tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-198409282011-07-07T16:05:37.913-04:00REALbasic comments and sample programs by Barry Traver.Barry Travernoreply@blogger.comBlogger341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1156362978841533412006-08-23T15:39:00.000-04:002006-11-14T09:49:39.666-05:00

Sorry that I haven't updated this blog recently, but my wife had double knee replacement surgery on June 15. I don't drive a car (I haven't done so for twenty years or more), and - until this past week - my wife hasn't been able to drive either, so life has been a bit difficult (and would have been a lot more difficult if it had been for the kind helpfulness of some very good friends).I've

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1150604472719555572006-06-17T23:57:00.000-04:002006-06-22T23:12:03.750-04:00

There's an improved version available with fewer bugs: HTML-RTF2.zip at http://traver.org/traverrb/.Changes include better handling of paragraphing and curly quotes (although mdash still needs some work for RTF).What does the program illustrate? Two things, primarily:(1) How to retrieve HTML code for a Web page at a certain URL, how to extract data from the Web page, and how to create HTML code

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1150457174915317852006-06-16T07:07:00.000-04:002006-06-16T07:26:14.973-04:00

HTML-RTF is a program I wrote for a friend who is the Web manager of a church denominational Web site. It make use of data retrieved at http://www.biblegateway.com/.OK. Here's what the program does (as I described it to him)...."You indicate Testament (O.T. or N.T.), Book, Chapter, Verses, and Translation (choice of five for now, KJV, NASB, NIV, NKJV, and ESV). You click on 'Make HTML.'"The

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1146908117796785962006-05-06T05:06:00.000-04:002006-05-06T05:35:21.200-04:00

There are two essential things you need to know about in order to do things on the Web using REALbasic: a function called HTTPSocket and a control called HTLMViewer.Here's the main difference between them. HTLMViewer allows you to View Web pages that have been written in HTML (or XHTML). You don't see the HTML (or XHTML) code itself: what you see is what you would see if you were to visit

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1145698641758346282006-04-22T05:04:00.000-04:002006-04-22T05:37:22.163-04:00

First, let me mention that I am planning to coninue TraverToys, but I will be making one change: TraverToys will be given more descriptive names. To call something "TraverToy2" or "TraverToy5" is not, I've found, very helpful. Many of the programs will continue to be fairly simple examples of REALbasic code, but in the future the names will hopefully give at least some hint as to what the

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1140093524976406232006-02-16T06:19:00.000-05:002006-05-04T22:13:48.716-04:00

As you know, I usually add something new to this blog every other day on the average. Why the delay this time? The main reason is that I have Verizon high-speed DSL (or, rather that I was without Verizon DSL for five days).I phoned Verizon on Thursday to let them know that I was unable to connect to the Internet. I was told that I would have service restored "in 48 to 72 hours." How does that

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1139417988080960602006-02-08T10:43:00.000-05:002006-04-03T15:16:21.053-04:00

Coming in the very near future is a program to "harvest" information (links, email addresses, and other informaiton) from Web pages. Actually, I already had a program written like that ready to upload, but I decided to rewrite it from scratch, since - although it works perfectly on some sites - it fails to get all the information on some other sites. (And I'm not talking about those sites that

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1138660512779326532006-01-30T17:29:00.000-05:002006-02-06T05:04:52.176-05:00

A new version of RB CodeHelper Lite is ready for people to beta-test, with some enhancements by Mark Nutter (read on!) and some bug fixes! I very much appreciate Mark's kind comments about the program as well as his his additions to the code.Below are comments from two recent emails from him (the ">" indicates his quoting of my previous email, and ">>" indicates my quoting of his original email)

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1138558031206033532006-01-29T13:05:00.000-05:002006-01-29T13:07:11.226-05:00

A couple of days ago I indicated that my diffpatch program (diffpatch114) did what it was intended to do, but it was neither user-friendly nor optimized for speed. Well, diffpatch124 is a slight improvement, but not much of one.Here's how I described the the program and its deficiencies:"diffpatch has two parts: "The diff [part] compares two versions of a document, generating a set of

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1138460322184572922006-01-28T09:36:00.000-05:002006-01-29T10:05:21.083-05:00

If you've been finding my RB Browser Editor for the Language Reference (RB-BE-LR) useful, you'll be glad to hear that a version enhanced by Steve Garman (RB-BL-LPsg) using code by Mars Saxman as a foundation is now available.The feedback I got on my program indicated that some people thought it would be nice if it had a Splitter so that the amount of space given to the browser and the editor

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1138272358626954442006-01-26T05:09:00.000-05:002006-01-28T09:58:55.900-05:00

I wrote diffpatch114 about two years ago, when I was a complete novice in REALbasic. Although the program in one sense seems to work flawlessly, in another sense it is a good example of bad programming, an illustration of what to avoid (and hence, I hope, a step toward better programming).diffpatch has two parts: "The diff [part] compares two versions of a document, generating a set of

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1138182168334788372006-01-25T03:51:00.000-05:002006-01-26T05:46:33.053-05:00

First, some background:"The standard Unix tools diff and patch are used to find the differences between text files and to apply the differences. These tools operate on a line by line basis using well-studied methods for computing the longest common subsequence (LCS)."--http://diffxml.sourceforge.net/My own diffpatch program in REALbasic (written about two years ago) does not use "well-studied

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1138121602346561472006-01-24T11:22:00.000-05:002006-01-24T11:53:25.026-05:00

TraverToy4 is very similar to TraverToy1. The difference is that TraverToy1 removes blank lines from source code, while TraverToy4 extracts the source code from the XML file and allows you to save it as a text file. (Important: No indenting is done. I hope to return to that topic sometime in the future.)XML is similar to HTML. In fact, an XHTML file is an XML file. The most important thing

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1137889065904005122006-01-21T18:46:00.000-05:002006-01-24T11:21:55.256-05:00

Sorry about the delay in posting a new entry, but I've kept my promise about trying to put up a new entry for every other day on the average. Here's the evidence:Saturday, December 17, 2005REALbasic (RB): A Cross-Platform LanguageSunday, December 18, 2005TraverToy1 and Removing Blank LinesTuesday, December 20, 2005TraverToy2 and Platform DeterminationTuesday, December 20, 2005CardTrick for

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1137535529970015542006-01-17T16:55:00.000-05:002006-01-21T19:17:00.756-05:00

I've made available an updated version of RB CodeHelper Lite. It had worked fine on other Projects which I had tried it on, but did not work properly with Thomas Tempelmann's helpful RB Project Tool.I think I've fixed CodeHelper for now, but - because of RS's lack of full documentation of their XML format - working with XML is like "the scientific method," complete with its disadvantages which

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1137383784683747312006-01-15T22:00:00.000-05:002006-01-17T17:05:59.473-05:00

RB CodeHelper Lite (described previously in this blog) is now available, but...It has NOT been extensively beta-tested. In particular, it has not been adequately tested on the Mac. If you have a Mac, use it at your own risk. In addition, your downloading it is conditional upon your wilingness to supply some feedback as to whether it works properly.I do not (yet) own a Mac, so - although RB

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1137109331545034412006-01-12T17:29:00.000-05:002006-01-15T22:57:27.350-05:00

Something that may be surprising is that the XML file for an RB Project contains no information on the indenting of the code. If you, for example, simply extract the source code information, everything is "flush" with the left margin, i.e., there is no indenting.So if you want to have properly indented code from the information in the XML files, you'll have to add the formatting yourself,

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1136962261226008052006-01-11T01:04:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:05:40.033-05:00

Previous blog entries have discussed some of the things that RB CodeHelper Lite can do. This entry attempts to consider briefly most of the other features (but be aware that although RB CodeHelper has seventy-seven different tasks it can perform, RB CodeHelper is expected to have even more: about twice that number!).RBCHL can display (properly indented) source code on the screen for the entire

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1136788623058930122006-01-09T01:31:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:06:19.966-05:00

Today we look at some other things that RB CodeHelper Lite can do.In an earlier entry, I explained how "Comment OLut Source and Add MsgBox" could be helpful if you wanted to create a Project that was a subset of an existing Project. "Comment Out Entire Source" can be useful if you need to build a new Project "from scratch," but want the code from an earlier Project to be easily accessible in

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1136755693204659662006-01-08T16:23:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:06:59.613-05:00

Now two versions of index.html. are available!One is a short version (with 700+ lines and links); the other is a long version (with 3000+ lines and links). Take your choice. The short version is very similar to the "Alpha" list in REALbasic 5.5.x; the long version is a complete list, with links to all of the 3000+ files in the Topics folder.I think the addition of the "alphabet bar" to the long

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1136613167958023842006-01-07T00:33:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:07:49.850-05:00

Attention: RB 2005 Users!Do you miss the alphabetical ("Alpha") index that you had available to you in REALbasic 5.5.x for the Language Reference? Do you dislike having to select (guess?) a Category and after that to select (guess again?) a Topic in order to find the information that you want to find? Then I have good news for you!I've prepared a 3000-line HTML file that will make an extensive

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1136564644170039092006-01-06T09:39:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:08:28.223-05:00

Last time I provided a list of the seventy-seven tasks that CodeHelper Lite can perform. In this entry, I will provide more of an explanation concerning some whose usefulness may perhaps be less obvious.Sometimes it is difficult to follow the logic or keep track of what's going on in long nested For/Next loops or complicated and lengthy If/End If statements. By the time you get to the "Next"

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1136415789459310222006-01-04T17:25:00.000-05:002006-02-06T05:05:51.596-05:00

I'm still looking for volunteers who would be willing to give me some feedback on a program I've been working on called CodeHelper. The program is still in the "development" stage, so you shouldn'texpect to see the final product yet. ("Development"-testing comes before "alpha"-testing, and that comes before "beta"-testing, so there's a way to go yet.) If you're interested, let me hear from

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135945453754870052005-12-30T06:55:00.000-05:002006-06-16T08:56:54.343-04:00

The purpose of this entry is to introduce RSS news feeds in general and some RB news feeds in particular. If you are aware of other worthwhile RB news feeds not listed here, please let me know, so that I can mention them in a future entry.Although people agree on what "RSS" news feeds are, there is no such agreement on what "RSS" stands for. There are at least three options: "Rich Site Summary

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135917917353280252005-12-29T23:10:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:10:32.746-05:00

Note at the end of each blog entry there is an indication of how many comments have been posted to that particular entry. Sad to say, most of them say "0 comments," but after the immediately previous entry there were "4 comments" (well, actually 2 comments plus 2 responses from me).If you click on the "... comments" you will be taken to an area where you can read comments people have posted or

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135694639413147922005-12-27T09:06:00.000-05:002007-03-05T03:26:56.956-05:00

Don't let the word "overload" bother you. We won't be "overdoing" anything. In RB, "overload" means giving more than one method (i.e., Function or Sub) the same name, but with a different number or different types of passed parameters. [Originally I had said "(or different return type)," but that was wrong - see the helpful comment by Will Leshner smong the comments to this blog entry.] Many

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135518805252623492005-12-25T08:14:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:11:57.596-05:00

You may be interested in some of the things planned for the future for discussion in this blog and, more particularly, interested in some of the programs whose source code serves as the basis for the discussion. If so, read on!Future TraverToys and/or longer programs are designed to illustrate how to perform these tasks:(1) download a particular file from a certain Web address(2) download all of

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135436193005230862005-12-24T08:36:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:12:33.926-05:00

This will be simple. I promise. It won't be "all you need to know" if you are a professional programmer working with XML files, but it will be "all you need to know" to understand the basics of how REALbasic's own XML format works. And you'll have all the foundation you'll need to understand many of the TraverToys. But it will be simple.After you've mastered this lesson, if you want further

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135259304107730222005-12-22T07:54:00.000-05:002006-01-11T06:20:44.370-05:00

Suppose you are in the RB IDE consulting the Language Reference. Suppose further that you're on a particular page and you would like to add your own comment to that page. Well, with the RB Browser/Editor for Language Reference (see yesterday's post), you can indeed add your own comment to that page. But there's a problem: how do you know which of the thousands of files that make up the HTML

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135203058481705762005-12-21T16:37:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:13:34.440-05:00

I've written a "quick and dirty" RB Browser/Editor that not only makes it easy to add your own annotations and code snippets to the Language Reference files so that your additions can be accessed from within the RB IDE, but also makes it easy to add links to relevant outside materials in HTML.Some Mac users may have discovered the book (in HTML format) I Declare: Calling External Functions in

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135125940003233252005-12-20T18:47:00.000-05:002006-01-15T23:03:17.090-05:00

Even though REALbasic is a cross-platform language, I sometimes write programs that work only in Microsoft Windows. That's because that's what my computer runs, and I used to program primarily in Visual Basic, a language very similar to REALbasic. I was accustomed to being able to use API calls to access the Windows operating system, so as to put to use the DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries) that

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1135105169613375662005-12-20T13:08:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:14:40.356-05:00

First, let me mention that I've replaced TraverToy1 with an improved version. I should have run TraverToy1 through my CodeHelper program before I uploaded the source code. The revised version eliminates Dimensioned but unused variables and alphabetizes the Dim statements and removed a bug that in effect removed the end-of-line markers in a processed file. So I thought I make make the topic of

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1134898168175190802005-12-18T03:41:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:15:13.216-05:00

TraverToy1 has arrived, and its purpose is show how to remove all blank lines from the source code. Before you use it, you have to save the RB Project you want to process as an XML file. (Cheer up you won't need to know anything about XML in order to understand the program.) An XML file is just a simple text file in a particular format. In it you'll see "tagged" text, similar to what you see in

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19840928.post-1134836435540519062005-12-17T10:09:00.000-05:002006-01-13T19:15:57.246-05:00

REALbasic (RB) is a cross-platform computer language used to develop programs for Windows, Mac, and Linux. In some ways, it is very similar to Visual Basic 6.0, except that an RB program will run without the hassle of a complicated installation procedure or the presence of a separate runtime file: you can put your program into a single file on a CD-ROM, and run it from there! "Where's the beef?"

Barry Travernoreply@blogger.com1