Gadget?!!... GADGET!!!???? Did I just enroll in pre-school?

[thefool]

I will begin at school soon, but i sure will get some time for beta testing

[Randy Walker]

Randy, go to here to login:
http://www.purebasic.com/securedownload/Login.php

If you didn't get that email, they you likely didn't get the payment confirmation, which means that your payment didn't go through for some reason.

I think this post from Fred explains everything:
viewtopic.php?t=11851
Seems I happened to place my online order the very day Fred planned his vacation.

[ivory]

Randy is right, Gadget is a goofy word, but everyone else is right too, its too late to change it.

My background includes HiSoft Basic on Amiga, so I am familiar with Gadgets, but when I imported my GetGadget routine to PowerBasic, I renamed it to MsgBoxPlus for the very reasons Randy mentioned. I didn't think customers would take GetGadget seriously enough.

BTW Randy, PowerBasic does have a relatively professional look and feel, and does create somewhat faster executables, but it is a relatively low level language which gives you a more direct access to the Windows environment, but also requrires you to program at a low C level.

But you pay for that stability with long slow update cycles, and while they listen to what we have to say, they are tight lipped about what they plan to release, and don't necessarily take the path some of use would like.

PureBasic seems to lean a little more on pleasing everybody, and doing so sooner rather than later.

Perhaps, when someone develops a good macro pre-compiler, then Randy and anyone else can write macros to rename some commands to something more suitable.

[Randy Walker]

Randy is right, Gadget is a goofy word, but everyone else is right too, its too late to change it.

Well actually, I was using the words professional and unprofessional, but I'm glad to see someone is willing to at least concede my point - Thanks!

As for being too late to change. The word "irony" comes to mind. Humans like to pride themselves on being the most adaptive creatures on Earth, yet the threat of change often smothers any means for improvement. (Genericly speaking.)

Aside from all that, all things considered, I think it is best to leave well enough alone. Too many are content with it as it is and none of my comments were aimed at causing trouble.


In case any are intersted, here is what I wrote to one who contacted me outside this forum.

My declared response at the forum is partially due to writing philosophy taught in English class: Never use vague terms when specific or more specific terms are available. The term "thing" should never be used! The term gadget, by my schooling, is unacceptable in any professional literary field for the same reason - - it is non-descript. Replace all the nouns in this paragraph with the word "thing" and it becomes quite evident why such practice is unacceptable in professional writing. The terms gadget and thing are virtualy synonomous, except gadget implies a mechanical thing. Excuse me, I meant "mechanical apparatus. Granted, the term "control" is not entirely appropriate. It does however have a more distinct meaning and thus far more applicable than gadget in professional literary terms. So the question one has to ask here is: Should a professional programmer be concerned that he is indeed a professional writer, and should he also be concerned about addressing his audience in a professional, "intelligible" manner?

[Randy Walker]

BTW Randy, PowerBasic does have a relatively professional look and feel, and does create somewhat faster executables, but it is a relatively low level language which gives you a more direct access to the Windows environment, but also requrires you to program at a low C level.

Auugh??! I need Windows 32 bit functions which is why I settled on PureBasic. It appeared to offer me access to that part of Windows, so...
what do you mean by "requires you to write in C"?

But you pay for that stability with long slow update cycles, and while they listen to what we have to say, they are tight lipped about what they plan to release, and don't necessarily take the path some of use would like.

I don't like sitting on promises I've made only to find I am unable to keep them. Personally I would rather be in the dark than wait for a promise that can never come to pass. Fortunately for me, PureBasic seems to meet 99.9% of my demands already, and I'm not a professional programmer so I doubt my needs will change much. The one thing I have seen where I would like to see change is a more sophiticated sort function. I did find a work around that will get me by so I'm not real concerned. As long as I can follow the logic, I'm not ascared... I can adapt.

[ivory]

PowerBasic is low level in the same way that Assembler and C are low level. You interface directly with the Windows API's whenever you want to do anything. Visual Basic did a wonderful job of shielding us from the obscure intricacies of Windows programming (the callback's mostly). With Powerbasic, you are given some very powerful tools to interface with Windows, but you must still program with windows callbacks just like you would with C.

Powerbasic has a fairly steep learning curve.

Purebasic (which I am still quite new at) provides a lot more high level commands (built in and in libraries) which provide a different interface to the windows system. Instead of creating a callback procedure for windows to call, there are instructions to wait for events and proceed after an event occurs. I think the learning curve is somewhat softer here.

The powerbasic development roadmap is agonizingly painfully slow. A Linux version has been rumored for years. The rumors have been confirmed, yet no release date is offered. It's a good product, and there are some very excellent third party products that can make it quite similar to VB in terms of productivity and ease of use.

One thing PB & PB have in common, good peer support. You can't go wrong with either product. I now have both, and am prepared to combine them whenever it suits my needs. (Although, if purebasic can provide a platform to easily port applications between the 4 platforms, I don't see how any other product can help).

[LarsG]

I just wanted to say that neither PowerBasic nor C are low-level languages.. (neither is PureBasic for that sake)

[Amiga5k]

Randy, you'll have to forgive us Amigans (Once an Amigan, always an Amigan in your heart). We come from a platform that marched (marches?) to a different drummer. With AmigaOS-related names like
KickStart (Core OS, first on disk then in ROM),
Intuition (Gui layer between Kickstart and WorkBench - Similar to MS's GDI),
WorkBench (The user-interface GUI over top of everything),
Guru Meditation (System crash like the 'blue screen of death'),
Agnes, Portia, Cooper (support chips)

it's no wonder that Amiga would choose Gadget as the name for it's, um, gadgets. But no stranger, I might say, than Windows insisting that EVERYTHING is a window (contrary to the actual definition of a window)...

Gadget is a generic term that can apply to anything that is part of the GUI.

Having said that, I do agree that some of the commands could be shortened (ChangeListIconGadgetDisplay(#Gadget, Mode) for example) or renamed (Is Translucide even a word?). This is where Macros would be great. You could rename all of the ones you don't like without having to wrap them in a function.

Russell

[ricardo]

Im agree that the use of Gadget is not very afortunated...

No offense, but it seems you're the only one who feels this way. The end
user of your product doesn't see the command set, so what's the big deal?
You're complaining about nothing.

Im not sure if its inofensive to have all those 'Gadget' keywords...

Look at the purebasic.com ranking acording to Alexa... its very low.

One important reason is because the keywords in PB are different than VB and WinAPIs.

I dont think much people looks for ButtonGadget or SetGadgetText in Google... im positive sure that if at the beggining of PB Fred has choosen more standard names, now he should have much more sales. Believe me that Search Engines are the best way to drive people here (forums) and to the main site.

Now there are nothing to do except when choosing new names try to use more standard names, just for letting people find PB, not for any other reason.

My 2 cents.

[blueznl]

what's missing is NOT function names that are more or less standard, but a sort of built in / working visual designer that allows rad style devving

even if you're not a fan of such an approach, it's what sells

[Amiga5k]

On this topic, perhaps PB 4.0 will take the OOP approach to make these calls easier.

For example, wouldn't it be nice to just create a button (or any other gadget) like this:

Code: Select all

button1.btn = (GadListHandle,x,y,w,h,text$,flags)

and then later on you can change the text, for example, like this:

Code: Select all

button1\text$ = "Changed"

Sure makes the code a lot more readable, I think. Of course, I've taken some liberties with the way the values are assigned. I seem to remember that the Amiga version of Blitz Basic allowed you to define several fields at a time by listing them one after another similar to how I've done in the example above.

Russell

Russell

[Jay]

Man! This is almost as good as General Hospitall..

[Truth_Seeker]

On this topic, perhaps PB 4.0 will take the OOP approach to make these calls easier.

For example, wouldn't it be nice to just create a button (or any other gadget) like this:

Code: Select all

button1.btn = (GadListHandle,x,y,w,h,text$,flags)

and then later on you can change the text, for example, like this:

Code: Select all

button1\text$ = "Changed"

Sure makes the code a lot more readable, I think. Of course, I've taken some liberties with the way the values are assigned. I seem to remember that the Amiga version of Blitz Basic allowed you to define several fields at a time by listing them one after another similar to how I've done in the example above.

Russell

Russell

I like that idea, it would make the code more readable.

[PB]

> Lets look professional... loose the gagets!!!

And now the irony: Windows Vista will have "gadgets" as a common term:

"Sidebar is a small panel at the side of the monitor that can be used to view
photo slide shows, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and other small
programs, dubbed gadgets."

Source: http://news.com.com/Sidebar+on+display+ ... =nefd.lede

Looks like PureBasic's choice of terminology was years ahead of Vista!

[Dare2]