Info Only Update 05-23-2012

[LarryMc]

Well, I'm making, what I consider, pretty good progress on merging the Form Editor into the IDE.
The 4 attached screenshots will give you an idea of where I'm at.

screen54
   shows the Tools menu options for opening the Form Editor
screen55
   shows the editor opened with the default WINDOW type form.  
   2 buttons have been dragged onto the form
   the form has been double-clicked to open its properties dialog
   notice the 3 options at the top, window,dialog,MDI Frame
screen56
   under the form editor the IDE is shown and it has a code window displayed
   the code was generated by clicking the GenCode toolbar button in the form editor which
   opened a dialog where 'to file' and 'generate skeleton' options were selected.
screen57
   shows the exact same form where the MDI Frame option was selected in the forms property dialog
   under the form editor the IDE is shown and it has another code window displayed(created the same as above)
   notice that although the form has 2 buttons there is no trace of them in the code.
   They're not in the code because a MDI Frame window can't have any controls.
   I left the controls displayed on the form because it was the easiest to do and they are simply ignored.
   this allows the user to keep from inadvertently removing a lot of controls just because they clicked the MDI option.
   
There is something that I've decided to do that isn't shown.
I'm going to go ahead and add the waituntil win=0 loop for windows and showdialog d1 for dialogs.
That way the user can compile the generated  code and it actually run properly.

[LarryMc]

Today, the code is in place to save a form to a file and to open an existing form file.
I needed the form editor merged in the IDE to finish that code.

I also added the extra generated code so that it represents a complete program that can be compiled and ran.

Will now turn my attention to the 'test' function.

[LarryMc]

Finished the 'test' function of the form editor.
I have a new version of the new IDE ready. But it will probably be Tuesday before I can upload it to the server.

In the meantime I've started work on the compile, compile/run, and run code structures for both single and multiple file projects.

Initially I'm using messageboxes as placeholders when I select the various toolbar buttons with various configurations of files /projects open.
The placeholders will eventually be replaced with calls to the required subroutines.

[AdrianFox]

There is something that I've decided to do that isn't shown.
I'm going to go ahead and add the waituntil win=0 loop for windows and showdialog d1 for dialogs.
That way the user can compile the generated  code and it actually run properly.

I think that's a great idea!  I remember when I first tried out EB and used the dialog editor to make a simple program, I 'ran' it and was baffled when nothing appeared on screen.  In fact, I was so baffled I just gave up at that point (as a complete novice) and went away.  It was only when I returned some months later and bothered to read the manual properly that I got started.   But I was still puzzled why the Dialog Editor didn't include the extra bit of code.   
I posted about this at the time, but the old owner rather dismissively rejected what I said on the basis that there are many different ways of 'showing' a dialog or a window.  That is of course true, but at least having some code there at the start doesn't preclude the user changing it to a different method.