Keyget, Redo, commandline compiling

[jj2007]

I have been testing GB32 for some days now and have a few spontaneous questions:

- is the language in active development?

- keyget n lets my cpu use jump to 100% for the active thread; under the hood, I see a loop calling PeekMessage. This is rather unacceptable behaviour for a Windows application. Are their alternatives to keyget?

- there is no redo in the editor, to my surprise: could it be added?

- is it possible to compile a source without using the editor, i.e. through the commandline?

Overall, it seems a nice language. Coming from GfaBasic for Atari ST and the 16-bit version of GfaBasic for Windows, it looks quite familiar to me...

[(X)]

Thanks for your great questions. 

I keep thinking of making a quick introduction to GFA-BASIC 32 video and this gives me good points to cover.

Jan 19, 2022 1:06:58 GMT 1 jj2007 said:

I have been testing GB32 for some days now and have a few spontaneous questions:

- is the language in active development?

Sjouke Hamstra is still developing.  See: gfabasic32.blogspot.com/  The wiki page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFA_BASIC sums up the state of affairs.  The original owners gave up the code to a user group.

- keyget n lets my cpu use jump to 100% for the active thread; under the hood, I see a loop calling PeekMessage. This is rather unacceptable behaviour for a Windows application.  Are their alternatives to keyget?

  '
' This is a typical application main loop where: Sleep
' waits for an event.
' Event subs for a 'KeyPress' are easily created
' in the form editor section.
'
Do
 Sleep
Until Me is Nothing



- there is no redo in the editor, to my surprise: could it be added?

My intuition is that it could be implemented - even by a user - via the Editor Extension feature which lets you customize the code editor in many powerful ways.  The ideal place to ask is on Sjouke's blog.

- is it possible to compile a source without using the editor, i.e. through the commandline?

Not that I am aware.  I searched but found nothing in GFA help, this forum or gfa blogspot... 
Again, the ideal place to ask is on Sjouke's blog.

Overall, it seems a nice language. Coming from GfaBasic for Atari ST and the 16-bit version of GfaBasic for Windows, it looks quite familiar to me...

If I am not mistaken, most 16 bit commands still work and the 32 bit commands are very similar to VB6.

[jj2007]

Jan 19, 2022 4:43:06 GMT 1 (X) said:

Thanks for your great questions. 

I keep thinking of making a quick intro to GB32 video and this gives me good points to cover.

Thanks. The "Me is nothing" looks awkward but it works fine.

Do
 Sleep
Until Me is Nothing

[yyin]

Jan 19, 2022 4:43:06 GMT 1 (X) said:

Again, the ideal place to ask is on Sjouke's blog.

Making the author become a frequent visitor of this forum is better. But how? I am not sure. If the forum is a very active forum, maybe the author will visit it daily. 

[yyin]

Jan 19, 2022 1:06:58 GMT 1 jj2007 said:

 

- is the language in active development?

Hello,
I am a new user only and don't know too much about GFA BASIC. However, I believe that:
The larger the user base of a software, the stronger the motivation of the author. 

Thus I hope that the GFA user community will become a huge community.

[(X)]

Jan 19, 2022 10:02:25 GMT 1 jj2007 said:

Thanks. The "Me is nothing" looks awkward but it works fine.

Do
 Sleep
Until Me Is Nothing

From: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/visual-basic/programming-guide/program-structure/me-my-mybase-and-myclass

The Me keyword provides a way to refer to the specific instance of a class or structure in which the code is currently executing. Me behaves like either an object variable or a structure variable referring to the current instance. Using Me is particularly useful for passing information about the currently executing instance of a class or structure to a procedure in another class, structure, or module.

Using 'Me' works fine if you only have one form loaded; when you have multiple forms loaded; using 'Me Is Nothing' may not work as expected. 

To close all forms I found this works best.

Proc P_Close_All_Forms
'
' If form count is 0 then don't attempt to close form 0.
' I believe it closes the GFA IDE.
'
Try

 Local i%, cnt% = App.Forms.Count

 If (cnt > 0)
   For i = cnt To 1 Step -1
     App.Forms(i).Close
   Next i
 EndIf

Catch
 Trace Err$
EndCatch




[(X)]

Jan 19, 2022 14:30:23 GMT 1 yyin said:

Making the author become a frequent visitor of this forum is better. But how? I am not sure. If the forum is a very active forum, maybe the author will visit it daily. 

I think this Forum is independant of Sjouke Hamstra and GFA in general and was created by D. J. Peters in 2010 perhaps just to have another place to post questions and build a community.

I estimate we have been very very lucky so far to have GFA as it is.

The little I know of Sjouke leads me to guess that he is developing "GFA-BASIC 32 for Windows" for the love of it.

I can't imagine he has profitted too much in terms of money from the obvious hard work he has put into GFA over the years, but, I imagine he is proud to see people building a community around something he has kept alive.

I feel more than a bit embarassed to say it took me years to finally donate (100$ CND) as a token of gratitude and thanks for the work he has done so far and the pleasure it has brought me to code to my heart's content since the 90's.

I think we have all felt at some time that if we keep our head down and worked hard for the common good, someone will notice, eventually.  I think perhaps those who have kept the GFA wheels of progress turning may deserve some real recognition.

[jj2007]

Jan 19, 2022 14:30:23 GMT 1 yyin said:

If the forum is a very active forum, maybe the author will visit it daily. 

The last visit of Sjouke Hamstra was on Jul 4, 2010, over 11 years ago.

[scalion]

An example of a way to get a key properly same as a keyget statement is :


FullW 1
FontSize = 50
Do
 Sleep
Loop Until Me Is Nothing
Sub Win_1_KeyPress(Ascii&)
 If Ascii >= 32
   Cls
   Print "Key  = " & Chr(Ascii)
   Ascii = 0
 EndIf
EndSub
Sub Win_1_KeyDown(Code&, Shift&)
 Cls
 Print "Special Key = " & Code
EndSub

Changing Ascii& to 0 in sub Win_1_Keypress cancels the keystroke so the window object receives no character, that mean in this code keydown receive only specials characters.

Note with KEYGET statement during the waiting period for a key to hit, GFA-BASIC 32 doesn't block other programs, but performs a DoEvents.

Yes Sjouke never take a look on this forum, it's  but he work very strongly on a disassembled Gfa-Basic.32 because nobody have the source code !!! Hacking at a high level to perform updates. This explains why there is no command line compiler, and why it is very difficult to improve the editor. That being said, Sjouke managed to debug a lot of things and to implement autocompletion for example, and I think he had a hard time (we're starting from a very long way). It's downright ironic that he has "New member" status and have only 1 follower. I think Sjouke Hamstra must have the same genius, strange and enigmatic profile as our much missed Frank Ostrowski.

I know the problem of "Redo", and there's others problem with CTRL+Z, editor give stranges result sometimes.

I dont know why exactly... I code with Gfa-Basic since more than 30 years and i am used to. For me the power of this language completely counteracts these problems.

 

[jj2007]

Bonjour Nicolas,
Merci pour ton post. Comment c'est possible qu'il n'y a pas de source? Qui est l'auteur? Pas Frank Ostrowski, j'imagine...
I had a quick look under the hood. Ordinals 46, 45 and 47 in Win23.ocx do the compiling, but it's very low level. Difficult to hack without seeing the source.

[yyin]

Jan 19, 2022 16:24:36 GMT 1 (X) said:

I think this Forum is independant of Sjouke Hamstra and GFA in general and was created by D. J. Peters in 2010 perhaps just to have another place to post questions and build a community.

I estimate we have been very very lucky so far to have GFA as it is.

The little I know of Sjouke leads me to guess that he is developing "GFA-BASIC 32 for Windows" for the love of it.

I can't imagine he has profitted too much in terms of money from the obvious hard work he has put into GFA over the years, but, I imagine he is proud to see people building a community around something he has kept alive.

I feel more than a bit embarassed to say it took me years to finally donate (100$ CND) as a token of gratitude and thanks for the work he has done so far and the pleasure it has brought me to code to my heart's content since the 90's.

I think we have all felt at some time that if we keep our head down and worked hard for the common good, someone will notice, eventually.  I think perhaps those who have kept the GFA wheels of progress turning may deserve some real recognition.

Thanks for telling me the detailed story of GFA-BASIC.

[yyin]

Jan 19, 2022 19:49:04 GMT 1 jj2007 said:

Jan 19, 2022 14:30:23 GMT 1 yyin said:

If the forum is a very active forum, maybe the author will visit it daily. 

The last visit of Sjouke Hamstra was on Jul 4, 2010, over 11 years ago.

Hey, if the user base of GFA-BASIC is as big as FreeBASIC, the author may be really interested in interacting with the users.