The Alter MapInfoDialog statement

I have chosen to place this article about a little know MapBasic statement in the MapInfo Environment section because it appealed to me initially as a way to control some work environment parameters that are not accessible directly with other parts of the MB language. Its use however goes beyond this "environment control" function as we can see in the main document.

A major restriction on the use of this statement is the lack of immediately available information concerning the arguments to use, essentially the codes for dialogs and those for controls within each dialog.

I have thus pursued two aims, a search on the conditions of use supported by some examples, and a documentation about the codes. The second objective was reached because of the generous contribution of Lars Nielsen who prepared a php application for extracting and preparing a htm template to display all the dialogs contained in the MIRESxxx.dll file. Without him, I would have spent several weeks extracting dialogs as image files.

The dialogs that appear in MI come from different sources; the majority are in the MIRESxxx.dll resource file (Genuine Dialogs) and some are based on Windows resources (Common Dialogs); others can be found in other dlls, generally added as Special Features were introduced in MI (e.g. the new Graph set). Genuine Dialogs can be fully documented and are the prime subject of this search. I have described the Common Dialogs as a special set that cannot be as thoroughly documented because dialogs do not "exist" as such but are generated on the fly by the program. And I have not dealt with the Special Feature dialogs that cannot be altered by the statement because of the lack of information on the required codes.

All the information I have prepared or assembled is contained in several pdf documents (see "the main documents"  below) that can be displayed on line or downloaded in a single zip file (alter_dlg_pdfs.zip) .

The dialog sets for various versions and in English are available on Lars Nielsen's site with names such as  miproXXX_en_dialogs.zip where XXX is the version and "_en_" stands for English  or I can e-mail the desired set to you on request.

Those who can master php language, Lars' application to rebuild the dialog sets and create an htm page to display them, can download it from here (makealldialogs.zip). This application would be of use for dialogs in other languages than English and for different versions not yet processed.

The main documents

Alter_MapInfoDialog_statement.pdf is the key document. It shows what the statement can do, how it works and how to use it by different examples.

Dialog_ID_6_8.pdf identifies the different dialogs available in versions 6 to 8 with special attention given to version 7. The differences between versions may limit portability of applications.

Principles_of_reconstruction.pdf is a "super legend" for the dialog image sets. It explains which information in MIRESxxx.dll is used to rebuild the dialogs.

Common_Dialogs.pdf explains how the Windows based resource is adapted to MI needs.