We rewrote our shell (that has been updated ever few version since 3.0 when I write the first shell).
Our goal was to have as few of global, and interprocess variables as possible. We got a long way in before we needed more than a few of each. Yes, one of those is for the hiding/showing of listbox rows. We really like the freedom of not having to worry about what I call the butterfly effect, where a global or interprocess is changed by somewhere else. The code is a bit longer to write, but after a few days it became natural to me. We love objects, and since ObjectTools was first released (years ago) we have been using objects. We really pushed the use of objects in our new shell too. One thing we did in our new shell was to write a bunch of developer tools to make our development lives much better. These are: - Color Picker - Method Finder (Name, Premptive, or by search words line in the method) - Object Viewer (we had this years ago), but now we can display it is a Developer of Administrator is signed in. What a great way to peak at what the values are. - DevMacros: This is a graphical code picker. So much easier to add those common / or not so common code snipets that one needs often or not so often. Now instead of hunting through code, or trying to remember what it is called, I go to the DevMacros Dialog. - Error Counter Window: Through all our code we trap for errors. Some errors bring up alerts, but others just get recorded in a log. This window shows us as we develop if we have encounter an err without disrupting anything. - The ObjectViewer tells us much about the computer, Admin, User preferences, and what is happening in the program. Being able to send this to us from the user’s computer, gives us great tools to investigate a problem. Now v17 comes out. We (Adam) had already written a dot notation module that included arrays. So this is not a big attraction. Now that version 17 is the last of the 32 bit 4D versions, our current shell could be useful to us and others. We will be rewriting our shell in v17 or v18 to make use of ORDA, 4Ds dot notation, and the new language. Oh always something to be keeping up with. Jody ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: https://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:4d_tech-unsubscr...@lists.4d.com **********************************************************************
