Emergence Basic (Brother of IBasic?)

Kale · Post by **Kale** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:27 am

thefool wrote:Now i know you are a partner member, Kale, please correct my statement:

I guess emergence basic is for beginners rather than aurora. I wonder why he makes 2 languages at a time. Isn't it taking his hands too full? Or is he just making an arsenal of tools for beginners & advanced.?

Exactly!

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:00 am

utopiomania wrote:Paul sold Ibasic on Ebay to Thomas Hanlin for 50k$

What I have a hard time understanding is why anyone would pay that much for something, then just let it die...

Dare · Post by **Dare** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:23 am

I decided a while back that getting involved in anything to do with some entities is potentially costly and certainly disruptive. Their track records are red flags.

This does not necessarily suggest 'badness' by those entities, just caution by me, based on my reasoning.

So no matter how good they may be, things like eBasic, Aurora and Ibasic are not for me.

In PureBasic we have more than just a language.

We have the support of these boards. We have a good official team. Most importantly we have, in Fred, a person who appears to do his best to keep things above-board and honest. Even under pressure. Now that is rare and it is priceless.

Just MHO.

yoxola · Post by **yoxola** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:41 am

Make IBasic (and Pro)
Sell the Forum Stuff
Sell IBasic Source or thing
Left IBasic and let it die
Make a new site of Aurora
Change IBasic's name to EB
Sell it again

I'm happy I choose PB and didn't buy IB/IBP/Aurora

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:01 pm

White Eagle wrote:
Paul sold Ibasic on Ebay to Thomas Hanlin for 50k$, and now it seems he's trying to use the same codebase
again and sell it as a direct competitor?
Do you have any proof to back up that allegation?

Emergence BASIC's codebase is based off of Aurora (NOT IBasic Pro), with an IBasic Pro "compatible" syntax.

And what is Aurora based on? Are you ready for a comparision between Aurora and IBasic?

Let's start with the IDE. Not to mention the "slight" problem that they look quite the same (uses the same owner-drawn tab controls, yes plural of controls because he did manage to use two different tab controls), use the same wording and use the same control layout they have some common bugs:
MS Sans Serif is used instead of the system default font in some places.
Other places, Tahoma is used instead of the system default font.
The places where this happens is the same in both editors. Both of them uses tahoma in the same dialogs and MS Sans Serif in the same dialogs. If he was aware of this he would have fixed it, if he wasn't aware of it there's no way he'd manage to do this wrong in the same places a second time. It's simply not possible.
Link labels are buggy redrawn the same way in both editors.
Buttons which are neither placed on grid boundary nor correctly placed with respect to their parent controls are misplaced to the same position in both editors. This simply does not happen by coincidence if you place them manually, if you don't place them manually they would be grid aligned.
Aurora uses Scintilla, this did not stop him from not fixing a small bug with selection and the cut/copy buttons. (No, it's not that they aren't enabled when nothing is selected, it's that they aren't enabled when something IS selected.)
The dialog editing part looks exactly the same, has the same bugs, and even uses the same icons.
And the menu editor also looks the same. If you look at the about box of the menu editor of Aurora you see a brown box that isn't there in the IBasic version. He probably meant to make it black, but this man obviously has bad eyesight because it's brown. Where this box is, in the IBasic version it says "Built with IBasic Professional", and above that copyright pyxia. In the Aurora version it only says copyright ionic wind. The about boxes shared the same bugs (or "feature"?) as well: The ok button doesn't appear until the window is clicked.

What's also strange is that not only is the same directory naming convention used, but the same files are also within.

But I guess you're not satisfied with the "if it looks like a rabbit it must be a rabbit" reasoning.

So let's take a closer look at the IDE internals.
The Aurora IDE has nice logo in the about dialog. This logo image is 500x300 pixels, and is 439 kb when saved uncompressed. The IBasic IDE does only have a small icon. The IBasic IDE is 1 761 339 bytes. The Aurora IDE is 2 240 512 bytes. The difference? 467 kilobytes. The IDEs are basically the same size compiled without the new branding.

The file menuedit.dll is only 4 bytes larger in the Aurora version.

The linker is 4 kilobytes larger in the Aurora version.

The file dbghelp.dll is exactly the same both versions.

The same version of the assembler is in both versions.

The manifest files for the IDE are exactly equal and they both have the same date stamps.

The size difference the Aurora compiler and the IBasic compiler is only 4 kb.

libtool.exe from IBasic and makelib.exe from Aurora are exactly the same size.

Simply put, the IDEs shares the same codebase. Whether the IBasic IDE is sold or not I don't know.

And here's from the IBasic compiler:

Code: Select all

PUSH EBP
MOV EBP,ESP
PUSH -1
PUSH ibparse.00497EF8
PUSH ibparse.0047B750
MOV EAX,DWORD PTR FS:[0]
PUSH EAX
MOV DWORD PTR FS:[0],ESP
SUB ESP,10
PUSH EBX
PUSH ESI
PUSH EDI
MOV DWORD PTR SS:[EBP-18],ESP
CALL DWORD PTR DS:[<&KERNEL32.GetVersion>
XOR EDX,EDX
MOV DL,AH
MOV DWORD PTR DS:[499584],EDX
MOV ECX,EAX
AND ECX,0FF
MOV DWORD PTR DS:[499580],ECX
SHL ECX,8
ADD ECX,EDX
MOV DWORD PTR DS:[49957C],ECX
SHR EAX,10
MOV DWORD PTR DS:[499578],EAX
PUSH 0
CALL ibparse.0047D137
POP ECX
TEST EAX,EAX
JNZ SHORT ibparse.0047B9C0
PUSH 1C
CALL ibparse.0047BA59
POP ECX
AND DWORD PTR SS:[EBP-4],0
CALL ibparse.0047CE17
CALL DWORD PTR DS:[<&KERNEL32.GetCommand>

From the Aurora compiler:

Code: Select all

PUSH EBP
MOV EBP,ESP
PUSH -1
PUSH acparse.0049CEF8
PUSH acparse.00480750
MOV EAX,DWORD PTR FS:[0]
PUSH EAX
MOV DWORD PTR FS:[0],ESP
SUB ESP,10
PUSH EBX
PUSH ESI
PUSH EDI
MOV DWORD PTR SS:[EBP-18],ESP
CALL DWORD PTR DS:[<&KERNEL32.GetVersion>
XOR EDX,EDX
MOV DL,AH
MOV DWORD PTR DS:[49E584],EDX
MOV ECX,EAX
AND ECX,0FF
MOV DWORD PTR DS:[49E580],ECX
SHL ECX,8
ADD ECX,EDX
MOV DWORD PTR DS:[49E57C],ECX
SHR EAX,10
MOV DWORD PTR DS:[49E578],EAX
PUSH 0
CALL acparse.00482137
POP ECX
TEST EAX,EAX
JNZ SHORT acparse.004809C0
PUSH 1C
CALL acparse.00480A59
POP ECX
AND DWORD PTR SS:[EBP-4],0
CALL acparse.00481E17
CALL DWORD PTR DS:[<&KERNEL32.GetCommand>

Post by **Rings** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:08 pm

TROND !!!

Dare · Post by **Dare** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:23 pm

White Eagle · Post by **White Eagle** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:58 pm

What I have a hard time understanding is why anyone would pay that much for something, then just let it die...

Not everybody who owns or buys a business does so to make a profit. If run as a sole-proprietorship, running your business at a loss can make for some wonderful tax advantages if you have a good CPA who knows the tax laws for small businesses.

Are you ready for a comparision between Aurora and IBasic?

By your own points and ASM code you are proving they are not the same.

Are they similar in looks? Yes. I know of many languages that have IDEs that look like VB or VC++'s.

If two languages are written by the same person, the chances of the IDEs looking the same are very good. Just the same as the UI in many of my games looks the same, even though some are written in different languages. Lets face it, when dealing with something as constrained as the Windows GUI system, you don't have a lot of wiggle-room when it comes to aesthetics. If you design an UI that is intuitive and functional, you generally stick with it.

Do IBP and EB share syntax commands? Yes, but so does VB, RealBASIC and KBasic and a few others. Nothing new, even back in the late 70s early 80s, syntax was highly portable between different versions of BASIC with little to no modification of the code needed.

Would two similar products that use NASM, and targeted at the PE format produce very similar code? Yes, if you expect NASM to properly handle it and the EXEs to run.

Simply put, the IDEs shares the same codebase.

And again, we take your word for it since you cannot prove it?

Like any of your other arguments, I guess this is somehow the fault of the Israelis, too :roll:

Seriously, if you are going to make wild accusations, you should at least have the balls to back up your statements with proof that actually stands up to scrutiny. Is common sense a completely foreign concept to you?

Even though you can't prove a single thing you are saying, lets throw our brains out the window and pretend for a minute that you are right. Are you privy to the contract Paul signed with Tom? Do you know if Paul was prevented from writing a competing language? (I would guess No, since Paul was no longer employed by Pyxia). Do you know if Paul sold all ownership of the code or just the rights to IBP the product and the code that is used to make it, not the parent code? (What you don't know? Neither do I. However it is a clause that is sometimes included or omitted in contracts). I could go through many other clauses that would normally be or not be in such a contract.

But, what it boils down to, is you have no idea, do you? You have no idea what is going on and what isn't, all you can do is rant and rave and throw out wild allegations even though you have no proof to back up your claims and you clearly have no understanding of what you are trying to discuss.

If you don't like Paul, fine, Be man enough to say "I don't like Paul". People would respect that and your opinion.

There is no need to open your mouth and make all kinds of accusations and allegations that you cannot even come close to proving. All that does is make you look like a pathetic ass because you cannot deal with reality.

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:38 pm

Are you privy to the contract Paul signed with Tom? Do you know if Paul was prevented from writing a competing language? (I would guess No, since Paul was no longer employed by Pyxia). Do you know if Paul sold all ownership of the code or just the rights to IBP the product and the code that is used to make it, not the parent code? (What you don't know? Neither do I. However it is a clause that is sometimes included or omitted in contracts). I could go through many other clauses that would normally be or not be in such a contract.

White Eagle, I said that whether the IBasic IDE is sold or not I don't know. That means that I have no idea whether selling it under another name is wrong or not.

It is a fact that some very important files (the product simply wouldn't work without them) are 100% equal in both the demo version of IBasic and the demo version of Aurora. If you don't believe me, download them and see for yourself.

Now do you honestly believe that equal files where compiled from different sources?

Would two similar products that use NASM, and targeted at the PE format produce very similar code? Yes, if you expect NASM to properly handle it and the EXEs to run.

Obviously you know nothing about compilers because the assembler used has nothing to do with what code is produced. And it's totally irrelevant, since the ASM is from the Aurora compiler and the IBasic compiler, not from code these generated. We simply see that inside them the startup code is equal. Then they both at the same point kill Olly.

Kale · Post by **Kale** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:14 pm

Trond, why do these points you've raised matter? IBasic is dead! and you don't know of the deals made between Paul and Tom! So really what does it matter if Aurora or EBasic uses some common code of IBasic's IDE? After all, they are all written by the same guy.

I don't understand the attitudes of some people regarding IBasic. Ok so the new owner left users in the lurch but did you expect it to last forever? Just get over it and move on. There are afterall plenty of languages to use and you are already using the best BASIC on the planet, so why grumble?

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:19 pm

IMHO they should be angry at the new owner and not at paul.

srod · Post by **srod** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:44 pm

Exactly.

Whlst I own Aurora, I do not need another basic as PB does everything I need and so will not be buying Emergence basic. However, I see nothing wrong with Paul (or anyone else for that matter) producing a Basic language which, for many people, will now fill the void left by the demise of iBasic. I'm sure that had Tom not allowed iBasic to die, then such a market would not exist for Paul and indeed he probably would not have produced EB. At the end of the day I reckon there's going to be a hell of a lot of grateful IB developers who can now continue their efforts knowing that their new platform has the kind of support which Tom never provided.

View it as you wish, but EB will prove valuable for a lot of people and that's all that really counts.

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:58 pm

I have not purchased IBasic, I'm not going to purchase Aurora and I'm not going to purchase EBasic, mostly because these products does not meet my needs.

Now why did I show that Aurora is very similar to, and parts of it is unmodified from, IBasic? Because:
This is the PureBasic forum.
False claims about EBasic (a competitor to PureBasic) was made on these forums. ("EBasic is not based on IBasic".)
I showed that if what else he said "EBasic is based on Aurora" was true, then what he said about EBasic<>IBasic wasn't true.

Basically an advertisement for competing product together with false information in favour of the competing product on this products forums. I correct the information. People didn't like that. My fault?

I'm sorry Kale and especially White Eagle. You need to pull yourself together. I didn't say Paul did anything wrong. But lying to me and calling me a pathetic asshole because I didn't do that, now that's nice!

You know what? I can't think of an insult that you would understand.

joske · Post by **joske** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:35 pm

I've had a big laugh reading this heated discussion.

Trond, can you cool down please? Nobody is calling you an asshole, only Utopiomania abused White Eagle for asshole in this discussion...

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:48 pm

Its just the small point that Trond's evidence is a few quadrillion times larger than the other.. He got proof, they don't. If they would pull out some major differences, i would change my mind.. perhaps..

but as far as i see, the assembly code trond posted isn't just alike. They are equal, and they do the stuff in the same order. The only possible explanation is, that the compiler is written in the same compiler, and it happens to be some kind of internal actions. But even so, its just too much alike..