PBDos 3.2 demo Documentation

[Russ Jones]

Hello everyone!

I downloaded the PBDos demo, but could not locate the reference
manual (I understand there is a context sensitive help, but that
is not very useful when trying to learn the language from scratch).
Can this be downloaded from somewhere?

I know that PBDos is "99% Quick Basic compatible", so I thought
that maybe a QBasic Tutorial could pass for a manual. Am I right?

Thanks in advance!

Russell

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Pontiac Aztek: Quite possibly the most hideous vehicle in the world today.

[Tom Hanlin]

The PB/DOS manuals are only available to PB/DOS customers. If you're looking
to brush up on BASIC in general, PB/DOS is generally a superset of QBasic, so
a QBasic tutorial might well be a good place to start. We also have a book
called Learning Basic, which is based on an older version of PowerBASIC.

The Download section of the web site provides many working source code examples
that may also be helpful to you.


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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Russ Jones]

Thanks Tom,
I found a *LOT* of QBasic code on the 'net and have also
downloaded lots of source code from this site concerning
PBDos.

I have to admit that I have had a reversal of thought process:
After examining PBDLL 6 and Windows programming in general for
some time now (Thank God for Charles Petzold!) I have to say
that it is not quite as difficult as I had previously thought. It's
just that finding all of the "How-To's" in one place was WAY WAY
too difficult.
And on the flip side, I'm finding that DOS programming is not as
easy as I had thought or hoped, especially where memory limitations
are concerned.

So I guess Windows programming is the way to go, although I still
think that DirectX is insanely complicated and confusing. Thank God
there's Fastgraph!

Take care!
Russell Jones

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Pontiac Aztek: Quite possibly the most hideous vehicle in the world today.

[Davide Vecchi]

finding that DOS programming is not as easy as I had thought or hoped, especially where memory limitations are concerned

Here i don’ t want to sponsor DOS programming as it might look (no, wait, ok, i do ), however the above about memory is much more true for QBs than for PB/DOS.
PB/DOS 3.5 has VIRTUAL arrays which let you smoothly access up to 32 MB of EMS through normal arrays, you just write DIM VIRTUAL A(100000) AS DOUBLE. Furthermore PB/DOS gets rid of QB size limits for string space and for code segment. I’ m sure other QB limitations aren’ t in PB that i actually haven’ t in mind.
If one wants to approach BASIC DOS programming, QB is good to start, but everytime one finds a limitation in it, it’ s worth to check whether PB/DOS has it too, nice surprises are awaiting him.

Under the possible point of view of pure programming pleasure, i find DOS programming much more satisfying, because the average ratio between the time spent in thinking about the task to accomplish and the time spent to swim in docs might be let’ s say 5/1 instead of 1/5 of Windows programming.
However i program in VB but not in PB/Win (just because i childishly try to convince myself that i can stop Windows programming tomorrow ), so it’ s likely that a similar ratio exists between these two Win languages, still pro PB of course.

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[Russ Jones]

Thanks for all of the replies, fellas!

I think I will concentrate on PBDLL for now, but keep PBDos in mind for the future. I have a considerable amount of money and time invested already in PBDLL/fastgraph (w/upgrades).

Take care!
Russell

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Pontiac Aztek: Quite possibly the most hideous vehicle in the world today.