Tyrone Hopes

You know, the more I use VIP, (with its misleading use of the words 'object', 'property' and 'method'), the more it reminds me of my local village amateur dramatics society, and their recent pantomime, "Slingedtogetha". It's a series of song and dance routines built around a hopeless young blonde object which has no parents and no inheritance, which is appropriated by ugly sisters. These suspicious characters have lost focus (and the plot as well, quite franky). She's given a glass slipper and a few other completely useless properties to which only she has access. Her methods are bizarre and undocumented, all subject to the strange timing cycle involving pumpkins. Meanwhile there are other strange objects floating around like the handsome prince, who lives at a designer Studio. Unfortunately every time we see his luxurious pad, there's loud crashing of scenery as the props are dragged inexpertly across the stage. The only object we can remotely trust in the whole sorry story is Buttons.

I'm looking forward to their next production, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Teapot Factory".

Wow! I didn't realize Papa Lazarou is a ProIV coder now. And you've got up to speed pretty quickly after leaving the League of Gentlemen.

The version of VIP we have here is a little on the old side (build 5,5919 - it has a build date of 23/06/2004). However, we've used this to build production functionality (to a much higher standard than that of VIP I must add). I have had a look at the other forums here and it seems that there's a new version of the kernel or client produced every five minutes, so I imagine most of my criticisms have been addressed by now...(nods of agreement from the the ProIV big guns).

But this doesn't blow my original arguments. This product should have worked straight out the box (they should have tested it). I can't be bothered to fanny around with patches and builds to get something working as it should have done in the first place. After all, I'm a developer, and I was born to code.

It's a case of "Give us the tools and we will finish the job" to quote a past British PM.

...or in the case of Papa Lazarou, "can I speak to Dave please?"

VIP is 'quirky' and 'eccentric' because it is not a windows compliant application fullstop, but looks like it is. Confusing. Imagine any external user from outside the blinkered world of Pro-IV arriving at a couple of windows like the screenshots above. And they certainly wouldn't know about F3. These screens are indefensible so please can everyone stop defending them. This is the point I'm trying to make - it shouldn't pretend to be a windows compliant product when it plainly isn't.

I am sure there are many talented individuals the world of Pro-IV that are able to adapt to using VIP. (Lord knows we've had to adapt before). However these talented developers must all have greater pain thresholds than me!

[quote name='Guest' date='15 Apr 2005, 08:16']And there is an answer coming to all this.

  A complete development environment which is managed code, follows windows standard, blazing fast, has everybodys wish lists and will give the RAD productivity back to PROIV.

  Watch this space.[/quote]
[QUOTE]
I hope and pray that it's better than VIP.

In the meantime, I've found an excellent 'feature' in VIP. Clicking randomly, I came across this window:

This is the famous 'morph' window. It allows you to change an object from Selection Cycle (for example) to Many Time Paging Screen Cycle. But where's the 'OK' or 'Cancel' buttons? There are none! If you press the top right hand 'close' you get the usual 'Window Close not Allowed' error

(I keep on hoping that one of these windows will allow it!)
So how do you exit? By double clicking the item it already is! Keep that mouse steady as you click, chaps, otherwise you do irretrievable damage to your function, and you have to import again (like I had to!).

Sterling work.

Hi All

I have persisted with VIP over the last few days and I'm beginning to change my mind. There seems to be more sense to the way it's laid out than first meets the eye. The various posts from Donald, Davethehun and Strider have actually thrown light on why VIP is the way it is.

There are IDEs that slavishly follow the Microsoft route - and those that follow the Mac (although to some they may seem variations on a theme). VIP is the 'third way' in application development, cutting its own furrow out there on its own...

Whenever VIP trips up the unwary, with the inconsistent and bizarre use of 'windows' furniture, it's just another dig at orthodoxy. I now smile to myself with satisfaction that I am programming with the 'in crowd' now. Us rebels!

The developers of VIP clearly have to be congratulated for their brave stand against the continuing dominance of the Steve Jobs/Bill Gates sponsored GUIs. If it means VIP is widely perceived as being counter-intuitive, counter-productive, and inconsistent, it's a small price to pay.

Developers of VIP - carry on the good work!