At the moment, whenever I need a custom dialog, however simple, I use Delphi’s form designer to create a new dialog form. The form is then wrapped in an easy to use ShowMessage() type function.
In some situations it would be easier if forms could be created at run-time from a script. The script would detail all form components and their properties, much like Delphi’s .DFM files.
Creating GUIs from scripts could be useful in other situations as well. For example, a GUI of a mini application could be embedded into the window of an existing application. Or the GUI script could be modified at run-time to create GUI variations.
I could create something to do this myself, but I assume other people have already tackled this problem. However I can’t find anything using google. Is there anything currently available offering this kind of functionality? (Free or otherwise) Or does it already exist in Delphi?
You might try XI Library (commercial): http://xilib.com/
I have never used it, it’s just something sitting in my bookmarks, but it looks like it fits the bill. Not a scripting engine, more of a way to define dialog boxes via XML. There’s sample XML code right on the front page, just click “Show the example”.