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At the moment, whenever I need a custom dialog, however simple, I use Delphi's form designer to create a new dialog form. The form is then wrapped in an easy to use ShowMessage() type function.

In some situations it would be easier if forms could be created at run-time from a script. The script would detail all form components and their properties, much like Delphi's .DFM files.

Creating GUIs from scripts could be useful in other situations as well. For example, a GUI of a mini application could be embedded into the window of an existing application. Or the GUI script could be modified at run-time to create GUI variations.

I could create something to do this myself, but I assume other people have already tackled this problem. However I can't find anything using google. Is there anything currently available offering this kind of functionality? (Free or otherwise) Or does it already exist in Delphi?

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Check out some of the scripting solutions for Delphi. For example, the TMS Scripting Studio, dwScript, RemObject's, FastScript, etc. I believe some of them are able to use DFM's for this purpose.

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Is using a general purpose scripting engine the best way to approach this problem?
Possibly - it depends on how much functionality you want. For ex, if you want to be able to write event handlers in scripts as well as just loading gui elements.
I would be happy to write event handlers separately and use a second [script/code/something] to link everything together.
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http://www.torry.net/pages.php?id=280 Delphin v.1.21, it can process DFM files, maybe you just want the DFM to code converter.

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You might try XI Library (commercial): http://xilib.com/

I have never used it, it's just something sitting in my bookmarks, but it looks like it fits the bill. Not a scripting engine, more of a way to define dialog boxes via XML. There's sample XML code right on the front page, just click "Show the example".

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