Dear Larry,
Can you describe some of the lesser know features of the Dynamic C GUI and maybe one or two “gotchas”?
Jason M.
Jason, thank you for your question.
Dynamic C is continually being improved to offer customers the best experience possible. I believe this will be a good opportunity to go over some of those overlooked features.
As you probably already know, Dynamic C is a comprehensive development environment that allows Rabbit products come to life. Knowing most of the features that Dynamic C has to offer can greatly reduce your development time.
There are a few features in Dynamic C that may be under utilized because they may not be immediately obvious. One of those not-so-noticeable features is the option to create a backup file whenever you compile a program. This feature can be enabled by clicking on the Options in the file menu, then select Environment Options, then select Print/Alert.
You may also elect to use the Backup/Auto save feature which offers you two options. The first option creates a backup of the file that is being compiled before the compilation. The second option will create backups of all open files and save files before compilation. Both of these options create files with a .BAK file type. However, the backup files will only be created if a change has been made to the files. Files which have not been modified will not have a backup created.
Another feature which is somewhat hidden is the ability of Dynamic C to create a text file of the STDIO window. To access this feature, click on the Options tab in the file menu, and then click on Environment Options. Next click on Debug Windows in which two options will be presented to you for this feature. The first option is to create a new file every time you run the program. The second option offers to append the STDIO content to an existing file. That’s it!
Now for those “gotchas”. One “gotcha” that we encounter from time to time is magical disappearing text. Some customers like to have customizability over their syntax color settings. If done properly, custom text colors can be really helpful in reading the program. If not done properly, however, the user can cause syntax elements to disappear. Here is a simple example: If you inadvertently set your syntax element background and foreground to the same color you will not be able to read the text. Thus the illusion of losing all your work occurs, and then panic follows. Do not fear, and the answer is quite near.
I have had some customers set their syntax element foreground color to the same value as the display window background color. Making it seem that the text has disappeared.
So here is the easiest way to avert that situation. First click options on the file menu bar, then click environment options, finally click on the syntax colors. Select the Open button, navigate to the Schemes folder within your version of Dynamic C and select one of the files there to be your color scheme. Notice that there is also a Save command. This allows you to save your color scheme so you can recover if it gets set incorrectly. This is also useful if you have customized the color settings and want to migrate them to a new release of Dynamic C.
Jason, I do hope that this answers your question, and that Dynamic C continues to be your choice of development software.
Larry C.
Larry Cicchinelli is Rabbit Semiconductor’s Technical Support Manager. He has 30 years of embedded experience, and is considered one of the foremost authorities on Rabbit products. Larry and his staff offer comprehensive technical support to Rabbit customers.
Submit your questions for Larry via email at
AskLarry@rabbit.com
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