Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

[Jim Chapman]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Hello Gabe,

Could you dock your form for me please, and also keep it open across multiple databases.

Thanks,
Jim

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

You nicely described Jim's xdlg, but yet you do not think it's an attack !!

I believe Jim was pointing out something that xdialog does rather nicely. As far as Jim's "Gabe" clock running backwards, I hardly think that qualifies as an attack. Rather he may be poking a little fun at you, but that's not an attack by any means.

The nice thing about mine, if you do not like the color or the CSS, you could easily change it to any one of your choice.

I do like the color, but not the rest of it. Sure, you can change that too. Understood.

When Selwyn goes off telling me that I am "unqualified" and "ill-informed" is once again getting off the subject and getting on me!

Well, that's not exactly an attack, rather it is his professional assessment of your understanding of the role of xdialog in A5.

Gabe, others have said it plainly: xdialog has its place in A5. If you don't like it, don't use it. I use it infrequently myself. I often use forms and make dialogs out of them because I can do it quicker that w. xdialog. But if I had more time, I would become proficient w. xdialog. They offer some attractive coding advantages in many instances. And they load instantly, where a form takes time, etc. etc...anyway, I'm just repeating what other have said.

The bottom line is xdialog is here to stay. It offers the Alpha development team a powerful tool to improve A5. It offers users (those who want to use it) a powerful development tool too. I'm glad xdialog has been exposed to us users. I hope they improve its user-friendliness (actually, I'm sure they will). Best of luck to you.

Peter

[G Gabriel]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Per your request:
open "Jim" the timer will pop.
Gabe

[G Gabriel]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Peter:
Thanks again.
You might think I am a "bomb chucker" and that comments like mine serve no purpose but let me refer you to the last comment by Selwyn in which he declares that as the development progresses the two will merge into one!
If comments like mine in anyway help provoke the thought process and shed some light on advantages and disadvantages of this feature or the other, I think we will all benefit in the end, specially so Selwyn.
Comments like mine should be embraced and encouraged not quashed!
I admit, I am harsh on xdlg, I said that in my very first entery, but that's how i feel about it, But in no occasion I sought to disparage Selwyn or anyone at alpha.

Gabe

[CALocklin]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Again this just shows that it's a matter of personal preference - how you work, what you like, and what you are used to. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out why you said it "popped" because I always (well, almost always) use maximized windows. I feel that using maximized windows gives me more control over what my users are doing and how they are getting from here to there. Others disagree with me but that's ok too. Your timer doesn't "pop" very well with maximized windows but that's fine as long as you feel it's 'sufficient to suffonsify' for your apps.

And you didn't keep it open across multiple apps nor is it truly dockable. Again, it's a matter of choices. There are things that can be done easily in forms and other things that are easier in xdialog. If one suits you - or the situation - better than the other, use it.

Done.

[Marcel Kollenaar]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Hi g gabriel,

If this kind of language 'Xdialog' was part of VBA in Microsoft Office for use in Word or Excel I would be very happy. It's just another way of setting up your dialog with the user, sometimes a form is preferable and sometime Xdialog. Keep coding and learn to use them at the moment you need them.

Marcel

[Cian Chambliss]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

I think the essense of the complaint is 'why provide more than one way of doing things when one way would suffice'.

This is a complaint I have seen made regarding programming languages - i.e. Take a language like scheme - which is about the simplest computer language to describe in terms of description of syntax, Then take Perl - which has a very rich, and some would say redundant (and arbitrary) syntax - due in part to the fact that the syntax evolved to fill needs.

Programmers who like a 'small syntax' of language like scheme tend to hate languages Perl -- 'why have 10 ways to do one thing'.

Wherease folks who write perl code love it because it provides a concise way to express when they want to do, due to the fact that a set in stone syntax was not adhered to and elements got added based on need.

My hope with Alpha five is to get to the point where forms & xdialogs are simply syntax 'definition' on top of a common layer -- achieving this goal involves combining all the features of forms and xdialogs. Towards that end, in building the new grid object for 7.0 (which will be available in both forms AND xdialogs), we are building a new low level that should be able to give us a superset of features.

For those who hate new syntaxes, there will be even more to hate in version 7.0 if we publish the interface(s) to the xbasic tools we are creating to implement the new Grid object.

The software components that are being developed to implement the grid are:

1) A Geometry Mapper - this is an object that describes how
objects are positioned and sized. It produces a string
based on a template that the xbasic programmer provides.
The geometry encompasess concepts such as flowed regions,
stretchable objects, and visibility (objects in the
geometry can easily be hidden/shown).
The geometry just produces a string - it doesn't care
what the string is used for, so the string produced could
be a C# script, some SVG of XAML code, a postscript file,
some xbasic, or in the case of grids another tool we
are providing internally called quick draw (since apple
already defines QuickDraw we will most likely need to
come up with a new name).

2) The aforementioned quick draw object - this is a very
terse syntax - looking more like a plotter language than
a human readable language - designed (like a plotter or
printer would require) for speedy/small parser is a
highly optimized renderer that already can render
pretty much anything a form or xdialog can conjure up.

3) Quick Windows - a manager for the quick draw - provides
a rich event interface so that code written to use
the quick draw can perform all the tasks either an
xdialog or form control can support (mouse/keyboard...).
A major shift from xdialogs and forms to QuickWindows
is that controls only exist when they are being used
(i.e. when the top level windows quick draw code is
being regenerated, When an xbasic programmer is setting
a control property, and When a control has focus or being
moused over - and in this case only if the control cares
about recieve keyboard input of mouse events).
The reason for this shift is driven by the nature of
a grid object - where controls are constantly being
created and destroyed.
The existing browse in alpha five cheats by having
separate code to render the inactive and live controls -
This means that it is always twice as much work to
Add a feature to browse - also, there is sometimes a
shift by a pixel when a control on a browse becomes live
since the code is completely different for live versus
inactive.

4) RowSource/RowView objects - allows a row in a table to
be bound to a variable and alternatively, allows for a
template to be populate with data (each template entry
contains a tuple of row #/field).
In addition to tables, a rowSource object can be created
against an array.

We could decide to keep some or all of these components 'internal use only' - but these components are being designed with an eye toward alternate use - i.e. the Geometry mapper and the Rowsource/RowView could be used
together without the QuickDraw to genarate reports directly
to postscript -- QuickDraw could easily become a printer language itself (the only limitation is that some printers don't support all the graphics primitives - unless you generate a bitmap and print the bitmap). The Rowsource/RowView object could be used alone to process an HTML template (filling in row/field tuples much faster than we currently can).

The reason that browse has been such a bitch to maintain is that all the functionality is heaped in together -- The appraoch we are taking with the new code is to divide an conquer. Each component can be separately unit tested.

Forms and xdialogs do layout that the geometry mapper could ultimatly replace, and the built-in controls rendering could ultimatly be replaced by the quick draw logic. Forms are populated in a very baroque fashion (because of the way form controls are implemented) - if forms were expressed in the new syntax, then they could be populated by the RowSource/RowView objects.

For version 7.0, the main goal (for me) is getting the Grid object in to replace the browse and fix all the quirks that browses have. But beyond that, I do see a convergence of xdialog and forms, at which point xdialog simply becomes a syntax.

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

As always, sobering & enlightening.

Thanks for giving all of us some insight...

-PG

[G Gabriel]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Cias:
Thanks for the response. Your statment is not exactly accurate, more like != in alpha's lingo:
>> I think the essense of the complaint is 'why provide more than one way of doing things when one way would suffice
I have written in some of my responses:
"the challange is not to introduce as many wasy as possible on how to skin the cat, but rather a better way and then make it even better"
Granted, there is more than one way to skin a cat, but What peopole seem to forget is that you have only one shot at it !! Knowing a "Better" way in my humble opinion is better than knowing two or three equal ones !!
I think the best analogy is what I wrote earlier:
>>You bought a new VCR, you took it home opened the box pulled out the manual to figure out how to hook up and set up the VCR. The manual is written in English and as always the case, Spanish, French, Japanes, Chineese and 10 different other languages.. Instead of reading the manual in English, NO, you decided to go ahead and learn Japanese so you could read the manual in Japanese and in the end set up your VCR !!
Give me a better VCR or a better manual!! instead a VCR a manual, and a book to learn Japanese !! In the end, the VCR will be hooked and there will be no difference whatsoever if you read the manula in English or Suaheelee!

My disappointment with alpha is, there are a lot of "Unsolved Mysteries". I have posted several questions on this board that remain to this day, unsolved. I am pretty sure alpha is aware of them, or should be, I say that because some of alpha members began responding and went off the radar screen ! What does that leave you with?? You feel like you want to beg alpha for a response?? or, where else would you go for answers? or maybe this is some "glitch" in the program! but when you see these "glitchs" and in the meantime, instead of investing the time in solving them, going off on showing me how to learn Japanese in order to hook up the VCR, you get annoyed! I did.
I am left with a very bad taste in my mouth after this thread for two reasons:
1-Instead of Selwyn getting so sensitive about it and taking matters personally and opening his guns on me, he could simply have enlisted the things that you could do with xdlg that you could not do with a form that justifies taking the time to learn it.
2-I found many of the users, for reasons I find hard to explain, without offering one singls example (mind you, the only two people who offered examples were Cal and Jim Chapman) going off like the "Deffenders of the faith" as if to say, hey look Dady Selwyn, we are sticking up for you!! Isn't that a shame that not one of them with the exception of the two I mentioned acting like a bunch of a bandit!! How did these guys get so "brain washed" that they have come to the conclusion that alpha is a "Perfect" program and above any and all criticism !! Who is served by this sentiment?
In the end, it's your program. In my business, the customer is KING, not the other way around.
Gabe

[Marcel Kollenaar]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Thank you :-) that you classified me under:

I found many of the users, for reasons I find hard to explain, without offering one singls example (mind you, the only two people who offered examples were Cal and Jim Chapman) going off like the "Deffenders of the faith" as if to say, hey look Dady Selwyn, we are sticking up for you!! Isn't that a shame that not one of them with the exception of the two I mentioned acting like a bunch of a bandit!! How did these guys get so "brain washed" that they have come to the conclusion that alpha is a "Perfect" program and above any and all criticism !!

I can only say: "You just made a big mistake". Oh man you have a lot to learn. You should read "Love is the killer app" from Tim Sanders.

Regards,

Marcel

[G Gabriel]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Marcel:
My apology. Honestly I found your response very reasonable and in my mind you were not included with the "defenders of the faith". My remarks goes to those who found it suitable to go on resembling me to some idiots in their work place or that I am "showing off" my expertise or that I do not embrace new technology etc., when had they read half of what I said they would come to a different conclusion. I think they could benefit from your kind words aw well.
Once again, my apology, I did not intended to include you in that group. There some others who offered their opinions without going off on personal insults. My remarks does not include any of those as well.
Thanks for you kind words.
Gabe

[Cian Chambliss]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

I believe that the analogy still holds - the argument that there is always 'one better way' to do things is what the proponents of simpler syntax (simpler feature set) always state. Nowhere did I state that this approach was wrong - it just requires that we know absolutely everything up front -- or in our case, they we know everything a user would need 10 years hence (that is how old the program is). Legacy is a bitch.

If we had the description of the feature set required for Alpha Five on the table right now, and were starting from scratch, and did *not* have to run any of our users existing applications, of course we would find a way to make the form/dialog component one and the same/ probably requiring a change in paridigm to do so.

The descision was made instead to incrementally refine where we could, and augment (but addition of a different subsystem) where we couldn't, the alternative being to say "no we can't do that because we didn't take that into consideration in the original design". Xdialog was actually developed as a replacement for our MFC UI code, not a replacement for forms, and as such it has served us very well.

I would never call alpha five "Pefect" - however I would argue that no program is "Perfect" - and if one was created, it would gradually become lose this distinction as requirements change.

[G Gabriel]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

Amen.
I realize xdlg was not intended as an alternative to forms, you used it in your development process and decided to open it to alpha users, to that I say: Thank you. But before you go too far and run in to two parallel lines, figure out which one is the "Best" one, stick with it and make it the best it can be.

To all the die-hard alpha users, who came out a little too zealous, I say: when you choose alpha over other software programs, did you choose it because it was just another software to do the same thing or because in your judgement, it was a "better" software?

To those who beleive: what's wrong with having two differnt ways to do the same thing and let the user choose, I say:
You do not need two or three different ways to do the same thing. If you think along these lines, then you might as well go ahead and buy Access and Q&A and Filemaker and you will have a dozen different ways of doing the same thing instead of two!

I am looking for the "Best" way. Isn't that what you look for when you look to buy a software or anything for that matter?!

And as a final note, God bless, continue the good work, I
hope you take my comments in the right vein and I hope they provoke the thought process for everybody's benefit!
Gabe

[Cian Chambliss]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

We do have agreement here. Forms are long overdue for an upgrade.

A lot of the functionality that has been added to xdialog needs to go into forms.

Fortunatly, This next release is focused primarly on enhancements to forms, which saw only minor enhancements (like anchor tags & tab navigation) as in recent releases, as alpha five gained untold hundreds of genies & web integration features.

Thanks for your input.
-Cian

[Alan Lee]

RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

WOW! 74 posts and couunting! Is that a record or what?