I've been having one of those blank minded mornings. I figured I would write a nice post about some neat thing in REALbasic which you hadn't known before, but then every time I thought of something, I realized I'd already written about it before. That's not to say that there's not more new things in REALbasic -- it just means that I talk too much. ;-)
So what sort of things are you interested in hearing about?
In other news...
It rained here all day yesterday. And I really do mean all day. I woke up to the sound of hail at about 7am and I fell asleep to the sound of a downpour around 2am. At least today I see some smatterings of blue in the sky, but it still looks like more rain is nearby. Which sucks because I just had the lawn reseeded middle of last week, so if the new seed hadn't established some roots, it's gone again. Lol, the little lawn that couldn't....
My trees are probably loving all the water they're getting though, so hopefully they stay nice and healthy!
I'm heading down to Austin on Friday morning (very early morning) for a week-long stay. I'll be working out of the REAL office (pun intended) Mon-Fri, and I get to see my Lissy! I'm quite excited, because I'm spending a full nine days down there, so I really will get to see Lis instead of just seeing her two days and then on evenings. We've got some fun stuff planned, but I think I'm mostly just looking forward to hanging out with her again.
The latest stuff I've been working on, in no particular order, is: the message board, a resource compiler, menu system overhauls, bug fixes and I've been toying with some plugin ideas and a book. I'm going to sit down (on the plane ride most likely) and come up with a chapter listing and perhaps the first chapter -- I'll post what I have when I have it and see what everyone thinks.
My truck's brakes went out the other day, so I'm now officially almost $500 lighter. :-P One of the calipers snapped off and lodged in the rotor. As you can imagine, this caused quite a ruckus. I brought it in to the local mechanic here in St Augusta and they were able to fix the issues pretty quickly. So at least I'll be able to drive myself down to the Cities for my flight instead of having to find a ride down there.
Does anyone want to buy a G4 iMac? I'm thinking of selling mine -- it's one of those alien looking white thingers. Has a super drive. 800 Mhz. Etc. Not certain how much to sell it for, or whether anyone even wants it.
In any event, I'm starving. I think I'm going to go make myself something barely edible, such as a frozen pizza. The one bad thing about going on week-long trips is that I can't buy decent groceries since they'll all spoil. I'm really looking forward to cooking with Lis because we always make excellent food and it's always a good time!
How about some tips/tricks your may have for creating controls via canvases. Doesn't seem to be your forte, but you may have some nice tips to help advanced users save some time.
Canvases are vital to anyone needing control over specific UI elements that are not built into RB. I've spent much time making things from calendars, replacement tab panel headers, enhanced listboxes built on canvases, all the way down to individual buttons and banners.
Shoot, I can go a cool $100.00 or that bad boy, let me know where to send the money!
Canvas-based controls eh? Yeah, I could handle doing a segment or two on that topic. I sorta touched on it with the making your own mode switch article -- is that the sort of thing you're looking for more of?
I think something that needs to be covered is using the debugger. I don't know if you've gone over it or not, but it seems that the majority of RB questions that come up could be easily solved by walking-through the code in the debugger. And I know, personally, a debugger is something I didn't "get" until I was formally taught it in college... a lot of RB developers seem to be hobbyiests without no formal programming education.
"Do you ever feel like you’ve run out of things to say?"
Why do you think I don't update ResExcellence every week? (Besides simply forgetting) :^) It's so hard to come up with regular ideas that are quick, easy, and useful. Half the time I'm tempted just to link to or duplicate something you've already written. (I did with the printing stuff.)
I'm eating frozen pizza and it's YUMMY!
Have fun in TX!
@James -- now that's a very interesting point, and I never thought about that. A how-to series on the debugger is a great idea!
@Seth -- lol, so if I just link to your content and you link to mine, then we don't have to write ever again? ;-)
What, exactly, is a "resource compiler"? Is it part of RB?
Why it compiles resources silly. ;-) On Windows, there's a section of the executable dedicated to resources. So when you make some version information, that gets compiled into a specific format and stuck in the resource section.
I'm writing a compiler which will take resource objects and turn them into binary resources for the executable. It's a part of the PE32 link process, and it would be a part of RB.
Right. An interesting blog entry for the future would be the format of Win32 executables (not details, but all the different types and the different layouts). What RB uses now, how your new compiler changes things, etc.
Oh, and what about storing pictures as PNG instead of BMP in the executable? That would sure cut down executable size on Win32. (Compressing it in a setup program solves the problem for Internet download size, but does Win32 load all the data into RAM before processing it (including pictures) or just the code segment?)
I'm not certain what you mean by different types and layouts but not details. Do you want to know the technical underpinnings of the file format?
As for storing pictures as PNG, that would eliminate all older OSes (98, ME, NT4 and maybe 2k, I don't recall for sure) for using that picture format natively. Bitmaps are simply the most widely used format, and lossless to boot.
But yes, the loader maps the executable into memory at load time, so your bitmaps will take up memory. All the more reason to externalize them instead of make them internal to the project.
Yes, technical underpinnings. Like on Mac, we have Mach-O vs. PEF. What about Windows?
Can't you compile in libpng to Win32 exes to support PNG extraction?
Ah, I see -- well, on Windows, it's PE32 or bust. But I can certainly describe the underpinnings in a post.
And yes, we could compile libpng into the Win32 exes, it'd only add (last time I checked) about 1 MB to your executable.
I'd be interested about Drag n' Drop on Windows. I find it hard to get the same behaviour on both Mac & Win.
You and me both. ;-) That's a topic which William typically knows more about than I do -- however, I've always been interested in learning more about it, so perhaps I'll do some homework and post about that.
Will removing the pictures from internal items to external, code-loaded items make my project load faster (assuming I don't do all the loading right away at startup)?
It would be nice, perhaps, if executables generated by RB had some other system of storing pictures. Like for Mach-O apps, pictures would be in the Resources folder of the bundle (and automatically found and treated as normal project items). For Windows, perhaps some other system--like generating a folder with the exe and picture files side-by-side (but autogenerated from the project's internal pictures again, so I don't have to do any work). That would be unwieldy for many users, so it would have to be an option, but it would make my app much slimmer.
Nice, how much for the mac mini? and I laughed my ass off at your faux comment spam this morning!!
I feel you pain regarding the truck. I used to have a truck that "ate" brake pads. I literally replaced pads every month or so until I could afford new rotors. :D
@Aaron (lol, so if I just link to your content and you link to mine, then we don’t have to write ever again?) : Well, at least one of us doesn't. :^)
@Adam -- yes, removing them will make the app load slightly faster since the system has to allocate less space up front and less to copy from disk into RAM. As for your idea -- it doesn't change the size of your application, it just moves the data around to another place. ;-) But I understand what you mean.
@Steve -- it's not the mini that I'm selling, it's my iMac, and make an offer. Glad you liked my comment spam. :-)
@Christian -- hoy, that's no good! I'm glad I was able to get mine fixed right away. That noise would have driven me batty anyway! ;-)
"That’s a topic which William typically knows more about than I do "
suggestion: maybe you could ask William to contribute to your blog about this subject, or Activex, or Officeautomation. That would give you some time to relax. (Oh.. sorry William , now you lost some sparetime)
So what sort of things are you interested in hearing about?
I would like a tutorial on building a database frontend from scratch. An address book type show-how would be helpful to me.
@Andre -- heh, I don't think William's too into the blog thing.
@Neal -- hoy, I'm about as database stupid as you can get, and I tend to revel in my ignorance in this category since it means I'm not stuck working on databases. Databases are one category of topics you probably won't ever see me blog about, unless it's complaints. :-P
Amen!
How 'bout a tutorial about using plugins? Especially the WFS?
It's tough to do a tutorial on how to *use* plugins -- you just drop them in the Plugins folder and use them in the IDE. And the WFS isn't a plugin, it's a set of RB classes that you can export from the main project and import into your own project. And that's something which I think could use some good documentation.
How about a tutorial on how to use RBscript?
I know I'm late to the party, but an rbscript tutorial would be much appreciated.
RBScript would be an interesting one, but first, I'd have to teach myself about RBScripts. ;-) To be honest, the only thing I ever did with them was a script server that would let you configure a UI via a secondary application. It was a quick and dirty little toy.
But still an interesting idea to write about!