Every application seems to start with me taking a similar app, thowing out the “meat” of it and using the skeleton for my new project.
I don’t always get all that I want from a previous project, nor do I need everything from it, but certain things keep cropping up again and again:
- about box (with contact email being generated from the app name & version number direct from the project options)
- splash screen (source & duration)
- only allow single copy to run
- prevent task switching
- acccept dropped files?
- minimaize to tray
- hide from task manager
- recent files list
that sort of thing.
I used too have such a skeleton for C++ Builder, years ago. It just read an .INI file and customized the app’s behaviour accordingly.
Before I take the trouble to port it to Delphi, does anyone know of anything similar which is freely available?
You can simply create your skeleton project and add it to the repository (IDE menu Project\Add to Repository).
If you want to be able to dynamically create different projects based on some parameters (user input) you can also write a wizard using the OpenTools API.