13 replies to this topic

[Ross Bevin]

I have just installed Pro-IV IDE and am stunned, almost like having a religous experience. Rob, you truly have created a master piece. I opened one of our more complicated functions and can't believe the simplicity of the layout of it's components. I encourage everyone to download IDE and give it a try; I guarantee you will be blown away.

Excuse me but I have to go and lie down for a while!!!

[Rob Donovan]

Hi,

Thanks for the post Ross...

I've talked to alot of ProIV Developers over the years, and this is what I think they want.

Its very hard to please eveyone, but I think I have enough options in there so that you can set it up like you want.

Following all the windows standards and making it quick and easy to edit a function is the key.

And the best thing... no conversion needed. Your code stays the same as YOU have written it!!


For anyone wanting to try IDE, the link is below.

http://www.proivrc.com/ide.html

Rob D.

[hendo]

Rob,
What about the old die hards like me that are still using version4
I can't wait to all my work through IDE.
When you have 50 odd separate servers running pro it would be a nightmare to upgrade then to version5

my superiors at work don't see why we should upgrade as they think as it ain't broke why fix it!!!

I know that you have talked making IDE work with ver4!!!........ are you any nearer completion.

Regards
hendo

[Rob Donovan]

Hi,

I'm beginning to wonder if I should concentrate more on making it work with version 4.0 and 4.6....

I seem to be getting a lot of requests for it!!!

It seems quite a few people are still on the old versions.

The only problem I have is that I make use of the new logic command Client.Get, which transfers a file from the server to the client.... I have to figure out a way to do that back in 4.6 code.

I shall keep you posted on the status though...

Rob D.

[Chris Pepper]

In another thread Rob was trying to sell me the IDE!

As a green screen developer I'm not really up to date on the ProIV GUI. Presumably both IDE and PROIV DEVELOPER use the ProIV GUI. I'm currently sitting here with four terminal emulator windows open to four different ProIV regions (some of our developers sit there with 10 or more sessions running). The windows title bar is showing me which region they're logged into. How easy is it to do this in GUI? Do I have to set up a separate GUI Ini file for each possible region? Do they each need to connect to a separate port? Can you fire up multiple copies of the same GUI against the same region?
Presumably I still have to have my terminal emulator set up as well so I can drop into editors when I want to edit the DCL / Perl / Shell scripts that are called from my ProIV routines, or to test run the Functions. So I'll have twice as many sessions on my screen?

Maybe I just need to read the latest ProIV GUI manual

[Richard Bassett]

Chris,
I'm sure Rob will clarify as soon as he sees this. I had thought his IDE was written wholly in VB as a "conventional" Windows app and did not require the ProIV GUI client. However, reading the above, if he uses client.get maybe that means the ProIV client has to be present on the PC and IDE is a giant Active/X control that's effectively handling all the UI? Or maybe it is a separate app that uses some kind of Windows IPC/DDE/whatever to exchange data with the ProIV client.
Of course, I'm no more a GUI programmer than you are
I also seem to recall saying he used Bus+Task though, which at the time is why I assumed a separate app for the IDE talking direct to the ProIV server. Maybe he uses both now, maybe B+T was too flaky for some things?
Or maybe client.get can work across a "Bus+Task connection". What do I know.

Tell us Rob, tell us, put us out of our misery

[hendo]

I thought green screen screen was to be phased out in the next version of pro.


I used to work with green screen a couple of year ago and was converted to GUI when we updated our apps.


I rarely use green screen to write functions as I find that using GUI is so much easier.
copy, paste move windows around the screen, etc.

Chris, you can run as many GUI screens as you wish and the windows title bar tells you exactly what each screen is doing ... you can even exit to shell via GUI to edit any scripts etc, but you probaly would still use your emulator (I still do).

As I'm still running on Ver4 I would find that using IDE would be much quicker and easier than @modX but i think Rob has delveloped IDE on later versions of PRO as ver4 does not have client.get and all the other new logic commands that were introduced in later versions.

[Rob Donovan]

Hi,

I've put a post in the IDE forum to answer your questions Chris and Richard, just to keep all the IDE info in one place....

http://www.proivrc.c...=ST&f=10&t=2756

hendo:
I'm currently looking into getting IDE to work on version 4.0 and 4.6
I've got the ProIV 5.5 OCX to connect to version 4.0 and 4.6, so now I just need to figure out another solution for the Client.Get command....

Guest 23:

I'm sure it's better now
but I'm also sure it may be better than VIP in some ways
but not so good in others

What do you reckon VIP does better?
Its always good to know, so I can improved IDE to be the the best editor..
I know there are some utils and things that are missing in IDE, but I'm working on them....

Rob D.

[Rob Donovan]

Hi,

Its very unlikely that I am going to rewrite it in Java....

I've spent the last 4 years writting it in VB

Since you need Windows to run the ProIV client, it shouldnt be too much of a problem that is written in VB, should it?

What advantages would it have if I had written it in JAVA?

Since there is nothing you can do with IDE but edit ProIV code, it should not matter what development language I have used.... Should it??

Rob D.

[Rob Donovan]

Thanks for the feeback on this..

I'll answer them bit by bit....

If it's written in VB it won't run on linux or OS/X - that's the limitation
and Java advantage - but I'm sure you realise that so I dunno
why you asked.

I could not see that as an advantage... surely you must be using windows with the ProIV Client? or are you emulating the ProIV Client on Lunix?

VIP does a very good job of rendering the nested structure
of a function in an easy to see manner. Does away with those
old nesting diagrams we (me at least) used to have to draw. Multiple
function views incl events, files, dynamics, statics and a view
customisable by function (object summary) and a treeview.

IDE has this, see the attached image at the end of the post....

Syntax highlighting and checking as you type.

Syntax Highlighting is also done in IDE, I'm coding the checking bit at the moment, and will be part of the QA check module that will be available sometime soon.

provides navigable function linkage tool, very useful for
tracing global calls etc.

IDE does not have this yet, but its in the plan. I'm planning to display function linkage in a standard Windows tree control so it can be expanded, colapsed etc... gotta think about it more though....

provides function backup/restore.

IDE has Undo/Redo (CTRL-Z / Y), but only up to the point of saving the function currently. I am planning to make the Undo/Redo save to a temp file, so that all changes can be backed out on a transaction level.

provides function booking system (soon to be integrated with
full CM system).

IDE will have a booking system at some point.

Automatic renaming of all occurances of object tags as required.

IDE does this automatically

Suite of customisable code processing tools, automatic function 'cleanup' tool

This will be part of the QA Suite for IDE.

Comes ready to cope with the latest Pro-IV features.

I will be updating IDE to work with version 6.0 as soon as its out, if not sooner....

Thanks for the pointers, I'll keep them all in my enhancment plans...

Rob D.


Tree View:

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[Rob Donovan]

Forgot to add, that the Function tree layout is fully controlled by the user, and the setup can be modified to suit your preferences from the options below.

There is also a flag you can set to display this view (instead of the LSDEF view) as soon as a function is loaded...

Attached Thumbnails

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