Mintoris Basic and RFO Basic for Android.

[pdablue]

Hi,

I have been exploring both Mintoris Basic and RFO Basic for Android.
Both have a powerful set of Basic Language commands. What each
one needs is a Visual Designer so you can design a screen layout easily.

Basic4ppc had a Visual Designer where you could design a screen easily
and put controls where you wanted them.

Does anyone know of a Visual Designer that could be used for screen
layout that could be adapted to Mintoris Basic and RFO Basic?

I have been trying to look for some thing that would work but I may
have to try and write one myself. Does anyone have any suggestions?

The attached photo is of a program written in Mintoris Basic. I had to
layout the screen by hand and some type of Visual Designer would
speed things up greatly.

Basic4ppc and Windows Mobile's biggest advantage was speed when it
came to developing an app quickly from start to finish. I have not found
anything else that is as quick on Android or IOS. Another advantage was
being able to load up everything you need on one device and you could
visually design your screen layout, write your code and run it.

A big advantage was being able to take the device with you and write
code anywhere. You could take your mobile device with you and work
any type of job and still gain valuable programming experience. You
could be in a job completely outside of your career field and still stay
involved in programming on a daily basis. Over time you could write
apps and create enough content to fill up a webpage. If you look at
many job descriptions you can easily create a webpage that rivals
the technical content of what you see advertised in many jobs and
in some cases you can do a whole lot better. The ability to do everything
on a hand held device while working any type of job may make the
traditional programming job obsolete.

Basic4ppc and Windows Mobile provided a programming experience 10 years
ago that may not exist now. If Mintoris Basic and RFO Basic could match
the speed from start to finish that Basic4ppc and Windows Mobile had that
would be a benefit to all Basic programmers.

If someone could write a Visual Designer that could be used with Mintoris
Basic or RFO Basic they would have an App they could sell to their programmer
communities. The last time I checked the PlayStore, Mintoris had about 2,000
downloads and RFO had about 100,000 downloads.

RFO has a Graphics Library available and an App that can compile your code to
an .apk file on a hand held device. Mintoris is working on being able to compile
an App to an .apk file on a hand held device. They both need some type of
Visual Designer that can run on a hand held device.

When Windows Mobile went away, having to go back and use a laptop or desktop
to write an App was like going back to the Stone Age...! The future is going
mobile, there has to be a way to get what is currently available today up to the
same speed level that Basic4ppc and Windows Mobile had 10 years ago when it
comes to writing Apps on a hand held device.

 

[Beja]

Why would you like to use these languages, if I may ask?

 

[Peter Simpson]

Why would you like to use these languages, if I may ask?

A better question would have been, why are you asking that question on this forum, so I'll ask it?

@pdablue why are you asking that question on this forum, also why aren't you asking that question on the Mintoris Basic official forum http://www.mintoris.com/forum/index.php?

 

[Beja]

well apart from the fact it's not as good as this

Hhhhh. You made my day!

I beg to differ Pete.. Freedom of speech in the open chat forum.. Another reason is to make a free ad for B4A by showing the stark contrast between a superior too like B4A and a command line languages that's so poor it lacks basic functionality of B4A.. A free tool where you must publish your source code according to GBL agreement. How do you submit a commercial game app with its source code?

 

[Peter Simpson]

Hiya @Beja
Freedom of speech is one thing, but I just couldn't see myself jumping on for example a Microsoft forum and asking fellow developers if they can help me with an Apple solution that has absolute nothing to do with Microsoft.

I'm all for free tools, well good quality free tools. I use lots of free tools including B4R for my house alarm project and B4J for other things, but I wouldn't jump on another website to as a question about them .

That's just me though, but hey @pdablue asked.

Just my opinion, freedom of speech and all that
It's 00:30 so I'm going out for a quick bike ride...

 

[Cableguy]

Along the lines of @Peter Simpson , you don't go to a republican'' meeting to as about democrats privileges or benefits of being a democrat. It has nothing to to with freedom of speech...

 

[LucaMs]

Does anyone know of a Visual Designer that could be used for screen
layout that could be adapted to Mintoris Basic and RFO Basic?

No, but I can recommend a development tool for Android in Basic language that is assoutably better than those:

https://www.b4x.com/b4a.html


!!!

 

[Star-Dust]

Hi,

I have been exploring both Mintoris Basic and RFO Basic for Android.
Both have a powerful set of Basic Language commands. What each
one needs is a Visual Designer so you can design a screen layout easily.

Basic4ppc had a Visual Designer where you could design a screen easily
and put controls where you wanted them.

Does anyone know of a Visual Designer that could be used for screen
layout that could be adapted to Mintoris Basic and RFO Basic?

I have been trying to look for some thing that would work but I may
have to try and write one myself. Does anyone have any suggestions?

The attached photo is of a program written in Mintoris Basic. I had to
layout the screen by hand and some type of Visual Designer would
speed things up greatly.

I'm sorry I only know B4A, I did not even know there were other languages.

I agree with the other comments .. You have to ask in the forum of those languages

 

[LucaMs]

You have to ask in the forum of those languages

... and drink some coffees

 

[agraham]

You seem to want what I want, a way to develop applications to run on a device without needing a server and to be able to actually develop on the device itself. I too have looked at those Basics but decided to do my own thing that gets me closer to the original Basic4ppc capability of being able to develop the same code on both desktop and device, and gets me learning webby things as well, something I have studiously avoided for the last twenty years.

It's probably not what you want but I am nearly done with developing a program (written in Basic4ppc of course )that takes a Basi4ppc project and translates the designer code into HTML5/Javascript/CSS so it can run in a browser on the desktop or device. The programming will however need to be done in JavaScript but can be done either conveniently on the desktop using something like Notepad++, desktop browsers have impressive developer debugging nowadays, or a bit less conveniently on a device using a programming editor from the Play Store such as Quoda.

I am developing it on my own private version 9.71 of Basic4ppc Desktop but I see no reason why it won't work on version 6.90, though I haven't tried it. I have implemented menus and all the intrinsic Basic4ppc controls, and you can always hack the generated files if you need something else. It is of course sand boxed in a browser so it won't be as capable as a B4A app. You are welcome to a copy to play with once I consider it mature enough to see the outside world.

To get the original Basic4ppc experience you will need a fine point active capacitive stylus of which I have several. The cheap Chinese ones on eBay seem to be a bit low powered and don't work on all touch screens. iBiopens seem to work well as do a couple I bought from Amazon branded with the unknown name of Yizhet.

EDIT: A bit of clarification on the image which is just testing various bits and pieces. The big square yellow box is a canvas to draw on, the horizontal half blue thing is a range slider as HTML5 doesn't have a NumUpDown and the horizontal black thing is a colour picker.

 

[epsharp]

I am developing it on my own private version 9.71 of Basic4ppc Desktop but I see no reason why it won't work on version 6.90, though I haven't tried it.

WOW! How did you get from 6.9 to 9.7?

I also miss the days of being able to run the same program on both the desktop and device, but I have developed massive desktop applications and lately have been looking at way of porting some of these to B4A. I write business applications instead of widgets and don't necessarily need all the bells and whistles of B4A. B4PPC works just fine at maintaining database tables and MySql can be made to do most of the hard work for you. I even have a program that will generate a complete, error free program in B4PPC including GUI to Add/Change/Delete a MySql table just be giving it the table name.

If I could just port it to B4A!

 

[agraham]

WOW! How did you get from 6.9 to 9.7?

In return for my contributions to Basic4ppc Erel allowed me to have the source code for my own private use when he discontinued it as a product and I have been continuously developing, and using, it ever since. Although the IDE looks much the same and the underlying language parsing is not altered it has significant differences internally to make it a desktop only IDE and with a much improved Form, debugger and typed variable support amongst many other changes.

In fact the program I referred to above, B4P2HJC (Basic4ppc to Html, JavaScript and CSS) will run under v6.9 with a couple of changes to the .sbp file header made in an external editor.

I also miss the days of being able to run the same program on both the desktop and device

What I have decided to do is to produce app GUIs with my B4P2HJC utility which can be programmed further in JavaScript and can run in a browser on both device and desktop. This is now complete and works well on my Android device under various browsers. I am investigating running the same code under NW.js ( https://nwjs.io/ ) which will look more like a true desktop app and remove the sand-boxing of a browser allowing me to add additional code to do all the normal desktop things like access the local file system and networking. Later I may look for a more conventional HTML/CSS creation facility but for now B4P2HJC works well for what I want to do.
https://nwjs.io/
I have found and tried https://github.com/agracio/edge-js (for some reason I can't make this a link here like I should be able to!) which allows JavaScript code running under Node.js to access .NET Framework assemblies and compile embedded C# code at runtime in a pretty seamless manner so my C# skills can be reapplied and I get the best of both worlds.

 

[Beja]

In return for my contributions to Basic4ppc Erel allowed me to have the source code for my own private use when he discontinued it as a product and I have been continuously developing, and using, it ever since. Although the IDE looks much the same and the underlying language parsing is not altered it has significant differences internally to make it a desktop only IDE and with a much improved Form, debugger and typed variable support amongst many other changes.

In fact the program I referred to above, B4P2HJC (Basic4ppc to Html, JavaScript and CSS) will run under v6.9 with a couple of changes to the .sbp file header made in an external editor.


What I have decided to do is to produce app GUIs with my B4P2HJC utility which can be programmed further in JavaScript and can run in a browser on both device and desktop. This is now complete and works well on my Android device under various browsers. I am investigating running the same code under NW.js ( https://nwjs.io/ ) which will look more like a true desktop app and remove the sand-boxing of a browser allowing me to add additional code to do all the normal desktop things like access the local file system and networking. Later I may look for a more conventional HTML/CSS creation facility but for now B4P2HJC works well for what I want to do.
I have found and tried https://github.com/agracio/edge-js (for some reason I can't make this a link here like I should be able to!) which allows JavaScript code running under Node.js to access .NET Framework assemblies and compile embedded C# code at runtime in a pretty seamless manner so my C# skills can be reapplied and I get the best of both worlds.

Hi Andrew,
So the absence was for good ☺
Any plans for B4P2HJC?