Hello from Chris Holbrook

**Chris Holbrook** · 11-01-2009, 21:55

I am an old programmer from UK.

Just wrote my first ThinBASIC script - a GUI to run my PowerBasic calendar app from a library. It took 10 minutes and appears to work correctly.

Congratulations to Eros and friends on a nice development tool!

**ErosOlmi** · 11-01-2009, 22:04

Ciao Chris and welcome to thinBasic community forum.

Hope thinBasic can be of some help in your every day programming.
If you find something missing or something you will like to see built into thinBasic, let us know. We will try our best to try to do it.

See you.
Eros

**Michael Hartlef** · 11-01-2009, 22:05

Hi Chris,

welcome here on the board. Yes thinBasic is very powerfull and you will see a lot of similar syntax to PowerBasic. The fact is that a lot of modules are written with PowerBasic. If you ever want to contribute a module to thinBasic or need speed for your scripts, then PowerBasic is a very good choice for doing so.

Michael

**Chris Holbrook** · 11-01-2009, 22:40

Originally Posted by Michael Hartlef

The fact is that a lot of modules are written with PowerBasic.

Michael, forgive my ignorance, what do you mean by "module"? Do you mean a dll or something different?

**Petr Schreiber** · 11-01-2009, 22:49

Welcome abroad Chris,

I hope you will find ThinBasic very useful!

What are modules? Others will explain better, but think of modules as of DLLs, which can take advantage of ThinBasic parsing mechanism. When you use such a DLL (which can be created using PowerBASIC and other languages), users can pick it and go - no need for headers, ThinBasic will be able to see functions immediately.

Check SDK directory for module templates for all languages (PB template recommended).

Petr

**ErosOlmi** · 11-01-2009, 23:03

Chris,

thinBasic is not a closed language but a modular one.
It mainly means that there is a Core engine responsible mainly for the memory handling, script program flow, the main numeric and string handling and some other stuff.
The rest is developed in external special DLL we call modules. They are special because they need to be built using a thinBasic scheme.
So, developing a thinBasic module you mainly improve the language with new native commands.

You will see a lot of modules in thinBasic\Lib\ directory. Some are create by thinBasic team, some are created by thinBasic users using different compiled languages.

As Petr stated, have a look at \thinBasic\SDK\ directory.
Unpack it and check PowerBasic example to see how to build a thinBasic module. You will be able to defined your keywords name and how they parse needed parameters.

Hope you will like it.

Ciao
Eros