TwinBasic

[WaynePhillipsEA]

Hello, congrats for your achievements!

Since it is intended to have backward compatibility with VB6 I want to ask if there is any technical reason for not sticking to the original file format and system, I mean plain text for definitions and binary files for binary data.

Text files:
vbp
bas
frm
cls
ctl
pag

Binary files:
frx
ctx
pgx
res
(better forget about vbw)

You could add your own new keys and sections on the text files for the new properties and features, or even new text files if needed, and new binary files (and extensions) if needed for whatever new features not supported by the original format.

The developers many times like to edit the files "by hand", but for being able to do that the files need to be easily readable and understable.

That's my opinion (and wishes).

I wish much success to you and also to Carles.

Hi Eduardo,

Thanks for your message. The plan is that all these formats will be supported, and natively.

Think of the twinproj file like a ZIP container, but it will also allow links to external files. So you'll be able to open a VBP file in twinBASIC/VSCode, and that will get migrated to the twinproj format, with links to the individual files (.bas, .cls, etc). The VBP file will be kept in-sync with the new twinproj format, and this will be effectively invisible to the developer.

The .twin file format is naturally different, because there is no way we can represent that in the old VB6 file formats at all, since you can't have multiple components per file, but all the original VB6 file formats will be supported via file links. Just not for this preview