1. New features
Hi everyone,
Here are some new features I would like to see in Euphoria DOS32 :-
1. Serial I/O. I made a minor attempt with e-serial but to do this proper=
ly
you need to use ASM and interrupts.
2. True / High Colour. 256 colours is OK for games but a bit 'naff' if yo=
u
are doing graphics.
3. I/O ports. Handy for writing sound card stuff.
4. Event Handling like QuickBasic or PowerBasic. eg ON-TIMER, ON-KEY,
ON-MOUSE or even ON-SERIAL
5. Support for 3D video cards.
Has anyone writen or considered a "Visual Euphoria" type development syst=
em
- might be an interesting project for someone with a lot of time spare.
Regards - Peter
2. Re: New features
- Posted by "Fam. Nieuwenhuijsen" <nieuwen at XS4ALL.NL>
Jul 19, 1998
-
Last edited Jul 20, 1998
>Here are some new features I would like to see in Euphoria DOS32 :-
>
>1. Serial I/O. I made a minor attempt with e-serial but to do this properly
>you need to use ASM and interrupts.
>
>2. True / High Colour. 256 colours is OK for games but a bit 'naff' if you
>are doing graphics.
>
>3. I/O ports. Handy for writing sound card stuff.
Yes, both serial, IO as comm ports are such crucial machine parts, they
should be built-in.
>4. Event Handling like QuickBasic or PowerBasic. eg ON-TIMER, ON-KEY,
>ON-MOUSE or even ON-SERIAL
Well, no. I think those are clumbsy and very speed in-efficient.
>5. Support for 3D video cards.
Well, we can now call DLL's.
What you want is to call OpenGL or DirectX.
I (personally) would prefer DirectX since my lousy Ati card doesnt even have
descent OpenGL drivers..
Any1 upto to writing those wrappers ?
Then Euphoria suddenly turns 'serious' as to gaming.
>Has anyone writen or considered a "Visual Euphoria" type development system
>- might be an interesting project for someone with a lot of time spare.
For Win32, there is a (in VB written) tool that lets you design your GUI and
then writes your code using David Cuny's Win32lib.
And David Cuny himself wrote a simerlar thing for DOS to use with his
TextGUI.
You should get TextGUI btw. The euphoria editor that comes with it (using
the GUI) is much like the QuickBasic editor. Only in full Euphoria source
code. (the code is even extremely *clean* .. you can learn much from it)
Other than those two I wouldnt know of one yet.
But many are looking for a new project, who knows ?
Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen
nieuwen at xs4all.nl
UIN: 9389920 (feel free to message me)
3. Re: New features
Peter Blue wrote:
> 2. True / High Colour. 256 colours is OK for games but a bit 'naff' if you
> are doing graphics.
already done by chris street.
"trucolor.e"/"trucolor.zip" is on the euph archive site.
fair warning: chris' library is (in his words) alpha state.
i've tinkered heavily with it, found and killed only one actual
bug, so his alpha is pretty damn good... would love to see
what he calls beta :)
anyway, there is a bad bug in it,
(fixable--if you need the fixed version,
i'll mail it to whoever cannot fix it themselves)
and the library is not the easiest to use, nor does it
contain many 'needed' functions. however, its fast,
with very fast virtual screen page flipping support
making animation childs play to implement.
--hawke
4. Re: New features
Fam. Nieuwenhuijsen wrote:
> >5. Support for 3D video cards.
> Well, we can now call DLL's.
> What you want is to call OpenGL or DirectX.
ive downloaded the microsloth directX SDK....YECCH!
openGL...defnly the way to go... heh, even mr. ID software thinks so...
read his .plan/profile and the interview he gave about his opinion
re:directX...
directX is messy and really hard to grasp/implement...
don't believe me? download the SDK...(i would sincerely love
to have someone prove me wrong and write a wrapper for directX
that is euph based and easy to implement with...cannae be done
IMHO without *gobs* of clumps of hair lying around the computer
desk of the unfortunate coder that tries this)
> I (personally) would prefer DirectX since my lousy Ati card doesnt even have
> descent OpenGL drivers..
get a new card :)
my vote? the glide drivers...defnly the ticket... wrapper for
glide or openGL (which 3dfx supports also) and those cards are
cheap now...baseline 3dfx card can be got for 50-80 bucks if u look...
considering what it does...cheap.
> >Has anyone writen or considered a "Visual Euphoria" type development system
> >- might be an interesting project for someone with a lot of time spare.
> For Win32, there is a (in VB written) tool that lets you design your GUI and
> then writes your code using David Cuny's Win32lib.
well, see, to me there is a difference between an IDE and a GUI.
GUI=Graphic User Interface=end user (also coders of course)
IDE=Integrated Development Environment=coder
i'm thinking the original question was asking for a Visual IDE, not a
Visual GUI writer... and some of the editors available currently act
like IDE's in a minute way....
now david's gui designer/code writer...is it a visual IDE?
is it an integrated development environment?
dunno...do you?
> And David Cuny himself wrote a simerlar thing for DOS to use with his
> TextGUI.
> You should get TextGUI btw. The euphoria editor that comes with it (using
> the GUI) is much like the QuickBasic editor.
i defnly do -not- consider the QB editor to be an integrated
development environment...close in some ways, severely lacking tho...
i'll hush now, enuff food for thought :)
--hawke
5. Re: New features
Peter Blue wondered:
> Has anyone writen or considered a "Visual Euphoria" type development
system
> - might be an interesting project for someone with a lot of time spare.
I started Win32Lib with the intent to ultimately write a VB-like front end.
That is still in the works, but I've gotten a bit sidetracked.
Stephen Spencer has been hard at work putting together a visual design tool
for Win32Lib, which I think he hopes to add a full VB-like IDE onto. He's
doing the work in VB.
In case anyone wonders why not much has been done with Win32Lib recently
(now that my hard drive is back up again, I can't use that as an excuse),
here's a bit of a status report.
For one thing, I've working on WinMan, which was intended to be only a
subset of Win32Lib, but portable between DOS32 and Win32. It's turned out
that WinMan is has a good chance of instead becoming a superset of
Win32Lib - if I ever get the project finished.
I've got the beginning of some new controls up and running, and I was hoping
to have some text controls written by now, but I got sidetracked on my
"Project X", which I hope to be able to post a pre-alpha some time late next
week. I'm not widely announcing it in case it crashes and burns, in which
case less people will know *what* failed. [OK, so I've leaked it to a few
people... shhhh! 
]
I've been dabbling with Tcl/Tk, and I really like a lot of the window
manager concepts that it's got - but I hate the syntax. As a result, WinMan
reflects a lot of Tcl/Tk ideas along these lines. You specify where controls
are placed relative to the window and each other, not by dragging them
around (although the "old style" will still be available). The advantage of
this is that it makes the code a lot more portable - although this should
not be to difficult to fix using resouce files.
So my attention has moved away from the "visual design" tools for the
moment.
Ralf mentioned my TextGUI. I think if you compare that with the WinMan code,
you'll see two major features that were not possible in prior versions of
Euphoria. The first is object orientation. For example, I've just
implemented a simple list object, which can contain virtually any other
object. For GUIs, OOP really makes life much easier. The second feature is
callback. The TextGUI code is really ugly in some places, because the event
loop had to be turned inside out. If I were to redo the code today, I'd be
using callbacks all over the place.
Anyhoo, I hope you can look forward to something in the near future.
-- David Cuny
6. Re: New features
>Fam. Nieuwenhuijsen wrote:
Just installed Win98.. hehe have to set that name right though..
>> >5. Support for 3D video cards.
>> Well, we can now call DLL's.
>> What you want is to call OpenGL or DirectX.
>> I (personally) would prefer DirectX since my lousy Ati card doesnt even
have
>> descent OpenGL drivers..
>get a new card :)
>
>my vote? the glide drivers...defnly the ticket... wrapper for
>glide or openGL (which 3dfx supports also) and those cards are
>cheap now...baseline 3dfx card can be got for 50-80 bucks if u look...
>considering what it does...cheap.
Yeah, but I already have a card, and the card does work nice, its just so
lousy supported.
And I wouldnt know about DirectX versus OpenGL as to which works more
logical.
But as soon as the Ati-OpenGL driver is out, I will give it a shot.. have to
do something with Win32 thingie some day... though it sounds like a group
project.. I suppose it wont be easy.
>well, see, to me there is a difference between an IDE and a GUI.
>GUI=Graphic User Interface=end user (also coders of course)
>IDE=Integrated Development Environment=coder
>i'm thinking the original question was asking for a Visual IDE, not a
>Visual GUI writer... and some of the editors available currently act
>like IDE's in a minute way....
>now david's gui designer/code writer...is it a visual IDE?
>is it an integrated development environment?
>dunno...do you?
No, it are seperate tools.
One writes the code for your GUI for you, the other lets you edit the code
in a way simerlair to the MS-DOS editor.
>> And David Cuny himself wrote a simerlar thing for DOS to use with his
>> TextGUI.
>> You should get TextGUI btw. The euphoria editor that comes with it (using
>> the GUI) is much like the QuickBasic editor.
>i defnly do -not- consider the QB editor to be an integrated
>development environment...close in some ways, severely lacking tho...
Well, in which ways ? Cuz they would make great sugestions for the new
editor of David Cuny, which I suspect he's working towards with his WinMan
(rigth ?)
Ralf
7. Re: New features
Peter Blue wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Here are some new features I would like to see in Euphoria DOS32 :-
>
> 1. Serial I/O.
> 2. True / High Colour.
> 3. I/O ports. Handy for writing sound card stuff.
> 4. Event Handling like QuickBasic or PowerBasic. eg ON-TIMER, ON-KEY,
> ON-MOUSE or even ON-SERIAL
>
Well thought-out points. I was going to suggest the following
constructs:
at({10:00,2:00,4:00},DrinkDrPepper) -- set timer watchdog to call
routine
on mouse | keypress | com1 do SomeRoutine -- interrupt by input device
activity
when (expr) do SomeRoutine -- watch a variable for some condition, but
don't
-- abort the program, just do "SomeRoutine"
which
-- could perhaps fix the condition.
There are a lot of programs that could benefit from these.
Regards,
Irv
