OpenEuphoria

2. Re: Catching Up.

• Posted by Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen <nieuwen at XS4ALL.NL> Dec 29, 1998
• 408 views
• Last edited Dec 30, 1998

>As someone new to Euphoria and trying to catch up I'm wondering is there
>a current FAQ and also is there a brief decription of some of these
projects
>that are being discussed in here all the time (EuServer, Edith, Win32Lib,
>etc) ?

There is a small FAQ that comes with Euphoria, but other than that, there is
currently only ABGTE II (an 'interactive' tutorial / tutorial program).
However, feel free to ask any question. We could make a FAQ based upon some
beginning programmers and their questions.

A beginners guide to Euphoria II can be found at:

And I'll give you the brief descriptions of some of the current projects:

[Win32-Development]

Win32Lib (David Cuny) is an simple and easy to use library that does all the
windows tricks for you. It is based after the visual-basic API. It is
currently still under construction, but its already fully usable. Win32Dev /
Visual Win32 (Stephen Spencer) is an program to 'draw' / design and code
programs for the Win32Lib, it is simerlar to the older versions (read:
cleaner versions) of Visual Basic, and has a built-in code editor. There are
also more win32 solutions, however they dont seem to have such a big 'users'
base as David's Cuny win32lib. The other solutions all use special DLL's
they made.

The latest Win32Lib is always available at RDS' site:
http://members.aol.com/FilesEu

The latest Visual Win32Lib / Win32Dev is always available at:
http://vis.server101.com/visualwin32lib

[Editors]

There are three editors worth mentioning here. One is TextGUI (EE-Euphoria
Editor). Its by David Cuny and available at RDS' site: Archives. It is
modelled after the Q(uick/uirk)Basic editor and the standard windows
dos-based editor. Then you have an alternative Euphoria editor, that had a
much better project management, but had some 'quirks' .. I even forgot the
name of the editor. However, it had a few nifty tricks as well. Then you
have the Edith editor. It is a windows-based editor, and offers things like
'bookmarks' and automatic 'structure' display on the right. A really nifty
editor of which this was just the prerelease. (the alpha 0.1 version)

The Edith editor is available at:
http://members.home.net/igb

[Online Utilities]

There is an FTP solution by (I think) Daniel Berstein, and available at RDS'
site as well, but most of the hype recently is due to EuServer. Behind
EuServer is Hawke and the EuTeam. Its a full telnet *server*. And Blackdog
(member of EuTeam I believe) is now working on a telnet client, however the
standard telnet client of windows should work nicely with the EuServer. Such
a server, thus, allows multiple people over the internet to connect to your
IP/Server, and get a text-based interface to chat with other users that have
logged into your server.

The latest EuServer is available at Hawke's site:
http://members.xoom.com/Hawkes_Hovel

[Graphics Engines]

Currently only DOS32 engines are available. Many that is. I will limit
myself to the more recent and usefull ones. First of all there is MCGA only
engine by Hollow Horse, that is reasonable fast, and offers a simple
interface. It does not do much, except for providing a fast interface for
virtual screens and the MCGA. Then you have the TrueColor solution of Hawke
(based upon somebody else's TrueColor library). I haven been able to get it
to work on machine, but that is most certainly due to the fact that my Ati
card doesnt support 32-bit Truecolor (only 15, 16 and 24) and the fact that
eh.. its a pretty crappy piece of technology.. my card that is. Also
providing an TrueColor interface is Neil. Actually Neil (that is the name of
this engine, yes) supports: ModeX, MCGA and VESA (of all color depths: thus
8, 15, 16, 24, 32). It has an most elegant end-programmer interface, using
the 100%machine code (asm) command lists. And has thus built-in (asm)
routines for normal blitting, see-through blitting, mix-copy,
background-copy, rle-sprites (run-lenght-encoded sprites: extra fast,
compressed sprites), mouse support, visual screens, subscreens (a viewport
to another screen), automatic palette conversion, pixel-perfect collision
detection, etc.

The Hollow Horse Engine (Blackdog and Lucius Hilley) is availlable at RDS's
site, and I believe at Blackdog site. However the URL to Blackdog's site had
dissapeared and I believe the site itself is not available anymore. It
looked promosing, a real loss.

The TrueEu engine of Hawke (also with mouse-routines I believe) is at:
http://members.xoom.com/Hawkes_Hovel

The super-de-luxe Neil engine is at Pete's site:
http://www.harborside.com/home/x/xseal/euphoria/

[DataBase & FileIO]

    Daniel Berstein has some routines to handle DBF files. I havent seen any
routines taking advantage of the ODBL that comes with Windows. As to File
IO, there is a quick machine level file IO acces done by Jaquesch Deschenes.
And I personally have routines to store and load a sequence containing any
type of data. Atoms, integers, bytes, booleans. Much like print () and get
(). However, it is much much faster, and much more space efficient. This at
the lost of readability off course. (with print & get, you get human
readable files)

Daniel Bersteins site (DABERSoft) is at:
http://www.pair.com/daber/architek/

EDOM2 can be found at my site:  (please sign my guestbook if you find
anything usefull)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~nieuwen

[PixelBOTS & BOTMatches]

    Almost at the same time a simple demo by me, and a much more powerful
program by John Bown. Lately ive updated the looks of my BotMatch, using
Neil. Ive traded in the pixels for real sprites. However, other than the
looks the goal of my BOTMatch is to get to the end of maze as the first
being blind: that is, you are told your current position and direction,
however you only notice walls when you walk into them. Then there are Jown
Bows PixelBot's. It comes with a complete API and has the bots 'fight' each
other is some arena. There is special mailing list to post PixelBot's or
discuss them.

For pixelbots take a look at:
http://www.psynet.net/pixelbot.htm

For BotMatches visit my site: (you can also get special random maze
generating routines there, if you are looking in building your own type of
BotMatch/PixelBot game)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~nieuwen

Also there are some Advanture/RPG games in the make. For example, Paul
Martin is working on an advanture game. However these projects have not
'released' there code yet or have an internet site.

This ended up to be very long. I hope somebody somewhere found this usefull.
Anyways.. best for 1999 all..

Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen
nieuwen at xs4all.nl
ralf_n at email.com     (yes, the domain name is correct!)
UIN: 9389920

[The Elevator] is at:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~nieuwen