OpenEuphoria

1. Introduction

• Posted by Jasper_Holshuijsen at dsw.nl Sep 05, 2001
• 432 views

Hi everybody,

I'm new to the mailinglist and I thought it would be polite to introduce
myself.

I work as a system developer / programmer in LINC, a quit simple language
(one can learn it in a two-week course) aimed at databases running on
Unisys mainframes. It's very exotic and not suitable for home-use.
Therefore I was looking for language that was more suitable for my needs. I
started to get a book about Java at the library. I soon found out that Java
had several draw-backs. Not as easy to learn as basic. Compiling is a
seperate step. Not a logical choice when graphics are involved.
I also found out that learning C would take me so long that I would lose my
interest before being capable to program. So I seeked further and
accidentaly came across Euphoria.
It looks very promising. The installation went well (except for a corrupt
zip-file due to an old floppy). The function of the include directory could
have been explained better but when it was filled with the "modules" I
needed, I was able to run the tutor program and some example programs. I
like the flexible use of sequences and the way bitmaps are handled. The
idea of storing ASCII-characters as numbers makes sense but if that means
that I only see numbers when I open a database-file with notepad it's a
drawback. (I haven't tried yet.) It's a pitty that there is no editor
designed for windows, or is there? Furthermore it would be nice to have a
debugger which could step through the code, also when the syntax is right,
while watching the value of some specified atoms or sequences. I also
downloaded IDE. A great utility, especially for beginners like myself. I
think I will use it a lot. In short: Euphoria is what I was looking for.
My goal is to make a program for baseball-statistics based on the Dutch
scoring-sheet in a windows enviroment. Unfortunately the Dutch
scoring-sheet is different from the American. The idea is that you can
score during the game and then print the official scoring-sheet and print /
watch all kind of statistics. You can then save the game for later use or
to produce statistics over several games.  The statistic-side is easy but
producing the scoring-sheet involves a lot of input-handling and bitmaps.
When it's finished I'd like it to be run as a program on it's own. Looking
at some demo-programs I think Euphoria provides all these functions.
By the way: the first program I wanted to use as an example was Othello.
The exe-file works fine but when I use the exw-file it won't start. I think
because I use the newest version of Win32lib. Therefor it was not possible
to make some changes and look what the effect was. Luckly BlackJack V2
works good so I can use that to see how the bitmaps are put on the screen.

Well, so far so good.

Jasper.