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**Borje Hagsten** · 4 Feb 2001, 09:23 AM

This is an excellent question, Ludwig. Where to start. Unfortunately,
there is no "PowerBasic for absolute beginners" manual, as I know of.
Think PB should consider doing one, since that helps bringing in a new
generation of PB developers to the fantastic world of PB. A couple
of tips:

1. Open up the samples that came with PB6. Start with "Hello World",
and work your way through them all. Look at the code in the editor,
look up keywords in the helpfile and compile/run the code to see what
it does.

2. Read the helpfile. There are several good chapters about how to use
PB there. Read entire user's guide and browse through the reference
guide. That will take you a long way, I promise. Print out pages
if you like that better. I always do, because I read and understand
printed text better than on-screen.

3. Look at the samples in the Source Code Forum here. These samples
can be copied and pasted into your PB editor, after which you usually
just have to compile them to see what they do. There are many hundreds
of nice little utilities and even some complete programs there for
you to examine, and use a base for your own programs.

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**Scott Turchin** · 4 Feb 2001, 09:24 AM

You know, truthfully, how I learned?
That simple SKELETON program in the PBDLL60\Samples directory!!
It's a great simple program that will teach you the basic concepts of a Windows program!

Then there is the source code forum where people post code. I find that if I see something I like I end up modifying it to fit my needs and that helps me learn too...

I'm no expert by far, but I just take things apart to learn them, and it helps!

I can send you a very simple program I wrote, I think I documented it very well, just takes a MAC address and swaps the bits on it, email me if you'd like a copy.

Scott

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Scott
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

**Edwin Knoppert** · 4 Feb 2001, 09:38 AM

Petzold stuff is translated to PB in the files section...

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[email protected]

**Brian Reynolds** · 4 Feb 2001, 11:41 AM

I have been learning ?? to write Windows programmes for years
and, until last year, quite unsuccessfully.
I have tried Borland's CA-Realiser, Microsoft's VB, PowerBasic's
PBDK and finally, PBDLL60. Like Scott, it was samples which came
with PBDLL60 that set me on the right track.
Then I came across software by Chris Boss, EZGUI, which made the
writing of Windows code quite simple. I always found entering code
for Windows text boxes, list boxes, combo boxes, etc. a complete
waste of time because it took so long to work out all the numbers
to put in.
With EZGUI I don't have to do that.
Having done all the time-wasting work with EZGUI, I have the
benefit of the PBDLL system of writing code to make it all work.
Though just an amateur (I am a newspaper editor who loves writing
computer programmes) I am producing code faster all the time with
these two development systems.
Having experienced wasting a lot of time with other development
systems myself, I would imagine "real" programmes would be saving
an enormous amount of time using PBDLL60
The part that really helps is the assistance you will get from
PB people and contributors to this board. In the newspaper industry
we use quite a few off-the-shelf programmes and I find this board
leaves all the others for dead when it comes to getting advice and help.
Try out PBDLL60. You'll soon get the hang of it and, like me,
wondered why you persisted with DOS for so long.
Regards,
Brian Reynolds.

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**Sven Blumenstein** · 4 Feb 2001, 11:58 AM

I began with learning PowerBASIC also with the Samples and SourceCode
Section of this Forum. But my knowledge in VB was also very usefull
for my work with PB.

Originally posted by Brian Reynolds:
Then I came across software by Chris Boss, EZGUI, which made the
writing of Windows code quite simple. I always found entering code
for Windows text boxes, list boxes, combo boxes, etc. a complete
waste of time because it took so long to work out all the numbers
to put in.
With EZGUI I don't have to do that.

EZGUI? Yes, I know this lil' product and I know, that Chris Boss has
done a very, very good work!

But I think the code, EZGUI produces is too big (for me )!
I preffer Dialogs, created with the Dialog Editor from VC++ 6.0 or one of the Freeware
Dialog Editors. Ans in combination with some Code from Steve Hutchesson's "DialogBuilder" you can
create really good looking GUI's. Ok, EZGUI supports some Elements, you can't create with
a Dialog Designer. But I don't need special Elements like Grid's or something like this(
btw, does EZGUI support Grid's? *grin*). And for beginners (and advanced Programmers, too),
Dialog's are a very good entrance to the "World of Win32 GUI Programming" (from my point of view).

regards,
Sven

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Homepage: http://www.Surf2Flower.de
E-Mail: mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>
E-Mail (work): mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>
PGP Key: http://www.Surf2Flower.de/pgp_key.asc

**Chris Boss** · 4 Feb 2001, 04:47 PM

Sven;

I offer two different Freeware Visual Designers for generating
DDT code for PB !

The Freeware Visual Designer can generate a hello World
program which is only 27 KB in size !

The Lite Version of this Designer can produce a hello world
program which is only 14 KB in size !

The smallest you could probably create using pure API code is
probably 8 KB in size.

I think the size of the apps produced using these tools, added to
the fast development cycle of using a RAD tool is excellent.

I have one customer who uses both EZGUI 1.0 and my Freeware Visual
Designer for those apps that need to be small. He tells me the
DDT apps he produces using my Freeware Visual Designer makes the
mouths of the Company C programmers drop, when they see how fast
he produces apps which have as small as (if not smaller than) a
footprint of C programs.

I doubt you will find much better that offers both speed of
development and small sized apps.

Note: the EZGUI Freeware Visual Designer supports some things not
found in Dialog Editors (Colors for controls and layers).

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**Paul Squires** · 5 Feb 2001, 02:51 PM

Ludwig,

I was in the same situation as you a few months ago. I found
that the biggest thing to help me so far is to download the program
called POFFS by Borje Hagsten (about 10 megs). It is an offline
viewer of all old posts from this message board. It is amazing
what some of the gurus here talk about.

The link to POFFS is....
http://www.tolken99.com/pb/pbfile_e.htm

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Paul Squires
[email protected]

**Mike Trader** · 5 Feb 2001, 03:20 PM

Great Question!

The only way I know to learn a vast subject like this is just pick somwhere to start and start. I am creating an app and DLL that is slowly getting to the point where it will do what I want. I have 40 versions so far. Some that start from scratch.

We are very lucky to have a few extreemly kind souls that answer questions here and provide examples. The working examples are particulary usefull because you can putz around with it for hours to see what does what. Thank you all those people!

Dialogs are a great place to start, and use the SDK help file.

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Kind Regards
Mike

**Steve Hutchesson** · 5 Feb 2001, 03:24 PM

Ludwig,

Its a path we have all had to take at one time or another, I did it the
old hard way about 10 years ago in C with the SDK of the time so being
able to make the shift from DOS to 32 bit windows in a language as clean
as PowerBASIC will not be anywhere as much hassle.

The POFFS database is very useful, the Petzold examples in PB are worth
having and any of the toys/code from various members of this forum will
go a long way to getting you started.

You are welcome to download my code generating tools at,
http://www.pbq.com.au/home/hutch/pbdll50.htm (I will rename the page one day.

Once you get the swing of how it all works, you will have a lot of fun
playing with a real language that can do so many things.

Regards,

[email protected]

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programm in windows with pb - how to learn?

programm in windows with pb - how to learn?

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