The Liberty Basic Newsletter - Issue #102 - NOV 2002

© 2003, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lbnews/

All Rights Reserved

Individual authors retain copyrights to their works.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again.
Fail better." - Samuel Beckett


In this issue:

Liberty BASIC News
Safe Registry and Ini File Alternative
Tipcorner - Deleting and Renaming Disk Files
Segments and Flushing - a Graphics Tutorial
Flat Toolbar with Toolips for the Open Source Editor
Translating 32-bit Visual BASIC API Calls
Event-Driven Programming Concepts - Part 1 by Brad Moore
Spotlight on the Community!
      ODBC in Liberty BASIC by Dennis McKinney
      Hex Viewer by Walt Grams
      Listing Files Recursively by Mark Parkinson
      Registering Hot Keys by Ken Lewis
      Preventing more than 1 instance of your program by Ken Lewis
      Multi-Coloured Text Input Boxes using a DLL by Raymond Fisher
      Images on Buttons and Statictext by Mike Bradbury
      Two Demos by David Conner


NOTES FROM THE EDITOR

First, thanks to Dennis McKinney who has kindly consented to allow us to include his ODBC sample with this newsletter. Dennis is one of those very special people who is always expanding our frontiers!

Thanks also to Walt Grams for his gracious permission to include his hex viewer in this newsletter! It looks very similar to other such programs that I've seen, proving yet again that quite a lot can be accomplished in relatively few lines of code by a clever Liberty BASIC programmer.

Many thanks to Mark Parkinson for his concise and very useful code to list disk files of specified types recursively. Great stuff!

Thanks also to Ken Lewis for his great demo program and explanation of registering hot keys. Ken has broken some new ground on this one! He has also provided instruction on preventing more than once instance of a program. Great stuff! Thanks, Ken!

Special thanks to Raymond Fisher, who contributed an article in a previous newsletter that showed us how to make colored text input boxes using the Windows API in Liberty BASIC. He has now simplified this for us by providing a custom textbox DLL. He includes detailed explanation and some sample programs. Thanks, Ray!

Thank you, Mike Bradbury, for sharing another easy and innovative method. The images on buttons and statictext will be a great asset to our programming toolbox!

Thanks David Conner, for sharing your two demo programs with us.

Thanks to my co-publisher, Brad for his great article on event-driven programming!

The quote above from playwrite Samuel Beckett was chosen for this issue because it so vividly describes the process I went through in creating the real Windows toolbar with tooltips. There are several different ways to handle the toolbar creation, and the one in use is my own variation. That was not a problem. The problem came when I tried to add tooltips. Some button images are universally undersood... cut,copy,paste, for instance. Others aren't so clear, but images are the standard for toolbar buttons, so tooltips are invaluable. Since we've known how to do tooltips for a long time, and toolbars are also not new, it should have been easy to marry the two, right? Wrong! I tried this, did some research, tried that, did some more research, tried yet another way, and so on and on. I was getting REALLY good at failing! I was despairing that I'd never work it out by myself when I finally hit on the answer. There is NOTHING like the feeling you get when you hit the "run" button and view your program that is working as you envisioned, finally!

Thanks for listening, er, I mean "reading." If you find anything in this issue that is interesting or useful, please comment. If you have a question or want to point out an error or omission, please comment. If you have a suggestion for a future article, please comment. Tom Nally will be publishing the December newsletter and Brad Moore will be doing the January issue, so send submissions to one of these fine people. (Some of you ARE planning to write articles in the next couple of months, aren't you?)

Best wishes to all in our online Liberty BASIC family,
Alyce Watson


SPOTLIGHT ON THE COMMUNITY

The spotlight section of the newsletter highlights a programmer, website, or other item of particular interest to Liberty BASIC programmers. This month, the spotlight is on THE COMMUNITY! The last several newsletters have contained many, many contributions from our members. This is so exciting! This kind of involvement provides such a wide variety of information that there is always something for everyone!

The publishing team offers a hearty THANKS to all contributors! Everyone has something of value to contribute, so please keep sending in these great demos, articles and tutorials!

The remainder of this newsletter consists of the many fine community contributions we have received this month, so ENJOY!




SUBMISSIONS

The Liberty BASIC Newsletter encourages all LB programmers to submit articles for publication. Everyone has something valuable to say, from beginners to veteran LBers. Consider sharing a code routine, with explanation. Perhaps you can review a favorite LB website, or program, or coding tool? Why not submit a list of questions that have been nagging at you? How about sharing your favorite algorithm?

The Publishing Team:
Alyce Watson: alycewatson@charter.net
Brad Moore: brad.moore@weyerhaeuser.com
Tom Nally: SteelWeaver52@aol.com
Carl Gundel: carlg@libertybasic.com
Bill Jennings: bbjen@bigfoot.com

This newsletter was produced with WikiWriter

Home

Liberty BASIC News
Safe Registry and Ini File Alternative
Deleting and Renaming Disk Files
Segments and Flushing
Flat Toolbar with Toolips
Translating 32-bit VB API Calls
Event-Driven Programming Concepts
Spotlight on the Community!
ODBC in Liberty BASIC
Hex Viewer
Listing Files Recursively
Registering Hot Keys
Preventing more than 1 instance
Multi-Coloured Text Input Boxes
Images on Buttons and Statictext
Two Demos by David Conner