Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

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.
See more
See less

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

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #31
    RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

    OK, I cannot keep quiet anymore. Alpha spending any amount of time improving on xdialog is helping the entire Alpha community, whether they use xdialog or not.

    Improving the xdialog is what has allowed Alpha to move as quickly as they have to give us the 'features' that we all use every day with forms, reports, etc, etc, etc

    Now, Alpha could spend more time in development using C which would slow down all these features that we all want and could even conceivably increase the cost. Which would you prefer?

    Just my two cents.
    Cheryl
    Cheryl
    #1 Designs By Pagecrazy
    http://pagecrazy.com/

    Comment


      #32
      RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

      Cheryl:
      I am not suggesting that alpha abandon xdlg in "their" development process. I am saying, I see no advantage whatsoever of any xdlg that you or I create over any form that you or I could create, so my question is: why waste your time or mine on it ??
      Gabe

      Comment


        #33
        RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

        I do not consider xdialog a waste of my time. I use it quite frequently and find it easy to use. xdialog and xbasic both have there places and I am one developer that is glad to have them both available to me.

        If you consider it a waste of your time, then you do not need to mess with it. But to ask Alpha to take away a valuable tool used by many ... or to stop developing it ... just because you find it useless ... is not constructive criticism. That of course, is my humble opinion.
        Cheryl
        #1 Designs By Pagecrazy
        http://pagecrazy.com/

        Comment


          #34
          RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

          Bill:
          I did respond, I do not knw if you read my response:
          ""Gee Bill !
          As smart as you are, I thought you should be able to figure this one out on your own !!
          Try variables!!
          xdlg do not have magic tools at their disposal, they rely heavily on variable. They use the same nuts and bolts are part of the ingredients of alpha. You could apply any of these ingredients to a form""

          Now if you would like me to spell out in a step by step, I will be glad to, but that will cost you a bridge!
          Gabe

          Comment


            #35
            RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

            Cheryl:
            Thank you for your opinion. As for me, I felt that all the time I spent learning xdlg was not worth the effort as I am able to create forms that do each and everything that xdlg do and more with much more ease. I had just hoped that alpha will invest this time on adding on to what they already have, good forms, as opposed to going off on a side show.
            Gabe

            Comment


              #36
              RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

              """I am being chastised by you and others for "Daring" to make an honest assessment of a feature that I think is a diversion."""

              NO, 'daring' has nothing to do with it. It's the manner in which you did and continue to do it. It's been pointed out how you could have done it constructively.

              A Diversion? Give me/us/Selwyn a break. Recognize you 'blew it' by the manner in which you chose to speak and let's go on from here.

              kenn
              TYVM :) kenn

              Knowing what you can achieve will not become reality until you imagine and explore.

              Comment


                #37
                RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                I have absolutely no opinion on this topic whatsoever, I would simply like to thank everyone one of you. I am just starting to learn this incredible data base and have found all the comments interesting and informative. To all you experts please continue the creative debating - especially on the Web Server - that is what I am primarily interested in.
                Ken

                Comment


                  #38
                  RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                  I learned a long time ago that nobody really listens to someone who does nothing but complain.

                  If you are unhappy with the forms, then you would serve yourself and the alpha community better by putting together the new features that you would like to see in forms and submit them to the "wish list" thread.

                  I reviewed that thread and you haven't contributed one well thought out idea. In fact, you haven't contributed anything.

                  You've made your point. Let's please stop this foolishness and move on to something constructive.
                  Alpha 5 Version 11
                  AA Build 2999, Build 4269, Current Build
                  DBF's and MySql
                  Desktop, Web on the Desktop and WEB

                  Ron Anusiewicz

                  Comment


                    #39
                    RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                    "I felt that all the time I spent learning xdlg was not worth the effort as I am able to create forms that do each and everything that xdlg do and more with much more ease. "

                    No problem, use a form and stop complaining. There are still people out there that thought the world came to an end when we stopped using command line DOS. If you don't know how to use xdialog, you probably won't use it effectively anyway.

                    Jerry

                    Comment


                      #40
                      RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                      Gabe. I don't think I am missing your point, I just very strongly disagree with your point.

                      Improving Xdialog and improving forms are NOT mutually exclusive. Forms have been improved in each new release. Some of the improvements have been made possible by Xdialog. V7 will see some very major improvements in Forms.

                      There are some things that Forms do really well that Xdialog currently does not do well. And conversely, there are some things that Xdialog does really well that can't be done in forms (if this were not true, the the user interface to Alpha would be written using Forms and not Xdialog).

                      At present, Forms are really good for user interfaces that are tightly bound to an underlying table. i.e. editing and entering records into a database. Xdialog's, on the other hand, are really good for working with variables. YOU may be able to do everything you want using Forms, but some types of applications need other tools. You apparently have no need for these other types of applications. This is neither good nor bad. It's just a fact. But since you apparently don't have the need to create the types of applications that warrant Xdialog, you seem (at least to me) ill qualified to comment on the merits of Xdialog. I can fully accept a comment like: "I've tried Xdialog and it's not for me - I can meet my needs using Forms.", which is a perfectly reasonable comment. But you have gone way beyond this, and, with all due respect, I think your comments are ill informed.

                      In V7 Xdialog's will have a lot of new features that make them seem a lot more like forms, and forms will have a lot of new features that make them seem a lot more like Xdialog. For example, forms will be saved using an XML syntax (i.e. a form defintion will be text, just like an xdialog's definition is text), and it will be possible to make 'unbound' forms. I.e. forms do not have to be based on a table.

                      Over time, as both Xdialog and Forms continue to evolve, the things that each don't do as well as their counterpart will diminish, and Forms and Xdialog will merge into the same thing, and you will have a choice of creating a form or xdialog in a code editor or a visual painter.

                      When that day comes there will still be some users who prefer the very concise (but cryptic) syntax of Xdialog, and there will be some users who prefer using a visual painter. Both will have their place.

                      Comment


                        #41
                        RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                        All I can say is: totally cool!

                        The innovation and ingenuity that Alpha is, is incredible.

                        Thanks for sharing your vision and development path. As always, impressive!
                        Peter
                        AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

                        [email protected]
                        https://www.alphabasesolutions.com


                        Comment


                          #42
                          RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                          Selwyn:
                          ""(if this were not true, the the user interface to Alpha would be written using Forms and not Xdialog). ""
                          You keep referring to how great xdlg was in advancing alpha and making it better. I am not disputing the value of xdlg to advance your objective on making alpha better, but once again, for my purposes as a user or any user for that matter, they do not offer more than a form does. In fact, you yourself make that point down the line:
                          ""n V7 Xdialog's will have a lot of new features that make them seem a lot more like forms, and forms will have a lot of new features that make them seem a lot more like Xdialog.""
                          So the day will come when both will merge and become one in a holly matrimony, and that will be a happy day for everybody, myself included.
                          One should keep open mind and adjust as you have wisely adjusted in the past and got rid of the stack cards!
                          Now:
                          1-If xdlg are the way of the future, then for the love of God make them user friendly like forms with drag and drop, properties, events and all the rest and one won't have to learn both forms and xdlg. It's redundant.
                          2-If it is the other way around, then implement those great features of the xdlg in forms.
                          The challange is not to introduce as many ways as possibly on how to skin the cat, the challnge is to produce a better way, and then make it even better.
                          Having said all of the above and having being chastised enough, I am a die-hard fan of alpha, I used multiple databases in the past and I have nothing but great respect and admiration for you and your team and you will earn more of my respect by keeping open mind!
                          Gabe

                          Comment


                            #43
                            RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                            Ken:
                            I did not blew anything. If you care to read Selwyn's comments further down, and even after he declared how disappointed he was, you will see that my point is very valid. Selwyn indicates that, in the future, both xdlg and forms will merge into one!!! Amen and Hallelujah !!

                            If my comments help speed up this process, maybe you will find it helpful for people to express their onion openly! it's a very healthy process and not one that calls for any personal assaults! If you find this debate annoying, you need not participate!

                            Gabe

                            Comment


                              #44
                              RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                              Ronald:
                              Thanks for your words of wisdom, but:
                              I entered this post primarily to find out how others feel about xdlg.
                              There is a fine line between complaining (which I was not doing) and acknowleging a problem which is the first step towards finding a solution!
                              I suggest to everyone who kindly participated in this "debate" to read the last response from Selwyn in which he acknowledges that in the future the two featues will merge into one.
                              I rest my case.
                              Gabe

                              Comment


                                #45
                                RE: Please Mister Please..Don't play B17 !!!

                                Gabe,

                                For those of us who are simple folks and use forms and xdialog off buttons could you please submit examples where a form can be used instead of xdialog. This is not a cheap comment but one of trying to understand the underlying reason for this thread

                                Best regards

                                Alan

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X