I have not been on the messageboard for quite some time
and have noticed the number of questions regarding hold-ups
on Alpha Five version 5.0 (which we had planned for Q2, but
is still in beta).
The things that have been holding us up have been:
1) backward compatibility for prior apps.
Changes to xbasic, and changes to way toolbars and
menus work have led to applications (largely written
in xbasic) - not working in version 5.0. We need
to make sure applications work the same way they
worked in prior versions.
We have been getting lots of feedback from our beta
testers who have found all sorts of backwards
compatibility problems -- I feel that the worst
backward-compatibility bugs have been fixed, so
we are in pretty good shape here (though not 100%
complete).
2) Yes - there is some feature creep
In fixing some of the bugs that have been around since
the original port of A5 to Win32 (and to MFC) - back in
version 2.0 - We found that the reason some of these bugs
were not fixed is that they couldn't be fixed without a
re-write. So these peices have been re-written. For
example all the menus in the version 5.0 beta have been
rewritten in xbasic - this allows use to fix a large
number of menu problems (i.e. duplicating menu entries
and missing menu items under the 'windows' menu - both
of which occured under ). As a plus, we now have
total control over a menus look & feel...
Re-writing the menus in xbasic has meant that we needed
to be able to support automation of everything we can do
from a menu from xbasic - so there have been lots of new
xbasic methods added that should help folks who can hack
xbasic to automate pretty much anything they do in
alpha five.
The latest feature 'creep' has been the Toolbar rewrite,
Toolbars for forms/browse and preview layouts are now
written in xbasic as well -- this rewrite fixes the
cosmetic problem of switching between maximized forms
causing the toolbar at the top of the screen to
dissappear and re-appear. (the BETA with the toolbar
re-write is awaiting a fix Win95 repaint issue)
The latest xbasic language feature creep is support for
an xbasic 'class' (the revised Alpha five Toolbar object
is now written in xbasic as an xbasic class).
3. Performance
We have also had to deal with getting version 5.0 up
to speed - i.e. since we added all of these features,
we have needed a way to make loading xbasic scripts
and functions really fast -- so we have created the
concept of precompiled code libraries, which load
about as quickly as a .DLL.
I think there is still some work here, and as much
as we would like to make all repaints completely
smooth & flicker free, I think that we won't solve
all the repaint issues till version 6.0.
I cannot make any promises as to Release date, but
I am comfortable that the remaining problems & issues
are easier to solve then those we have needed to
deal with up to the beggining of Q3 (I don't foresee
any major rewrites of subsystems - which we was doing
frantically during Q2 when we missed our target).
and have noticed the number of questions regarding hold-ups
on Alpha Five version 5.0 (which we had planned for Q2, but
is still in beta).
The things that have been holding us up have been:
1) backward compatibility for prior apps.
Changes to xbasic, and changes to way toolbars and
menus work have led to applications (largely written
in xbasic) - not working in version 5.0. We need
to make sure applications work the same way they
worked in prior versions.
We have been getting lots of feedback from our beta
testers who have found all sorts of backwards
compatibility problems -- I feel that the worst
backward-compatibility bugs have been fixed, so
we are in pretty good shape here (though not 100%
complete).
2) Yes - there is some feature creep
In fixing some of the bugs that have been around since
the original port of A5 to Win32 (and to MFC) - back in
version 2.0 - We found that the reason some of these bugs
were not fixed is that they couldn't be fixed without a
re-write. So these peices have been re-written. For
example all the menus in the version 5.0 beta have been
rewritten in xbasic - this allows use to fix a large
number of menu problems (i.e. duplicating menu entries
and missing menu items under the 'windows' menu - both
of which occured under ). As a plus, we now have
total control over a menus look & feel...
Re-writing the menus in xbasic has meant that we needed
to be able to support automation of everything we can do
from a menu from xbasic - so there have been lots of new
xbasic methods added that should help folks who can hack
xbasic to automate pretty much anything they do in
alpha five.
The latest feature 'creep' has been the Toolbar rewrite,
Toolbars for forms/browse and preview layouts are now
written in xbasic as well -- this rewrite fixes the
cosmetic problem of switching between maximized forms
causing the toolbar at the top of the screen to
dissappear and re-appear. (the BETA with the toolbar
re-write is awaiting a fix Win95 repaint issue)
The latest xbasic language feature creep is support for
an xbasic 'class' (the revised Alpha five Toolbar object
is now written in xbasic as an xbasic class).
3. Performance
We have also had to deal with getting version 5.0 up
to speed - i.e. since we added all of these features,
we have needed a way to make loading xbasic scripts
and functions really fast -- so we have created the
concept of precompiled code libraries, which load
about as quickly as a .DLL.
I think there is still some work here, and as much
as we would like to make all repaints completely
smooth & flicker free, I think that we won't solve
all the repaint issues till version 6.0.
I cannot make any promises as to Release date, but
I am comfortable that the remaining problems & issues
are easier to solve then those we have needed to
deal with up to the beggining of Q3 (I don't foresee
any major rewrites of subsystems - which we was doing
frantically during Q2 when we missed our target).
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