Hi all,

after a pause of nearly four months, I decided to go back to REALbasic on Linux 
and asked for a licence number that I get faster than the speed of light, 
thanks Andrew.

I will not told you about the password that I forget and all of the hasle of 
the installation process.

I will just concentrate my attention to what I was...

It seems to me that REALbasic on Linux is the pauper parent of the three 
platforms.

Why ?

I do see a simple change on ONE of the multiple screen visual glitches I saw 
with 2006 Release 3!

Do you think that I am angry ?

Oooooh YEAH, I am angry.

What works and what does not ?


1. Control Text Size (and drawing baselines)
Very simple, BevelButton Captions fit the standard size (BevelButton 
boundaries) with the standard font and standard size (System and 0).

Using the same values with PopupMenu and PushButtons (the one I tested) does 
not gives the same results: the text is trucated in the best bottom... we 
nearly see only the top of the "azeruio", and characters like qp are not 
recognizable...

You may "ask me why ?" Ad I can give an answer:

The BevelButton caption is draw at a smaller size than PushButtons and 
PopupMenus...

I've made a simple screen shop and placed two copies of the same part of the 
image one below the other (with transparency set to on) and of course, the 
Linux snapshots does not matches. I already was able to say so, but I wanted to 
check.

I've made the same comparison with the Mac OS X interface (same project) and 
the text have the same size.
[Note that the text on Mac OS X is not totally Black or Black and Grey, there 
are some other colors... and this comes from my PowerBook, sorry for the pun)

I noticed that in the RB IDE, this problem exists here and there (check the 
debugger, properties pane for example).


2. The Language Reference
-------------------------
No change at all. It may not be REAL's fault, but it is totally unusable, a 
REAL shame. I have to place the Pentium IV machine beside the PowerBook and 
check the LR there...


3. Where are the REALbasic Icons ?
----------------------------------

No green cubist icon on the projects files, no icons either in my application 
(built on Linux, but who comes from the PowerBook where I have a nicce set of 
icons). Maybe I do not notice some warning somewhere...

I even re-boot suse 10.1 (one of the nicer OS I ever saw,  and on some part, 
even better than Tiger 10.4.8! It told me that the power cord was out AND the 
battery is full with nice dialogs - at two different times-)

I reboot after creating my stand-alone application with no change: my 
application have the gnome default icon and my associated files do not have my 
candy colored icons :(


4. IDE design (implementation) grave flaw!
------------------------------------------

I am able to move the left pane beyong the right window boundary (but I stay 
with the Mouse down). I've done that because I couildn't get the Properties 
(right) pane excepted in the Atl+E mode.
After having a second look on the subject - and a blank project - it happens 
that it is possible to reduce the Properties pane beyond the window right 
boundary and only see two vertical ScrollBar (one below the second).
If you try that, do it on a blank project since I do not know how to go back 
and that was my problem. In fact, I copy the project back to Linux to work 
around this problem.


5. The Touch Pad
----------------

I have a problem with the touch pad 'click' function (default feature under 
Windows and Linux). I resolved the trouble under Windows by using the ad hoc 
driver, but I do not found one for Linux. So in the use of REALbasic, I 
probably do some nasty things and get weird results. Part of that is my fault 
(in some way).

That said, for some reason, I often get a message telling something like "you 
have implemented an Action event in <BevelButton for example> when there 
already is one" and the only answer I have is to trash the project, quit RB, 
shut down the machine, wait a bit and reboot / re-copy a fresh copy of the 
project from the Memory Stick and start back the project testings...


6. The MemoryStick case
-----------------------

You still cannot run a project opened from a MemoryStick (mine in all cases ... 
it is a 512 MB MS-DOS FAT32 formatted).
Add a warning at project Open time for example if you cannot (do not have the 
time now to do it) squash that problem. That warning would say: "you can modify 
and save the project, but you will not be able to run it until you copy it in 
the main hard disk" or something that have this meanings...


7. Did I told you lately about the speed ?
------------------------------------------

No ? Oh, you're lucky... more than 30 seconds to get the project running in the 
IDE !
And this is not a very complex project nor a large footprint on disk (less than 
500KB!)

And the launch time (may I use the word "duration" as in: "And the launch 
duration ?")


8. Testing - live - the text styles on Linux
--------------------------------------------

I needed a break while writting this message and so I created a simple project 
to deal with text styles, font name and size, colors, etc.

The first part works fine: three BevelButtons (Bold, Italic and Underline), one 
BevelButton to choose a Color (SelectColor).

Now I will add File I/O [aïïÎ...]


One BevelButton to Open (Styled text) and a second to save the styled text from 
the EditField...

I can’t believe that! My nice styled text created in the previous application 
run in the IDE is not in the Clipboard!

OK, I will wrote one more times some styled text...

I DO NOT BELIEVE IT: it does not works! This is the first step after the 
simplest text typing project: Bold, Italic, Underline and color. Four buttons 
for the styles, two for the File I/O (Open... / Save... as StyledEditField!)

Just in case, and before I shutdown and goes to sleep (it's 23h45!), I will 
check the project on the PowerBook!


Results: OK, everything is correct here, even the Clipboard holds the styled 
text! Save and Open with the styles as expected.

Copy / Paste within Linux / the application running in the IDE is OK (styles 
still here), but all other operations does not works!

Even copy / paste from OpenOffice.org Writer to the IDE running project does 
not works...


9. Advertising for REALbasic and some job (money) for me
--------------------------------------------------------
I contacted in early February (2006) a major European Linux monthly (every two 
months) magazine and get supportive answer. They were ready to publish a column 
that (first) presents the product and then present programs that do something 
(and not a technological demonstration program) on "one article every two 
months".

But, due to some constraints, I had to put on hold that project (and the money 
that I miss) 'till better days... The troubles were:

a. Lack of a French language version (France, Belgium, Swiss, eventually 
Quebec),
   [I am quite sure that they would publish the articles on other european 
languagesif it have success]

b. REALbasic 2006 Release 2 wasn't ready for such exposure (drag and drop not 
working for example)...

c. Does not works on general purposes Linux distributions (works nice on suse 
10.1, but elsewhere...)

d. Clipboard that does not works as expected (or does not works at all).

e. All the troubles I wrote earlier (read back the points 1 thru 7).

f. My own lack (and I forget some knowledge by not using Linux during the last 
five or ten years) of Linux knowledge...

g. My personal situation - but this have nothing to do with REALbasic / REAL 
Software - does not allows me to run Linux for some months (August 2006 thru 
last week)


Of course, my original idea was to write "technological" articles: explain the 
use of ListBox (Fonts, Align, Background Colors, Grids, Borders, Text Color, 
Column Resize, Drag and Drop with ListBox, File I/O with ListBox, and so on), 
create a SQLite DB with text data import / export sql queries, and so on. 
Multimedia products (with automatic file I/O, dynamic Menus, etc.). I even have 
a product that can be used as a Language Reference Displayer.


Unfortunately, I am still not able to get styled text with REALbasic 2006 
Release 4!

I will look forward for REALbasic 2007 Release 1, but without serious hopes for 
the Linux platform...



Nota: I downloaded recently NS BASIC, have a look at it, does not understand, 
try some examples that does not works (except one who just build a menu bar), 
and I throw away the whole product from my Windows machine. However, they have 
a good marketing: I receive tons of mails from them until I explain gracefully 
what happens.

"Now is the time" to go to sleep.

Greetings from France,

Emile
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