XI Library General Information

XI stands for XML Interface. XI is the library that allows you to generate user interfaces from XML source in run-time. It is useful when:

• You are developing a program that supports plugins and plugins' UI must be integrated into the main program. In this case you simply pass the XML source from the plugin DLL into the main program and XI will build UI from it at a glance!
• You want to develop a database that can edit itself. Just imagine, you can keep record editing UI right in the database itself!
• You need to construct different UI in run-time. It's much easier to generate XML source than a form with controls especially if you need to vary UI depending on some conditions.
• You want an easy way to implement an options dialog in your program.

....and in many other cases.

So, to make a long story short, XI lets you convert the following source:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<root>
  <edit name="edit1" caption="This is label for &amp;edit" default="some default value"/>
  <comboedit name="combo1" caption="&amp;Combo with label at left" labelpos="left"/>
  <gap line="1" size="15"/>
  <checkbox name="ch1" caption="Pretty checkbox with a pretty long caption" default="1">
   <groupbox caption="Dependant group">
    <checkbox name="ch3" caption="Option 1">
     <edit name="edit2" caption="Some edit under check"/>
     <edit name="edit3" caption="And another one"/>
    </checkbox> 
    <checkbox name="ch2" caption="Option 2">
     <edit name="edit3" caption="For checking" labelpos="left"/>
    </checkbox>
   </groupbox> 
  </checkbox>
</root>

into this dialog: