1) Resources for getting
assistance with LB.Liberty Basic is develeopped by Carl Gundel Original Newsletter compiled by Alyce Watson and Brosco Translation to HTML: Raymond Roumeas
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I will be trying very hard to make this newsletter have content for everyone, but my main concentration will be for the newer LBers. I encourage any newbies to send me suggestions for topics that they would like to see discussed. That does not mean that I want you to send "How do I ..." type questions. The message board at LB4ALL and the EMailing List are the places for those types of questions. I also encourage the 'older hands' to submit articles that may be of interest to others.
1) Resources for getting
assistance with LB.When I first started with LB, I was constantly asking questions, and the assistance I received from the above two resources was fantastic.
Sometimes I would get an answer that fixed the problem, but I was still none-the-wiser about why it worked!! Thats where this newsletter comes in. Here I have the space and the time to be able to explain in a little more detail the WHY behind the answer. If you have an area that you don't understand, the chances are that others are having the same poblem, so send it in and I will try to answer it. If I can't, I will try to enlist the resources of one of the LB gurus to give an explanation.
There are no rules on this and each person has his own preference. My personal preference is to use the Message Board for questions and the Email list for announcements and general discussion. My reasons are very simple. When there is a lot of activity on the Email list, people may read your question, but if they can't answer immediately, they may never get back to it - it just gets lost in a list of archives. On the message board, not only is the message held there for a long period, but the 'threads' of responses are maintained as well. When I am viewing the Message Board, I look first at the postings that haven't received an answer at all, then I look at the other messages that I haven't read. But, I repeat, this is just my personal approach - others may see it differently.
For information on how to SUBSCRIBE to the Email list, go to Carl's Liberty Basic site:
http://world.std.com/~carlg/basic.html
and click on 'NEWS". At the bottom of this page you will find the details for subscribing. For the Message Board - go to Garrett's LB4ALL site:
http://www.in-syte.com/lb4all/lb4all-b.html
On the left hand side of the page you will see his 'Table of Contents'. Click on 'LB Message Board'. If you are not currently accessing these two facilities, you are missing out on the best sources of LB assistance available.
A third resource is the LB Chat Room. This is used every few weeks for a get together. Watch for announcements on the Message Board for scheduled chat times. To get directly to the Chat Room, use the following URL:
http://www.in-syte.com/lb4all/lbchatrm.html
2) The big news in April. "a
thunking we will go...", the background story.The ability to access 32 bit API functions from Liberty Basic. OK, I know, its not really a topic for the newbies, but a lot of the background information is, so read on!
Windows 3.x is a 16 bit Operating System. Even though the 386 CPU and onwards gave 32 bit capabilities, the extra power and facilities weren't utilised until the release of Win32 and later, Win95. Programs written for the 16 bit enviroment cannot directly access 32 bit facilities. Liberty Basic, although it is a programming language, is in reality just another program, and is written for the 16 bit world. This means that although LB allows the programmer to issue API calls - they can only be of the 16 bit variety. The fact that you may be running Windows 95 does NOT change anything.
As soon as LB was given the ability to make API calls, several programmers started experimenting. Regularly, there would be a question posted like: "Hey, I found this great new API function that does .........., but when I try to use it in LB, the system crashes! Why?" And the answer usally came back:
"Thats a 32 bit Function - you can't access that one from LB".
Then early in April, Garrett posted a very stupid question: "Other 16 bit programs access 32 bit facilities, via a method called 'THUNKING', why can't LB do this?". Within an hour or two, Brian Pugh sent Tom Record a DLL that enabled 'thunking' (Brian has troubles with uploads with his ISP). Tom posted the DLL on his site immediately so that it was available for everyone to download. I quickly grabbed this and wrote a small sample program in LB that accessed the 32 bit functions and posted the program to the Message Board. Over a period of 12 hours, we went from:
'thats impossible'
to
'oh that - just use the Call32.dll - ho-hum.'
Call32.dll was written for the Visual Basic programming community by Peter Golde and posted as FREEWARE. Thank you Peter. (Peter has been sent a copy of this Newsletter). The moral of the story is: "There is no such thing as a stupid question" - so dont be shy with your questions, no one will laugh at you - and perhaps your question might just lead us to yet another discovery!
3) Snippet of the MonthHave you ever noticed that some professional programs have ComboBoxes that allow the user to add extra entries by typing into the ComboBox itself! Here's my code to allow you to do this:
' ComboBox data entry - writen by Brosco, April 1998
'
nomainwin
dim Fonts$(100)
Fonts$(1) = "Arial"
Fonts$(2) = "Courier"
Fonts$(3) = "Courier_New"
Fonts$(4) = "System"
numF = 4
WindowWidth = 170
WindowHeight = 160
StaticText #w.t1, "Select a Font, or Type one in to Register it", _
10, 10, 125, 50 ' *** Note 1
TextBox #w.f, 10, 65, 125, 24 ' *** Note 2
ComboBox #w.fs, Fonts$(, [fontClick], 10, 65, 145, 120
Button #w.default, "OK", [okClick], UL, 25, 95, 50, 25 ' *** Note 3
Button #w.quit, "Close", [close.w], UL, 85, 95, 50, 25
open "Font Selection / Register" for Dialog as #w
print #w, "trapclose [close.w]"
print #w.fs, "selectindex 1"
print #w.f, Fonts$(1)
[loop]
input var$
goto [loop]
[fontClick] ' Note 4
print #w.fs, "selectionindex?"
input #w.fs, i
a$ = Fonts$(i)
print #w.f, a$
goto [loop]
[okClick] ' Note 5
print #w.f, "!contents?"
input #w.f, a$
' See if the new font already exists
print #w.fs, "select ";a$
print #w.fs, "selectionindex?"
input #w.fs, i
if i > 0 then
notice "This Font is already registered!"
goto [loop]
end if
numF = numF + 1
Fonts$(numF) = a$
sort Fonts$(, 1, numF
print #w.fs, "reload"
notice "New Font has been added!"
goto [loop]
[close.w]
close #w
END
' end of program snippet
StaticText #w.t1, "Select a Font, or Type one in to Register it", _
10, 10, 125, 50
TextBox #w.f, 10, 65, 125, 24 ComboBox #w.fs, Fonts$(, [fontClick], 10, 65, 145, 120
Button #w.default, "OK", [okClick], UL, 25, 95, 50, 25
Newsletter written by: Brosco. Comments, requests or corrections to: brosco@orac.net.au Translated from Australian to English by an American: Alyce Watson. Thanks Alyce.