Where to go to write frontends:

[Night Train]

I have been writing largely "backend" applications for over thirty
years, and making a little money at it. Recently a friend of mine asked
what it would take to resurrect one of them, a program that was
originally written for the Apple Macintosh in interpreted Microsoft
BASIC then converted it to the compiler when that came out in about '86.
I told him that three months would probably be required - Visual BASIC
not.NET being pretty similar.

Now, looking back at some of my other old programs, I am thinking that
with a nice frontend, they might have some commercial value.

Lately, for the last eight years or so, I have been writing in
PowerBASIC, first for DOS then the Console Compiler. From past
experience, conversions are not as difficult as they first appear to be,
so the question is, how should I proceed?

Microsoft left me hanging when it dropped Mac BASIC many years ago and,
as I understand it, they left a lot of VB6/VS6 developers hanging when
it went to .NET, so I am not eager to go there, even though I already
own copies of and have written some small apps using both of them. The
most obvious route would be to invest in PowerBASIC for Windows, but my
intuition tells me not to get more involved with Zale's and his
snickering lieutenant's arrogance and paranoia - I'm too old to put up
with their bullshit. In that regard, I just read the thread in the
comp.lang.basic.powerbasic newsgroup "Banned from the PowerBASIC forum,"
and it is much like my own experience with these people.

So, my question is, coming from PBCC, where should I turn for a frontend
and backend BASIC compiler? I am going to look at FreeBASIC more
closely, mainly because the PureBASIC company seems to be a little
difficult to reach, (even though I read and write German fairly well).
Realistically, I suppose VB.NET bloatware is the best choice and I have
a little time to get up to speed with it, as opposed to learning C#.

I would be grateful for any help with this.

[H-Man]

Post by Night Train
I have been writing largely "backend" applications for over thirty
years, and making a little money at it. Recently a friend of mine asked
what it would take to resurrect one of them, a program that was
originally written for the Apple Macintosh in interpreted Microsoft
BASIC then converted it to the compiler when that came out in about '86.
I told him that three months would probably be required - Visual BASIC
not.NET being pretty similar.
Now, looking back at some of my other old programs, I am thinking that
with a nice frontend, they might have some commercial value.
Lately, for the last eight years or so, I have been writing in
PowerBASIC, first for DOS then the Console Compiler. From past
experience, conversions are not as difficult as they first appear to be,
so the question is, how should I proceed?
Microsoft left me hanging when it dropped Mac BASIC many years ago and,
as I understand it, they left a lot of VB6/VS6 developers hanging when
it went to .NET, so I am not eager to go there, even though I already
own copies of and have written some small apps using both of them. The
most obvious route would be to invest in PowerBASIC for Windows, but my
intuition tells me not to get more involved with Zale's and his
snickering lieutenant's arrogance and paranoia - I'm too old to put up
with their bullshit. In that regard, I just read the thread in the
comp.lang.basic.powerbasic newsgroup "Banned from the PowerBASIC forum,"
and it is much like my own experience with these people.
So, my question is, coming from PBCC, where should I turn for a frontend
and backend BASIC compiler? I am going to look at FreeBASIC more
closely, mainly because the PureBASIC company seems to be a little
difficult to reach, (even though I read and write German fairly well).
Realistically, I suppose VB.NET bloatware is the best choice and I have
a little time to get up to speed with it, as opposed to learning C#.
I would be grateful for any help with this.

Hey Train,
No sure what you mean about the PureBASIC guys being hard to reach, but as
a user of PureBASIC I can tell you from first hand experience, the forums
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/
are quite active and help is never too far away. They have versions for
Linux and Mac and as far as I know, the visual designer is done for Linux
(it's at least a working Beta) and the version for Mac is being worked on.
The good news is that native code is cross platform and API code (as
always) needs to be ported. If you are just developing for Windows, There
is a 64 bit version and Vista is supported. One thing is for certain, the
executables are very tight and fast. Oh, and inline assembly is supported
as well. The only really weak point with PureBASIC is how ActiveX and COM
is interfaced, there are tools to allow it, personally I haven't yet
figured it out as I haven't had the need.

As far as I can see, FreeBASIC is really active as well, however, it's lack
of a visual designer left me looking for an alternative. Purists will say
that a designer is just fluff and real men code the GUI by hand.
Personally, I hate coding a GUI by hand. So much easier having something do
the heavy lifting as it were.

I had tried RealBasic, made huge executables and required a runtime. I used
to use VB6 so I tried VB.NET. Framework is required and I found the IDE and
resulting apps really slow to load. So I settled on PureBASIC and haven't
looked back. I still use VB6 to maintain legacy code though when porting is
more work than it's worth.

[Night Train]

Post by H-Man

Post by Night Train
I have been writing largely "backend" applications for over thirty
years, and making a little money at it. Recently a friend of mine asked
what it would take to resurrect one of them, a program that was
originally written for the Apple Macintosh in interpreted Microsoft
BASIC then converted it to the compiler when that came out in about '86.
I told him that three months would probably be required - Visual BASIC
not.NET being pretty similar.
Now, looking back at some of my other old programs, I am thinking that
with a nice frontend, they might have some commercial value.
Lately, for the last eight years or so, I have been writing in
PowerBASIC, first for DOS then the Console Compiler. From past
experience, conversions are not as difficult as they first appear to be,
so the question is, how should I proceed?
Microsoft left me hanging when it dropped Mac BASIC many years ago and,
as I understand it, they left a lot of VB6/VS6 developers hanging when
it went to .NET, so I am not eager to go there, even though I already
own copies of and have written some small apps using both of them. The
most obvious route would be to invest in PowerBASIC for Windows, but my
intuition tells me not to get more involved with Zale's and his
snickering lieutenant's arrogance and paranoia - I'm too old to put up
with their bullshit. In that regard, I just read the thread in the
comp.lang.basic.powerbasic newsgroup "Banned from the PowerBASIC forum,"
and it is much like my own experience with these people.
So, my question is, coming from PBCC, where should I turn for a frontend
and backend BASIC compiler? I am going to look at FreeBASIC more
closely, mainly because the PureBASIC company seems to be a little
difficult to reach, (even though I read and write German fairly well).
Realistically, I suppose VB.NET bloatware is the best choice and I have
a little time to get up to speed with it, as opposed to learning C#.
I would be grateful for any help with this.

Hey Train,
No sure what you mean about the PureBASIC guys being hard to reach, but as
a user of PureBASIC I can tell you from first hand experience, the forums
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/
are quite active and help is never too far away. They have versions for
Linux and Mac and as far as I know, the visual designer is done for Linux
(it's at least a working Beta) and the version for Mac is being worked on.
The good news is that native code is cross platform and API code (as
always) needs to be ported. If you are just developing for Windows, There
is a 64 bit version and Vista is supported. One thing is for certain, the
executables are very tight and fast. Oh, and inline assembly is supported
as well. The only really weak point with PureBASIC is how ActiveX and COM
is interfaced, there are tools to allow it, personally I haven't yet
figured it out as I haven't had the need.
As far as I can see, FreeBASIC is really active as well, however, it's lack
of a visual designer left me looking for an alternative. Purists will say
that a designer is just fluff and real men code the GUI by hand.
Personally, I hate coding a GUI by hand. So much easier having something do
the heavy lifting as it were.
I had tried RealBasic, made huge executables and required a runtime. I used
to use VB6 so I tried VB.NET. Framework is required and I found the IDE and
resulting apps really slow to load. So I settled on PureBASIC and haven't
looked back. I still use VB6 to maintain legacy code though when porting is
more work than it's worth.

I would like to thank you and Michael Mattias for sharing your well
informed perspectives.

Another concern I have is deployment, especially to older boxes. I'm
going to give Inno a try. I might even set up a Windows 95 system,
although there can't be many of those left. Actually, DOS 6.22 is all
that is needed for serious computer work. (It's been all bells and
whistles since then.)

I'm looking some sort of GUI for the only thing it is good for, which is
the user-program interface, then SHELL out of that to my .exe for
starters. In my mind anyway, the graphical end of it is annoying but
necessary fluff. Much can be accomplished with simple menus in a
DOS-like window. Making changes to settings in a text file can cover a
lot as well — not hardly suitable to most users.

Having users select files by searching through a list is a familiar
operation as is putting check marks in boxes to set parameters, so
tapping into installed procedures saves a lot of coding. But writing
backends in that same environment is awfully awkward. It's like looking
trying to see the world looking through a knot hole. As a result, there
are a lot of big programs out that don't do much.

Well, thanks for your time and your input. I'll check out PureBASIC,
but signed integers wastes a bit most of the time. I can't remember the
last time I used one.

Night Train

[Michael Mattias]

I have been writing largely "backend" applications for over thirty years,
and making a little money at it....
Lately, for the last eight years or so, I have been writing in PowerBASIC,
first for DOS then the Console Compiler....

[snippage]

The most obvious route would be to invest in PowerBASIC for Windows, but
my intuition tells me not to get more involved with Zale's and his
snickering lieutenant's arrogance and paranoia - I'm too old to put up
with their bullshit.

There are many fine development products to create "front ends", which I
shall interpret in context as meaning "GUI" screens.

Since you are already own a license for PowerBASIC's Console Compiler, you
can use that. All you have to do is learn how to call CreateWindowEx and/or
DialogBox[Indirect][Param] and/or CreateDialog[Indirect][Param] and how to
write a window procedure. (You'll only need to learn that once, since the
procedures for Windows and Dialogs are very, very similar).

If you want to create the 'front end' with another product (probably
easier), the good news is you can reuse any of your PB/CC backend code with
it; the bad news (I surmise) is you'll have to license the PB/Windows
compiler to create the dynamic link libraries you'll need to actually call
those procedures from another 'front end.' Then there is some offsetting
good news is if you do go the PB/Windows route: that product offers some
pretty easy ways to create screens with the "DDT" sytax.

[John H. Guillory]

Post by Night Train
I have been writing largely "backend" applications for over thirty
years, and making a little money at it. Recently a friend of mine asked
what it would take to resurrect one of them, a program that was
originally written for the Apple Macintosh in interpreted Microsoft
BASIC then converted it to the compiler when that came out in about '86.
I told him that three months would probably be required - Visual BASIC
not.NET being pretty similar.

Just a thought on a side-note.... If your program is an intpreted
program, similiar to gw-basic, then you might want to go to
powerbasic's site and download pbint32 I believe is the name. It's a
.dll file with Powerbasic 8.0 for windows source code. You can define
your own functions and read/write to variables inside the intpreted
code, then either use a string or a text file for your script and run
it from your program.... If you define functions for your GUI, you can
have your script output to the GUI while executing your own script
with minimal changes....

[Night Train]

Post by John H. Guillory

Post by Night Train
I have been writing largely "backend" applications for over thirty
years, and making a little money at it. Recently a friend of mine asked
what it would take to resurrect one of them, a program that was
originally written for the Apple Macintosh in interpreted Microsoft
BASIC then converted it to the compiler when that came out in about '86.
I told him that three months would probably be required - Visual BASIC
not.NET being pretty similar.

Just a thought on a side-note.... If your program is an intpreted
program, similiar to gw-basic, then you might want to go to
powerbasic's site and download pbint32 I believe is the name. It's a
.dll file with Powerbasic 8.0 for windows source code. You can define
your own functions and read/write to variables inside the intpreted
code, then either use a string or a text file for your script and run
it from your program.... If you define functions for your GUI, you can
have your script output to the GUI while executing your own script
with minimal changes....

Thank you for the tip. The last versions of the program were compiled
but the last computer that would run the compiler was a Mac SE, and ours
died a long time ago.

It sounds like the approach you suggest would lead to a quick way of
getting an instance of it to execute, but we won't want a patched up
app. What we plan to do is keep the overall structure, the processing
schemes and logic, but go over it line by line, converting functions and
variables as needed. Some of that can be done by writing a conversion
program and even though it is made up of a couple thousand lines of
code, the structure was carefully tailored (I have been at this for a
long time) and the code is loaded with explanatory REMs, so once we sit
down and get at, it will break up nicely into blocks, and go pretty
fast. Also, we have written a support routine that helps with
maintaining the integrity of the variables and the function blocks.

The real issue then is getting a "front end" or user interface working.
The old Mac BASIC was designed to be event driven and the GUI had to
be constructed in detail manually using built in text box and button
constructs. So, all we really need for this project, and some others as
well, is a window and similar routines that support that. What
Microsoft did to get what they call Visual BASIC was to pull the old Mac
QuickBASIC off the shelf and add some largely useless bells and whistles
to it. I still have the manuals. With the Mac BASIC, a person could
write the program he wanted, not as it is now, the program the Microsoft
IDE makes him write, which is largely a pile of colorful and useless
glop (much like puke). (The old DOS version of WordPefect remains the
best computer program ever written from the standpoints of reliability,
ease of use and worker productivity - the sparks really flew when the
secretaries in the back office got the hang of it.)

Anyway, it does not appear that we are going to get anything dependable,
durable and close to what we need, either from FreeBASIC or PureBASIC or
PowerBASIC without patching in a bunch of API calls, while Visual BASIC
.NET is way over priced and so loaded with viral susceptible fluff that
it can't be deployed or run on a "clean" trustworthy box that we would
ever connect to somebody else's network in good conscience, Vista being
bloated crap which makes the prospects for Windows 7 Simonized poop and
Windows 11 will be more of the same.

Thanks again for your input. We really appreciate your taking the time
to help us come up with a solution.