New to PBWin 9

[Bert Slootmans]

A long long time ago (in the eighties, but it seems like in the Middle Ages ) I used to work in PBDos 2.x. After that, with the arrival of Windows, I switched to Visual Basic and I've been using this till now (in version 2008 .net).

The last couple of weeks I have been trying desperately to fend off Bob Zale's mails regarding PBwin and I finaly caved in (mostly based on the advertised speed of apps created in PBWin compared to VB) end of last week .

So I purchased both PBWin, PBForms and Graphic Tools Pro edition.

I am very eager to start but I am noticing that I can find very little newbie stuff on the web that could get me going (when I worked with PBDos I could find several excelent books on it over here in Belgium, but not so for PBWin).

Could anyone point me in correct directions that can get me started ?

I am particularly in need of info on how to write multiple form applications that could (if possible) connect to a database (such as MS Access) and that could display and manipulate graphics. I also need to be able to work (input-output) with Unicode characters (i.e. Chinese) because I would like my first app to be a learning tool for my little daughter who is raised bi-lingual (Dutch and Chinese).

The samples that came with all three packages can't help me very much and neither do the stuff I could find on this website.

Anyone out there in PowerBasic land that could help me out?
- websites with could learning code
- books available in other countries (can be English, French, German or Dutch).

Many thanks from Belgium to whoerver can help me .

[Chris Burgess]

Hi Bert,

I was in a similar situation a year ago.

My PC programming background was some QB / QuickC stuff (DOS) from the early to mid 90's, and from then until now has been microcontrollers (custom made digital electronic components), not PCs and Windows. Can't speak for VB Win.net, never used it, only seen a few rather bloated apps made with it.

We had a need to create a series of "home brew" Windows apps for a classroom environment, which could handle multimedia content and accept user input, and store results / progress on a network drive. We had been using a program made by a local software developer for the first year, written in Java, that was a real dog - no internet or network support, slow as heck (15 seconds to load a text page!) no cut and paste, and to change one page, you had to manually retype in the whole subject. And to run it, the PC had to be de-tuned in BIOS to get it to run stable for more than 30 minutes. Total rubbish, and they were charging $2500 a year licensing for it

At first, we looked at getting a replacement app written for us... all we found was bloated .NET developers locally. One demo app took over 5 minutes to load.
We then looked at several options at writing our own software, and after one false start settled on PBWin and EZGUI. Went from zero Windows programming experience to version 1.0 in under 3 weeks, spending a couple of hours a day on it, with lots of help from the developer of it (Chris Boss). Resulting app does exactly what we wanted it to do, and is lightning fast on a P3 PC - the program loads in well under 1 second, and interacts with the user (for example, when they click a button on the screen) in milliseconds.

The EXE file is "portable" (i.e. can run from a memory stick or CD-ROM, no need to install the app) and is under 100KB in size.
I don't think you'll be able to do that in "dot net" - the locals certainly couldn't.

We couldn't have done it without EZGUI and the help received from it's developer (Hi Chris), as it reduced by about 95% the need for me learn Windows specific programming details.
EZGUI was the best $249 I ever spent, within a few months we had saved both that and the cost of PBWin in the licensing fees from the software we had been using previously.

Have a look at EZGUI (google it) - I think they have a much cheaper "personal" version, not sure what the differences are though.

By the way, I have no connection with Chris Boss or EZGUI, other than being a satisfied customer.

Regards,
Chris

[Chris Boss]

For those who prefer to use DDT, I added some new forums on my (Computer Workshop) forums specifically for DDT (and SDK) coding.

The tutorials (101 classes) are helpful:

http://cwsof.com/forums/index.php?board=14.0

My source code forum has some interesting code which I wrote which has a lot of DDT code:

http://cwsof.com/forums/index.php?board=10.0

You will learn just from examining the source code. I write clean and readable source code.

In my (generic) Programming forums, I currently concentrate on DDT coding , but their is some SDK style coding for stuff like custom control design.

I also have a few Freeware DDT Visual Designers which you can download. They are not as powerful as PB Forms, but they are useful because they generate some very readable code and you can learn from that.

http://cwsof.com/freeware.htm

I can't discuss my commercial software offerings (which Chris Burgess mentioned) here in this forum, so check out: http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=41049

[Gary Beene]

Bert,

I've written a 100+ page web site on PowerBASIC, including about 75 pages of tutorial information. It should help you get started.

http://www.garybeene.com/power

And of course, I recommend reading the introductory sections of the PowerBASIC Help file. It's where I started.

Good luck!

[Gösta H. Lovgren-2]

Bert, the PB Windows World can be (is) bewildering. You'd be hard pressed to find a better guide than EzGui to designing an interface. Or these forums. To do particular things look in the Samples folder for PBWin9.

One thing for sure you won't find better help anywhere else. Good Luck.

=============================================
If you can't have faith
in what is held up to you for faith,
you must find things to believe in yourself,
for a life without faith in something
is too narrow a space to live.
George E. Woodberry
=============================================

[Bert Slootmans]

Thanks for these comments, I'll look into them. Should someone else have additional suggestions...