• Welcome to PlanetSquires Forums.
 

Update

Started by Paul Squires, March 21, 2018, 10:01:04 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Paul Squires

I've had a few people email me regarding the development of WinFBE and how quiet it has gotten over the past couple of weeks. Just a quick update to let you know that I am still working on everything but at a little slower pace because this is the busiest time of year for my real world job. Every year at this time I slow down with programming but it usually only lasts around the Feb/Mar months. I should be back up to full speed again soon. In the meantime, I have been making modifications to WinFBE's visual designer and that is progressing well. The next WinFBE release will show off that new functionality at least for a handful of basic controls that WinFormsX supports so far.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Johan Klassen

good to hear from you Paul  :)
I seldom make any posts but I follow your work and that of Jose Roca with interest and it's nice to see posts regarding your progress.

Paul Squires

Been working on the visual designer portion of the editor. Have you ever run into a problem that bothers you so much that you can't sleep? :)  Well, I have. Been encountering a random GPF on project close involving design forms and it's been hard pinpointing it. Time to break out the debugger and trace line by line.  :)
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

...crisis averted. I can sleep now.  :)
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

SeaVipe

Clive Richey

Paul Squires

Back to working on WinFBE. The busiest time of the year for my regular is now over. As discussed before, I am working on the visual designer. Just finished the code for saving the form and controls to disk file. Now need to write code to read that data back into WinFBE when a form file is loaded. I hope that my recent inactivity on the project will now be a thing of the past and this forum can start generating more discussions. Once again, if it wasn't for Jose's WinFBX library, creating WinFBE would be a much more laborious process.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Andrew Lindsay

Paul, I'm watching with bated breath.  I enjoy seeing the solutions that you guys develop, and am always amazed at Jose's ability to churn out informative and very readable examples of the little trinkets he's developed and shared with the community.
Keep up the good work, it's very much appreciated.

Johan Klassen

I look forward to the release :)

Paul Squires

Finally finished the coding for saving forms/controls and then loading/restoring them. I am very happy with the resulting code. It is simple and works great.
I need to work on the Property List now because it is pretty rudimentary at this point.
Just to let you guys that progress is being made... and should be much faster now that the busiest time of the year is behind me for my day job.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

SeaVipe

Thanks for the update, Paul.
Clive Richey

Paul Squires

I finally fixed some high DPI issues I was having with the visual designer. Thanks once again to Jose's WinFBX library. It is an essential tool for all FB programmers.

This week will see the first code generation for the visual designer. I will NOT be taking the approach that I used with FireFly. Instead, it will be kind of like the PB Forms approach where form code will be generated inline with other code. This will allow the user to have all code for a form in one disk file. The generated code will update whenever a change occurs in the visual designer and you either switch to the code editor for the form, save the form, or close the form. Once that code is implemented, I will post a version of WinFBE for you guys to see it in action and provide feedback.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

Just to keep the updates coming... my first attempt at code generation as describe above has been very successful. Using the WinFormsX library for code output also reduces the amount of code that needs to be generated.
I'll update again when closer to releasing a test version for you to play with in order to get a feel for how the new system will work.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Klaas Holland

Why NOT the FireFly approach???

This is the way you teached us.


Paul Squires

Quote from: Klaas Holland on April 24, 2018, 04:30:17 AM
Why NOT the FireFly approach???

This is the way you teached us.

:) Hi Klaas, to be honest there really is no longer a need to code output the way that Firefly does it. Firefly has to generate code for every form, callback procedure, and subclass. There is a lot of duplication, but it is needed for Firefly's approach. The new library has all of the code in one place so you just need to #Include the library. The program does not need to manually generate a lot of code that glues the application together. This makes the code generation much cleaner and easier for the user to follow.

The best part of the newer approach is that the user can see exactly how the code works. They will see the code that is used to create the form and all of the controls and also all of the events. It also gives the user flexibility to split the code up as much as they want. You could have all of the form code in one disk file or split the form generation code from the user entered code (stuff like code for the various events).

I personally don't think that the shift from the Firefly approach to the new approach will be hard for anyone. If anything, it will hide a little more of the winapi complexities from the user allowing you to code a little faster. Of course, once we try the new approach for a bit we'll soon see if it has merit or if we'll need to revert or change to something else.  :)

Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer

Paul Squires

Yes, I'm still working on the visual designer... ever so slowly  :)
I have the Events code implemented in the Toolbox. Just now need to write the code that gets generated for each selected Event.

Attached is screenshot of how easy it will be to create and generate form/control Events.

Hang in there guys... we're getting there... eventually.
Paul Squires
PlanetSquires Software
WinFBE Editor and Visual Designer