Form Designer • VCL-compatible file and stream formats

Form Designer uses only VCL features for storing the forms and components, so it supports both text and binary DFM formats and can save/load the form or component to/from stream in standard VCL stream format.

Any DFM file in text or binary format can be loaded. The only limitation - each loaded component type must be registered with standard VCL RegisterClasses procedure. This is a base limitation of VCL stream system. If the loaded DFM file or stream contains unregistered component type, the Form Designer just ignores this component without error messages or exceptions, but any such error can be processed manually in the application by OnReadError event of TFormDesigner component.