Girder 3.1 beta 16

[Ron]

Okay 1 BIG new feature, Num Parser. This is the new implementation of the registers. The main features are

* Full named variables
* Full parser. So you can do almost anything with it, and it only needs 1 action where the old register needs several.

To explain all of this here is the guide

http://www.girder.nl/help/gettingstarted/registers.php

A small request, I'm having troubles with bandwidth (as in Girder generates a friggin lot these days ), please use the upgrade file if you already have the beta 15. Thanks.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RonB on 2002-03-23 20:23 ]</font>

[Ron]

Hi Mark,

That are a lot of questions. :smile: I've built this parser on top of YACC, that means I can extend it as much as I like. BUT I am in the process of learning how to use yacc. The text registers don't use the new mechanism yet. As soon as i figure out how to handle these in yacc that will change. And when I have that figured out I'll update the plugin API to have access to the new stuff, but first I want to get this to works as smooth as possible.

I'll add the + - * / % to the text tomorrow. The ! isn't in (yet). It all boils down to a good book about yacc. Or someone that has experience with it :smile:

Save/Store has been updated to work with the new stuff, so that should not be a problem.

Logical Operators, for the AND you can use the * and for the OR you can use the +. I'll explicitly add these to the grammer in the next release.

-Ron


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RonB on 2002-03-23 22:59 ]</font>

[Ron]

Oh my, this Yacc is wonderfull, I'm absolutely amazed. I'm working on extending it to the string registers, adding string manipulation routines to it and adding error reporting. Stuff might change still so use it but don't be building complete systems yet, I'm working out the grammar that will be used in the parser.

Suggestion are very welcome about your favourite feature that the parser should have.

In the mean time, I think Girder has reached a stable state, any objections if I call the next release Girder 3.1.0 ?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RonB on 2002-03-24 16:52 ]</font>

[Ron]

Thanks for the suggestions :smile:

I see you are raising the bar for me :grin: Good Good. I don't see too much problems in your requests. Although formatting might prove tricky, I'll have to learn how to lexically anayse this, thats why I'm reading the manual of this thing, only 200 pages :wink:

[Ron]

Go to google.com and type Yacc or Bison ( Bison is the Yacc variant that I use ). There are a lot of pages about this.

The win32 executables for Bison can be found here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=23617

Have fun :wink:

[Ron]

I absolutely hate windows xp, if microsoft just would keep things compatible that would be lovely but noooo they want to break 90% of the applications by changing the size of the title bar. Besides I have no idea what to change to fix this. If someone can point me to a solution I'll implement it, if not just use the classic theme of winxp and be done with it.

[Ron]

I've been searching the delphi site to see if they have updated delphi 5 for compatibility with winxp, and they have not. So I looked at buying Delhpi 6, but what do I see; It is not allowed to make commercial application with the personal edition, for that I'd have to buy the professional package, that is a whopping $1000! Is Borland killing its custommer base here or what ? So I'm sorry I cannot afford this.

[Ron]

Thanks Steve!

[Ron]

If someone uses Girder for commecial purposes I charge money for licenses. Just so I can keep this site up and running. So its a commercial application.

[Ron]

Thanks I'll give it a look.

[Ron]

Ooh very good, I'm making this into a 'Tips and tricks page' :smile:

[Ron]

Does Delphi have a function similar to GetSystemMetics that would allow you to determine the size of the title bar button height, frame thickness, etc and size the dialog box window size taking this size into consideration?


Of course delphi has full access to the win32 api. But I don't have full ( or any ) access to winxp. So I can't help here.

[SteveV]

I absolutely hate windows xp, if microsoft just would keep things compatible that would be lovely but noooo they want to break 90% of the applications by changing the size of the title bar.

Admittedly a STUPID thing to lose backward compatability over. Pretty easy to change in XP however:

1.) Open Control panel and double click Display Properties (or right-click on the desktop).

2.) Select the "Appearance" tab and click the "Advanced" button.

3.) From the "Item" drop down, select "Active Title Bar" and change the "Size" to the lowest available (20).

This changes the XP themed title bars to standard pre-XP size for all apps.

Regards -- Steve

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SteveV on 2002-03-25 12:28 ]</font>

[SteveV]

As Mitko pointed out, the "disable visual themes" check box only removes the XP title bar graphics, it doesn't reduce the height of the title bar. The only 2 ways I know of to over come the problem is to either use the "Windows Classic" theme or reduce the size of the "Active Title Bar?

Does Delphi have a function similar to GetSystemMetics that would allow you to determine the size of the title bar button height, frame thickness, etc and size the dialog box window size taking this size into consideration?

Regards -- Steve

[SteveV]

Hmmm. Actually, that not right either. If you use windows classic theme with a large Active Title Bar size it scews up the windows as well...

Anything over 24 seems to screw up the layout.

--Steve

[Mark F]

Very cool!

When you get a chance, could you add a blurb to the help about the valid operators (%, /, *, +, -, ?????)? Are there unary operators? (not !, negative -, etc.) Are there logical operators? (and &&, or ||, etc.) Are there bit-wise logical operators? (and &, or |, xor ^, etc.)

How does this affect the save/restore register commands?

Can we use any name for string register variables, too?

Will the register interface for plugins change very soon to let us get to these new memory locations?

What is the record for questions in one post? :smile:

Thanks for the great new functions.

[Mark F]

Asking for suggestioned parsing features? If you insist. :smile:

The serial plugin can generate strings of hex digits from binary data. I'd like to be able to parse these hex digit strings and place the results into numerical variables for futher algebraic or logical manipulation.

A nonsense example is a mouse that is used as a simple serial device. It always generates a 5 byte packet. The first byte is the button information (up/down state) mask (need logical bit operators to test for changes). The next 2 bytes are relative X and the final 2 are relative Y. Being able to position <whatever> based on mouse movements and draging/dropping would seem cool. :smile:

Going the other way, from numerical variable to string variable, with formatting, would also be helpful. sprintf springs to mind but any syntax that works would be welcomed.

An example - A well known X10 program requires any values passed to it to be 3 digits long with leading 0s if the number is less than 100.

Thanks for asking. :smile:

[jediperry]

I absolutely hate windows xp, if microsoft just would keep things compatible that would be lovely but noooo they want to break 90% of the applications by changing the size of the title bar.

Alternitavly if you don't want to change your visuals, right click on the girder exicutable, select properties and on the compatability tab, check the disable visual themes box

[jediperry]

Ooops, sorry I probably should have checked it worked first. Never mind.

[Mastiff]

On 2002-03-25 09:34, RonB wrote:
It is not allowed to make commercial application with the personal edition


But Girder can't be considered a commercial application, can it? I mean you don't charge for it, you only ask for gifts. So how can that point stop anything? :smile:

[mattwire]

Ron, there seems to be a bug in Beta16 (probably earlier as well)!
I don't have Redrat hardware, but I enabled the Redrat hardware plugin and then told girder to enable input devices, which it did without error.
I then tried enabling the software plugin part of the Redrat driver. As soon as I press 'Apply' I get an error message 'Plugin Error', following by an access violation and Girder quits.
I realise it is probably doing this because there is no RedRat hardware attached but it's not a very friendly behaviour!
Also, on restart Girder still loads the hardware plugin part of Redrat and if I try to disable that plugin I get an error 'Thread did not exit' and Girder freezes for a while.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: mattwire on 2002-03-25 19:12 ]</font>

[Nikolai]

Hey, Ron, I posted a bug in the Beta 15 thread that you wanted more details on, but it seems to work OK in Beta 16, so it's not a problem anymore. Thanks for whatever you changed. :smile:

[mitko]

Ron, look at this site
http://www.jrsoftware.org/
the guy has done some intersting .pas files which can help (XPTheme.pas,HintShadow).
Haven't tested them yet but when I do I'll report

[mitko]

jediperry, I don't think your solution realy works because it's not the themes that interfere but the default height of the title bar.
May be I'm wrong but your method din't help with the convertor102.exe which has an issue with WinXP. Setting the height to 20 pixels helped but then WinXP doesn't look so good.

[Danijel_Pticar]

Hi.

Im interested in yacc, can you direct me to some usefull www pages ??

DPM

[gkour]

I don't know if its a bug but when i press "Learn event" after selecting "Girder event" on the dropdown, the window is small and has scroll bars. I have to resize it to be able to use it. I know it's unimportant but I thought I point it out. Otherwise rock solid :smile:

[stevech]

event string entry window is small here too. I have to enlarge it each time.
(Win XP)