As mentioned before, if you are reading this article and have some helpful tips of your own, about VAPS XT or any of our other products, drop me a note at blogs@presagis.com. I will include them when I cover that product or perhaps even make a user-submitted collection of tips and tricks at the end of this series.
Here are my tips and tricks for VAPS XT:
Drag & Drop
Instead of drag-and-dropping new object instances into the workspace, dragging new object instances from the project view or from the toolbox into the implementation view positions the new object at the 0,0 coordinate of the format or containing object where it is dropped in the tree. This can help make sure that things are neatly positioned in your design.
Object Alignment
Beyond using the alignment menus, another way to quickly align two objects is to select both objects to see their common and different properties. Any differing property is shown with an inequality symbol ≠ and the value shown in these fields is the one from the first object selected (or the object that is highest in the tree if they were selected as part of a rope operation). To line up the objects, simply click in the X or Y position property of the object and press Enter. This will apply the value in that field to both objects.
Copy & Pasting
If you copy/paste objects using the quick Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V keyboard shortcuts, the new copy will be positioned in the center of the current view of the workspace. To get the copy to retain the exact same position as its source, copy the object, then select an element in the implementation view and use the Paste Above or Paste Below functionality to place it at a specific position in the hierarchy and maintain its positioning.
Executable File Size Optimization
If you use a lot of images and find that your executables are growing in size rapidly, go to the Settings | Root Project menu, under the CODE nGEN tab and set ImageTableGeneration to TableOnly instead of TableAndData. This will allow the application to read the image files from disk instead of compiling them into the code. Another advantage of this mode is that images can be modified on disk to change the look/content of the application without having to recompile any code.
Code Implementation
When adding new properties to a coded object after instantiating it in your application, delete its coded implementation from the project view in order to get access to the Generate Code option and create a template with the new properties. Once this is done, simply use the Undo feature (Ctrl-Z) to bring the Coded Implementation back in the project without having to re-select that file.
This concludes this entry on VAPS XT tips. Stay tuned for more articles in this series.
