I think I need to broaden my horizons a little ; VB and Delphi are good for fast development with relatively little effort, but I reckon I’m going to have to get to grips with C++ or something…
Well, Mangetout, let’s not give up quite yet. Let me ask something - why do you have a database at all in this program?
Well, I could easily have hard-coded the tag interpreter, but wanted to make it both flexible and extensible; the SDMB doesn’t support the [img] tag, so I didn’t bother adding it, but other boards do, so users would want it; in a similar way, other boards may render the same tags differently, so it needs to be possible to edit the target HTML.
I suppose that could all be done in a flat text file, but a table is easier to manipulate…
indeed, I already configured mine to display all the right smilies. And then I reinstalled my OS. 
I was hoping you were going to write it in C++ because I want to see how an HTML interface works. 
Yes, a less than pure motivation, I know…
Well, yes and no. You see, I alredy started working on this, and using an ASCII file takes about…well, from what I can see, about an hour or two to code up, and 8 less MB, and requires less run-time DLLs. I am known as the “ASCII Goddess”, in fact, because I don’t use a database for anything less than a 100kb or so of data. 
I’ve written some pretty good stuff in Visual C/MFC for my freeware programs. I’m happy to share knowledge, or…I’m pretty decent at getting things started - I could make a “shell” for the program, then turn over the code to you so you can add the core functionality.
Or, if you have no time to work on it in the next few days, I could code something up myself and ask you for help on some of the things you’ve done. My freeware Recipe database and freeware Science Tool already have all of the component parts needed, they just need stripping out of some things.
Or, if you want to go lone wolf, I respect that too, and I’ll stop bothering you.
I have a Class for you: CHyperLink. It is beautiful, and someone donated it to CodeGuru (I think). It lets you do lots of neat things with HTML. I also made an HTML output processor too the other month…
Hmm, I was searching for it but it seems it only allows something in a window to act as a hyperlink. (CodeGuru rocks!)
Both Python and Ruby have very fast prototyping: You get shells, or realtime interpreters, with the download. You can type in single statments and get immediate output. You can create and debug whole programs piecewise, from the bottom-up, like Forth, but with a much nicer OO language.
Plus, they’re Open-Source Software. They’re distributed under the GPL, the Free Software Foundation’s license. Free-of-charge interpreters are available for all major platforms with documentation.
Of the two, Python is the older and probably the most mature project-wise (it seriously challenges Perl in some ways) but Ruby is more pure OO (everything is an object, right down to numbers being instances of the class Fixnum). Either would be more than acceptable.
Ruby Programming Language – Ruby is the child of a Japanese man, so the English documentation is the product of translation. It doesn’t really matter, but it will look a bit odd.
There is no good way to compile either Ruby or Python (or Perl for that matter), but the interpreters aren’t big downloads. Plus, Ruby and Python are both good languages to learn to program with (much better than that 1960s-era toy BASIC).
Well, this thread has pretty much gotten away from me, and I have not had much chance to participate this last week or so, but I just wanted to take a second to say thank you, especially to **Mangetout **, for the considerable time and effort he put in to the project. The application is performing (mostly) as ordered/advertised and has already saved me lots of stress and wasted telephone time. While I am nothing of a programmer, I can sit on the sidelines and say “Go team GO!” So if there are any future additions or up grades I would be happy to test them out. Again, I thank you and, my wallet thanks you!
Just oput of interest Janx - how did you get past the OCX registration problem?
** Mangetout ** wrote…
Pretty simple really, when the first error message came up, IIRC it was something like File missing or not correctly registered XXXXX.OCX, I just copied the error message into google to see where I could get the missing file. I downloaded it and threw it into windows/system. Then I ran the program again and got the same error but calling a different *.OCX file (ratz!). So I did the same thing with google. This search brought me to a page (that I did not mark), which had a patch for some one else’s software that was giving the same errors. The patch is called " libraryfiles.exe" by a company called Ascentive Library. Any way I loaded this and it installed all the *.OCX files I needed (and probably a bunch of extra garbage I will never need). Ran the program again and got the VB runtime error, Soooo I loaded up Vbrun500 and, VOALLA! No more problems. Then I added a folder to your ZIP file called ERRORS? containing the library.exe and the VB run time install with a FILE_ID.DIZ that says
This causes the original zip (44kb) to swell up, but only to 3.7 Megs (not much these days), no where NEAR the 8 megs previously discussed. BTW, I installed your application and the two “add-ons” on a PIII 800mhz, 128 meg ram and on my PII 266mhz 256 meg ram. Before I installed the “add-ons” I got the same errors on both machines, and after I had no problems what so ever. Rock on!
This is the package I will give to my friends. I wish I could isolate exactly which files I needed to run the program without the excess garbage, but WTF, I’m to lazy to go through all those false starts. I just install this,then that, and the other from now on and POW, bbBuddy runs just fine thank you very much. I even used it to check this post! 
I’ve been enjoying it immensely. I write some long-winded posts and it definitely takes a small load off the server, all the times I preview it. 
C’mon Derleth, tell us how your really feel.
And Mangetoute, old man, I’m deeply in admiration. This is what a programmer should be, and what I am so obviously not.
Well done.
May I post links on other boards? Get you some recognition?
Ok. Lesson 1- Real the whole thread.
Lesson 2- Using of bbBuddy would have kept me from messing up my coding.
But I still want to put some links out to other sites.
Props to Janx, btw, for coming up with the cool idea of finding the files out on the 'net and doing things the easy way. Sometimes programmers, like mechanics, get caught up in the bells and whistles and forget other options.
Feel free to link or distribute it wherever you want; if/when you do though, it’s worth mentioning that it is a ‘work in progress’ and the install problems have not yet been overcome.
When I finish the new features (menus, file saving and loading, [sup]m[/sup]o[sub]r[/sub]e [sup]s[/sup]p[sub]e[/sub]c[sup]i[/sup]a[sub]l[/sub] e[sup]f[/sup]f[sub]e[/sub]c[sup]t[/sup]s) I plan to update it with a proper installable version (which will unfortunately be a larger download)
Eh, it couldn’t be any bigger than the Windows updates :rolleyes:
Oh BOY! I cant wait for the latest version!
vBulletin 3 has this feature, but it’s about a month away from being released.
Yeah, I saw lots of talk about the WYSIWYG editor over at the vB board.