# InstallOptions 2

InstallOptions 2

Introduction

InstallOptions is a NSIS plugin which allows you to create custom pages for NSIS installers, to prompt the user for extra information.

InstallerOptions will create a dialog which will be displayed inside the NSIS window. The controls on the dialog can be defined in an INI file.

NSIS 2 has a new page system, which allows you to add custom pages to your installer without messing with Prev/Next functions. With the new plugin system, you also don't have to worry anymore about extracting and deleting the DLL file. When you store the INI files in the plugins directory, NSIS will also delete them automatically.

This new version of InstallOptions has been designed for NSIS 2. It supports customized user interfaces and custom font and DPI settings.

INI File

The INI file has one required section. This section includes the number of controls to be created as well as general window attributes. The INI file also includes a variable number of Field sections which are used to create the controls to be displayed.

The required section is named "Settings". It can contain the following values:

NumFields | (required) | The number of control elements to be displayed on the dialog window.
Title | (optional) | If specified, gives the text to set the titlebar to. Otherwise, the titlebar text is not changed.
CancelEnabled | (optional) | If specified, overrides NSIS settings and enables or disables the cancel button. If set to 1, the cancel button will be enabled. If set to 0, the cancel button will be disabled.
CancelShow | (optional) | If specified, overrides NSIS settings and shows or hides the cancel button If set to 1, the cancel button will be shown. If set to 0, the cancel button will be hidden.
BackEnabled | (optional) | If specified, overrides NSIS settings and enables or disables the back button. If set to 1, the back button will be enabled. If set to 0, the back button will be disabled.
CancelButtonText | (optional) | Overrides the text for the cancel button. If not specified, the cancel button text will not be changed.
NextButtonText | (optional) | Overrides the text for the next button. If not specified, the next button text will not be changed.
BackButtonText | (optional) | Overrides the text for the back button. If not specified, the back button text will not be changed.
Rect | (optional) | Overrides the default rect ID to run over. This will make IO resize itself according to a different rect than NSIS's dialogs rect.

Each field section has the heading "Field #" where # must be sequential numbers from 1 to NumFields. Each Field section can contain the following values:

Type

(required)

Type of control to be created. Valid values are "Label", "Text", "Password", "Combobox", "DropList", "Listbox", "CheckBox", "RadioButton", "FileRequest", "DirRequest" "Icon", "Bitmap" or "GroupBox".
A "Label" is used to display static text. (i.e. a caption for a textbox)
A "Text" and "Password" accept text input from the user. "Password" masks the input with * characters.
A "Combobox" allows the user to type text not in the popup list, a "Droplist" only allows selection of items in the list.
A "listbox" shows multiple items and can optionally allow the user to select more than one item.
A "CheckBox" control displays a check box with label.
A "RadioButton" control displays a radio button with label.
A "FileRequest" control displays a textbox and a browse button. Clicking the browse button will display a file requester where the user can browse for a file.
A "DirRequest" control displays a textbox and a browse button. Clicking the browse button will display a directory requester where the user can browse for a directory.
An "Icon" control displays an icon. Use no Text to use the installer icon.
A "Bitmap" control displays a bitmap.
A "GroupBox" control displays a frame to group controls.

Text | (optional) | Specifies the caption of a label, checkbox, or radio button control. For icon and bitmaps control this specifies the path to the image. Note: For labels, \r\n will be converted to a newline. To use a back-slash in your text you have to escape it using another back-slash - \\.

State

(optional)

Specifies the state of the control. This is updated when the user closes the window, so you can read from it from NSIS. For edit texts and dir and file request boxes, this is the string that is specified. For radio button and check boxes, this can be '0' or '1' (for unchecked or checked). For list boxes, combo boxes and drop lists this is the selected items separated by pipes ('|').

ListItems | (optional) | A list of items to display in a combobox, droplist, or listbox. This is a single line of text with each item separated by a pipe character '|'

MaxLen

(optional)

Causes validation on the selected control to limit the maximum length of text.
If the user specifies more text than this, a message box will appear when they click "OK" and the dialog will not be dismissed.
You should not use this on a "combobox" since the user can not control what is selected.
This should be set to a maximum of 260 for "FileRequest" and "DirRequest" controls.
Ignored on "label" controls.

MinLen

(optional)

Causes validation on the selected control to force the user to enter a minimum amount of text.
If the user specifies less text than this, a message box will appear when they click "OK" and the dialog will not be dismissed.
Unlike MaxLen, this is useful for "Combobox" controls. By setting this to a value of "1" the program will force the user to select an item.
Ignored on "Label" controls.

ValidateText | (optional) | If the field fails the test for "MinLen" or "MaxLen", a messagebox will be displayed with this text. Note: \r\n will be converted to a newline, two back-slashes will be converted to one - \\.

Left
Right
Top
Bottom

(required)

The position on the dialog where this control appears. All sizes should be set in dialog units. To get the right dimensions for your controls, design your dialog using a resource editor and copy the dimensions to the INI file.
Note: For combobox or droplist, the "bottom" value is not used in the same way.
In this case, the bottom value is the maximum size of the window when the pop-up list is being displayed. All other times, the combobox is automatically sized to be one element tall. If you have trouble where you can not see the combobox drop-down, then check the bottom value and ensure it is large enough.
Note (2): FileRequest and DirRequest controls will allocate 15 dialog units to the browse button. Make this control wide enough the contents of the textbox can be seen. Note that you can specify negative coordinates to specify the distance from the right or bottom edge.

Filter

(optional)

Specifies the filter to be used in the "FileRequest" control.
This is constructed by putting pairs of entries together, each item seperated by a | character.
The first value in each pair is the text to display for the filter.
The second value is the pattern to use to match files.
For example, you might specify:
Filter=Text Files|*.txt|Programs|*.exe;*.com|All Files|*.*
If not specified, then the filter defaults to All Files|*.*
Note: you should not put any extra spaces around the | characters.

Root | (optional) | Used by DirRequest controls to specify the root directory of the search. By default, this allows the user to browse any directory on the computer. This will limit the search to a particular directory on the system.

Flags

(optional)

This specifies additional flags for the display of different controls. Each value should be seperated by a | character, and you should be careful not to put any spaces around the | character.

Value | Meaning
REQ_SAVE | This causes "FileRequest" controls to display a Save As dialog. If not specified, an Open dialog is used.
FILE_MUST_EXIST | Used by "FileRequest" to determine if the selected file must exist. This only applies if an "Open" dialog is being displayed. This currently does not force the file to exist other than through the browse button.
FILE_EXPLORER | Used by "FileRequest", enables new file request look (recommended)
FILE_HIDEREADONLY | Used by "FileRequest", hides "open read only" checkbox in open dialog.
WARN_IF_EXIST | Used by "FileRequest" to display a warning message if the selected file already exists. The warning message is only displayed for files selected with the browse button.
PATH_MUST_EXIST | Used by "FileRequest" to force the path to exist. Prevents the user from typing a non-existant path into the browse dialog window. This only validates path's selected with the browse button.
PROMPT_CREATE | Used by "FileRequest" to display a warning if the selected file does not exist. However, it still allows the user to select the file. This only displays the warning for files selected with the browse button.
RIGHT | Used by "Checkbox" and "Radiobutton" controls to specify you want the checkbox to the right of the text instead of the left as is the default.
MULTISELECT | Used by "Listbox" controls to specify if more than item may be selected. If this flag is not specified,only one item may be selected from the list.
RESIZETOFIT | This causes "Bitmap" controls to resize the image to the size of the control. Also useful to support custom DPI settings.
GROUP | Add this flag to the first control of a group of controls to group them. Grouping controls allows you to create multiple groups of radio button and makes keyboard navigation using arrow keys easier.
NOTABSTOP | Do not stop on the control when the user pressed the Tab key. Add NOTABSTOP to all controls of a group except the first one to allow navigation between groups with the Tab key.
DISABLED | Causes a control to be disabled.

How to use

Modern UI

For information about using InstallOptions with the Modern UI, have a look at the Modern UI documentation.

Extract the INI File

First, you have to extract the INI files for the dialogs in the .onInit function:

    Function .onInit

      InitPluginsDir
      File /oname=$PLUGINSDIR\test.ini test.ini

    FunctionEnd

Call the DLL

You can call InstallOptions in a page function, check the NSIS documentation for information about the page system.

The InstallOptions DLL has three functions:

- dialog - Creates the dialog immidiately
- initDialog - Creates the dialog in memory, does not show it
- show - Shows a dialog created in memory

Usually, you only need to use the dialog function:

    Function FunctionName ;FunctionName defined with Page command

      ;Display the Install Options dialog

      Push $R0

      InstallOptions::dialog $PLUGINSDIR\test.ini
      Pop $R0

    FunctionEnd

Return value

After you have called the DLL, InstallOptions adds one value to the stack, with one of the following values:

- success - The user has pressed the Next button
- back - The user has pressed the Back button
- cancel - The user has pressed the Cancel button
- error - An error has occured, the dialog cannot be displayed.

Usually, you don't need to check this value, but you still have to remove it from the stack (have a look at the example above).

If you want to check the user input immidiately, for example, to display a warning when the input is invalid, you should check whether the user has pressed the Back or Next button.

Get the output

In most cases, you will need the output from the INI File in a section. Get it using ReadINIStr:

    ReadINIStr $R0 "$PLUGINSDIR\test.ini" "Field 1" "State"

ReserveFile

It you are using BZIP2 compression and your .onInit and Page functions are not above all other sections/functions with File commands, use ReserveFile on the top of your script to put the DLL/INI files first in the data block, which will make your installer start faster:

    ReserveFile "${NSISDIR}\Plugins\test.ini"
    ReserveFile "${NSISDIR}\Plugins\InstallOptions.dll"

Fonts and colors

If you want to use custom fonts or colors on your InstallOptions dialogs, you should use the initDialog and show functions. initDialog creates the dialog in memory, but does not show it. After calling initDialog, you can set the fonts and colors, and call show to show the dialog. initDialog pushes the HWND of the custom dialog to the stack. To get the HWND of the controls use:

    GetDlgItem (output var) (hwnd of the custom dialog) (1200 + Field number - 1)

Example of using a custom font:

    Function FunctionName ;FunctionName defined with Page command

      ;Display the Install Options dialog

      Push $R0
      Push $R1
      Push $R2

        InstallOptions::initDialog /NOUNLOAD $PLUGINSDIR\test.ini
        Pop $R0

        GetDlgItem $R1 $R0 1200 ;1200 + Field number - 1

        ;$R1 contains the HWND of the first field
        CreateFont $R2 "Tahoma" 10 700
        SendMessage $R1 ${WM_SETFONT} $R2 0

        InstallOptions::show

      Pop $R1
      Pop $R1
      Pop $R0

    FunctionEnd

Version history

- DLL version 2.1 (3/15/2003)
  - \r\n converts to newline in both label Text and ValidateText
  - New browse dialog style (modern)
  - Word wrapping for check boxes and radio buttons
  - No ugly border for edit fields under XP
  - Scroll bar for list boxes
  - Works with SetStaticBkColor
  - DISABLED dir and file request fields now disable the browse button too
  - No more STATE value for labels
  - Minor fixes

- DLL version 2.0 (1/4/2003)
  - Supports custom font and DPI settings (by Joost Verburg)
  - INI files should contain dialog units now, no pixels (by Joost Verburg)
  - RESIZETOFIT flag for Bitmap control (by Amir Szekely)
  - New documentation (by Joost Verburg)
  - New GROUP/NOTABSTOP/DISABLED flags

Complete version history

Credits

Original version by Michael Bishop
DLL version by Nullsoft, Inc.
DLL version 2 by Amir Szekely, ORTIM, Joost Verburg
New documentation by Joost Verburg

License

    Copyright © 2001-2003 Michael Bishop

    Portions Copyright © 2002-2003:
    - Nullsoft, Inc.
    - Amir Szekely
    - ORTIM
    - Joost Verburg

    This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
    warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
    arising from the use of this software.

    Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
    including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute
    it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

    1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented;
       you must not claim that you wrote the original software.
       If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the
       product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
    2. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such,
       and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
    3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any distribution.