GUI applications

mee · Post by **mee** » Sep 15, 2011 18:10

I have just heard about FreeBASIC and whilst I'm impressed that this is available, I can't help feeling that a technology founded on QBASIC and those before it, is somewhat limited in scope for some of today's application requirements.

I don't doubt that many developers will find it both usable and ideal for their needs, but as a programmer who most frequently needs to develop GUI-based business applications, I wonder if there is any scope to do this with FreeBASIC, and if not, why is that the case.

Am I correct in saying that it does not provide an environment similar to Visual Basic?

If so, how does one develop business applications with input fields, click boxes and so forth?

Please don't interpret my comments critically against FreeBASIC, but I need to know if I'm to consider using it for my requirements. Thanks and congratulations to those involved.

MOD · Post by **MOD** » Sep 15, 2011 18:22

I read this question several times in the last days. It would be a good idea to read some threads or use the searchbutton on the top of this site.

There's wx-c, GTK and WinAPI. Even designer exist: Visual WX-C Designer, GladeToBasic, FireFly....search for them.

Coolman · Post by **Coolman** » Sep 15, 2011 18:24

http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15796

http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17058

Drago · Post by **Drago** » Sep 15, 2011 18:38

Hoi,

Am I correct in saying that it does not provide an environment similar to Visual Basic?

to build a GUI there are several programs out there.
some listed above.

The most equivalent to VisualBasic at the moment is FireFly.
But FireFly is Windows Development only, like VisualBasic.

Grüße
Drago

Edit....: argl.....not FreeBasic is Windows only....... VisualBasic

Post by **fxm** » Sep 15, 2011 18:41

http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopi ... 980#160980

Aave · Post by **Aave** » Sep 15, 2011 19:17

So in short, FreeBASIC is like C or C++, i.e. it is not tied to any particular IDE and its "standard library" doesn't provide GUI widgets (though there is basic graphics support in FB), but the usage of a third-party library and possibly a visual designer makes it possible.

TJF · Post by **TJF** » Sep 15, 2011 19:45

mee wrote:Am I correct in saying that it does not provide an environment similar to Visual Basic?

Yes, thankfully there is no similar environment.

As mentioned in previous posts FreeBasic can be used with several GUI toolkits. At the beginning it isn't easy to find the right one matching your needs.

mee wrote:If so, how does one develop business applications with input fields, click boxes and so forth?

I do cross-platform business apps for windows and LINUX. I'm using

GTK toolkit
Glade3 interface designer
Geany IDE (UTF-8 support for I18N)
GladeToBac FreeBasic code sketcher

Find some screenshots here and here or see german and english GUI of GaldeToBac on different OSs.

agamemnus · Post by **agamemnus** » Sep 16, 2011 20:44

A thought:

If there were a few VERY EASY picker-upper projects with the various GUIs, I think Freebasic would greatly benefit...

----

We want the community to expand so that we get more developers, more libraries, and more acceptance in the programming community.

In the past few years there has been a lot of interest phone and tablet-based game development. User-friendly business applications of course need GUIs too, and that has always been a staple of commercial programming. Freebasic doesn't make it easy, though...

----

If we had easy GUI development in Freebasic (without fundamentally changing the language), it would bring a lot of users. It can be done if we reduce the amount of work needed to successfully initiate a new project that uses GUIs. Currently, that includes:

* Finding out that Freebasic actually allows GUI-based development.
* Finding the different GUIs, and comparing them.
* Setting up the GUI and creating basic/commonly-used GUI functions for the application/game.
* Building and/or discovering and documenting for oneself a function for the commonly-needed functions specific to the type of program being made -- in games, for instance, you might want pathfinding. In business apps, you might want a few basic SQL queries and some helper functions.
* Making the actual application/game!

It's a lot of work and hard to convince games/business app people to move to Freebasic when various parts of these steps have already been made easier in languages:
* In old languages such as C/C++, lots of STUFF and functions are already out there.
* In boutique new languages or even platforms for languages such as Javascript, specific and easy-to-use APIs have been made: restricts the type of program that can be made, but it makes that program 10-20 times faster to program.

TJF · Post by **TJF** » Sep 17, 2011 8:32

Yeah, good thought(s)!

agamemnus wrote:We want the community to expand so that we get more developers, more libraries, and more acceptance in the programming community.

h_2_bi and some header translations are my contributions to that goals up to now.

agamemnus wrote:If there were a few VERY EASY picker-upper projects with the various GUIs, I think Freebasic would greatly benefit...

According to my experience the most effective way to develop GUI apps in FB is to use GTK and Glade3 as GUI designer. But in this case you don't have one source code. You have to deal with *.ui, *.bas, *.bi, *.pot, *.po and *.mo files and a given folder structure. Unfortunately it's not easy to cover that in a 'VERY EASY picker-upper' project.

agamemnus wrote:If we had easy GUI development in Freebasic (without fundamentally changing the language), it would bring a lot of users. It can be done if we reduce the amount of work needed to successfully initiate a new project that uses GUIs.

This goal I aimed with my GladeToBac project. It reduces the amount of work for a new GUI project, ie by

creating a project file for the IDE
creating a code frame for the GUI to be extended
supporting the I18N process.

In an other thread

Lachie Dazdarian wrote:We need GTK and GladeToBac "I'm an bright" tutorial(s) and problem solved. Trust me on this.

I think Lachie is right. I tried to write a tutorial. But for any reason I'm not good in this matter. If someone will make a try, I can offer to check the result and give hints for improvement (before or after release -- as desired).

agamemnus wrote:* Setting up the GUI and creating basic/commonly-used GUI functions for the application/game.
* Building and/or discovering and documenting for oneself a function for the commonly-needed functions specific to the type of program being made -- in games, for instance, you might want pathfinding. In business apps, you might want a few basic SQL queries and some helper functions.

If we want to benefit from libraries we should avoid to cover them by wrappers. It's hard enough to keep headers up-to-date.

I think we should go for this goal by creating a well sorted pool of example code (similar to the german web side). And we need a better search function to reduce the output to specific libraries/authors/LOC#/....

vladimir777 · Post by **vladimir777** » Sep 17, 2011 23:04

I AGREE WITH ALL WHAT

agamemnus

SAID!!

agamemnus · Post by **agamemnus** » Sep 18, 2011 1:44

We should just steal the website code from the German website then. :D

agamemnus · Post by **agamemnus** » Sep 18, 2011 1:50

vladimir777 wrote:I AGREE WITH ALL WHAT

agamemnus

SAID!!

Thanks!

TJF wrote:Yeah, good thought(s)!

Thanks.

Maybe I will try helping with tutorials on setting up GTK and GladeToBac.. can you give me some links (forum links here, etc.) to get me started?

TJF wrote: If we want to benefit from libraries we should avoid to cover them by wrappers. It's hard enough to keep headers up-to-date.

Well, that's the ideal. But I want to wrap some library functions myself, usually.

TJF wrote: I think we should go for this goal by creating a well sorted pool of example code (similar to the german web side). And we need a better search function to reduce the output to specific libraries/authors/LOC#/....

We should just steal the website code from the German website. :P

vladimir777 · Post by **vladimir777** » Sep 18, 2011 3:37

I have got some GTK tutorials in PDF last night.

LINK IS HERE:

http://www.moreplovac.com/GTKBOOKS.zip 17MB

This one is GOOD:

GTK_drawing.pdf

vladimir777 · Post by **vladimir777** » Sep 18, 2011 3:41

And here are some example I was testing this morning:

http://www.moreplovac.com/GTK3TEST.zip

vladimir777 · Post by **vladimir777** » Sep 18, 2011 4:11

code depository like this one:

for all libraries:

http://www.vbcode.com/

and

snippets:

http://www.vbcode.com/Asp/code.asp?SortBy=SnippetsOnly

and ZIPs:

http://www.vbcode.com/Asp/code.asp?SortBy=ZipFilesOnly