OT: Power Basic bargain

INPUT "How many fish do you want?", FISH
PRINT "You can only have ", FISH/2

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin_at_highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:usilp55j25fsfap9rsg3vmf5ps2v4amgug_at_4ax.com...
INPUT "How many fish do you want?", FISH
PRINT "You can only have ", FISH/2

I can't deny the attractiveness of the simplicity there. :-)

The Windows approach does get you an automatic history with scrollbars and
usually very easy font/color changes and complete clipboard access, but I
would have to admit that the price for all that is often a little steep for
simply-minded utility programs.

On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:15:59 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On Mar 12, 11:00 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:34:16 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Mar 8, 6:54 pm, "Martin Riddle" <martin_...@verizon.net> wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:3a515c55-f2fc-4f29-acba-635d457189e2_at_u9g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...

On Mar 4, 2:12 pm, John Ferrell <jferrel...@triad.rr.com> wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 13:29:22 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:

I was writing a mechanical simulation with graphics this weekend &
flailed a bit getting around WinXP's support of VGA graphics under
Microsoft QuickBasic 4.0 (circa 1987, I think).  (*Great* product)

Anyway, John Larkin's raved about PowerBasic--it does all that
graphics / menu / GUI jazz--under Windows 95-through-Win7, makes
tight
code, it's anti-bloatware, and the old version (Classic PowerBasic
8.0
for Windows) is on sale for $49 (for the next few days).

I snagged a copy.

http://www.powerbasic.com/
http://www.powerbasic.com/products/clwn/

You should too.

I got mine. Now it is back to "Drinking from the firehose" for a
while. Don't overlook the downloads section on the web site and the
forum access from the help function.
John Ferrell W8CCW

I got mine and loaded it -- 14MB, total.  I'm impressed.

Time to sip from that firehose myself...

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

Ha, Tracking my package.  Last entry:  INCORRECT ROUTING AT UPS FACILITY

Its stuck in UPS hell.

lol

Cheers

Okay, here's my update--

You can't just PRINT and INPUT -- it does have the WinGUI drivel --
but they've made it fairly unpainful(tm).  After some fiddling I
managed the classic "Hello world", with a trivial graphics display:

----------- code -------------
#COMPILE EXE
#DIM ALL

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG

   DIM a AS INTEGER
   DIM x&
   DIM y&
   DIM nWidth&
   DIM nHeight&
   DIM hWin???

   x& = 100
   y& = 100
   nWidth& = 480
   nHeight& = 320

   a =1
   DO
     a=a+1
   LOOP WHILE a<10
   GRAPHIC WINDOW "Graphic Window crap", x&, y&, nWidth&, nHeight& TO
hWin???
   GRAPHIC ATTACH hWin, 0
   GRAPHIC PRINT "This is some text"
   GRAPHIC BOX (10, 20) - (120, 120), 0, %BLUE

   MSGBOX "Hello world" ,,"hello.bas msgbox title"

END FUNCTION

-------- end code ----------

I used these directives:
 #COMPILE EXE -- tells the compiler to generate a .EXE file
 #DIM ALL -- forces you to declare all variables (reduces errors from
misspelling variable names)

The compiler is screaming fast, and I'm warming up to being able to do
portable Windows-style i/o stuff if I want to (even though I'd usually
rather just PRINT).  This /is/ more flexible, and more Borg-friendly.

All-in-all, pretty darn good for $49-.

Here's the entire PBCC version:

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG

    PRINT "Hello, world!"
    SLEEP 2000

END FUNCTION

I don't want to waste my time dealing with the stupid Windows
interface. #COMPILE EXE is the default... currently that's all it can
do.

It is absurdly fast, compiling and running.

John

Yeah, but did yours pop up a useless, custom button to demand the user
click "Ok"?  Mine does, with custom titles. <spew

I could've ditched that do-nothing DO-LOOP, saving a few lines.

I might roll the rest of that stuff into a macro, and write my own
PRINT and INPUT routines.

That's a lot of work to save $100. Fine if you want to play with
Windows. When I want to crunch some engineering numbers, I don't want
to hassle with the asynchronous Windows interface.

Most of my programs have devolved to a screen of prompts for
single-letter keystrokes. like...

    C    set Capacitance

    T    set Timestep

    G    Go

    H    Help

    Q    Quit

where hitting C would institute a prompt for some capacitance.

John

On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:35:52 -0800, "Joel Koltner"

zapwireDASHgro...@yahoo.com> wrote:
"John Larkin" <jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:usilp55j25fsfap9rsg3vmf5ps2v4amgug_at_4ax.com...
  INPUT "How many fish do you want?", FISH
  PRINT "You can only have ", FISH/2

I can't deny the attractiveness of the simplicity there. :-)

The Windows approach does get you an automatic history with scrollbars and
usually very easy font/color changes and complete clipboard access, but I
would have to admit that the price for all that is often a little steep for
simply-minded utility programs.

In PowerBasic ConsoleCompiler you can do some clipboard stuff. You can
highlight text in the console window with the mouse and right-click to
copy it to the clipboard. And you can paste text from elsewhere into
an INPUT prompt, which is handy for pasting command strings, file
names, like that.

John

dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:aba96914-ab63-4eaf-9f26-01cce6c033d6_at_q16g2000yqq.googlegroups.com...

The compiler is screaming fast, and I'm warming up to being able to do
portable Windows-style i/o stuff if I want to (even though I'd usually
rather just PRINT).  This /is/ more flexible, and more Borg-friendly.

One of the first routines that I usually end up writing in any new
window-based programming environment is the canonical "log window" so that I
can get "print" back!  I've done this in Visual BASIC, MFC, wxWidgets, etc.,
and it's well worth it -- the alternative, where peopple pop up a message box
for any error or status or whatever, becomes *incredibly* annoying when
there's a whole bunch of cascading failures or whatever and you're sitting
there clicking through a dozen message boxes.

On Mar 12, 6:42 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:35:52 -0800, "Joel Koltner"

zapwireDASHgro...@yahoo.com> wrote:
"John Larkin" <jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:usilp55j25fsfap9rsg3vmf5ps2v4amgug_at_4ax.com...
  INPUT "How many fish do you want?", FISH
  PRINT "You can only have ", FISH/2

I can't deny the attractiveness of the simplicity there. :-)

The Windows approach does get you an automatic history with scrollbars and
usually very easy font/color changes and complete clipboard access, but I
would have to admit that the price for all that is often a little steep for
simply-minded utility programs.

In PowerBasic ConsoleCompiler you can do some clipboard stuff. You can
highlight text in the console window with the mouse and right-click to
copy it to the clipboard. And you can paste text from elsewhere into
an INPUT prompt, which is handy for pasting command strings, file
names, like that.

John

PowerBasic.com's feature comparison list
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/technote/features.asp

says their Console Compiler doesn't support INPUT.

Is the list wrong?

That was one of the things that counted against getting PB/CC--it
looked like I'd have to do my own i/o anyhow, so PB/Win it was.

James

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:23:43 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On Mar 12, 6:42 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:35:52 -0800, "Joel Koltner"

zapwireDASHgro...@yahoo.com> wrote:
"John Larkin" <jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:usilp55j25fsfap9rsg3vmf5ps2v4amgug_at_4ax.com...
  INPUT "How many fish do you want?", FISH
  PRINT "You can only have ", FISH/2

I can't deny the attractiveness of the simplicity there. :-)

The Windows approach does get you an automatic history with scrollbars and
usually very easy font/color changes and complete clipboard access, but I
would have to admit that the price for all that is often a little steep for
simply-minded utility programs.

In PowerBasic ConsoleCompiler you can do some clipboard stuff. You can
highlight text in the console window with the mouse and right-click to
copy it to the clipboard. And you can paste text from elsewhere into
an INPUT prompt, which is handy for pasting command strings, file
names, like that.

John

PowerBasic.com's feature comparison list
 http://www.powerbasic.com/support/technote/features.asp

says their Console Compiler doesn't support INPUT.

Is the list wrong?

That was one of the things that counted against getting PB/CC--it
looked like I'd have to do my own i/o anyhow, so PB/Win it was.

James

That's weird. The HELP documents INPUT, INPUT #, and LINE INPUT. It
seems to work fine.

    DEFSNG A-Z

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG

    PRINT "Hello, world!"
    INPUT "How many fish do you want", FISH
    PRINT "That will cost $"; USING$("###.##", FISH * 2.99)
    SLEEP 2000

END FUNCTION

It also supports single-key input INKEY$ and a bunch of neat input
buffer functions, like character counts and INPUT FLUSH.

The TCP functions let you do prints and inputs on sockets.

John