[Gambas-user] Hello and questions

[richard terry]

Rob, a few comments from a novice below, hope you stay with us.

On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 12:25:25 pm Robert Rowe wrote:
> I just discovered Gambas yesterday and I'm quite impressed. I'd like to
> thank Benoît for writing Gamabs. I'm a professional VB developer and
> have missed VB since I switched to Linux (Kubuntu) about a year ago. I'm
> stuck with Windows at work since our customers use Windows. I used to
> make little apps at home when needed but I hate to bring up a VMWare
> session for such small tasks. It looks like Gambas will solve this for me.
>


> I have a couple of questions though.
> 1. I couldn't find a place on the website to submit suggestions. Is this
> mailing list the appropriate place for suggestions?

Absolutely, usually good place, benoit is amazingly quick to respond/add 
features if he feels them worthwhile.
>
> 2. I found the bug tracker but couldn't seem to access the page(s) that
> showed the description of the listed bugs. Am I missing something? I'd
> hate to submit a duplicate bug report.

People seem to send directly to the list.
>
> 3. I'd have to agree with Richard Terry that an efficient workflow is
> critical. I use a large number of addons with VB at work. I didn't see a
> way to add extensions to Gambas. Does it have this ability? If not then
> do you except source code changes to the IDE? I'd be willing to write
> several tools that could be added to the IDE. I'd prefer a plugin type
> system so that each user could choose whether to have the tool or not.
>

The gambas source tree has the source code for the gambas editor. You can 
experiment with editor changes and run them as a project. Benoit seems 
willing to change things that are good ideas.

One can write components directly in Gambas (sorry I can't as I don't 
understand how to , but would love to learn). With your talents I'm sure you 
can do this. There are examples in the tree, and the grideditor is a good 
example of a component you can download from http://gambasrad.org I think.

> 4. Another thing that I do a lot at work with VB is to write controls as
> the built in controls are rather lackluster. Do components have to be
> written in C or can they be written in Gambas? If they can be written in
> Gambas, is there a how-to somewhere?
>
No how to (sob sob), please write one when you figure it out, as above can be 
written in gambas. I want to replicate my vb popup phrasewheel (see 
www.gnumed.net/rterry/Index.htm for a summary of some of my really old vb 
medical program concepts if you are interested), which Karsten/Ian Haywood 
implemented for the gnuMed project expanding my examples.


> 5. The first thing that I did after installing Gambas was to try to run
> the samples. None of them would compile. I eventually figured out that
> it was because I was running Gambas as a normal user. When I ran as root
> the samples ran well and were impressive. My suspicion is that Gambas
> needs to write the compiled file(s) somewhere and my normal user
> couldn't write to that location. It seems this location must be the
> project folder which is /usr/share/gambas2/examples/ for me. Is there a
> way to tell Gambas to write the compiled files to another location (like
> the temp folder) when running a read only project.

Personally don't know, I can't compile mine either - get huge executables 
(2gig) havn't deciphered why.
>
> 6. I know that I'm a Gambas newbie but I'm a BASIC veteran (over 25
> years) and I'm sure that I will pick it up quickly. What would be the
> best way for me to contribute? I stink at C and I'm an okay document
> writer.
>
Perhaps we could collaborate. I'm interested in writing help files and have 
written many, I'd prefer the .chm format (kchmviewer runs on linux) as it is 
easy/searchable. I use HELPBLOCKS to make these files.

> 7. I've been reading through
> "Getting Started with Gambas Version 2: A Tutorial" by
> timothy.marshal­nichols at ...1868... He says that his screenshots were
> taken from Gambas2. I have Gambas2 installed.  In has screenshot of the
> New Project Wizard there are several options that I don't have including
> an option to import a VB project.  I'm very interested in importing VB
> projects. Am I somehow missing this option or do I need to install
> something else? I installed everything from the repository at danicafe.
> I can provide a package list if this would help.

As an aside download form the web "a beginners guide to gambas" by John 
rittinghouse - pdf - free (though I bought the book to give him some money), 
though only gambas 1.0 its an interesting overview.

> 8. I'm a hotkey junkie and was very pleased to see that most of the
> hotkeys in Gamabs were the same as the ones in VB. Not all are though.
> Is there a way to configure the hotkeys?
>
> 9. I prefer a green background with a white foreground for comment
> lines. I find that this makes them stand out. I located the option to
> change the syntax highlighting colors but I couldn't set the background
> color. Is this possible? Maybe I could edit some config file directly if
> the option isn't available from the options screen.
>
> 10. This next one is more of a suggestion. I love the intellisense
> menus. In many ways they are superior to VB. One thing that I ran into
> though was that you seem to have to press enter to choose the item from
> the list. If this could be triggered on the keypress of any non-alpha
> character then it would allow me to press the . or = to choose the item
> and continue with the statement. I know it only saves a few keystrokes
> be this adds up after a while.
>
> Robert Rowe

Regards

Richard