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 Topic # 1340 |
Program conversion from HotPaw |
06/01/2006 @ 19:12
by Tony
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I am very new to isiBasic. I would like to convert a 47k program :-O from Hotpaw basic into iziBasic. Anyone have any recommendations to make things easier for me?
Thanks!
-Tony |
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Answer n° 11
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08/01/2006 @ 23:33
by Ktimaster
visitor
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Aldweb... I would Vote to Publish it...
I think this will do *almost* anything Tony needs to construct his program. Even though the program that Tony is making will be lengthy... It will work. And I found no bugs in it at all |
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Answer n° 12
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10/01/2006 @ 18:40
by aldweb
visitor
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Good news that you did not find any bug in this PP applet Because I wrote it quickly and did not test it much (just the small sample I sent you).
I was planning to release it "officially" in the next release of iziBasic. Meanwhile, it is of course available for all nice requesters here.
And I agree 100% with you: for Tony's needs, if he feels like working more in a Palm optimized way than a generic Basic way, it would fit *all* (why did you write *almost* ?) his needs.
Cheers,
aldweb |
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Answer n° 13
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12/01/2006 @ 04:47
by Tony
visitor
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I need to be honest with you guys here since you have both been so helpful. I have been doing a lot of thinking in the last few days on whether I should go forward with the port to iziBasic.
The reason is when I learned of the array limitation I lost a lot of my enthusiam to do the work involved. My program makes extensive use of arrays. Here is a cut and paste of all my DIM statements:
dim team(2,4,2),bvs(2,4,2)
dim hand(2,9,2),bxy(2,3,2)
dim her(12,2),ded(12,2),t(2,4,4)
dim res(40,2),dis(40,2),h(2,9,2)
dim bbt$(23),b11$(10),ml$(99)
dim av(3,2,2),b(2,6),cp(6,4,2)
dim n$(3),a$(3),suit(2,4,10)
As you can see, there is a good amount of arrays used and as you can imagine they are referenced extensively throughout the code. Even using a subroutine to calculate all the indexing involved, I would have to put a lot calls to these subroutines everywhere.
If that isn't enough, it looks like I will also have to redraw all my bitmaps manually again, or manually enter in a lot of hex values somewhere in order to reproduce my graphics.
Not sure where to go from here, got a lot more thinking to. And again to be completely upfront with you guys I am even giving consideration to other languages at this point.
However, Alweb please send me that PP applet you guys are talking about. Maybe it might influence my decision. I still see a lot of potential for iziBasic of course, and I definitely like the support. 
As always, thank you for your responses and patience.
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Answer n° 14
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13/01/2006 @ 09:45
by aldweb
visitor
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Hello Tony
I have been doing a lot of thinking in the last few days on whether I should go forward with the port to iziBasic.
Checking if it is worth before going to much ahead is a very good thinking. You are right to balance pros and cons of porting.
And again to be completely upfront with you guys I am even giving consideration to other languages at this point.
Not one development tool fits all needs (cost, speed of development, execution speed of application, result... see conclusion on this page as from a very constructive exchange of e-mails with George Henne from NSBasic Corporation), so it is a very good approach to find the best one for your project.
1- Extensive use of arrays
2- Redraw bitmaps
Sure I can send you the PP applet (during the week-end, please drop me an e-mail to ease my time... mailbox full everyday...) but it will not overcome your 1st issue and it is not a "miraculous" solution.
As a suggestion/curiosity, rather than porting an existing application which was developped with another development tool, why don't you start a new project with iziBasic?
What are the reasons for you to migrate it from Hotpaw Basic?
Cheers,
aldweb |
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Answer n° 15
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13/01/2006 @ 17:35
by Tony
visitor
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Alweb, I would be happy to start a new project with iziBasic, once I complete this one.
The biggest reason I had for wanting to move away from Hotpaw was a program size constraint. Let me try to explain. In Hotpaw you can create very large programs in memopad by “Including” as many memos as you like. The problem arises when you want to distribute your program by making a single PRC out of all those memos. The PRC maker only creates a PRC out of the first memo! As a result you are limted to a PRC program size of 4k. 
There IS the option to write the Hotpaw program using the PEDIT editor. This will allow memos, and as resulting PRC, of up to 32k in size. Better, but still too small for my 47k program. I tried stripping my source of everything not absolutely necessay (including comments and indentations) and it still weighed in at 35k or so. Very frustrating. 
So I started to look around for another language that: 1) would be easy to port to, preferably another Basic , 2) can handle very large programs, 3) as a bonus, did not require a separate runtime to be install. As you can see, izibasic looked very promising!
You know, it just occurred to me that my conversations here may have taught me enough to solve my Hotpaw problem! As you stated, it's not good practice to have the READ/DATA and bitmap values in the source code, and that it is possible to put it all in the resource file. In fact, I didn't even know the structure of a resource file until I started to have this conversation with you. You encouraged me to look read up on the subject.
Now that I have learned about resource files, I can see that it might be possible that my progam WILL fit in a 32k box if I pull out all of that hardcoded data from the source and put it in a resource file instead. Of course, I will still have to redraw all the bitmaps this way. But at this point it may be the best option for me to find closure with this project.
Thank you Alweb for giving me all these alternatives and more options to think about. Even if I do finish this project in Hotpaw, I am sure I would like to work with iziBasic in the near future.
By the way, thanks to your site I also have been giving PP sneak peeks from time to time since the execution speed is so amazing and since the Pascal language seems almost as concise as basic. I wonder, how hard would a Basic (Hotpaw) port to Pascal (PP) be?? Hmmm.... 
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Answer n° 16
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13/01/2006 @ 21:58
by aldweb
visitor
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Hello Tony,
I am verry happy that we helped you to find areas of improvement for your project.
iziBasic is a hobby for me, not a job, so it is never my objective to push iziBasic sales, it is more important to me that you are happy in improving your game project whatever development tool you use.
Will we get a chance to get to see a screenshot or a preview of your game?
Cheers,
aldweb
@+
aldweb |
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Answer n° 17
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09/11/2006 @ 19:11
by Tony
visitor
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I'm back! Remember me?
WARNING: The following is friendly banter and should not be taken seriously...
Aldweb, I am mad at you.
As you can see, I have shelved my little game project for many months now. After looking at iziBasic way back when and running into limitations with arrays (and a few other things) I looked around for another language and none of them felt right for this project as much as IziBasic did. So, for the time being, I moved on to other projects.
Now I am interested in picking up my little card game where I left off all those many months ago and looked around again for something to port it to from HowPaw basic. And once again, all roads led me back to iziBasic. I simply can't get around the convenience of programming directly on the Palm (in colored syntax!) and the ultimate prize of a standalone app.
I like iziBasic.
I want to use iziBasic.
I want to embrace izibasic.
But, here is the part where I am mad at you comes in.
After all this time, iziBasic's array limitations are still around!
What have you been doing in the last 10 months??
And to make matters worse, I read more of iziBasic reference manual and I discovered that the free version only has single letter variable names!  I can't port my large program with that!
Sure, I can register and then get longer names (although it would be a pain to rename everything to have a "%" in front of them  ) but the array problem is still there.
I thought of an elegant solution to the array problem similar to your DIM2 example, but it will require something similar to Basic's DEF FN statement. Does iziBasic have anything like that?
Anyway, sorry about this rant. And that's all this really is, a rant. Just to show you have friendly I really am, I signed up for your email newsletters. 
-Tony
P.S. Is the offer still around to have you guys look at some of my code to see if iziBasic is a good fit for it or not? I am even considering PP at this point to use IT'S array capabilities. Pascal is similar to Basic in syntax. Uh, right? |
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Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /web5/aldweb/www/aldweb_com/www/thread.php on line 497
Answer n° 18
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11/11/2006 @ 19:40
by aldweb
visitor
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Hello Tony,
I'll have just one overall comment:
Porting any source code from HotPaw basic to any other development tool will never be something like having the other tool just and magically interpret or compile the original HotPaw source code and getting an immediate working result.
Would you try to get into the philosophy of how iziBasic (or PP, or OnBoardC, or PocketC, or whatever) was designed, then you would for sure succeed to port your game.
If you look at my copyleft applications, like NekoCat, Matches, or Numerus, you will see that they were originally written for HSPascal, then ported to PP, then to HB++ (Matches only), finally to iziBasic without any special issue.
Now, why not just keep your game working in HotPaw?
Cheers,
@+
aldweb |
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