Using MASkinG

To use MASkinG you first have to install it. See the installing section of this documentation if you haven't done it already.

Include files
To make a skinnable dialog in your application you have to include the MASkinG.h header file. At the beginning of your source add the line:

      #include <MASkinG.h>

The MAS namespace
All the MASkinG code is in a namespace called MAS. This means that if you want to access a MASkinG class or function you need to prefix it's name with MAS::, for example MAS::Window or MAS::InstallMASkinG(). If you don't want to do that you can add this line right after you include the MASkinG header:

      using namepsace MAS;

Initializing Allegro and MASkinG
To use the GUI part of Allegro one or two things have to be initialized. You can do this by calling the InstallMASkinG() function or manually. InstallMASkinG() initializes Allegro, installs the keyboard, mouse and timer modules, installs AllegroFont, loads a skin and some preferences and sets the graphics mode. If you don't want to call InstallMASkinG(), you must manually do everything this function does otherwise your program will most likely crash. See InstallMASkinG() for details.

Your first dialog
After you've installed Allegro and MASkinG you have to make a dialog and execute it. There are many ways in which you can do this, for instance you can create it in your main() function but the recommended way is to create a new class that inherits from the base dialog class provided by MASkinG and build the new dialog inside this class. So make the new class like this:

      class MyDialog : public Dialog {
         private:
            // here you put your dialog controls like boxes, buttons, etc.:
            ClearScreen desktop;
            Button myFirstButton;
            
         public:
            MyDialog();
            ~MyDialog();
      };

      // All the initialization can be done in the constructor
      MyDialog::MyDialog() : Dialog() {
         // Set the control's size, position, flags, etc.
         myFirstButton.SetText("Hello, world!");
         myFirstButton.Shape(100, 100, 200, 24);
         myFirstButton.MakeExit();
         
         // Add the controls to the dialog
         Add(desktop);
         Add(myFirstButton);
      }

Putting it on the screen
In your main function you can create an instance of your new dialog and execute it like this:

      MyDialog dlg;
      dlg.Execute();

      MyDialog *dlg = new MyDialog;
      dlg->Execute();
      delete dlg;

When you're done with MASkinG you have to uninstall it by calling the ExitMASkinG() function. This will free any memory used by the skin and make sure your program can exit normally. If you don't call this function your program may crash or hang depending on your compiler and OS. So add this line somewhere at the end of your program:

      ExitMASkinG();

That's it! If you compile this you should get you average "Hello, world!" program (see example 1 in the examples directory if you can't get it right yourself).

Linking
To compile MASkinG programs you have to link with the MASkinG library AND the AllegroFont library which is used for loading fonts. The way this is done is different from compiler to compiler. In GCC (DJGPP and MinGW) you have to link with these:

      -lmasking -lalfont -lalleg

      -lmasking -lalfont `allegro-config --libs`

Note: The order of the libraries that you link against is important!

To make programs with OpenGL support you need to link with the MASkinG library that was built with AllegroGL support (built with "make ALLEGRO_GL=1", AllegroGL and all the libraries it requires. For example like this:

      -lmaskinggl -lalfont -lagl -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lalleg -luser32 -lgdi32

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