Robert Kondner wrote:


It all depends on whether you want to be able to drop this "editor"
onto a container and configure it at design-time or would be happy with
creating it at run-time in code.

To be able to use existing forms at design-time you have basically two
options:

1. You can create a skeleton project and add it to the repository as a
template you can then base new projects on. This is an underdocumented
feature I never used myself, so know little about it. It would work
like the stock projects you see in the Delphi repository dialog, e.g.
for a MDI application. When you create a new project based on such a
template the IDE copies all forms/units that are part of the template
and you can save them under new names into a new folder.

2. Create a wrapper TComponent descendent that you install into a
design-time package and register it with the IDE. The component would
offer properties you need to configure the form set at design-time and
methods to create an instance of this "editor" and interact with it
from code at run-time. If possible avoid creating the actual editor at
design-time, that only complicates matters a lot since that code runs
in the RAD Studio process and can destabilize it if it is buggy.

Yes, you should make sure the component works properly before you
install it, but that can be done easily in a test project where you
create an instance of the component in code at run-time.

--
Peter Below
TeamB