Gambas futuro o che tipo di Gambas noi vogliamo.

[vuott]

...continua...


" If they're running Ubuntu, it's just a matter of a few clicks to install
Gambas through the software center. If they're trying to compile the whole
thing from source and are having difficulty, they probably don't need to be
compiling from source anyway. Just because you CAN do something under Linux
that you can't do under Windows doesn't mean that you have to do it.

Packages made with Gambas should automatically have the right dependencies
and the required packages should be pulled in during installation.

I just don't see this as a big issue. Ubuntu, Debian, Suse and Fedora all
include Gambas as part of their package management systems. Those four and
their derivatives cover easily 90% of all desktop Linux users. Yes, there
will be issues with architectures not typical of desktop computers, like
MIPS or ARM. Those aren't officially supported, and it's up to users with
those platforms to get Gambas working on them if the packages automatically
generated by Debian (etc.) don't work.

If you really think Windows development tools are better in that regard,
try getting VB6 running on PowerPC, which was officially supported by
Windows during VB6's lifetime. It never happened. If you google "visual
basic" "powerpc", the fourth hit is actually a Gambas package which runs on
PPC. Today you can make VB.NET apps that run on Windows RT (ARM
architecture) if for some reason you actually wanted to, but I'm also
guessing that never happens with most VB.NET apps because no one really
cares about Windows on ARM except Microsoft.

And even that's a huge step up from the previous second-class Windows port,
WinCE for ARM and MIPS, used up until about a year or two ago on $99
laptops that were punishing to use. I've heard you could write your VB apps
in a certain way and cross-compile them to run under WinCE, but I've never
seen an app built that way.

Gambas programs, on the other hand, will work on any flavor of Linux once
the Gambas interpreter is fully ported. They aren't officially supported,
and on many platforms where the Linux kernel is supported, Gambas will
never work because they're embedded devices without X or (in the case of
Android) even glibc. But the wonder of free software is that anyone can
take the source and make the port if they put enough effort into it. You
can't do that with most Microsoft tools.

> decent one, the only thing you need to know is your time zone.
> Otherwise it is all answered in Askubuntu.

Unfortunately, with laptops (which are most of the PCs sold today), that
isn't always the case. For example, my new Lenovo Ideapad has function keys
that don't even generate keycodes unless you press the Fn button with them;
on their own they do things like adjust volume and brightness. And there's
no SysRq key so no magic key combinations, no NumLock key so there's no
mouse accessibility for when its touchpad goes haywire which is about a
dozen times a day, and the ATI graphic driver has a memory leak resulting
in the X server swapping constantly after about a day, and trying to revert
to the free driver causes the updater to crash in 13.10, and not a single
one of these issues has a solution on AskUbuntu, though several have been
asked and left unanswered. (Don't buy a Lenovo Ideapad.)

Of course, in my Windows days there were many, many issues that couldn't be
solved in online forums, since you had the source to almost nothing and bug
fixes were driven by PR, not technical merit or even, in those days, security.

From time to time, someone chimes in with "We need to make it as easy to
develop and distribute Gambas apps as it was to develop VB apps", but the
truth is, Gambas is already far more flexible and easy to distribute apps
in than VB6 ever was. You just have to let go of leftover Windows notions
like "setup.exe is the pinnacle of package management" or "applications are
best distributed in one big file containing all the dependencies statically
linked" or "it's up to the compiler's author to port to my non-standard
architecture", because none of those are true.

Rob "


" Rob:
...and so maybe a million new users get introduced to Python -
already loaded in the Wheezy RPi distro, not Gambas.  If you want to
secure the long term future of Gambas, one of things that must be
done is to attract new users.  These new users, like me, are just the
ones that don't have the necessary skills or experience to install
and update Gambas on these platforms.  These architectures are a wave
of the future.
Carl "

[vuott]

...continua...


" First of all, as someone who abandoned Gambas app development in favor of
what we now call HTML5 years ago, you're appealing to the wrong guy with
that argument. Python is a capable enough language, though I personally
dislike it due to its retarded indentation requirements (if meta-Q destroys
my program logic, your language has a problem, not me). Bottom line, I
don't have a horse in this race anymore; I'm actually waiting for Benoît to
let me know when to send him the transfer codes for the gambasdoc.org
domain that I've been hosting for the last 9 years since that server is
likely to disappear soon. Desktop apps just haven't been a priority to me
for a long time.

Second, I would argue that the Raspberry Pi isn't "the future", cheap
Chinese Android devices are. Gambas being ported to Android isn't going
to happen anytime soon as despite having a Linux kernel, Android doesn't
even have the most basic GNU libraries (or a replacement for those) that it
would need to be POSIX compliant. Education might be moving toward ARM for
desktops, at least in CS/CSE programs where kids are meant to be hacking,
but the business world isn't, and that's where most of us are coming from.
Most of us have ARM phones and x86/x64 desktops. I have a couple cheap
Chinese Android sticks hooked up to TVs too. I had hopes to use them as
desktop replacements but in their current state (early 2013 vintage)
they're really not. I could put Debian on them but they wouldn't even have
2D video acceleration and I might not be able to get back. (I write my
Android apps in Java, for the most part. What a terrible, verbose,
top-heavy language, but if you use anything else you're stuck with a subset
of the platform's capabilities and good luck finding support.)

As a corollary, even if Gambas is available on those systems, as you say,
Python is installed by default and the Raspberry Pi project pushes it
pretty hard. Students sitting in front of RPis are going to get taught
Python unless their teacher is someone like me who strongly dislikes
Python, and I suspect Gambas isn't going to be the next thing on their
list.

Third, you can't install or update Gambas on a platform on which it doesn't
compile and run, and if you're one of "the ones that don't have the
necessary skills or experience to install and update Gambas on these
platforms", I would hope you'll shell out the 50 bucks to send your pet
hardware platform to someone who volunteers to make it work, or to Benoît
if it's a bigger job than patching out some Intel-architecture-specific stuff.

It isn't like there's a big red "Port to ARM" button that we've all refused
to push out of spite. The developers need the hardware and the time to
figure out what doesn't work and why. Apparently it compiles, because the
packages are available. I don't think any of us had heard it was broken at
runtime until someone reported it earlier in this thread. The bug has still
not been officially reported on http://code.google.com/p/gambas/issues/list
. Developers can't fix what they don't know about, especially if they don't
even own the hardware it fails on.

Isn't there a Raspbian support group or something that has people who know
how to read gcc error messages?

Rob "


" G'day Rob:
I concede to your greater knowledge and experience.   Just a couple
of points in response:
Firstly, I chose my words "a wave of the future" carefully.  I did
not say "the wave ..."  Hopefully the future holds many good waves.
Secondly, I was simply following the thread, which may or may not be
correct, that securing the long term future for Gambas requires a
continuing or even periodic intake of new users.  RPi's are not just
used for education, although that was their prime intent, they are
also useful for embedded systems and, in particular, hobbyists.  That
segment is still quite large.  I guess I fit in that category - a
cheapskate with time and no great programming skills!  My particular
point was that it seemed a missed opportunity to me that boards like
RPi , Beaglebone and the coming Intel board did not better support
Gambas and that it was up to the Gambas community to take up those
and similar opportunities to ensure a Gambas future.  Certainly
Gambas 3.2.1 compiles and runs on the RPi.
Carl "

[Gianluigi]

 
Scusate se un gamberetto imbranato si inserisce nella discussione a esporre la sua, per prima cosa ci terrei a dire (malgrado la cosa mi costi visto che è un cugino) che concordo con chi sostiene che M. Benoît Minisini è un grande ecc. 
Concordo con lui (M. Minisini) nel voler rimanere in ambito Linux e non volersi scontrare con colossi che ti possono schiacciare quando vogliono (i colossi hanno soldi, tanti soldi e con i soldi si possono comprare tante cose...), e poi proprio adesso? che grazie a Ubuntu, Linux sta diventando il più facile dei sistemi operativi, che ai noi grazie alla crisi anche le amministrazioni pubbliche stanno passando all'open source?, e pure molte aziende iniziano a pensarci seriamente intendo quelle piccole e micro che avranno bisogno di programmi tipo quelli che facevo anch'io che ero un frillo grazie alla facilità di VBA e VBE.
Concordo con Akrobaticone ma solo dove dice che sarebbe utile un rapporto simbiotico con Libre Office.
Al grande vuott dico di non ascoltare certe voci, che non tenere conto delle possibilità dell'audio o suono o anche musica in ambito programmatico sarebbe davvero un grave errore, se penso alle tantissime persone ipovedenti impiegate nelle aziende e al grande aiuto che potrebbero avere da un programma di lavoro dialogante.
Per me questo è il futuro (vostro, che io oramai sono alla frutta).

Un salutone a tutti 

[akrobaticone]

.
Concordo con Akrobaticone ma solo dove dice che sarebbe utile un rapporto simbiotico con Libre Office.

per curiosità, con quali delle cose che ho detto non ti trovi d'accordo?

Aggiungerei un nuovo fronte di sviluppo:
Prima o poi uscirà anche Ubuntu touch su tablet e smartphone
Perchè non usare anche lì gambas?

Mi piacerebbe sapere cosa ne pensa Minisini, magari anche della questione di gambas su libreoffice..

[Gianluigi]

per curiosità, con quali delle cose che ho detto non ti trovi d'accordo?
Aggiungerei un nuovo fronte di sviluppo:
Prima o poi uscirà anche Ubuntu touch su tablet e smartphone
Perchè non usare anche lì gambas?
Mi piacerebbe sapere cosa ne pensa Minisini, magari anche della questione di gambas su libreoffice..

Scusa mi sono espresso in modo inappropriato, oltre a tutto arrivo bell'ultimo e pare che critichi proprio un benemerito di Gambas.
Intendevo dire che sono in accordo con te ma non dove parli di fork e di portabilità...
e sono pure in accordo con quanto scrivi ora.

ciao 

[akrobaticone]

per curiosità, con quali delle cose che ho detto non ti trovi d'accordo?
Aggiungerei un nuovo fronte di sviluppo:
Prima o poi uscirà anche Ubuntu touch su tablet e smartphone
Perchè non usare anche lì gambas?
Mi piacerebbe sapere cosa ne pensa Minisini, magari anche della questione di gambas su libreoffice..

Scusa mi sono espresso in modo inappropriato, oltre a tutto arrivo bell'ultimo e pare che critichi proprio un benemerito di Gambas.
Intendevo dire che sono in accordo con te ma non dove parli di fork e di portabilità...
e sono pure in accordo con quanto scrivi ora.


ciao 

Tra me e i benemeriti passano anni luce!
il fork era solo una ipotesi nel caso che Minisini preso da improvvisa follia decida di abbandonare Gambas
la portabilità è questione assai delicata, mi chiedevo solamente se il fatto di poter utilizzare  su più piattaforme le stess applicazioni non fosse un incentivo ad utilizzare questo linguaggio.

Per dare una risposta semplice alla domanda del titolo della discussione mi piacerebbe che Gambas possa diventare per Linux quello che Visual Basic è stato per Windows, uno strumento semplice ed efficace alla portata di molti che permette di realizzare applicazioni distribuibili senza difficoltà e un sistema semplice per l'automazione di software complessi come Libreoffice al pari di VBA per MS Office.

 

[Gianluigi]

Tra me e i benemeriti ...
Per dare una risposta semplice alla domanda del titolo della discussione mi piacerebbe che Gambas possa diventare per Linux quello che Visual Basic è stato per Windows, uno strumento semplice ed efficace alla portata di molti che permette di realizzare applicazioni distribuibili senza difficoltà e un sistema semplice per l'automazione di software complessi come Libreoffice al pari di VBA per MS Office.

...e allora (adesso  ) posso scrivere che concordo al100%