Hi José,
if I can permit to suggest something for this forum ...
- "Karma Description Mod" from http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=192
It gives a complete new way to handle Karma with a more human and involving way, letting users to indicate the reason why you set up or down other's karma and linking that reasons to exact post. Just having a number is not so nice and gives nothing to people reading the forum. - "GeSHiSmf" from http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=200
As you can see from my site, having colored syntax when posting code is another story.
Ciao
Eros
Hi Eros,
Thanks for your suggestions. I'm avoiding to install mods because they become a problem when new versions of the forum software are released. When version 2.0 of the forum will be released, all the mods will become incompatible. It already has been announced that "The upgrade will remove any currently-installed mods. You'd need to wait for the mod authors to upgrade their mods."
The manager of the CodingMonkeys forum already complained of not being able to update it from 1.1 RC3 to the current version because of the lack of updated versions of some mods he is using.
Yes, you are right. SMF forum suffer a lot the way mods are handled, I mean directly to the template code other than mounted as external extensions loaded dynamically.
In any case do not keep "Blue Steel" as an example because he installed so many mods in CodingMonkeys that I do not know how the forum can still work :)
He did that as a try to get more users and more vitality to the forum but I do not think it was a good move.
Here you are making a great job remaining professional on the contents so I'm pretty sure sooner or later many users will populate this board (maybe tired of old PB forum).
Ciao
Eros
Just a last note bout SMF mods.
It is important to check if mods have been updated at during SMF version change. All the one I have installed are all updated at least 5 times and been present in all major SMF updates.
In any case, even if a little weak on mods aspect, SMF is really good.
Ciao
Eros
Thanks. PB needs to change the forum software and close the Café.
>Thanks. PB needs to change the forum software and close the Café.
To think i was about the last person actually making the nn-th complaint not having a off-topic forum..
Right after that it was added.. boy what a mess it gave... sorry :)
Actually it seems the one and only forum people seem to come back for.
Maybe a misconception of mine but frankly, i think the PB future is rather dark.
A few 'cracks' are no longer visitting.
I suspect the freeware .NET IDE's have taken over everything.
Not a big deal per se, i have new programming tasks lately as well.
PowerBASIC is less than 5% of my work nowadays.
Geeh, i do so much c# nowadays i have difficulty thinking in BASIC: Boolean b = false; (hips!)
Maybe i am all seeing this in the wrong perspective, i would like to hear your thoughts on this.
:)
I feel like you Edwin but I do not think the reasons are mainly related to other development environment but mostly to how Power Basic conducts their business.
I'm pretty sure they get enough for living in any case but the fact that for many, many months there is just silence is not good for any one.
I can be wrong but recent PB strategy is the following:
1. stay calm as much as possible, say nothing
2. in the meantime develop as much as possible new functionalities to justify a pay upgrade to a new version
3. release new pay version
4. for x = 1 to rnd(1, 3)
5. fix some bugs
6. release free *.x version
7. next
8. goto 1
Now, it can be a not bad strategy. So where is the problem? Problem is in line number 1.
If "stay calm" is too short, they cannot justify a pay version. If "stay calm" is too long, many users disappear.
Now we are in a "stay calm" too long era. I'm sure mr Zale will come out with a new pay version in next few months and it will be rich of new functionalities, but in the meantime install and usage base will be a little bit smaller.
I still think PB compilers are the best around in many aspects but I do not like the actual strategy at all.
That's my thoughts.
Ciao
Eros
From Standpoint of marketing, I like the Purebasic marketing much more.
Buy one get all further free.
And finally I think they even make more money then Powerbasic, as they sell a lot more copies.
Its just that the stability of Powerbasic is unbeaten, and most of my libraries are in Powerbasic.
If I had to switch to something else, it would cost me more time then the actual benefits.
But if that would not be the case ... if I would right now want to start programming,
I'd choose between Freebasic and Purebasic.
For the actual number of features, Powerbasic looks to me to high priced (compared to the alternatives).
Besides Freebasic also looks rather promissing as well as some other languages (like D++).
But in case of freebasic, stability seems to be a issue, and thats something I can't take in my projects.
if something in my programm doesn't work as expected, it shall be my fault, not fault of the compiler :-).
Everything else would be really surprising for me after using Powerbasic so long time now.
PS. Jose:
I am one of those who go to the PB-Forum to post in the Cafee. Its the easiest place to tell the "Amis" a bit of what they don't see in their news :-)). If it would not be that I know you really dislike it, a cafee could be in somewhere :-)). But in fact I understand that you want to moderate technical questions and not political opinions. Which can be quite difficult. Therefore we "sell code" not "whine and coals".
Theo, I am doing some fairly complicated things with Freebasic but have not encountered any stability problems from the compiler. Much of the work is done by 'GCC' and 'AS' back ends, so it has adopted a strong foundation of reliability.
There may be one or two weak eareas in error reporting, for instance PRINT#1, ss does not do anything, whereas PRINT #1,ss with space between PRINT and '#' works as expected.
I cant think of any major problems at all.
Of course, the intrinsic function set is much smaller than PowerBasic's, so you may find yourself writing the missing functions, like USING$ and FORMAT$ which only works in QBasic legacy mode. The biggest hurdle for me was learning to live without GOSUB.
>the missing GOSUB
In Powerbasic you would not really need the GOSUB, as it internally seems just to compile to a CALL.
You can't do something like that in FB ?
PRINT #1,[:-)]ss
! CALL mysub
PRINT #1,[:-)]ss
END.
mysub:
PRINT #1,[:-)]ss
! RTS
At least in PB this will do the same as far as I can say.
The same with JMP and GOTO.
Here is an example how even function can be called from ASM:
ASSEMBLER-Tutorial #2 (http://www.powerbasic.com/support/forums/Archives/Archive-000003/HTML/20020808-6-000791.html)
and this of course:
ASSEMBLER-Tutorial #2 (http://www.powerbasic.com/support/forums/Archives/Archive-000003/HTML/20020808-6-000716.html)
Assembler-Tutorial #3 (http://www.powerbasic.com/support/forums/Archives/Archive-000003/HTML/20020808-6-000719.html)
I had not thought of that Theo. I have just tested it with Freebasic:
GOSUB replacement
goto maincode
'------------
gosub_test:
print "here in gosubs"
asm ret
maincode:
'--------
asm call gosub_test
end
I too had a suggestion.
How about contacting some of the ex forum members, long lost from the PB forums?
I think we all know why (most, at least) of them "disappeared"; so, if anyone had (or still have) some friendly mail exchange with some of them, I think it would be nice to mention this new place on a message.
If this wasn't already done, off course! :)
Bye!
I just have sent an email to Semen. I miss his posts.
There are a number of ex-PB'ers over on the PureBasic forum.
>I just have sent an email to Semen. I miss his posts.
Me too!
I really hope this forum becomes a place for ex-Pbers to come.
There have been some really excellent developers that have faded away from the PB forums. It is such a shame.
If you set a favourite you'll get> "Show unread posts since last visit."
Maybe you can set a title to: JRS - Show unread posts since last visit.
>I just have sent an email to Semen. I miss his posts.
Me too!
And who knows who else :-).
All we can do is to contact them to let them know of the existence of this forum, but there is nothing we can do if, for whatever reason, they aren't interested in participating. I don't like to insist.
I think that PB represented the next stage of BASIC development for a long time,
and it really overcame many of the limitations of QBASIC, such as the memory
model, number of serial ports, and limited data types quite well.
But there is more competition from other languages and development tools now,
and it is less about price than it is about what you want or need to do, and how you want or need to do it.
Price becomes significant when you have reasonable alternatives, and then you become concerned about what you are paying the extra for.
I respect the fact that having the Cafe, that PowerBasic keeps hands off and does not police what gets posted. It represents a community viewpoint. However, I do find some of the things said, or the way they are said, rather extreme. I think the Cafe is also distracting - people spend too much time on it, and it is not productive time either.
I really think it has less to do with PB per se, than it has to do with the fact that the face of computing is evolving, and PB compilers are not on the bleading edge of what's going on. In fact, for many people, they need to play catch up in order to compete with other tools that have become available in the meantime.
But the problem with catch up is that it easily becomes too little, too late. You
have to get ahead of the game somewhere. And with FreeBasic and PureBasic already available on other platforms, and bringing the separate capabilities of the PB compilers together into single products, where is PowerBasic to excell?
But if you have PowerBasic or buy it, it does not disappoint. So it becomes a question of whether you will be happy with what you get, or can you get as much elsewhere for less. Sometimes a lot less.
Quotethe face of computing is evolving, and PB compilers are not on the bleading edge of what's going on.
@Donald. You could go into Politics. You talent for diplomacy sayings is really amazing :-).
In short:
No sofware manufacturer can keep up with competition if the only updates come every 7 or 8 Years.Anyway I heared rumors that the newer PB Compiler MAY be also programmed in PB not in ASM.
If thats the case, they can more quickly update them.
The fact that the other BASIC's are definitely ahead in terms of features is just a fact and therefore I agree with what you say.
If I had today to start new with Basic, I'd choose FB, or maybe Purebasic - for the price they have.
Purebasic has an included Visual Designer and the price is really "in range" and is "one time for all updates".
FB is completely free and has a lot of features which make it really competitive for big projects.
Also people say that its quite stable, can't comment on this myself (and don't want to risk it by today :-)).
About Semen, I can say that he wrote me:
Quote
If PB will compile 64-bit Exe, it could be useful in very far future. At least, for me.
The reason - it's not a good idea to have separate releases for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.
Meanwhile, 64-bit Exe should run faster in 64-bit Windows.
Actually, in current moment I am more interesting in Wine (one company asked me to transfer my app to Linux).
It was serious progress during last 2 years, and the latest Wine works not very bad
Therefore I assume that his absence is due to the fact that he is actually using "wine" and working on his applications.
Also he would prefer using programming tools, which enable him to output 32 or 64 bit code.
Which may be the case for FB once the gcc Backend is available.
I think the best strategy is not to become too dependent on the implementation of one particular language. If the code is well structured and simply written it transfers well.
The irony is that x86 assembler turns out to be the most stable and enduring programming language as it has changed little in 30 years from the inception of the 8088 and 8086. By trying to hide the CPU and pretend that registers do not exist, high level languages have introduced huge inefficiencies into computing and caused a proliferation of many different programming languages and 'dialects',
Quote
No sofware manufacturer can keep up with competition if the only updates come every 7 or 8 Years.
PBWIN 8.0 and PBCC 4.0 were released in February 2005. That's 2 years and 5 months ago, not 7 or 8 years.
Quote
Anyway I heared rumors that the newer PB Compiler MAY be also programmed in PB not in ASM.
And I hear rumors that the end of the world is close, so who cares?
Quote
FB is completely free and has a lot of features which make it really competitive for big projects.
DO you know of any "big project" done with it? Apparently is mainly used by youngsters to code small games.
Quote
Therefore I assume that his absence is due to the fact that he is actually using "wine" and working on his applications.
Also he would prefer using programming tools, which enable him to output 32 or 64 bit code.
Just tell him about FreakBasic :)
Quote
The irony is that x86 assembler turns out to be the most stable and enduring programming language as it has changed little in 30 years from the inception of the 8088 and 8086. By trying to hide the CPU and pretend that registers do not exist, high level languages have introduced huge inefficiencies into computing and caused a proliferation of many different programming languages and 'dialects'
This is why I always request low-level features, that are the ones that really give you power, and not high-level statements that don't do anything that you can't do using the Windows API.
Seeing the area you guys are working in, usually IT related things, you want to have the low level power of c and powerBasic. I can see how those 2 languages will be used for things like that for a long time.
But I do think that with huge complicated projects like a really interactive, story rich, very cool graphics and interface type games and graphics tools need the abstraction of higher level languages, especially for a single programmer or very small team. Otherwise you would need a team of 30 people or so to put out anything in any decent amount of time on such projects.
I don't know how many of you have checked out eBasic from Paul Turley. Out of demands from many Aurora users and ex Ibasic Pro users he put this language out. It runs ibasic pro programs and will be a lot more when finished. Also it seems it is working under linux, especially ubuntu as many of the users are using that. I took my ubuntu off and never had a chance to test ebasic under it.
I just reinstalled ebasic and have put in some of the command paks from ibasic pro that you can download and they seem to be working fine. ebasic has not 3d support built in, but the opengl pak and the other opengl headers at the coding monkey forums worked fine. I read on the forums that Paul wrote an SDL wrapper for iBasic Pro, I am trying to find that. But that should make for a great 3d development combo when put together.
eBasic does support OOP but you are not required to use it.
FreeBasic is very nice too and seems will only get better. I have not tried Real Basic and Pure Basic.
Also this surprised me as I throught this last visual studio release was the last Visual Basic being released, but the 2008 visual studio is out as beta 2 and Visual Basic is going strong in it, so that was a shock, but less of a shock than if they actually stopped visual basic as I had heard.
The videos of what all it can do is really impressive and it is all free for now and will have free express versions when released. By then most people under windows will have .net for sure, so I think it will be very hard for other languages to compete against free with all the flexibility. The power play from microsoft is going to pay off by then I think for them. I thought they really messed up with the introduction of .net, but it is coming together now and looks impressive and massive as it is. It will be the DeathStar when Orca (VS2008) is complete and released. Now it makes sense why Microsoft got Novell to work on Mono to speed things up and polish it up.
Quote
Seeing the area you guys are working in, usually IT related things, you want to have the low level power of c and powerBasic. I can see how those 2 languages will be used for things like that for a long time.
Yes. If you haven't guessed it yet, I like to do research. Too high level languages bore me. If I had to choose another language I probably will use C.
Quote
I read on the forums that Paul wrote an SDL wrapper for iBasic Pro,
The SDL headers can be easily translated to PowerBASIC. One potential problem is that many functions return a pointer to an structure as the result of the function. This is know to cause problems if the DLL has been compiled with gcc.
Quote
I have seen code to do this but they are usually so complex that remembering how all this works is just to hard.
C++ programmers always scatter the code in dozens of files, making it almost impossible to follow. I have written an OLE container in PB for my own use, implemented as a custom control in an include file.
It does what I need and, for hosting documents, I use it to host the WebBrowser control that, in turn, hosts the document. See the pictures attached to my post in this thread ( http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smfforum/index.php?topic=772.0 ), showing embedded Acrobat Reader, MSWord and Excel.
Something i have requested :)
An ole container for documents.
Like wordpad.
Jose you and the good programmers here are doing really cool stuff. It is a pleasure to look at all you guys come up with!!
José, if you were planning to do SDL headers, there is a full set in the Freebasic distribution. I dont know how up to date they are though. SDL comes in many pieces. I think I counted 6 zips, some containing 3-4 DLLs. Well that's one way to cope with complexity.
Thanks, but I already have done it (well, SDL 1.2.11, not other libraries that don't even come with a DLL). I find easier to translate from the original declarations than from other BASIC dialects. I just want to do some tests to see if it works correctly.
There is just one detail pending: since many functions return pointers to structures, I have declared structure parameters as a BYVAL pointer to avoid having to use the BYVAL override when passing this returned pointer as the parameter of another function. However, there is one structure called SDL_Rect and an union called SDL_Event that will be somewhat easier to use if declared as BYREF SDL_Rect and BYREF SDL_Event (otherwise, we will have to use VARPTR to pass the parameter). Should I do this syntax mixing or should I declare them as BYVAL SDL_Rect PTR and BYVAL SDL_Event PTR for consistency?
Jose, I would use whatever makes it easy to read SDL tutorials written in C/C++ on the web and makes it easy to convert to powerbasic code using your conversion. I have a feeling it that would be the consistent version. But I am happy to see this coming, so will be happy either way!!
By the way thanks for this news. You really are providing us with so many great conversions to make graphics programming fun, thanks so much!
Stay tuned. I will post the SDL header and some examples in about an hour. One of the examples is based in this one: http://sol.gfxile.net/gp/ch02.html
Thanks for the link too, looks like a really nice site to learn SDL. Thanks!
I think the BYVAL ... PTR syntax is fine if it give a more consistent set of calls. It seems to have more clarity.
Nothing wrong with a few VARPTRs. (I have found they mix in with assembler well,
the result is returned in the EAX register, and does not seem to alter any other registers.)
On the SDL DLLS, I found I had to use Google to get them. They seem to be buried in various locations but Google gets them first time.
I got 14 DLLs and they came in 5 zips needed to run all the Freeebasic SDL examples.
These are:
SDL-1.2.12-win32
and
SDL_image-1.2.6-win32
SDL_mixer-1.2.8-win32
SDL_net-1.2.7-win32
SDL_ttf-2.0.9-win32
A number of the DLLS included will be 3rd party such as zlibVorbis & libpng.
In Windows, we can use GDI+ to load images, as we did with OPENGL.
SDL-1.2.12-win32? Damn. It has changed since I downloaded it.
Being a new user to PowerBasic, I think a neat new addition to the forum would be to have guides for study paths.
These would be recommendations on what to read and in what order and with later additions of tutorials and articles.
This would be better done in a wiki format then a forum application, but it would be great to have something like this
along with the forums of course for questions and discussions.
Right now I don't know if I should just try to do something as a project to learn, finish going through the help files, then maybe
do winapi study and then move into my area of interests.
But with a wiki, I could read and learn in an organized way the steps recommended from experienced users. I find sites that have wiki's to be really valuable and great for learning in a more focused way and in a more pleasant manner. You can really see what a language or application can do and being updated constantly it is great for reference.
I can see by the posts here many of you could have so much to offer to help us noobs and even other coders looking to learn more. There is a vast pool of knowledge in you guys and it would be neat to see it not only in this forum in dialog, but in organized articles and tutorials in a wiki.
But someone interested in Database programming could go quickly to see recommendations of what to read first, examples that will help him learn how to do that kind of programming.
For someone into 2D games a section geared for that. Another for 3D games, well you guys get the idea. Hope it is doable, would love to read and use it when it was here.
I thought I would post this again but shorter. I can see that very valuable reference material is coming to this site. I think all of the articles, how to's, tips and reference examples would be better in a wiki program. Then for each page of the wiki to have a link to the forum thread for discussion and questions about that article. This way it will be nice to have an organized index up front that links and makes it very easy to look for things when they need to be referenced. It will be a lot harder to put this in later as daily I can see the volume of very useful posts increase dramatically. Thanks.
A lot of what is going on here is a surge into new categories from a basis of using PowerBasic as a primary development tool. Those that want to focus on FreeBasic or Assembler are also making a home here.
Because of the level of involvement, this is rather like graduate studies rather than undergraduate courses. I mean there is no reason that people just learning PowerBasic can't be involved and learn as they go, but in general we suggest that you take a good look at what is already available from the PowerBasic web site and elsewhere for learning some of the fundamentals. You are probably going to have to crack some books on different aspects of programming and using the Windows APIs as well, otherwise you are likely be just looking around for code solutions and samples that someone else took the time to develop.
The idea of a Wiki format is that somebody has to become the subject matter expert and commit a huge amount of time and effort into creating and maintaining an encyclopeia-type presentation of the subject. We aren't teaching basic programming techniques, here, we are teaching the tricks or the art of programming, and ways to extend the limits of the languages and tools available to us. We also share ideas and tools, because that is the mind set we belong to.
Sometimes you see someone make a request that someone else write a program for them. We aren't here to do somelthing you should be willing to try and do for yourself. You have questions or problems, people will try and help and give some answers. But we aren't interested in dealing with everything on our plate, then having to spoonfeed anyone or wipe their chin or clean their plate as well.
The PowerBasic compilers comes with extensive Help files, clear explanation and examples, some sample files, the entire PPB/CC manual online, a download section, some tutorials, and everything that has been posted to the forums for ages. In additon, they provide technical support, links to third party sites, and a bunch of additional material, including their own conversion of the Windows API calls and structures as spelled out in a number of INC files.
PowerBasic has done a reasonable job in getting the job done. We are not here to repeat everything they've done, attempt to fill in all the blanks, or revamp the whole process of helping everyone to try and get up to speed with PowerBasic. If we managed to do it, then what's available must be good enough.
How many degrees are there in a circle? We generally agree that there are just 360, but in fact, the circle could be divided up any number of ways. How many degrees are in there in a 3D sphere? That's a much harder question. The suggestion that we could map out ways in which people could use PowerBasic is like trying to describe every vector that could be drawn to pass through a sphere. The possibilities are endless. Once you study the language a bit and work with the examples or play with the samples, then the question of how to exploit that knowledge and understanding become something that the student has to exhibit. That's not something you can get completely out of books or any other form of reference.
In exxense, your question (or suggestion) boils down to this: "How can we make it all easier?". There is no easy answer to that, and there is no certain way that would work for everyone equally well. By the time you get to the point where you understand enough to keep on going, you might be in a position to try and answer that question, but by then you will be torn like the rest of us: Do you now try to simplify it for others, continue to press ahead to learn ever more, or devote your time and effort to using what you now comprehend in some project related to your other interests? There is no easy answer to that question either.
QuoteI can see that very valuable reference material is coming to this site.
Stay tuned, my impression is, that Jose has just started to get warm.
He'll be the secret weapon of PB, to make us use all the API,".NET" and COM Technologies
without having to use the normally used bloatware compilers.
And besides that, I think his really amazing knowledge - free for everyone in this forum -
brings a fresh wind into the whole PB-Community.
Yesterday I had again one of these expereinces which show me how good PB is in its strong side.
I made a somehow really complicated sub-program, which is several levels deep. Then I pressed "
compile" and thought "this time i should get an error message because this was really complicated!".
Nothing happened.
It just said "Compile succeeded at ..". No chance to get this compiler "out of sync".
Anyway I know
there will be something new one day, then I'll try again ... :-)