Fix premature truncation of brief descriptions in Doxygen comments.

[wxWidgets.git] / docs / doxygen / overviews / docview.h

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// Name:        docview.h
// Purpose:     topic overview
// Author:      wxWidgets team
// RCS-ID:      $Id$
// Licence:     wxWindows licence
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/**

@page overview_docview Document/View Framework

@tableofcontents

The document/view framework is found in most application frameworks, because it
can dramatically simplify the code required to build many kinds of application.

The idea is that you can model your application primarily in terms of
@e documents to store data and provide interface-independent operations upon
it, and @e views to visualise and manipulate the data. Documents know how to do
input and output given stream objects, and views are responsible for taking
input from physical windows and performing the manipulation on the document
data.

If a document's data changes, all views should be updated to reflect the
change. The framework can provide many user-interface elements based on this
model.

Once you have defined your own classes and the relationships between them, the
framework takes care of popping up file selectors, opening and closing files,
asking the user to save modifications, routing menu commands to appropriate
(possibly default) code, even some default print/preview functionality and
support for command undo/redo.

The framework is highly modular, allowing overriding and replacement of
functionality and objects to achieve more than the default behaviour.

These are the overall steps involved in creating an application based on the
document/view framework:

@li Define your own document and view classes, overriding a minimal set of
    member functions e.g. for input/output, drawing and initialization.
@li Define any subwindows (such as a scrolled window) that are needed for the
    view(s). You may need to route some events to views or documents, for
    example, "OnPaint" needs to be routed to wxView::OnDraw.
@li Decide what style of interface you will use: Microsoft's MDI (multiple
    document child frames surrounded by an overall frame), SDI (a separate,
    unconstrained frame for each document), or single-window (one document open
    at a time, as in Windows Write).
@li Use the appropriate wxDocParentFrame and wxDocChildFrame classes. Construct
    an instance of wxDocParentFrame in your wxApp::OnInit, and a
    wxDocChildFrame (if not single-window) when you initialize a view. Create
    menus using standard menu ids (such as wxID_OPEN, wxID_PRINT).
@li Construct a single wxDocManager instance at the beginning of your
    wxApp::OnInit, and then as many wxDocTemplate instances as necessary to
    define relationships between documents and views. For a simple application,
    there will be just one wxDocTemplate.

If you wish to implement Undo/Redo, you need to derive your own class(es) from
wxCommand and use wxCommandProcessor::Submit instead of directly executing
code. The framework will take care of calling Undo and Do functions as
appropriate, so long as the wxID_UNDO and wxID_REDO menu items are defined in
the view menu.

Here are a few examples of the tailoring you can do to go beyond the default
framework behaviour:

@li Override wxDocument::OnCreateCommandProcessor to define a different Do/Undo
    strategy, or a command history editor.
@li Override wxView::OnCreatePrintout to create an instance of a derived
    wxPrintout class, to provide multi-page document facilities.
@li Override wxDocManager::SelectDocumentPath to provide a different file
    selector.
@li Limit the maximum number of open documents and the maximum number of undo
    commands.

Note that to activate framework functionality, you need to use some or all of
the wxWidgets @ref overview_docview_predefid in your menus.

@beginWxPerlOnly
The document/view framework is available in wxPerl. To use it, you will need
the following statements in your application code:

@code{.pl}
use Wx::DocView;
use Wx ':docview';   # import constants (optional)
@endcode
@endWxPerlOnly

@see @ref group_class_docview, 



@section overview_docview_wxdoc wxDocument Overview

The wxDocument class can be used to model an application's file-based data. It
is part of the document/view framework supported by wxWidgets, and cooperates
with the wxView, wxDocTemplate and wxDocManager classes. Using this framework
can save a lot of routine user-interface programming, since a range of menu
commands -- such as open, save, save as -- are supported automatically.

The programmer just needs to define a minimal set of classes and member
functions for the framework to call when necessary. Data, and the means to view
and edit the data, are explicitly separated out in this model, and the concept
of multiple @e views onto the same data is supported.

Note that the document/view model will suit many but not all styles of
application. For example, it would be overkill for a simple file conversion
utility, where there may be no call for @e views on @e documents or the ability
to open, edit and save files. But probably the majority of applications are
document-based.

See the example application in @c samples/docview. To use the abstract
wxDocument class, you need to derive a new class and override at least the
member functions SaveObject and LoadObject. SaveObject and LoadObject will be
called by the framework when the document needs to be saved or loaded.

Use the macros DECLARE_DYNAMIC_CLASS and IMPLEMENT_DYNAMIC_CLASS in order to
allow the framework to create document objects on demand. When you create a
wxDocTemplate object on application initialization, you should pass
CLASSINFO(YourDocumentClass) to the wxDocTemplate constructor so that it knows
how to create an instance of this class.

If you do not wish to use the wxWidgets method of creating document objects
dynamically, you must override wxDocTemplate::CreateDocument to return an
instance of the appropriate class.



@section overview_docview_wxview wxView Overview

The wxView class can be used to model the viewing and editing component of an
application's file-based data. It is part of the document/view framework
supported by wxWidgets, and cooperates with the wxDocument, wxDocTemplate and
wxDocManager classes.

See the example application in @c samples/docview.

To use the abstract wxView class, you need to derive a new class and override
at least the member functions OnCreate, OnDraw, OnUpdate and OnClose. You will
probably want to respond to menu commands from the frame containing the view.

Use the macros DECLARE_DYNAMIC_CLASS and IMPLEMENT_DYNAMIC_CLASS in order to
allow the framework to create view objects on demand. When you create a
wxDocTemplate object on application initialization, you should pass
CLASSINFO(YourViewClass) to the wxDocTemplate constructor so that it knows how
to create an instance of this class.

If you do not wish to use the wxWidgets method of creating view objects
dynamically, you must override wxDocTemplate::CreateView to return an instance
of the appropriate class.



@section overview_docview_wxdoctemplate wxDocTemplate Overview

The wxDocTemplate class is used to model the relationship between a document
class and a view class. The application creates a document template object for
each document/view pair. The list of document templates managed by the
wxDocManager instance is used to create documents and views. Each document
template knows what file filters and default extension are appropriate for a
document/view combination, and how to create a document or view.

For example, you might write a small doodling application that can load and
save lists of line segments. If you had two views of the data -- graphical, and
a list of the segments -- then you would create one document class
DoodleDocument, and two view classes (DoodleGraphicView and DoodleListView).
You would also need two document templates, one for the graphical view and
another for the list view. You would pass the same document class and default
file extension to both document templates, but each would be passed a different
view class. When the user clicks on the Open menu item, the file selector is
displayed with a list of possible file filters -- one for each wxDocTemplate.
Selecting the filter selects the wxDocTemplate, and when a file is selected,
that template will be used for creating a document and view.

For the case where an application has one document type and one view type,
a single document template is constructed, and dialogs will be appropriately
simplified.

wxDocTemplate is part of the document/view framework supported by wxWidgets,
and cooperates with the wxView, wxDocument and wxDocManager classes.

See the example application in @c samples/docview.

To use the wxDocTemplate class, you do not need to derive a new class. Just
pass relevant information to the constructor including
CLASSINFO(YourDocumentClass) and CLASSINFO(YourViewClass) to allow dynamic
instance creation.

If you do not wish to use the wxWidgets method of creating document
objects dynamically, you must override wxDocTemplate::CreateDocument
and wxDocTemplate::CreateView to return instances of the appropriate class.

@note The document template has nothing to do with the C++ template construct.



@section overview_docview_wxdocmanager wxDocManager Overview

The wxDocManager class is part of the document/view framework supported by
wxWidgets, and cooperates with the wxView, wxDocument and wxDocTemplate
classes.

A wxDocManager instance coordinates documents, views and document templates. It
keeps a list of document and template instances, and much functionality is
routed through this object, such as providing selection and file dialogs. The
application can use this class 'as is' or derive a class and override some
members to extend or change the functionality.

Create an instance of this class near the beginning of your application
initialization, before any documents, views or templates are manipulated.

There may be multiple wxDocManager instances in an application. See the example
application in @c samples/docview.



@section overview_docview_wxcommand wxCommand Overview

wxCommand is a base class for modelling an application command, which is an
action usually performed by selecting a menu item, pressing a toolbar button or
any other means provided by the application to change the data or view.

Instead of the application functionality being scattered around switch
statements and functions in a way that may be hard to read and maintain, the
functionality for a command is explicitly represented as an object which can be
manipulated by a framework or application.

When a user interface event occurs, the application @e submits a command to a
wxCommandProcessor object to execute and store.

The wxWidgets document/view framework handles Undo and Redo by use of wxCommand
and wxCommandProcessor objects. You might find further uses for wxCommand, such
as implementing a macro facility that stores, loads and replays commands.

An application can derive a new class for every command, or, more likely, use
one class parameterized with an integer or string command identifier.



@section overview_docview_wxcommandproc wxCommandProcessor Overview

wxCommandProcessor is a class that maintains a history of wxCommand instances,
with undo/redo functionality built-in. Derive a new class from this if you want
different behaviour.



@section overview_docview_filehistory wxFileHistory Overview

wxFileHistory encapsulates functionality to record the last few files visited,
and to allow the user to quickly load these files using the list appended to
the File menu. Although wxFileHistory is used by wxDocManager, it can be used
independently. You may wish to derive from it to allow different behaviour,
such as popping up a scrolling list of files.

By calling wxFileHistory::UseMenu() you can associate a file menu with the file
history. The menu will then be used for appending filenames that are added to
the history.

Please notice that currently if the history already contained filenames when
UseMenu() is called (e.g. when initializing a second MDI child frame), the menu
is not automatically initialized with the existing filenames in the history and
so you need to call wxFileHistory::AddFilesToMenu() after UseMenu() explicitly
in order to initialize the menu with the existing list of MRU files (otherwise
an assertion failure is raised in debug builds).

The filenames are appended using menu identifiers in the range @c wxID_FILE1 to
@c wxID_FILE9.

In order to respond to a file load command from one of these identifiers, you
need to handle them using an event handler, for example:

@code
BEGIN_EVENT_TABLE(wxDocParentFrame, wxFrame)
    EVT_MENU(wxID_EXIT, wxDocParentFrame::OnExit)
    EVT_MENU_RANGE(wxID_FILE1, wxID_FILE9, wxDocParentFrame::OnMRUFile)
END_EVENT_TABLE()

void wxDocParentFrame::OnExit(wxCommandEvent& WXUNUSED(event))
{
    Close();
}

void wxDocParentFrame::OnMRUFile(wxCommandEvent& event)
{
    wxString f(m_docManager->GetHistoryFile(event.GetId() - wxID_FILE1));
    if (!f.empty())
        (void)m_docManager-CreateDocument(f, wxDOC_SILENT);
}
@endcode



@section overview_docview_predefid Predefined Command Identifiers

To allow communication between the application's menus and the document/view
framework, several command identifiers are predefined for you to use in menus.

@verbatim
wxID_OPEN (5000)
wxID_CLOSE (5001)
wxID_NEW (5002)
wxID_SAVE (5003)
wxID_SAVEAS (5004)
wxID_REVERT (5005)
wxID_EXIT (5006)
wxID_UNDO (5007)
wxID_REDO (5008)
wxID_HELP (5009)
wxID_PRINT (5010)
wxID_PRINT_SETUP (5011)
wxID_PREVIEW (5012)
@endverbatim

*/