In a message dated 9/9/04 1:43:38 PM, realbasic at webconnected dot com writes:
> First, make a better help system.
>
Actually I really like the speed of the RB help system. It seems when you
open the Excel help it takes a long time and has the stupid animation which
never
goes away. RBhelp is really fast. However, there is a nice organization to
the Excel help where related functions are grouped together, and if you are
trying to look how to do something but can't remember the name, you can just
get
to the right group. The RB system is great and I use it constantly (and I agree
with what someone said about the need to copy and paste - especially working
on a powerbook with a 12 in screen where the help window takes the whole
window), but there are times when I can't find what I need because I don't know
the
exact name of it.
>
> RealBASIC help should have examples that work in Windows, Mac and Linux
> environments even if three code examples were required to accomplish this.
> Many topics natural to Mac programmers are totally foreign to Windows and
> Linux programmers so don't make assumptions!
>
> Second, a publication that tells how common tasks that a programmer would
> encounter are accomplished.
>
Thats a great idea. Not everyone wants to make their own word processor and
there are a number of common tasks related to files, databases, graphics,
menus, windows, dynamic arrays, sockets etc. which seem to always have a series
of
related tasks. And there seems to be a more or less standard way of doing
things, which could be spelled out clearly.
In fact some of these things are so standard that it might be a good idea to
make them a part of the language in the future. For example,
- most applications, when asked to quit need to check if any changes have
been made, and then put up a dialog to save or not before quitting.
- Many arrays need to be sorted at some time (often multi-dimensional).
- All databases need to be opened and saved in usually the same way. Instead
of going record by record filling in each field, it would be nice to simply
define a multidimensional array based on the same field names and types, and
simply write a single line like <LOAD "db.Employees", EmpArray.Employees,
NEmployees > which creates the array EmpArray, cycles through, and at the end
you
have the number of records in the third variable.
- Create a Spreadsheet style listbox, or resizable listbox, etc.
There are a lot of things, which each person has to re-invent along the
learning curve which would allow RB to stand out even more as quick and great
language.
>
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
|