Hi David, I know exactly what you mean, having programmed in pascal (and it's successor Modula2) for many years. but before there was pascal, there was fortran, and I programmed in it for many years, and it required your main body come first, followed by your subroutines. as you say, you can't argue which is best (not really), but since I only taught in one style, thought it worth mentioning that other options were available. Just as you like to see your variables all declared first, I like to see the main body first (being a top-down kind of guy). If we included a log, or a read me file, it might be hard to find in the hundreds of files in the WE profile area; however, we now have the ability when creating a package to put all our files in a directory of it's own (I think I read that as an upgrade feature of 7.5). it would make finding such files a lot easier if we started to do that (perhaps, have to do some experimenting). I see a lot of comments from students like yourself, Rick and Bruce, who have been programmers; I wonder if anyone is taking the class as a beginner? I would appreciate hearing from them, and knowing if they're able to keep up, would like anything done differently, and so on. thanks. Chip
_____ From: David [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 2:56 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: VBScript NotePad App and Loading To App Central Guess, one reason why many people will do their definitions - including their subrotuines and functions - at the beginning, then do the main body of the app; it all comes from old. At least, for the ones of us, who is coming in from the old days, we are all used to things like Pascal (and I do believe it was the same thing in C). In those programming languages, you were not allowed to do anything, unless you first had the Variables, Procedures and functions, already defined. That meant - since the encoder would process the program (app) consequtively, starting out with line 1, and finishing with the last line - you would have no other choice but to place your main body at the bottom. The transformation into scripting, is a bit of a jump over for old-timers like me and many others. Specially so, when comes to reading other peoples app code. You read, and all the sudden meet up with an instruction, that looks intesting and nice. Right away, you think this is a built-in feature of the scripting language, and so implement the instruction in your own code. Then try to run your newly constructed app, and are left with an error thrown at you, and pretty soon the waiste basket full of newly pulled hair - since you do¨n't see why that error got thrown at you. Finally, you decide to read the rest of the 1000 lines from the original script that you downloaded, and at line 995, you find the reason for being bald-headed: This was an instruction, pointing to a subroutine of some kind, that the author has put the code of, at the very end of his script. I have been playing around with scripting in VBS for a couple of years now, and still find it confusing to see main bodies at the top - or even somewhere hidden in between all kinds of subs, functions and variable definitions. After something like two decades of Pascal programming, it all looks to me, as if you were going to do a job - like building a house - and you put the hose on the plot first, then brought out your toolbox. Another practice, that I don't find very convenient when reading through other peoples code, is the tendency of scattering their variable definitions (dim statments) all over the place. Again, looks like a carpenter, who just left his hammer, saw, screw-driver, drill - all over the plac - simply dropping it where he found it convenient. Then atain, when in college, studying for my electronic edducation, we were always told to first sit down and figure the problem find a solution, make up our minds on what to do, where, when and how to do it. This meant, to bring the tools we needed. Guess this made the basis for our computer skills, as in the method of programming described above (taken from Pascal), you'd have to define - or as if it was, bring your tools - at the beginning of the code. Again, think of a person who wants to bake a cake. She would typically go to her cuppard and fridge, making sure she had what the reipe told was neeeded for ingrediences, before she would even dream of getting started with the baking process itself. Or, are you used to start cooking, all the sudden realizing that you are out of eggs, then run to the store and pick up eggs (or let's say put ind an instruction in your code - Dim EGGS). Then coming back to your cooking, you continue with the job, only to realize you now are left with the lack of a qurter of milk. S, you drop down to the store and pick it up -. or in your code Sub Quarter of milk() ... End Sub 'Quarter of milk. For people who got started out directly in modern scripting, all of this chatter of mine, might seem useless. But at least, that is where old-timers like me are coming from. I am not going to claim that the one way of handling things are to be more correct over the other. Simply just letting people know, why some people tend to put the main body here, others will drop it there. Good thing Windows doesn't mind! Smile. After all, one practice that would have been helpful, but which seems to often being left behind, is the clearly marking of where your different parts are placed in the code. Good commenting habits, I guess, is the keywords here. Again, here you will sometimes see that there is a couple of practices. Some people like to do the job first - writing ther line of code -and then explain what they have just accomplished, by dropping a comment in their app code. Others, like myself, find it more useful, first to tell the reader WHAT you are going to do - then go ahead and do it. Like: 'We now will take an user input of the phone number: PNumber = Input "Phone number please? " Again, none of the methods are more correct than the other. And different app authors will cling to the one or the other. But, as people start to read the different app codes from others, they might wonder why all this differences in practice - and does it matter what way I personally handle the job. In things like VBS, and in the cases here discussed, it doesn't matter for the performance of the app. But it might impact the readability of the code, mainly for yourself. So, at the end, I think it will stand as this: Find the practice that you yourself are familiar with, then go ahead. Only, keep in mind that others might want to read your app, or you yourself want to modify it at a later time. That's why, it is always good to make sure, that it stands out clearly what you have done. A small 'log-file', that goes with your app, is of course a pretty good idea. Yet, see how many does keep such a logfile? Smile! ----- Original Message ----- From: Chip <mailto:[email protected]> Orange To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 3:33 AM Subject: RE: VBScript NotePad App and Loading To App Central Very nice Rick; thanks, and I hope everyone in the class will download the .zip file attached to Rick's message. he's not only provided his solution, but he's provided a "walk through" document, a kind of log of his process for developing this app and debugging and testing it as he put the two parts together, to make sure everything was working ok. Rick, I've decided this is useful enough to me that I'm going to keep mine running, but I don't feel like taking on the support of another app just now. so, if you'd like to do it, feel free to finish it off and upload it to app central; I think it's useful and belongs in the program enhancements. If you don't feel like doing it though, maybe let the list know in case someone else would like to take it on? One thing I'd like to mention to the beginning students: in my examples, I've always placed the code of the main body of any app at the start of the .vbs file. You'll find Rick has placed his down into the .vbs file (a not uncommon practice), marked with a comment. this is all the same to Window-eyes, no matter where it's placed, it takes all the statements which are not in a subroutine or function, and groups them together and executes them as the main body; just something I thought I should mention now, as I don't ever recall mentioning this point earlier, and someone may have thought there was no main body code. Chip _____ From: RicksPlace [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 4:51 PM To: [email protected] Subject: VBScript NotePad App and Loading To App Central Hi Chip: Here is the Script files for the NotePad script we were working on in class. It is unfinished since I did not want to upload it to App Central unless this is the version that would be a good Production Fit with anything else up there for NotePad. Also, since I have not uploaded it I don't have a real ID, ScriptNamed Website and whatever else goes along with uploading a script properly. That said, this is getting close and I will check out any docs on uploading scripts. I to not want to add to the bloat that is happening with the available scripts by putting up some test script so will wait until I hear from you here or in class. Anyway, it's done for now so it is what it is. Let me know if you are going to put a real NotePad script up or if you are going to modify an existing script. Rick USA
