch it from XMetaL Author as a separate process (how that is done depends on what you build). Keep in mind that in order to communicate any information back to XMetaL Author your “form” will need to instantiate XMetaL Author as a COM server.

It is a lot more work to coordinate all these things than it is to use XFT (COM reference counting in particular is something you need to watch out for), so I would generally not recommend it unless there is some good reason. You might have already built something you wish to reuse, or might feel it is easier to modify existing code, etc. Or perhaps you wish to hire someone that's a wizard at creating VB COM controls, Java applications, etc.

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