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The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
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User Poll

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    #1

    User Poll

    Hi All,

    I am thinking of using A5 to create a application for distribution, now I am using Microsoft Visual Studio what I would like to know is how many people
    dropped Visual Studio or any other high-end development product in favor of A5 and y?

    Thank You
    Ray
    12
    Yes, I only use Alpha Five now
    66.67%
    8
    No, I have continued to use another environment
    33.33%
    4
    Kind Regards,
    Ray Roosa
    Raylin Micro, LLC.
    Tags: None
    #2
    Hi Ray,
    Actually I was using Filemaker Developer and Visual Studio, but found Alpha to be quicker, and easier for me. Not to mention the price compared to the others.
    Kevin G. Timberlake
    Marvel Illusions

    Comment

      #3
      Originally posted by Kevin G. Timberlake
      Hi Ray,
      Actually I was using Filemaker Developer and Visual Studio, but found Alpha to be quicker, and easier for me. Not to mention the price compared to the others.
      Kevin - thank you for your reply, did you get any applications done in Visual Studio?

      Do you have any applications done in A5 for the commercial market? and how is this working out for you?

      I hope to get many others to post.
      Kind Regards,
      Ray Roosa
      Raylin Micro, LLC.

      Comment

        #4
        Hi Ray,
        I have 3 different programs I have done in A5. They are at my website. 30 day downloads. I used Jerry Brightbill's security enveloped into my programs for registration. It is perfect! His program is RCheck and it is on the alphabay forum. It is here, the first one in the list. If you sell your databases, use this!
        Kevin G. Timberlake
        Marvel Illusions

        Comment

          #5
          I just added an actual poll to this thread.
          Aaron Brown
          Alpha Software Development Team

          Comment

            #6
            Originally posted by Kevin G. Timberlake
            Hi Ray,
            I have 3 different programs I have done in A5. They are at my website. 30 day downloads. I used Jerry Brightbill's security enveloped into my programs for registration. It is perfect! His program is RCheck and it is on the alphabay forum. It is here, the first one in the list. If you sell your databases, use this!
            Hi Kevin,
            So your using RCheck and Astrum InstallWizard at the same time with your program?

            which one of your programs can I download a 30 trial of that is designed in A5?
            Kind Regards,
            Ray Roosa
            Raylin Micro, LLC.

            Comment

              #7
              I still use many other tools. For Win32 development, Delphi 7. For .NET development, VS 2005 or Delphi 2005, PHP for web stuff, Squeak Smalltalk for educational, experimental and portable stuff, REXX for command line utilities, etc. I'm not a huge Java fan but I'll use it if I need something more mainstream than Squeak.

              I actually don't find VS or Delphi harder to use than A5--once you get past the learning curve. They can actually be much easier to get the final effect desired (unquestionably if you consider how much 3rd party code you can leverage). One particularly admirable thing about Delphi is that it follows a direct line from an old Pascal compiler ca. 1981--and still compiles that code. I expect A5 v7 to break my code and v8 to break it again.

              Comment

                #8
                Originally posted by Blake
                One particularly admirable thing about Delphi is that it follows a direct line from an old Pascal compiler ca. 1981--and still compiles that code. I expect A5 v7 to break my code and v8 to break it again.
                Sorry Blake, we're not going to meet your expectation of v7.

                Lenny Forziati
                Vice President, Internet Products and Technical Services
                Alpha Software Corporation

                Comment

                  #9
                  Originally posted by Lenny Forziati
                  Sorry Blake, we're not going to meet your expectation of v7.
                  Heh. Are you saying v7 isn't going to break my code? 'cause v6 sure did.

                  Comment

                    #10
                    What does "break my code" mean?

                    Comment

                      #11
                      Originally posted by Ohlen Cartmell
                      What does "break my code" mean?
                      It means "this code worked before and does not work now".

                      As a simple and relatively minor example (though one enough to raise hackles in most programmer communities), v6 changed the way arrays are expressed, from the traditional Basic form (using parens) to a Pascal/C form (using square brackets). So, if you had code that used the old style, it would be "broken" when you went to v6.

                      Not to suggest that Alpha is the only product where this occurs. In days of yore, the common wisdom was that you never switched compilers mid-project, because you could count on that introducing all manner of problems, from code that wouldn't compile to code that introduced subtle bugs. These days, you seldom have a choice: It's upgrade or die.

                      Comment

                        #12
                        Originally posted by Blake
                        It means "this code worked before and does not work now".

                        As a simple and relatively minor example (though one enough to raise hackles in most programmer communities), v6 changed the way arrays are expressed, from the traditional Basic form (using parens) to a Pascal/C form (using square brackets). So, if you had code that used the old style, it would be "broken" when you went to v6.
                        Blake, this change was well-documented. () for arrays was deprecated in V5, but continued to work. In V6 the () array syntax was removed altogether. In order for a language to evolve, changes like this sometime need to be made. But because it was documented well in advance, this isn't anything that should have surprised you. We of course try to keep this type of change to an absolute minimum and I can assure you that you'll have plenty of advance notice on any other changes like this.

                        Lenny Forziati
                        Vice President, Internet Products and Technical Services
                        Alpha Software Corporation

                        Comment

                          #13
                          Originally posted by Lenny Forziati
                          Blake, this change was well-documented.
                          I never said it wasn't.

                          Originally posted by Lenny Forziati
                          In order for a language to evolve, changes like this sometime need to be made.
                          Of course. The design of the entire family of languages to which xBasic belongs is historically motivated by expedience, which tends to make them (relatively) fragile when new functionality is desired. (Check out Basic.Net or whatever MS is calling it these days. Or how quickly all the xBase dialects splintered when objects became popular.)

                          Originally posted by Lenny Forziati
                          But because it was documented well in advance, this isn't anything that should have surprised you.
                          It didn't surprise me at all. Nor did I care particularly since I don't use arrays much. (I find it easier to use associative arrays.) In fact, the first time I came across code that needed changing was, em, Wednesday, and I hadn't written it. It was tucked away in some old code.

                          But then, that's why I said it was a minor change. (Though I've seen people fight to the death on the whole paren/square bracket/curly brace issue.)

                          Originally posted by Lenny Forziati
                          We of course try to keep this type of change to an absolute minimum and I can assure you that you'll have plenty of advance notice on any other changes like this.
                          This isn't the type of change that concerns me. A well-documented change that performs as expected can be a major nuisance, but is manageable. It's the undocumented changes, the ones that create problems without logical or consistent fixes--those are the killers.

                          That's where your code still runs, but just doesn't work properly any more. The changes the designer introduces without knowing it. Those are deadly.

                          Comment

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