PowerBASIC

[JRS]

I removed my post that may have been over the line.

[Brian Alvarez]

  I guess adam is trying to do exactly what i started few years ago.
I hope they get it done quicker, being a team and everything.

[JRS]

If they were to release a 10.05 free update addressing issuses discovered since Bob died, it would be a huge boost to Drake's credibility.

PB actually gives me hope that BASIC is still alive. If you have users believing PowerBASIC has a future, projects like O2 that are actively supported have a chance at restoring interest in language. I don't think people look at BASIC and see COBOL. (yet)

[JRS]

PowerBASIC is like Frank Sinatra and Oxygen Basic is like Elton John.

[JRS]

Nice to see the JRS forum alive again with the help of recent interest in O2. For awhile there, I thought JRS died with Bob.

[JRS]

Anyway, I believe that almost all the DDTer's will continue to use PB for ever.

Forever may be as soon as current Windows breaks PB.

[JRS]

There may be some more movement as part of today's reorg. Microsoft seems to be interested in distancing itself from the Microsoft Windows-first legacy which has been in place for years.

Forever is getting nearer.

[JRS]

Is there some tradition I missed that developers feel a need to ignore dead BASIC languages and continue on as if they are supported and active projects?

[Mike Lobanovsky]

With reference to PowerBASIC, my feeling about the language can best be described by the English word undead that comes from the Anglo-Saxon horror movie subculture and has no direct synonym in Slavonic languages.

[JRS]

Playing around with IUP got me to thinking that a PowerBasic DDT emulation could be done (and extended) with an IUP wrapper include.

Create
    DIALOG NEW - create new dialog (does not display)
    DIALOG SHOW MODAL - display/activate dialog (modal)
    DIALOG SHOW MODELESS - display/activate dialog (modeless)
    DIALOG END - close and destroy a dialog

Set Properties
    DIALOG SET CLIENT - set width/height of dialog client area
    DIALOG SET LOC - set upper/left position of dialog
    DIALOG SET SIZE - set width/hight of dialog
    DIALOG SET TEXT - set dialog caption
    DIALOG SET USER - set 1 of 8 user dialog values
    DIALOG SET COLOR - set dialog background color (RGB)
    DIALOG SET ICON - change dialog icon
    DIALOG STATE - change visible state of dialog

Get Properties
    DIALOG GET CLIENT - get width/height of dialog client area
    DIALOG GET LOC - get upper/left location of dialog
    DIALOG GET SIZE - get width/height of dialog
    DIALOG GET TEXT - get dialog caption
    DIALOG GET USER - get 1 of 8 user data dialog values
    DIALOG UNITS - convert dialog units to pixels
    DIALOG PIXELS - convert pixels to dialog units

Run-Time Management
    DIALOG DISABLE - disable dialog (cannot receive mouse/keyboard messages)
    DIALOG DOEVENTS - process messages, sleep, relinquish time slice
    DIALOG POST - send message to dialog, continue without waiting
    DIALOG SEND - send message to dialog, wait until complete
    DIALOG REDRAW - direct dialog/child controls to redraw

What do you think Charles?

[Charles Pegge]

Hi John,

I've never used DDT, or created dialogs for that matter, which explains why OxIde is a bit austere. Has anyone else here used DDT, who might have an opinion?

[Arnold]

During my professional life, I did not need programming skills and so I never used Powerbasic - unfortunately, because in the meantime I see that it is a powerful language and that there are many brilliant users which contributed a lot of useful code and apps.

In my understanding, one can achieve similar results with Dialogs.inc as with DDT. The difference is that Dialogs.inc is more based on the "Resource Definition Statements"
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/menurc/dialog-resource

which should simplify using the results of a resource editor like e.g. Resed.exe. Some of the DDT statements can be done in the associated dlgproc callback functions.

Of course Oxygen can handle IUP very well and it would be easy to create Dialogs via IupDialog(). For me the problem is that using iup.dll you can do only basic things. Eleborating a little bit more you will need a lot more dlls, iupcontrols.dll alone is not sufficient. You will also need different dlls for 32-bit and 64-bit. All this was the reason why I finished my experiments with IUP. In Windows I would use IUP only for really sophisticated applications. On the other hand, with Linux it would make sense to use IUP.

[JRS]

The IUP DLL / SO count is the price you pay for a modular cross platform GUI API.

IUP may be a good candidate for UPX.

For Script BASIC, IUP is its default dialog based UI and SDL_gfx is the default graphics primitive UI. SB also supports a BBC GUI emulation using SDL.

[JRS]

I have started a thread on the AllBASIC.info forum as an effort to promote IUP and LED as a GUI framework, I hope James Fuller will chime in and share his knowledge about LED. The docs seem a bit lite for this tool.

[JRS]

I believe the PowerBASIC market is big, but most of its fans are holding back because of the storm around it.
I think you are right for the moment though. I believe the people can return to PowerBASIC, but it takes a man
with enough funds to make it great again.

You're dreaming if you think there is money to be made selling a BASIC language these days. Keeping the free open source projects alive is tough enough.