VSX development update

Post by **Antonio Linares** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 7:43 am

We have contacted several VSX experts to get some help about how to implement resources editing from it.

Unfortunately nobody yet seems to know how to acomplish this "simple" task with VSX

In the meantime we keep sending emails to MS MVPs and VSX gurus and reviewing source code and VSX docs.

Rick Lipkin · Post by **Rick Lipkin** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:16 pm

To All

I know I sound like a broken record .. but if VSX works out .. the resource editor is all that I need.

IDE's are fine for those people that like a structured ( programming ) path .. for me, give me a good programmers editor ( lines and syntax hi-lite ), a project make file utility and a resource editor ..

When you start talking IDE's .. you are pretty much stuck with using that tool for ( their ) development ( eg .. visual xHarbour and the Xh product )..

I prefer to write my code .. how I like with the ( generic ) tools available ..

Please understand .. I am not trying to hurt anyones ideas or feelings .. there is room for both philosophys.

Rick Lipkin

Kleyber · Post by **Kleyber** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:33 pm

Rick Lipkin wrote:To All

I know I sound like a broken record .. but if VSX works out .. the resource editor is all that I need.

IDE's are fine for those people that like a structured ( programming ) path .. for me, give me a good programmers editor ( lines and syntax hi-lite ), a project make file utility and a resource editor ..

When you start talking IDE's .. you are pretty much stuck with using that tool for ( their ) development ( eg .. visual xHarbour and the Xh product )..

I prefer to write my code .. how I like with the ( generic ) tools available ..

Please understand .. I am not trying to hurt anyones ideas or feelings .. there is room for both philosophys.

Rick Lipkin

Rick,

That's why I'm using at the moment the xDevStudio, which is a tool that contains a very good editor (syntax hi-lite, showing structures and a good help), and you can organize all files in projects, creating your own make file utility and the one thing that it does not have is a resource editor, where my option today is the "old" Borland Resource Workshop, but it has been useful to me. But if it's possible to use another product which can accelerate our development, it's not a bad idea to take a look on it.

Let's wait,

Best regards

José Luis Sánchez · Post by **José Luis Sánchez** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 7:37 pm

Rick: What editor are you using ?

Kleyber: Is there an english version of xDevStudio ?

Regards,

Kleyber · Post by **Kleyber** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 7:43 pm

Kleyber: Is there an english version of xDevStudio ?

Hi Jose,

At the moment no, but there are plans to have English and Spanish versions of xDevStudio as soon as possible.

Regards,

Post by **Antonio Linares** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:07 pm

We do use and we strongly recommend UEStudio. It works simply great as a source code editor and as a project manager including automatic make (works with FWH, FWPPC and building LIBs).

We are reviewing VSX just to see if we can get a built-in resources editor 32 bits, besides the source code editor and the project manager.

Rick Lipkin · Post by **Rick Lipkin** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 12:35 am

Jose

I still use the ole 16 bit Borland Resource editor .. still works great ( works even with 32 bit Vista ) but is showing its age .. especially if 64 bit becomes more of a player .. 16 bit will no longer be supported under 64 bit.

Until then I have googled 'resource' editors .. have previewed a lot of them .. all seem to have one flaw or another

Rick Lipkin

José Luis Sánchez · Post by **José Luis Sánchez** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:07 am

Kleyber:
I have tried xDevStudio, and it's a very good editor. My problem it's about the language, I don't understand portuguese. I think that an english version of the editor will be a good solution.

Rick:
I use PellesC as resource editor, it's the best free resource editor I've found. PellesC it's a C compiler, and the RE is part of the IDE, and you can download from www.smorgasbordet.com/pellesc/ . There is another one that seems also be very good, called ResEdit, and can be downloaded from http://www.resedit.net
As a code editor I use MED - http://www.med-editor.com - and HippoEDIT - http://www.hippoedit.com -. HE as the best autocomplete feature I've ever seen, and this feature is very helpfull. The problem with HE is that uses a xml syntax definition to highlight the code, and my syntax file makes the editor crashes with some files. I'm talking with the developer to solve this, because HE is the best editor I've ever used. I'm also trying UltraEdit, but I don't have more time to learn to use some features.

What code editor are you using ?

Regards,
José Luis

Regards,

Wed Jan 09, 2008 11:06 am

José Luis Sánchez wrote:I use PellesC as resource editor, it's the best free resource editor I've found.

It seems that RES created with PellesC resource editor have some problems to be used with Borland C++.

EMG

norberto · Post by **norberto** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 12:52 pm

hi, patrick´s ide dont work?? he says dont compile with last fwh because dont have this??? i dont understand...

http://www.geocities.com/ksfanhk/index.htm

quote

Jkide32.exe is still built with the modified xHarbour 0.99.70 CVS (29/12/06) and FWH 2.4 because I don't have any newer FWH release.

endquote

Rick Lipkin · Post by **Rick Lipkin** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 1:38 pm

Jose, Enrico and Norberto

Jose .. I use xMate as my project manager, make utility and editor ..

Enrico .. I have problems like you with the Pelles C resource editor .. as you mentioned .. .res has problems and if you use .rc .. you have to delete out the #include statements

Norberto .. Patrick's IDE has virture .. however ( like all ide's ) I like to write my own code and not have the resource editor write it's 'methods' in the .prg every time I lay down a button ...

Thanks
Rick Lipkin

Post by **Antonio Linares** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 1:58 pm

Roberto,

Patrick can buy upgrades from www.fivetechsoft.com

norberto · Post by **norberto** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 4:16 pm

Antonio, sorry, now i understand.

TimStone · Post by **TimStone** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 7:42 pm

Although I have used Resource Workshop and Pelles for building RC files, I have found that its often productive to manually edit these files.

I wanted consistency so I started going through my RC file ( about 5000 lines ) and came to some important realizations:

1) It is much easier to align the controls manually. The "eye" is not always accurate, and being off by a few pixels can be distracting. I made sure that control sizes were all the same height, text static controls were also the same height, and vertical and horizontal fields were aligned. It is also easy to maintain consistant vertical spacing between controls. The end result was nicer.

2) I actually found extra resources that didn't need to be in the file ...

3) It was easier to strip out the Borland resources that I didn't want.

4) The tab order is decided by the order of the controls in the .RC file. I was able to make sure all dialogs now have proper tab order which will be quite pleasing to my clients.

A powerful text editor is very helpful in scanning the file and accomplishing quick work of the editing tasks. I happen to use, and like, Multi Edit but I've also tried the demo of UE and it is very good. I'm just used to Multi-Edit so I decided not to switch at this time.

If someone has a good resource for RC file control information, perhaps you could post it. Somewhere there is probably a paper on this.

Happy coding ...

Otto · Post by **Otto** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 8:12 pm

No doubt VSX is not the alternative for the “IDE” solutions we use at the moment – right now.
But I have the feeling that VSX will become MSWORD for the programmer craft within very short time.

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