XVT-Design is a graphical, interactive design tool and application generator. It simplifies the design and implementation of graphical-user-interface (GUI) based applications in three major ways:

• XVT-Design lets you create the user-interface objects of your application (windows, controls, menus, and so on) graphically and interactively, rather than by programming manually.
  
  
• XVT-Design provides a TestMode that lets you preview your application’s user interface without separate compilation and linking steps. You can use XVT-Design to build and refine application prototypes rapidly without writing any code.
  
  
• XVT-Design generates event handlers and other source code for your application’s user interface. Instead of rewriting“generic” user-interface code by hand for each new application, you can use XVT-Design to create this code automatically.
  

Without XVT-Design, it is necessary to write resource language source code by hand to define the necessary GUI resources for an application in a portable manner. Since you cannot visually inspect your resources until you run the application, this is a cumbersome, iterative process.

With XVT-Design, you create a “project” file containing the GUI resources for your application. For each project, you can create any number of dialog boxes and windows. Then you draw the needed controls right on your computer screen, placing them just where you want within a window or dialog box—without ever having to calculate the screen coordinates numerically.

XVT-Design automatically generates a complete set of source files for your application:

• C code for the application’s user interface
  
• A C header file containing function prototypes and constant declarations
  
• An XVT Universal Resource Language (URL) file, containing portable definitions of your application’s resources
  
• A complete makefile for compiling and linking your application
  
• A help text file

All the GUI objects provided by the XVT Portability Toolkit have a number of attributes that describe their appearance and behavior. For example, windows might be sizeable or iconizable, or might contain scrollbars or titlebars.