Thanks Petr, it is updated.
Hi Peter,
this is known issue I fixed in attachement of this post:
ThinForm 1.8c
I will ask Kent to attach it to first post of this thread to avoid confusion.
Petr
Learn 3D graphics with ThinBASIC, learn TBGL!
Windows 10 64bit - Intel Core i5-3350P @ 3.1GHz - 16 GB RAM - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
Thanks Petr, it is updated.
Acer Notebook: Win 10 Home 64 Bit, Core i7-4702MQ @ 2.2Ghz, 12 GB RAM, nVidia GTX 760M and Intel HD 4600
Raspberry Pi 3: Raspbian OS use for Home Samba Server and Test HTTP Server
Sorry Gents,
I missed the update post. I think I was a bit tired.
Petr, thanks for straightening me out.
Regards,
Peter H. (Gungadout)
Thought for the day (in a broad Australian accent):<br />First of all yer gungadin. Afterwards yer gungadout.
Interesting discussion!
How does one write a UI in ThinBasic ?
Just like PowerBasic, SDK style ?
I might be interested in offering some help in this area.
I currently offer a Visual Designer (freeware) for DDT and it could be modified for ThinBasic.
As a third party developer for PowerBasic, I think it would be good to help promote thinbasic. ThinBasic , as freeware, could be useful in promoting BASIC as a language, which is a good thing IMO.
With my latest Designer (EZ5) I have pushed the limits of Visual Design even more (I continue to learn) and it may be useful in helping create a designer for thinbasic.
So what is the current state of a Designer and/or IDE for thinbasic right now ?
Building a Visual Designer requires a number of core systems such as:
- a Form file format
- drag and drop form editor (aka. drag handles to move and size controls)
- property dialogs or property listbox for editing properties
- project (multiple forms) tracking (aka. project file format)
- control alignment (working with multiple controls)
The area of Visual Design greatly interested me.
Last edited by Chris Boss; 24-06-2011 at 08:19.
Dear Chris,
first of all thanks a lot for being here with us at thinBasic community forum.
Many of us that follow PowerBasic forum know you and your great passion in developing user interface designers.
Regarding current state of a UI Designer in thinBasic is quickly said: nothing.
There were some passionate experiments years ago like the one you traced in this thread
All UI you can have into a thinBasic script is typed as code in thinBasic scripts source code more or less following a syntax very very close to PB DDT.
You can check thinBasic examples installing thinBasic and going into \thinBasic\SampleScripts\UI\ directory or also check Tutorial example in \thinbasic\Tutorial\ directory.
So and help on UI side is really appreciated and I'm quite sure other will be interested.
Important is to understand that thinBasic is a continuous descendant parser interpreter.
Every line of the source code can be interpreted again and again and again (if inside a loop or inside a callback function).
In theory (but not allowed ATM) you can even change source code while script is executed and execution would change according.
This gives great opportunity but impose some constrains: you do not have an exe that uses one or more dlls, you have to work on something like quicksand.
Also consider that I personalized (not much) some standard control behaves and added few custom controls and who would like to create a Designer has to consider this.
Maybe it is better to open a dedicated forum related to UI Designers for going on to discuss in there
Let me know.
Ciao
Eros
www.thinbasic.com | www.thinbasic.com/community/ | help.thinbasic.com
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 64bit - 32 GB - Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-10855M CPU @ 2.80GHz - NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000
One of the reasons ThinBasic interests me is this:
To promote Basic as a professional programming language (ie. PowerBasic) requires that Basic be promoted as a language for those interested in learning programming as well. While PowerBasic is great, learning languages usually are most successful when free. Thats why QBasic was so popular in the DOS days. It was so accessable.
I have followed a number of attempts at Basic languages on the web and while interesting, they become only slightly successful. A number deviate from the core Basic syntax of old, unlike PowerBasic which maintains the core Basic syntax I prefer. Some cater to game designers, so the graphics are great, but the language tends to be terrible. Some jump on the OOP bandwagon and lose the feel of Basic (OOP should be secondary to the language, not primary, like it is with PowerBasic).
Because we live in the age of Visual Design, many lack a decent visual designer and that hurts them as well (even though I still like being able to hand code a UI if I want to).
ThinBasic interests me because it was written using PowerBasic and because it emulates PowerBasic syntax (plus has lots of extras). It is freeware and has a good community of developers.
When you look at the history of Basic, it had a number of reasons for its success. First, there were freeware versions people can learn with. Second the language was easy to learn and to teach. Third, there were professional versions you could gravitate to when you wanted to do more.
Programming has changed a great and expectations are much higher now, because unlike the DOS days, computers are so much more powerful and everyone is use to more vivid graphics and user interfaces.
Sadly, Basic has been treated as if it is obsolete and old fashioned. Just read the following articles:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...t_Basic_world_
http://www.salon.com/technology/feat...06/09/14/basic
Microsoft can't make its mind up what it wants to promote as the core programming model (is it dot.net, is if WPF, is it HTML5, is it Javascript).
As a long time professional programmer I appreciate the value of the Basic language. PowerBasic is one of the industries "best kept secrets. Because PowerBasic programmers are forced to learn the Windows API, the PB community likely has a better grasp of Windows under the hood, than many C# programmers today.
Also for a long time, people didn't care about the bloat in programming languages (aka. dot.net) because computers were so powerful (so who cared), but now with Tablet PC's and Netbooks becoming the latest fad, tools like PowerBasic (and ThinBasic) have an advantage. You can write software which will run on minimal hardware, which require little memory and disk space.
ThinBasic is an obvious choice to promote as a freeware Basic development tool.
I am not sure how much time I have to be able to help out with ThinBasic, but it may be worth some investment in time.
Many may not realize this, but my GUI engine software is designed specifically for the task of building visual design (WYSIWYG) style applications. My latest (EZ5) Visual Designer is a 100% EZ5 application, meaning it does not make one single Windows API call. All the drag and drop stuff is built into the engine. EZ5 even comes with a drag handle control, a subclassing engine to take control and impliment drag and drop and property listbox control (perfect for adding property lists in a designer). All the hard stuff most face when trying to build a visual designer is all built in. Even things like snap to grids are built in.
As I learned new ways to do things, using the API, when it comes to visual design and drag and drop, I added it to the GUI engine, so it would be there when I (or my customers) wanted to use them.
To start with ...
What code editors do most use when writing ThinBasic programs ?
Also could some post a very simple example of a ThinBasic program which displays a Form (Dialog) with a few controls on it.
If I create a Visual Designer for ThinBasic, it would use the Smart Parser technology I currently use in EZGUI 5.0, which would allow any external code editor to be used. The source code library from my last freeware DDT Visual Designer also could be used as the basis for coding forms.
When I get a chance, I'll see if I can create a quick prototype.
thinBasic editor is called thinAir. Just install thinBasic and you will get thinAir
screen001.png
thinAir has complete debugger called thinDebug:
screen002.png
As an example you can use thinBasic tutorial script you can find at \thinbasic\tutorial\Tutorial_Intro.tBasic
Just double click on it to execute script on the fly or right click + Edit to open source code into thinAir editor where you can see source code (and execute it)
tutorial.png
Tutorial script uses a lot of UI controls: menubar, toolbar, imagelist, treeview, splitter bar, richedit and web browser, viewport.
Also check the many UI scripts you can find into \thinBasic\samplescripts\UI\
Ciao
Eros
www.thinbasic.com | www.thinbasic.com/community/ | help.thinbasic.com
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 64bit - 32 GB - Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-10855M CPU @ 2.80GHz - NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000
It will be nice to see what you guys come up with. Writing a good form editor is a challenge that is for sure.
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