Hi

First let me apologise for my long absence. But real life was demanding (and still is ). Nevertheless. I now have a running Haiku nighly build gcc2 hybrid. So it is time for a new yab version 1.7 based on the unofficial version 1.6. Of course I will include a build factory again this time.

So, what are your most wanted features and bugfixes for yab?

cu

Jan

That is stupendous news, Jan__64!

1. Lelldorin has shown us that we don't actually need libncurses. Please get rid of it, I am not prepared to bundle that damn library with my apps again. I haven't seen anybody using yab to write command-line apps, so you can disable the commands that date back to the DOS graphics mode, or leave them in but quietly take them out of the documentation.

2. I'm not on a haiku machine right now (goofing off at work) but the commands to change fonts and font sizes/weights/etc show absolutely no effect on my setup (alpha3). Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but please take a look.

3. As I'm sure you know yabasic is being developed again. Perhaps you could cast an eye on what improvements are being made over there and incorporate them?

4. A compiler? <<ducking for cover>>

5. I am a big user of DATA statements. I like making my app as a single file, without a horde of supporting files that the user has to install. Right now the syntax is

RESTORE labelname
....
LABEL labelname

Now what I'd like to see would be

RESTORE "labelname"
....
LABEL "labelname"

Why? Because I want to do this:

IF <something> THEN
a$ = "label1"
ELSE
a$ = "label2"
END IF
RESTORE a$

Right now I have to do this with a whole clumsy series of SWITCH ... CASE commands - see my recent app FreeVerse for an example.

Changing that would entail digging into the yabasic core, I realise, but the syntax would be more like it is everywhere else in yab (my " key is getting worn out!) so that would be a good thing.

6. The other case where yab uses inconsistent syntax is in loading libraries, but I won't insist on that one.

7. Documentation, documentation, documentation! I'm willing to help with that. PM me if you are interested.

8. You may drop the BeOS and Zeta versions. Nobody cares anymore.

Let's see:

1. droping ncurses

I will look into that. Actually the build factory should handle that but I think that part was buggy. Doesn't Haiku come with libncurses as default? Thought so. Anyway, we can remove this legacy stuff.

2. problems changing fonts

I'll check that.

3. yabasic3 development

yabasic3 development is very interesting but slow. There is no stable version yet. Lua on the other hand is also interesting. With Lua BeAPI-bindings in place, I could add a yab compatibilty layer that allows easy porting.

4. A compiler? <<ducking for cover>>

Not possible in the current state. The build factory is the best I can offer.

5. RESTORE a$

This should be possible in some way. I'll have to check the sources for that.

6. The other case where yab uses inconsistent syntax is in loading libraries, but I won't insist on that one.

Same as 5.

7. Documentation, documentation, documentation! I'm willing to help with that. PM me if you are interested.

I am interested. However, I never really got any feedback on my extended documentation in the yab help (it is about 50% finished). Everybody seemed to use the short yab-commands file only.

8. Drop BeOS/ZETA support.

Done that already in yab 1.6.

1. Fix yab so that I can run a command-line yab ap from a shell script consistantly without yab locking up and stopping the script. I understand that there is some kind of race condition that causes this.

2. Allow the developer to chose the BEOS:APP_SIG and bind this with the app so that a bound application does not show yab in the deskbar.

jan__64 wrote:

Only if you install the beoscompatibility optional package, I think. My bog-standard TEST A3 installation that I use for testing my apps (separate partition from my MAIN and DEV installations) has libncurses.a for both GCC's, but no libncurses.so, but the MAIN installation on which I have installed everything I could find,including beoscompatibility, does have it.

While you were gone Lelldorin put up a variant of yab compiled without the ncurses dependency: haikuware.com/directory/view-details/dev...without-libncursesso
I've been using that one ever since.