1. RE: New to Euphoria and GUI
- Posted by bill at genient.com
Jun 17, 2003
Hi Ray,
Can I just slip in a little plug for my book, here? It's precisely
because of people like yourself that I decided to write a book on
Euphoria with particular reference to Windows programming. Should be
out around August and hopefully will answer a few questions. Watch the
Euphoria web site.
Bill Aitken
-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Tomes [mailto:rtomes at ihug.co.nz]=20
Sent: 17 June 2003 00:25
To: EUforum
Subject: Re: New to Euphoria and GUI
Dan Moyer wrote:
> You could be a great help to many other newcomers to Euphoria and=20
> Windows GUI programming if you could spell out to us what is confusing
> about the Win32Lib help, so it could be improved to help newbies=20
> better.
Hi Dan and Derek
Thanks to all those that replied to my posts. I would be very happy to=20
relate my experience with beginning to use Euphoria and Win32Lib.=20
Hopefully this is useful in making euphoria easier to get on to.
It is clear to me now that Euphoria is a gem. However I nearly missed=20
this gem because I DLed Euphoria and couldn't get it to run. All I got=20
was some very DOSsy looking window and an error message about not being=20
to find some includes. At that time I continued to look for other=20
languages on the web. Later, I had another look at Euphoria to decide=20
whether to persist or delete it. I really liked the data structure of=20
Euphoria and so decided to persist.
It turned out that I hadn't set up the autoexec.bat file for the=20
location of Euphoria in "program files". So I found out about that and=20
put in the two changes it said. However it still didn't work. It was=20
clearly looking for something in C:\euphoria: in spite of the two=20
changes I made to autoexec.bat and so I decided it was a bug and moved=20
euphoria to c:\euphoria and made a further change to autoexec.bat and it
got things going. Later I found out form some other document (don't ask
me which) that there was a third parameter needed in autoexec.bat which=20
was set euinc I think, but this was not mentioned with the other two.
After DLing lots of stuff (about a hundred zips) I found the EU=20
encyclopedia which is a very useful help facility because until then the
help seemed very scattered. I would suggest pointing new people towards=20
this or even making it a part of the basic system DL instead of the many
little txt files.
Before addressing your specific question on Win32Lib, I need to say that
I am a very experienced programmer, but have no previous experience of=20
GUI programming and its way of event driven routines. I have written=20
Interrupt driven routines however and so am generally familiar with the=20
concepts. For me, the big hurdle to jump here is the jargon. Often the
help will use exactly the same word as the parameter to describe what to
put there and I don't know enough to know what that variable is. This is
of course a matter of me getting educated, and as Derek Parnell pointed=20
out there is information overload.
So what I really need before I can use Win32Lib is the concepts and the=20
jargon explained. I can pick these up quickly from examples which are=20
simple enough, if they say this is a such and such and here is how it
works.
> For instance:
> Were you able to tell where to *begin* with the Win32Lib help=20
> documentation? (I still think it would be helpful to have a single=20
> html help doc in the main folder which would jump to the beginning of=20
> the help documentation that's inside the Doc folder, since there's a=20
> lot of docs in there.)
This might turn out to be embarrassing for me, but never mind ... no=20
doubt someone will say "look at this dummy!" if I missed the most=20
obvious thing. 
...
I cannot find a help for win32lib in my euphoria folders. I have=20
win32lib.ew itself in include but nothing in doc. So I think all the=20
information that I have is in the EU encyclopedia. Other than that I=20
was looking at the comments in win32lib.
Actually I cannot recall with the DL for win32lib whether it was just=20
the .ew or whether there was a zip with extra documentation, but if=20
there was I cannot find it.
> If you were able to find the beginning of the help doc, then did you=20
> notice the "double link" to "General Info", which shows a synopsis of=20
> Win32Lib, including some of the fundamental GUI jargon? (The links in
> that synopsis don't work right, because the main documentation is=20
> created directly from comments in Win32Lib by a "MakeDoc.exw" program,
> and the synopsis is not a part of the main library. But all the terms
> that show as links do have separate sections in the main doc that you=20
> can go to.)
I came across mention of MakeDoc.exw and thought it sounded like a nice=20
idea but I don't think that I ever ran it. This is, as you probably=20
have anticipated, probably a factor in my confusion.
> And did you notice the FAQ referenced in the main doc? It's=20
> incomplete, but could maybe be a little helpful nonetheless.
This is a list of what I have in my doc folder. I have had a look at all
of this I think. If it should have led me to something else, then I=20
missed it. I am not sure what you mean by "main doc".
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\basic.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\bind.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\c.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\database.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\ed.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\EncyclopaediaREADME.TXT
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\ENCYEU.CNT
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\EncyEu.FTS
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\EncyEu.GID
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\ENCYEU.HLP
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\HELP.EW
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\install.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\LIBRARY.DOC
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\overview.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\perform.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\platform.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\REFMAN.DOC
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\relnotes.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\trouble.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\web.doc
C:\EUPHORIA\DOC\what2do.doc
At the moment, in spite of a suggestion to the contrary, I am planning=20
to do some more playing around with EUwinGui because I find it easier to
follow for an old programmer used to procedural code and making the=20
transition to random events of unknown types happening everywhere.
One of my sons is a programmer and once started to show me Visual Basic=20
because QBASIC was becoming a bit limited with long file names and lack=20
of memory available (otherwise I like it for getting very quick=20
results). However Visual Basic seemed to require vast amounts of code to
do even a simple thing and I suspect that this is a little bit true with
Win32Lib also, being the very nature of all these event types that one=20
has to deal with. That is what I like about the window designer for=20
EUwinGUI, is I only need to put some code in for the bits I am=20
interested in. But I can see what the different event types are and the=20
different thingys that each window is made up from and so the concepts=20
are starting to form. In another few months I might even be able to=20
write a GUI beginners guide to Euphoria myself :)
All the best
Ray
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