Recent Posts

11

Other BASIC languages / Re: Other Basic languages worth checking out

« Last post by Brice M on January 30, 2025, 07:15:38 pm »

These are both from one of the living legends of BASIC and early home computers.

BBC BASIC for Windows

And a newer version that is free, open source and cross-platform.

BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0

Both of the above are great and I have used them in the past, even the DOS version of BBC BASIC. Richard is a great guy and talented coder.


I also highly recommend these:

PureBasic

IceDesign GUI Designer (The best GUI designer for PureBasic, IMHO)

SpiderBasic

PureBasic is designed to pretty much run on any OS (Windows, Linux, MacOS and Raspberry Pi) or processor (32-bit or 64-bit or ARM). It is ALWAYS kept current with new technologies. Works great on the RaspberryPi. PureBasic creates DPI aware apps as a built in feature, which is a huge plus nowadays and has created 64bit EXEs for many, many years.

SpiderBasic is awesome for web-based applications, Android & iOS.

12

Other BASIC languages / Other Basic languages worth checking out

« Last post by Chris Boss on January 28, 2025, 11:59:23 am »

Here is a short list of other Basic languages worth checking out:

Oxygen (O2) Basic compiler (32 bit and 64 bit) :   https://github.com/Charles-Pegge/OxygenBasic

PluriBasic (generates apps for a variety of platforms):   https://www.patreon.com/c/pluribasic/posts

ThinBasic (interpreter) :  https://www.thinbasic.com/

13

WIN32 Programming / Where to download Windows SDK

« Last post by Chris Boss on January 28, 2025, 11:48:45 am »

To use the WIN32 API in Windows successfully I strongly recommend downloading the Windows SDK (Software Development Kit) to get the WIN32 docs.

You can download the latest SDK for Windows 11 here:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-sdk/

Personally I find that it is better to use an older version of the SDK for q quick reference, since it leaves out much of the "bleeding edge" API's of later versions of Windows such as Windows 10 and 11. I find that the Windows 7 SDK is the best one to use for everyday reference. You can download it here:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/sdk-archive/

Scroll down to the Windows 7 download link on the above webpage.

I use the Windows 7 SDK for everyday quick reference use (it is less bloated and easier to traverse) and also double check API docs online for Windows 11 (the latest).

For the latest docs online go here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/api-reference/

14

FreeBasic / Where to download FreeBasic

« Last post by Chris Boss on January 28, 2025, 11:41:44 am »

Freebasic is a popular open source BASIC programming language. It can be downloaded at the link below:

https://freebasic.net/

15

BCX (Basic to C) Transpiler / Where to download BCX

« Last post by Chris Boss on January 28, 2025, 11:40:11 am »

BCX is an excellent BASIC programming language. It is not a compiler, but a transpiler.

At least that is the term I like to use. It generates C code from the Basic and then compiles using a C compiler as a backend.

You can get more info about BCX here:

https://www.bcxbasiccoders.com/

16

Powerbasic / Welcome

« Last post by Chris Boss on January 28, 2025, 11:33:42 am »

Welcome to the Powerbasic section of my forums. The Powerbasic website and forums both currently are down and no indication they will return.
If you would like access to this forum just email me a request to join (real names required).

chrisboss@centurylink.net

or

support@cwsof.com

I personally have decades of experience with the Powerbasic compilers and still use them.
I also have decades of experience with the WIN32 API.

Chris Boss

17

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)

18

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

19

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!

20

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.