Getting the ball rolling. Which VB6 projects are you working on?

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Making progress, slow but sure.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

My progress is slow and nothing new visually to show for it, but progress being made. Anyone else up to anything interesting with something for us to see and hear about?

[Erwin69]

Balancing work with adapting to live in a new country. (View on the Pacific, swimming pools and tropical vegetation from my desk.) Released service packs with a series of bugfixes for two applications last week. Started work on some new features for the 3rd app. Nothing really exciting from a software (development) perspective to be honest. Sun, sea, swimming pools, golf and meeting new people great!

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Balancing work with adapting to live in a new country. (View on the Pacific, swimming pools and tropical vegetation from my desk.) Released service packs with a series of bugfixes for two applications last week. Started work on some new features for the 3rd app. Nothing really exciting from a software (development) perspective to be honest. Sun, sea, swimming pools, golf and meeting new people great!

Sounds as if you should be joining the "Is everybody having fun? " thread. You sound as if you are.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Still completing my Steampunk Clock/Calendar shown above, no new pictures. I have a task list and it always seems to have fifteen or so tasks on it, regardless of mow many I complete and cross off as being DONE. I count again and there are STILL fifteen. Is this normal? Should we ever aim to complete a project?

[DrBobby]

15 is still pretty impressive! I like to joke at work that R&D stands for rewrite and development because projects seem to go on until the end of time.

[Niya]

I have a task list and it always seems to have fifteen or so tasks on it, regardless of mow many I complete and cross off as being DONE. I count again and there are STILL fifteen. Is this normal?

This is a most normal thing. I have NEVER known ANY project to reach a state where it couldn't stand any improvement.

[xiaoyao]

C # has been developed for many years, and many programmers like to use it to write various kinds of tool software. Recently, the programmers who have always pursued "Talk is Cheap, Show me the code" have started a new round of "whole work". On a whim, one of the software engineers, Bartosz Korczynski, rebuilt Visual Basic 6, which had been scrapped by Microsoft 16 years earlier, in C.VB6) IDE. For him personally, it was initially just out of interest to develop a "fun toy project". Unexpectedly, as soon as the project was completed and open sourced on GitHub (https://github.com/BAndysc/AvaloniaVisualBasic6), it hit the headlines of HN (Hacker News) and attracted the attention of a large number of developers. Even many people left messages, "I hope this project, which is regarded as a small toy by the author, will continue, because I still have to interact with a very large VB6 code base on a regular basis.".

[xiaoyao]

This is a most normal thing. I have NEVER known ANY project to reach a state where it couldn't stand any improvement.

So twinbasic says it will take a year or two, and we don't know when it will come out, and it is far away.

[xiaoyao]

According to Bartosz Korczynski, "If recreating old user interfaces is a hobby, it's my hobby.. it's all about fun and nostalgia!"! This is a toy project, there is no other use, but he did not know that this hobby also solves many people's pain points.

Why does Microsoft have to give up VB6 and choose Visual Basic. NET? Daniel Tallentire, a former senior scientist at Microsoft, responded earlier to Quora, a question-and-answer community, saying: ".NET solves many of the underlying problems with VB6.". The Microsoft did not want to maintain too many different languages, and eventually the VB. NET prevailed.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

... (https://github.com/BAndysc/AvaloniaVisualBasic6)

Yes xiao, we saw that but THIS thread is for what YOU are doing, not a general news channel for the VB6 world. If YOU are doing something interesting feel free to post a picture. Otherwise post elsewhere.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Putting it back on track.

I tried to integrate a very pretty VB6 calendar from an open source project with little success, an error or two stymied me, so in the end I just added some drop down comboboxes to allow selection of the date/time for five separate alarms.

[Shaggy Hiker]

This is a thread for things YOU are working on, not a thread for speculating about things others could do. Start a new thread for that.

[fafalone]

This week I made a small video player UserControl with the easy to use IMFPMediaPlayer interface. I'm planning on releasing a VB6 version in the next couple days, right now there's a preview for tB users on the tB Discord.



Also I recently made a shell extension version of my ZoneStripper app. It adds a right click menu option to remove the "mark of the web".. the NTFS alternate data stream that Windows and Office use to identify a file as 'from the internet', which must be removed from macro-enabled Office docs before they can be used.

Really needs a 64bit version so will have to be tB only. You can finally easily make shell extensions again thanks to tB. Even easier, because you can skip the vtable swapping most VB6 examples use to return the correct hresult, since tB has Err.ReturnHResult to give full control.



https://github.com/fafalone/ZoneStripperExt

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Really good as always! I will be using/testing that video player on my desktop as soon as you release it - and no doubt using some of its internals. I do have to remake my old audio player and it could do with in-built video capability, which it used to farm out to WMP in the old .js version..

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Trialling TwinBasic since the recent proof of maturity found in the compilation of PhotoDemon. 200,000 lines of VB6 code compiled by TwinBasic without error. I have no choice now, given that VB6 is over 20 years old now and TwinBasic in mature form HAS arrived, the future is clear.

So, time to test one of my programs, one that I care about, my steampunk dock known as SteamyDock.

Steamydock is written in VB6 using a transparent form that fills the whole screen, using GDI+ to extract large PNGs and adjust to two much smaller sizes. These are then stored in two scripting dictionaries and animation is achieved by monitoring the mouse position using APIs and repainting the screen using GDI+ on a small enough interval to achieve animation effects.

My program is about 10,000 lines of code, has three minor VB6 forms that are used to display the splash and 'about' images as well as provide a native VB6 menu. The running footprint is reasonably small with 48,000K memory usage (lots of PNGs), the disc footprint is even smaller at 700kb and the CPU usage is neglible <0.03% when idle on an old core 2duo. It compiles in 3-4 seconds.

In TWinBasic, it errored, pointing out a single failure on my part to declare a variable as a long in my splash form, where I had omitted OPTION EXPLICIT. Apart from that no errors at all. Compiled immediately, no discernible delay.

Set the output dir to program files x86 and recompiled, replacing the binary that I use as my standard dock on a daily basis.
It worked, no issue at all, operating exactly as the VB6 version, [redacted] I am using the community version.

So here is a GIF of the dock operating as compiled with TB.



The running footprint has doubled though still reasonably small with 119,000K memory usage - I understand that the the binary includes a lot more than just my compiled code so I am happy enough with that, the disc footprint is now 2,700kb and the CPU usage is very similar though I have not yet done enough analysis to prove anything... I'll keep an eye on it and report back but I'll assume it is the same.

It seems to operate with the same limitations of my code, especially when dragging a dock entry to another location, the re-ordering of the icons requiring a repopulation of the underlying dictionaries still takes the same amount of time (slow). The program methodology requires a significant restructure, no fault of TwinBasic. What I suppose I am saying is that I am not seeing any magical perforrmance benefit from TB. It just runs as it should.

So far, no experience of the IDE, I need to dip my toe in further.

Expectation: Errors, no compilation.

Result: Worked flawlessly. I am VERY impressed. This program would be a candidate for 64 bit conversion/compilation later, when I test the full version of TwinBasic.


I will keep two separate code bases for Steamydock for the meantime and keep them in synch. We'll see how long that lasts. I will be coding VB6-style for a while and not taking advantage of language improvements until I feel confident. Give me time! I have to adopt TwinBasic in my mind and let VB6 go... that will be a mental struggle of signficant proportion.

If you choose to try Steamydock with TwinBasic, be aware that Steamydock's code was a learning task for me. If I was coding it now I would have used a very different approach across the board.

[fafalone]

Great to see such a complex and gorgeous graphics program work flawlessly in tB!

It worked, no issue at all, operating exactly as the VB6 version, no discernible change except for the tiny watermark in the right hand corner that I can live with as I am using the community version.

Where? I don't see one and there shouldn't be any watermarks in 32bit at all. 64bit displays a splash screen on load, but doesn't watermark forms or UCs either.


(PS-- IIRC, you use RC6 for some/all of it? Won't be able to make a 64bit version unless/until Olaf makes one of RC6.)

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Apologies. I currently have a watermark due to one or other VB program I am running and I had assumed it was TB. It isn't.

Steamydock does not use RichClient at all and no VB6 controls except for menus. It only uses GDI+ and VB6 logic.

At the time I started Steamydock I was trying to build an application that might have been built at the turn of the century, so using GDI+ seemed the right thing to do. A learning tool.

The advantage of being able to build a 32 bit version of my program using a supported and improving/ growing TwinBasic), with potential language improvements is a draw in itself. For me the promise of 64 bit operation is just a prowess-badge and some degree of future-proofing.

My 32bit apps will benefit the most from the impending multi-threading language features and I suppose in the longer term some potential for multi-platform capability, though SteamyDock making a great deal of use GDI+ and Windows APIs might not easily make the jump to another o/s. A conversion to RC then is on the cards but I will have to await Olaf's Magnum Opus Part II, a 64 bit version of Rich Client and then hopefully, an implementation for multiplatforms too.

A lot to hope for! I remember the chats we all had a few years ago, where everyone was very disparaging about the future of "legacy" VB6. Well, here is the future and it feels rosy!

[fafalone]

If 64bit is in the cards, or even might be, I recommend provisioning even when you're working in VB6; you can add LongPtr and conditional pointer size constants for any pointer math. Then it's even easier.

Pure GDI+ will have little trouble going to x64... I've put a lot of work into easing the process; now how I upgrade is just comment out all the 32bit defs and let WDL take over; it's quicker to do that then resolve any signature differences than re-do all the defs again. You really get used to rarely needing to go searching for something from the Windows API.

[fafalone]

Really good as always! I will be using/testing that video player on my desktop as soon as you release it - and no doubt using some of its internals. I do have to remake my old audio player and it could do with in-built video capability, which it used to farm out to WMP in the old .js version..

I'm going to have to delay the public release; the idea was that the VB6 version could also be imported into tB, but there's a bug preventing that.

But since you're interested I put preview versions of both VB6 and tB on GitHub, https://github.com/fafalone/ucSimplePlayer

The VB6 version works only in VB6. The .twinproj is the original twinBASIC version, not the shared codebase version, so it works in tB. The code is almost identical; just the original tB version has controls on the bottom I moved to the top in VB so I didn't have do a ton a manual size/pos calculations tB's achoring handles automatically, and of course uses WDL instead of oleexp and as such doesn't have the APIs in the form, and lacks the conditional compilation mess around the refcount issue.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

I have just converted another of my more recent creations to TwinBasic, my steampunk Clock/Calendar.

It compiles and runs. A few issues to work around, some not yet investigated but it is a good start.

There is a mismatched variable in a recently added subroutine, some sloppiness on my part highlighted by TB. Easily repaired.

I had to replace a registered OCX that TB could not find with the one contained within the program RES file, easily done. Love the way the IDE operates in form design mode. Nice to have the control bounds showing!

The preference displays a couple of problems that I have yet to investigate. All the resized icon images are upside down (!) and clicking on the icons does not select and switch the correct tab. Some investigation to do here. I'm not raising an issue here just stating what I have found. All going rather well to have managed to get this far. I am sure a little bit of digging will fix the two issues found so far.



This is a program that combines VB6 forms and Olaf's RC6 DLLs to achieve the transparent form upon which a variety of RC6 widgets are displayed, all having a function and making up the clock/calendar.

It works and with a bit of fixing will be an impressive example of TwinBasic.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Too many clocks spoil the broth...



Showing the old Konfabulator clock/calendar written in .js on the left, the VB6 version middle and the TwinBasic version on the right. The Basic clocks share the same code exactly. The TB clock is slower to load as on startup both read data from an INI file, using that to fill a variety of comboBoxes, the TB version does that in slower time than the VB6 clock. However, the TwinBasic clock runs with a smaller memory footprint and significantly less CPU when animating.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Really enjoying trialling TwinBasic. Feels like an injection of young lifeblood into an old girl. Found a bug already, reported.

[SearchingDataOnly]

DreamUI

I rewrote all the common UI components with RC6, which made it easy for my FormDesigner to implement all sorts of modern UIs.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

SDO, what is that picture showing us?

[SearchingDataOnly]

SDO, what is that picture showing us?

It's a UI framework I wrote for my VSCode-like project, and it has all the features of a Modern-UI: flexible, dockable, splittable, configurable.

Perhaps the image below can show more clearly what it is:

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Ah, right! Understood. I look forward to seeing this, are you making good progress?

This is my tiny little bit of progress...



Just tweaking the time advance/retard slider settings on my clock/calendar/time machine.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

(Made that animated GIF using ScreenToGif and uploading to imgur)

[-Franky-]

My latest VBC project deals with the possibilities of the "Windows App SDK". As you can see in the picture, starting with Win11 you can even change the colors of the title bar and buttons. If you set AppWindowTitleBar.ExtendsContentIntoTitleBar = True, you can completely customize the title bar if you want. -> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...elop/title-bar The dialog window was only created using the "Windows App SDK". As you can also see in the picture, quite a few classes and modules have already been put together for it. Let's see how far I get.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Franky upload that to imgur and post the BB link here. I'd like to see it but the forum attachments are just too small.

I don't mind it when people customise the title bar, I just want the apps I use, to, at the very least, have one!

[-Franky-]

Franky upload that to imgur and post the BB link here. I'd like to see it but the forum attachments are just too small.

It would be better if you could click on the image here in the forum and the image would then be displayed in full size in a separate window.

I don't mind it when people customise the title bar, I just want the apps I use, to, at the very least, have one!

The "Windows App SDK" offers more than just changing the title bar. For me, this was just the start to see whether the SDK can also be used in VB6, and thus in TwinBasic. I think you also need the App SDK if you want to use the controls from WinUI3.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

It would be better if you could click on the image here in the forum and the image would then be displayed in full size in a separate window.
.

Doesn't work for me.

[-Franky-]

Doesn't work for me.

What I wanted to say is that it would be nice if it was implemented in the forum so that it works like that. That would be a suggestion for improving this forum.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

This forum is NOT going to be changed. We just have to get used to that.

[fafalone]

So I recently figured out how to use Microsoft's new RichEdit controls they've enabled for Office and the new crappy Notepad but haven't been letting anyone else use. The big advantage is they support color fonts, usually used for color emojis:



You need the stupidly named riched20.dll that on Windows 10 at least only comes with Office. The one in System32/SysWOW64 is RichEdit 3.1. Then 5.0 and 6.0 are in msftedit.dll, which for some reason says RichEdit 8.5... but the MSOffice riched20.dll says RichEdit 8.0 and is newer, and is the only one supporting the Direct2D rendering option allowing color fonts outside of windowless RichEdit... Which is a nightmare to implement and I can't even get C++ examples to work so probably won't make one for vb or tb.

So anyway, you need the 8.0 richedit20.dll from MS Office... Unfortunately they only install the version matching your Office bitness, so if you have 64bit Office, no 32bit one for VB6 or 32bit tB. So I just copied them and posted both with my demo, if you want to take the 32bit one and use it in VB6. You also need the msptls.dll file included with it. These are both signed by Microsoft.

What you need to do is call LoadLibrary on the riched20.dll, and then create the window class "RichEditD2D" instead of the normal RichEdit class, then immediately after creation send EM_SWITCHTOD2D. It's that simple, you'll now have a RichEdit control supporting all the normal commands and also color fonts.

Since my Intermediate UI Ribbon demo already had a ton of code for a useful RichEdit with font/alignment/etc working, I used that for my example, but you see the method is very simple and you could use it for any API based RichEdit in VB6 or tB.. like easily modifying Krool's VBCCR RichEdit to use it.

https://github.com/fafalone/UIRibbon...ntermediateD2D

    Private Sub CreateRichEdit()
        Dim szClass As String
        Const bTryD2d As Boolean = True
        If bTryD2d Then
            #If Win64 Then
            hREDll = LoadLibrary(App.Path & "\Build_win64\riched20.dll")
            #Else
            hREDll = LoadLibrary(App.Path & "\Build_win32\riched20.dll")
            #End If
            If hREDll = 0 Then
                hREDll = LoadLibrary(App.Path & "\riched20.dll")
            End If
            If hREDll Then
                szClass = "RichEditD2D" 
            End If
        End If
        If hREDll = 0 Then
           (Fallbacks to msftedit etc omitted)
        End If
        If hREDll Then
            Dim rc As RECT
            GetClientRect pbREHost.hWnd, rc
            hRE = CreateWindowExW(0, StrPtr(szClass), 0, _
                    ES_MULTILINE Or ES_SAVESEL Or WS_VISIBLE Or WS_CHILD Or WS_BORDER Or WS_TABSTOP, _
                    0, 0, rc.Right, rc.Bottom, pbREHost.hWnd, 0, App.hInstance, ByVal 0&)
                    
            If hRE Then
                If bTryD2d Then
                    SendMessage hRE, EM_SWITCHTOD2D, 0, ByVal 0
                End If

(Note: I tried to test modifying VBCCR but even the original RTF control with no changes isn't working for me right now)

[-Franky-]

@fafalone If I needed it, I would use the XAML RichEditBox. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uw...ew=winrt-26100 You don't have to worry about the appropriate riched20.dll. OK, the whole thing can only be implemented for VBC or TB using the "XAML Islands" and the WinRT XAML classes.

[fafalone]

Copying two dlls is far less of an issue than the massive complexity of XAML islands. Your work on those is very impressive but it's orders of magnitude more complex and likely on par with just implementing a windowless richedit (which underlies the xaml control) directly.

[VanGoghGaming]

Is this "Windows App SDK" different than the XAML islands you were working on before? Do you have a download link for this project? Probably it would be easier to write the interface definitions in tB and then using them in VB6 rather than relying solely on DispCallFunc which is much more clunky and error-prone...

fafalone, you can't really say that implementing your RibbonUI was any easier than XAML islands!

[fafalone]

No but the RichEdit control doesn't require the ribbon. I just used the ribbon project out of convenience since it had a RichEdit with so many options already set up. All the RichEdit control really needs is a few lines to call LoadLibrary and CreateWindowEx; you don't need additional controls at all let alone the fancy ribbon ones. I don't think the XAML version includes a whole text editor UI for setting fonts/alignment/etc either, just some wrappers to simplify the API calls a bit.

I'm going to play around a little with windowless richedit... just see if I can get the bare minimum functionality working then go from there.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

I am debugging TwinBasic-induced bugs and looking for workarounds, so far found a few workable fixes to bugs that I have discovered. Loving compiler directives...