[Gambas-user] Back-port of gb.highlight to all distributions with 3.18

[Bruce Steers]

On Sat, 23 Dec 2023 at 21:53, Brian G <brian at westwoodsvcs.com> wrote:

>
> I have run into an annoying issue many times, after updating to use the
> new gb.highlight,
>
> Debian, and other distributions of course fail, but more so even if I
> build the new version of gambas
>
> for those distributions, when I install my app the distro still
> complains about gb.highlight not found.
>
> I know its normal but is there any chance that the component can be back
> ported to 3.18. and
>
> pushed to the supporting distros? It is difficult to test it on
> different platforms and beta the app when it is
>
> difficult to get it installed properly.
>

I agree that has been a bit problematic.
What i would have liked to see was gb.highlight being made to have all the
very same calls/methods/properties as gb.eval.highlight.
and for it to be compatible, ie, either texteditor could use gb.highlight
or gb.eval.highlight

for me there are 2 problems with gb.highlight
1. it's not compatible with gb.eval.highlight so some of my code (mostly
that involves TextEditor) needed some adjustment.  thus making my program
now only work on gambas dev branch.
2. it's not so easy to import gb.highlight code into your own project.
This was always my solution for compatibility.  For example a few of my
programs have imported components like gb.form.editor gb.form.teminal,
gb.settings, etc  Really easy to import, just drag the component .src files
into my project and remove the component from the list.  Then i can modify
the components or even better include the newer version in my program so it
works on older gambas versions.

(A possible solution for you there Brian is to import into your project an
older version of gb.form.editor that uses gb.eval.highlight)

My editor has an imported and customized gb.form.editor that just started
failing "again" because you removed the new TextEditor._GetStyles() method
that replaced TextEditor.Styles that i adapted to and restored it back to
TextEditor.Styles again.

It's a little annoying for me but i accept there's some risks using the
gambas development branch.
but the worst thing is my program will now ONLY work if you install the
relevant compatible latest gambas version from what ever week it was
compiled to work on.
Ie. The editor downloaded over the last month will only work if gambas
TextEditor has the _GetStyles() method.

The only solution i could think of for us who want our software to work on
older gambas versions as well is to stop using gambas dev branch and stick
to stable.
But i don't want to do that.

I like that tag that someone has "Don't change anything EVER!"
And yes i know you're now using words like "API" because many of us are
monkeying around with the way you make things work then run into problems
when you change things but that's just how it is :)

My request for gb.highlight would be to make texteditor be able to use
either gb.highlight or gb.eval.highlight api depending on what the user has
installed. or to be able to drag-n-drop the gb.highlight/.src folder into
my project and it work.

Or just stop blummin changing things ;) lol
or rather, yes change how they work but not how you (and we) make them work.


> When will we switch to having gambas providing  a gblib manager so we
> have a gambas repository to
>
> pull the components from instead of having every one of them have to be
> part of the general repository for each
>
> distro. Maybe never, but it would be nice. The distro only having the
> runtime, compiler etc install as part of
>
> the distros repository, and gblib just builds the components as they are
> installed on each platform....
>

interesting idea


>
>
> Dreaming
>

Never stop dreaming dude :)



> Thanks
>
> --
> ~~~~ Brian
>
> Merry Christmas to all :)

Respects
BruceS
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.gambas-basic.org/pipermail/user/attachments/20231224/4ee9fdce/attachment.htm>