Hey Rick,
Below is the reply I sent to your original message yesterday. I assume you
didn't get
it for some reason.
Hey Rick,
I've used Power BASIC for years. I just got the new release (V10) on
Friday.
And they did an overhaul of the IDE interface. It's not much different
functionally, but it is a bit funky in some odd ways. Although it's not
any
big deal. So I've been
playing around with it. And it's definitely very accessible.
As far as features and framework go? This is probably why PB is not all
the
rage for most programmers today. It's a very basic (no pun
intended) developer without all the fancy bells, whistles, frills and
thrills
of something like Visual Studio. It's a programming environment for those
who want to make every line count. This is why their real customer base is
in big critical app development. It was only a year or two ago that they
(begrudgingly) put out a forms add-on. I bought it, tried it, and it was
actually pretty accessible. But the cool factor wore off pretty quick for
me.
So, other than that, you're not going to have 14 windows and 12 toolboxes
crowding your display with wonderful one size fits all chunks of
prefabricated code. It's just an old-school sit down and write the code
kind
of developer designed for very lean programming instead of the rush to
market bloatware we get from most developers these days. But don't get me
wrong. Any IDE in the right hands can be the source of a killer app. But a
lot of auto-generated code is what can hit us the hardest. And that's
another thing I like about Power BASIC. By default all the controls are
standard Windows controls rather than gussied up versions that sighted
folks
tell me they can't even see the difference in while I have to deal with
custom controls.
So if you don't mind writing code with absolutely no help from your IDE,
give it a test drive. That is if they have a demo available.
As far as debugging? The debugger works fine. It gives you an error code
and
a brief description, which usually is all you need. But if you want more
information, just open the context menu and you have the option to view
that
error code in the help window. And you've got the standard options; run
to,
setting break points, stepping, etc.
I haven't tackled writing a Window-Eyes script with it yet. VBScript was
too
tempting, given all the overhead it handles automatically. But it is on my
to-do list. Well, that's not exactly true. I did write a little app using
the GWSpeak.dll library a year or so ago. It's just a pipeline of sorts
that
enables me to send strings to Window-Eyes to speak.
Hope this was of some help. Good luck with whatever route you decide to
take.
Regards,
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "RicksPlace" <
[email protected]
To: <
[email protected]
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 5:21 AM
Subject: PowerBASIC Editor / Debugger Accessibility
Hi: I saw GW's script for Power Basic on AppCentral. I am guessing from
what
i read about it's power for COM that someone out there has likely used it
or
is using it. Can you tell me a little about Accessibility of the IDE and
features?
Has anyone developed a script in PowerBASIC and used Windows and, or, MSAA
Events within their script?
Have you hit anything that is not very accessible in any of the PowerBasic
features or framework?
Rick USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "RicksPlace" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 6:25 AM
Subject: Re: PowerBASIC Editor / Debugger Accessibility
Hi Guys: Are you using PB to create WindowEyes scripts?
If so Have you tackled using MSAA or Window event processing?
Back in the day I used Liberty Basic to do all my programming and PB was
popular because of it's easy access to system32 dlls and some other
features if I remember.
Thanks:
Rick USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Kingston" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 6:17 AM
Subject: Re: PowerBASIC Editor / Debugger Accessibility
Hi David,
Interesting. I just tried this in PBWin 9 and it sure did hang. I don't
recall discovering this before, but, that may be because I don't use
context sensitive help. I just open the help window the first time I
need
it, search on whatever I'm looking for, then leave help open so I can
jump back-and-forth when needed. I know their search results are strange
in that you can search for a specific key word and it will seldom be the
first word in the list. But usually a few taps of the first letter lands
me on it.
Also, I tried it in PBWin 10 and didn't have any problem.
Regards,
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Hoff Jr" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 8:51 PM
Subject: Re: PowerBASIC Editor / Debugger Accessibility
I also use PowerBasic. I have PBCC 5 and PBWin 9. In the editor window
I
often want to place the cursor on a keyword and press F1 for help, but
if there is more than one option for that word,PB freezes up. Have you
found any solution to that problem other than going through the long
listing of keywords on the help screen?
David Hoff Jr
--
<>
