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General Discussion / What should I do with EZGUI ? (its future)
« Last post by Chris Boss on September 07, 2024, 02:25:20 pm »
I am in a quandary of what to do with EZGUI ?

Powerbasic, simply put is dead. I won't go into the details, but it is a fact and the chances of it resurfacing are slim at best.

So what to do with EZGUI, without Powerbasic. There is too much code for me to port it to another language, unless that language supports a syntax at least close to Powerbasic. I used a lot of tricks found in the PB language which would need to exist in whatever I port it to. Second, 64 bit is critical to make it worth the time to port EZGUI.

EZGUI is over 50,000 lines of Powerbasic code (with a tiny bit of inline assembler).

Is it worth it to port it ?
I think so. EZGUI , as far as GUI tools go, has features far beyond anything in the PB compiler. It is so complex it is almost a programming language in of itself. There are over 1000 GUI commands in it, and so many low level features is can be extended to add even much more.

Kevin Diggins BCX looks interesting to me. That may be one approach to port EZGUI.

If one looks at many of the "other" BASIC's out there (indie developed BASIC's), I doubt any of them come close to the feature set of EZGUI. EZGUI is also quite unique in that I wrote 100% of it from scratch. Not a single line of so called "open source" code or libraries. What ever I do with it, I don't have to worry about third party licenses getting in the way.

Languages like Purebasic for example use a third party 3D engine. EZGUI's graphic engine I wrote myself from scratch.

EZGUI has features very unique to it such as:

2D Sprite animation engine which is very fast and does not require DirectX. It uses the Windows GDI (using Device Independent Bitmaps). It creates its own memory buffers and handles all drawing via my own code and then Bitblt's the memory buffer to the screen. It is very fast. I benchmarked to Patrice Terriers GDImage (which uses GDIplus) and the animation was significantly faster.

3D OpenGL based scripting language. It even supports loading and displaying STL 3D models (used in 3D printing). It is so fast it can load and display huge 3D models with over 1 million polygons in a few seconds, even on a old computer and does not need the latest (bleeding edge) hardware to do it.

Drag and Drop Visual Designer engine (build your own programming visual designers, form editors).

and much more.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them here or contact me via email (support@cwsof.com)


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General Discussion / Re: Powerbasic Website Demise
« Last post by Chris Gaskell on August 26, 2024, 07:54:43 am »
I can understand what you mean. Perhaps, if you have time (or indeed feel like it) you could organise a poll to see what computer languages for using EZGUI would like or prefer to see.
I still have to maintain VB6 programs, and I will do so as long as possible. I used PB because it eliminated the use of ActiveX ( a problem when these companies disappeared and the activation would no longer work) and EZGUI made the design of user interfaces so much easier. I have experimented and am experimenting with EZGUI.
I am currently creating a simple game. I realise that EZGUI is not designed for game creation, but the Sprite movement etc, is great, and I enjoy experimenting.
Whatever happens, Chris, I wish you well.

Chris Gaskell
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EZGUI 5 support forum / Re: Using EZ_SETONLAYER with a Page Form
« Last post by Frank Kelley on August 14, 2024, 05:57:45 am »
After a night's sleep, I came at the problem differently. Ignoring the layer question entirely, I created a second, tiny page form (7 x 1) and loaded it immediately after the first page form in the parent's EZ_Loaded event. This second page form is positioned over a blank space on the parent, so while it's present, you can't see it. I can then use EZ_ShowPage in the parent's tab events to show the first page form when layer 1 is selected, and switch to the blank second page form when other layers are selected on the parent form.

This took only about five minutes to put into place and it works perfectly!
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EZGUI 5 support forum / Re: Using EZ_SETONLAYER with a Page Form
« Last post by Chris Boss on August 13, 2024, 09:29:57 pm »
A lot may depend upon when you create the page form.

I find it best to add the page forms during the parent forms %EZ_Loaded event. EZGUI does not like shifting between forms control creation mid stream.

Also it may be difficult to put the page form itself on the parent forms layers.

I really didn't do a lot of testing with layers on page forms as well as the parent form at the same time. There may be issues.

My suggest is simply to experiment with different ways of handling things. You may find one that works for your situation.

Now one technique which may work better is to convert your page form into a a Component (see: EZ_DefComponent command).

Components are forms which have controls on them which are treated as it is a single control. A component can even be used multiple times on the same parent form.

Since a Component is treated as if it was a single control it may work better with Layers.

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EZGUI 5 support forum / Using EZ_SETONLAYER with a Page Form
« Last post by Frank Kelley on August 13, 2024, 08:34:55 pm »
I have a page form with a tab control embedded in a parent window. The parent window also has a tab control. It appears the page form is being created on Layer 0, as it is visible on each of the parent's tabs. Is there a way to place the page form on layer 1, so it does not appear on any of the parent's other tabs?

I explored using EZ_SetOnLayer, getting the page form's EZ_Handle and then using EZ_AssignID, but that didn't work. Also tried using EZ_SetLayer in the page form's %EZ_Loading event...no dice there, either.

Any ideas?
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EZGUI 5 support forum / Re: Questions about PButton and EZ_LoadPicture
« Last post by Eric Miller on August 05, 2024, 10:34:11 pm »
Thanks
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EZGUI 5 support forum / Re: Questions about PButton and EZ_LoadPicture
« Last post by Chris Boss on August 05, 2024, 08:09:20 pm »
If you want to change the image on the Picture Button, etc. dynamically using EZ_LoadPicture you must use the EZ_SetImage command to change the image, passing the value returned by EZ_LoadPicture.

This sends a message to the control that a new picture needs to be used. 
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EZGUI 5 support forum / Re: Questions about PButton and EZ_LoadPicture
« Last post by Chris Boss on August 05, 2024, 08:06:35 pm »
It is best to use Bitmaps which are 256 color for Picture Button and Picture controls.

EZ_LoadPicture can load 24 or 32 bit images for use with the Canvas control, but you draw them yourself using the EZGUI canvas commands. The Picture Button and Picture controls though do the drawing themselves and 256 color seems to be the most they can handle.

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EZGUI 5 support forum / Re: Questions about PButton and EZ_LoadPicture
« Last post by Eric Miller on August 05, 2024, 01:48:36 pm »
I've used the EZGUI Designer 5.0 to make an user interface.  I decided to update some bitmaps to a new look only to find out I can't no image us drawn.

I'm using BMP in 24bit mode and the PButton only seems to work with BMPs I first used for my interface design.  If I try to replace the BMP's I get blank boxes instead.  Are the forms responsible for the blank Picture Buttons once their bitmaps are changed?   Is there a way to update the bitmaps on Picture Buttons w/o the images disappearing from them?

Thanks,

Eric
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EZGUI 5 support forum / Re: Autosave
« Last post by Brian Reynolds on July 26, 2024, 12:35:54 am »
Thank you Chris. My eyesight has been failing but I finally found your help.
Much appreciated.
Brian Reynolds.
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