[Gambas-user] Gambas "Best Practices"

[richard terry]

This probably won't be of much use to you because I'm not in your programming 
league and probably off topic for you, however, my 2 cents worth is:

QT walks all over GTK.

The combo box problem - agree. I've written a medical records system in VB 
back in 1996/7 which I use at work, and have been tinkering do some modelling 
of a new system in gambas, and have found similar problems to yourself.

Unless I'm wrong, the only way to easily do this would be to roll your own 
control. If you are into other languages take a look at the cPhraseWheel in 
the gnumed project which Ian Haywood and Karsten modelled after my vb work 
from the 90's. Its a super-control - textbox, popup list, spell checker, 
backend updater etc etc all rolled into one.

In my tinkering I must admit that I simply use a textbox with an attatched 
list box, which popups up as the user types eg to search for people use 
either j m (would bring up all firstnames j surnames s,  or s,j (like the way 
you do in your example or john, would bring up all the johns, or ,smith would 
bring up all the smiths .

I find there are lots of limitations with many of the qt controls in annoying 
ways, but at the end of the day they function well, the IDE of gambas is easy 
to use.

Don't know what database you are using but Postgresql seems to stand out from 
the pack. pgAdmin3 is available on linux, not bad, but for anything complex 
like working out complex queries or functions (with my puny cerebrum), I 
purchased a copy of EMS sqlmanager for postgres for windows which I run in 
virtualbox (seamless mode) on my ARCH linux laptop, so I can can past queries 
etc between the two environments - works well.

Hope you stick with gambas and bring some expertise, as many seem to come and 
go due to some of the frustrations inherent in a developing language and lack 
of documentation.

Regards

Richard
On Tue, 20 May 2008 01:43:01 am Doug Gack wrote:
> Background:
>
>     I am an independent software developer, primarily providing custom
> business applications to small businesses. I do most of my work in M$
> Access, but also some in PHP and ASP Internet forms. (After programming for
> 40+ years, another language is easier to learn than the first few.) I've
> been looking for a couple of years for a way to do the same thing in Linux,
> and it looks like I've finally found it. Thank you. Gambas!
>
> I just completed a conversion of a (tiny) application from Access/ASP to
> Gambas/MySql/PHP, and it works just fine, thank you very much! Except....
>
> As when learning any new environment, there's a prolonged period of
> developing a "style" for the environment.
>
> I started off trying to create a "Graphical" application, not knowing any
> better, and soon (well, not so soon, actually) realized that a "QT
> Application" would give me a lot better user environment. That's just one
> of the bumps encountered on the road, but I got it to work, so I'm better
> for the experience.
>
> Question is, what can anyone tell me about better ways to approach the
> subject?
>
> Some starter questions:
>
> - Which graphical environment, and why?
>
> - I've been spoiled by Access's methods with combo boxes, and it's become
> my most used way of looking up data. If I want to find "Smith, John", I
> start typing "smi...", and soon his name pops up. Looks like Linux
> subscribes to the browser forms method of only using only the first letter
> out of a list. I type "S" and get "Sa...", then type "m" and get "Ma...".
> When I have a list with 15 or 20 thousand names, this won't do. How have
> others solved this issue?
>
> Any starter suggestions?
>
> TIA,
>
> Doug
>
>
> Doug Gack
> Homepage: http://dgack.selfip.com
>
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