PCopy! #60 released.

[E.K.Virtanen]

PCopy! #60 is released.

Read HTML (http://www.shnetworks4.net/~asciiwor/pcopy/issue60/)
Download .zip (http://www.shnetworks4.net/~asciiwor/pcopy/issue60/PCopy60.zip)


Regular Columns:
* From Our Editing Desk (Da Editors)
* Submitting to PCOPY! (MystikShadows & E.K.Virtanen)
* Letters To The Editors (Mixed Contributors)
* In The News (Mixed Contributors)
* Exit Issue (MystikShadows)

Articles:
* Reliving BASIC's History In One Website (MystikShadows)
* The Open Source Entity Demystified (MystikShadows)
* Interview with Pete Berg (E.K.Virtanen)
* Open Source Software For A Living (MystikShadows)

Reviews & Presentations:
* Introduction to sdlBasic (Cybermonkey)
* QBinux (Sebastian McClouth)

Tutorials & HowTo's:
* The ABC of the Xblite Programmer (Guy "gl" Lonne)
* An Xblite Primer (Guy "gl" Lonne)

[Petr Schreiber]

Thanks for new release,

I was afraid of PCOPY 60 as there were so many release date moves... very happy it is out finally!

Especially interesting for me was reading letters to the editors, I appreciate your reaction on user "offended" by too much thinBASIC. But it is good to know some readers dislike to see thinBASIC in PCOPY, although did not get the reason fully from the letter.

Regarding the PCOPY in total, I like it so far! Just one thing, in article "Reliving BASIC's History In One Website:" you can find it starts with : "Here we are, in 2007, using what we've come to consider an every day tool". Maybe there could be 2008?

Tiny detail, I know...

Just from topic headlines it seems this issue is pumed with very nice combination of topics, and will be pleasure to read.

How is going data collection for your thinBASIC population statistics ? :)


Thanks,
Petr

P.S. As I prefer reading longer texts from paper rather than PC screen, I put PCOPY to text editor to print it out. It was about 50 pages! This number surprised me, as when I just scroll page in browser it is not so evident.

[ErosOlmi]

Especially interesting for me was reading letters to the editors, I appreciate your reaction on user "offended" by too much thinBASIC. But it is good to know some readers dislike to see thinBASIC in PCOPY, although did not get the reason from the letter.


Very appreciated the reply. In any case I can understand the request.
For PCopy future, it is better it remains independent from any specific language.

I will read with great pleasure.

Ciao
Eros

[Michael Hartlef]

Thanks for the release. I could not read it so far, as I allways get a can't Connect to server error. Maybe in a while.
Well, just in advance it is sad to hear that people dislike certain contributions to a free e-zine. I hope these people will contribute now more to it, not just read it and complain.

[Petr Schreiber]

Mike,

I think their server is down, I cannot get any issue to download.
I was lucky I catched it on the morining.

I presume they update something, if it won't be fixed till tommorow morning I will send them report.


Bye,
Petr

[E.K.Virtanen]

Hi and thanks for the feedbacks.

For start, there were some problems with hosting service while i were at work. I noticed problem when i got back home. Now, seems like things are solved and magazine is back online.
I dont have any information what was the problem, but i trust my hosting provider will let me know asap.


Especially interesting for me was reading letters to the editors, I appreciate your reaction on user "offended" by too much thinBASIC. But it is good to know some readers dislike to see thinBASIC in PCOPY, although did not get the reason from the letter.

That letter was something i wondered lots of. At first, it should not be seen as a bad thing.
There is huge amounts of bitterness between different basic dialect users, and i personally think this letter was one "side effect" of it.
Who knows, maybe a person behind of that email is someone ex-user of thinBasic who just didnt get what he wanted or something...
I have hes email and i actually did ask why he thinks like he told but i did not got reply.

By any means, i do not wish that one letter effects in any way for contributions from thinBasic community.
Quality and general level of contributions about thinBasic is great, and i dont see why it should be changed just because of one letter.

Releasing date was forced to move since there were few articles which took way more time than we expected. Interview delayed for weeks since it was busy time for both sides of interview.
I was sure some delays will come since december is busy for peoples, but it did still surprise me how much it actually did took.

I did receive even one more correction for one article after i released this issue, but i decided not to delay anymore.



How is going data collection for your thinBASIC population statistics ?
Sorry man. No matter how friendly and nice community this is, peoples are bit lazy to answer things like this ;)

[MystikShadows]

I don't think the poster of that letter didn't like thinkBASIC, I think he just thought that issue of PCOPY! was I guess overstuffed with thinBASIC contents (compared to other BASIC contents in that same issue is all.

Me, I don't mind, we post what we get in PCOPY! the reaction shouldn't be "hey, there's too much of this or too much of that in this issue." I think it should rather raise a challenge to other BASIC user groups and communities to balance things off by contributing more about the dialects they want to see in PCOPY!

I think it's a miss read letter ;(.

[Michael Hartlef]

I had time to read it now. Great issue! I'm looking forward to the new look as I find the durrent look a little difficult to read. But anyway, great job as allways. :)

[ErosOlmi]

I think it's a miss read letter ;(.

Yes, it can be, but in any case it doesn't matter too much because everyone is entitled to have any opinion. As developers we have to accept that our own products can be loved or hated at the same time. And there is nothing we can do other than trying to improve our product following our ideas and at the same time be open to user suggestions.

For me the point is that your reply was on target, I mean you described your editorial line clearly: you publish whatever contribution you get. So you are a free zine and give voices to who have something to say on any Basic.

Keep up the good job you are doing.
Ciao
Eros

[Petr Schreiber]

Really good issue!,

I liked the OpenSource related articles by MystikShadows, the other articles are very good too.
PCOPY really goes up with each issue released.

There is still one problem - I get weird characters displayed for example in "Qbinux by Sebastian McClouth" and "The ABC of the Xblite Programmer by Guy "gl" Lonne". On other places too.

Cause? There are 127+ ASCII codes, which usually serve for special letters or indicate problems.
How to get rid of problems? Use thinBASIC of course :D

To clean the issue from "bad characters" I used following minimalistic script.


' -- Tiny script to fix codepage (?) problems in PCOPY #60

uses "UI"
uses "FILE"

dim sFile as string = dialog_OpenFile( 0, "Select PCOPY file", APP_SOURCEPATH, _
"HTML files|*.htm*", "htm*", _
%OFN_FILEMUSTEXIST OR %OFN_HIDEREADONLY or %OFN_ENABLESIZING )
if len(sFile) = 0 then
msgbox 0, "No file, no work for the script"
stop
end if

dim sBuffer as string = FILE_LOAD(sFile)


sBuffer = remove$( sBuffer, CHR$(226, 128, 157))
sBuffer = remove$( sBuffer, CHR$(226, 128, 156))

sBuffer = replace$( sBuffer, CHR$(195, 169), "é")
sBuffer = replace$( sBuffer, CHR$(195, 159), "B ")
sBuffer = replace$( sBuffer, CHR$(226, 128, 153), "'")

file_Save(APP_SOURCEPATH+"Corrected_PCOPY60.htm", sBuffer)
msgbox 0, "File saved as:"+$CRLF+APP_SOURCEPATH+"Corrected_PCOPY60.htm"


Converted file is attached in case Linux users ( ;) ) cannot run thinBASIC, but in other case script will do the job too.


Thanks,
Petr

[MystikShadows]

Hi Psch, glad you liked my Open Source articles :). There's more I'd like to write about on the subject, and there's a couple other related subjects that aren't exactly programming per se that I think any programmer that want's to get serious with his coding (Commercial or not) I figured PCOPY! isnt' a bad place to write about them ;-).

As for the character mix up, which version of windows and where do you live? maybe it's a unicode issue more than anything else :-)

[Petr Schreiber]

Happy to hear more articles will follow!

Regarding my character problem :)...

I use Windows XP SP2 + Updates, Czech localization ( lot of weird characters in the language by default ).
Try to seek in PCOPY 60 in your browser following: "multiple items". I got what you can see on the picture.

It is the same in IE7 and FF2.0.0.11.

Interesting is that apostrophe is displayed correctly in whole text except mentioned articles for example.


Bye,
Petr

[E.K.Virtanen]

Hi Psch.

Im confused now since i cant figure out the problem..or what causes it.
I tested with 3 linux browsers (Finnish), asked my friend from Sweden to try it (XP + IE & Opera & FF) and no problems + lot's of peoples around the world has looked this issue and no reports of this kind of problem.

Maybe certain character combinations makes a mess or something...
Ideas? Would be nice to fix this.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

it can be just my CZ localized Windows and browsers... not sure. It would be not their first difference in behaviour comparing to other language versions.

One thing is that PCOPY has not specified any charset in META tag (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/charset.html), could that cause it somehow?

But hey, not so big trouble. I thought it is something everybody experiences, but if it is just me than no problem.
I can always run the fixing script or just ignore those characters.
I will also try to test on more PCs.


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Thanks for PCopy #60. I will head over to read it after I do the forums reads. Sounds like a lot of interesting articles, thanks again!

[MystikShadows]

HOpe you like it Kryton9. :)

Just so you guys know, I recently added a category on our forum at http://forum.basicprogramming.org/ under PCOPY where you can make suggestions about what you'd like contributors to write about in upcoming issues.

Want to learn how to do something, want to know how a certain BASIC dialect works, want a review of a given dialect to be made? doesn't matter what you want, post it there, this way they won't be forgotten about and from then we'll see what we can do about including atleast some of them in each issue.

So if you have an idea, go ahead and suggest it, if you happen to have time and can write about one of the suggestions already there, feel free, we welcome contributions as you probably already know by now :-)>

[kryton9]

I'm enjoying the new release very much. I can't believe the amount of great content you guys put out in such a short time. My hats off to you guys!

[E.K.Virtanen]

Thank you kryton but the real thanks goes to the peoples who contributes contents to us. I only did make interview and build the issue.