From: stevepo@microsoft.com (Steven Podradchik)
Subject: Re: VBDOS questions for MS guys
Date: 06 Oct 92 19:21:08 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Distribution: usa

Glad you like VB/DOS.  Not that I'm biased or anything (grin) but I
like it, too.

>
>	1) TRNSLTE really locks my machine up bad everytime I run it
>	but it seems to get through most of the steps, it creates the
>	.MAK file with only the forms in it and outputs text files, but
>	doesn't merge the text to the forms before locking up.  
>	I have a 386-40 with 4meg ram and Trident SVGA running a 
>	sstor compressed SCSI drive.

Ensure that VB/DOS and VB/Win are both in your path.  Also...it's unlikely
that it locks up your machine.  If Translate seems to fail for some
reason while VB/DOS is running, hit Ctrl_Esc to pop back to Windows then
Select "Translate" and hit "ENd Task".  Then kill VB/DOS with a Ctrl-Alt-Del
from the DOS box (assuming Win 3.1).


>	2) Sometimes running/compiling goes real fast and sometimes it
>	absolutely crawls, taking several minutes to run/compile.  
>	It doesn't seem consistent in compile times, I guess is what
>	I am trying to say.  Even if I don't change any code the binding
>	step only increments the line counter once every 5-10 secs or so
>	SHould it be this slow?

No VB/DOS should not be slow.  Ensure that you have your machine configured
for both EMS and XMS memory.  Presumably you have Windows.  The easiest
thing to do is run VB/DOS from a Windows DOS box using .PIF file provided.
This gives your DOS box all the EMS and XMS it can handle.  But check
your config.sys  and look at the C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE line.  Be certain
that you do NOT have NOEMS on that line (many people do).  My Config line
looks like:
DEVICE = c:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM
Running under Windows, while certainly not required, also gives
you the adv of virtual memory on 386/486 boxes.

>	3) It took forever to find any mention of SENDKEYS in the manual.
>	I figured it wasn't supported but thought it should be easier to 
>	find.
Oops.  I justed check the docs and on-line myself and
couldn't find it.
Note: Pages 518-543 of the Programmer's Guide includes a very
exhaustive list of all Statments, Methods, Events, and Properties
as they exist for VB/DOS, VB/Win, QB45, and PDS.  But it does
look like we missed one statement.  Will try to correct on next
printing.  Thanks!

>	4) One other problem I had was a line that looked like this:
>		Sell_Form.Hide : ' Hide this form
>	the editor kept changing this to a line label like this
>	Sell_Form.Hide:			' Hide this form
>	I couldnt get it to work right until I moved the comment down.
>	This worked fine with VBwin
>
Believe it or not, that really is a Feature not a Bug.  In VB/Win,
variables cannot have dots in them unless they are part of a TYPE.
For backwards compatibility with QB/PDS, VB/DOS allows variables (and
labels, therefore) to have dots in them.  Following these backward
compatibility rules, VB/DOS correctly interpreted that as a label.
To get it to work in both environments (and save a byte), make the line:
Sell_Form.Hide 'Hide this form
(in other words, kill the colon ... it doesn't do anything anyway)

>Other than these small problems VBDOS is great, I ported about 10k lines
>of code over to DOS in no time, all I had to change were the SENDKEYS, and
>touchup most of the forms.  This is exactly what I needed, so I can support
>older computers with non-windows abilities.  
>
>Thanks MicroSoft, 
>-Al
>
Thanks, Steve Podradchik (VB/DOS product manager)


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