New laptop

[Ric]

I have just purchased a new laptop and would like to move bb4w across to it. I have successfully downloaded the demo version and have my key from the previous version of bb4w, but i can not find a way of downloading without going through the paypal page. I have tried just copying my copy of bb4w and when run it says no key has been inputted. i know this is true because i have not been asked to input it! I would like to continue with bb4w as opposed to bbcsdl because i prefer how the ide performs ( and i am used to the little nuances ). Could someone please point me in the rightg dirction to download with out having to pay again?

[Richard Russell]

Could someone please point me in the rightg dirction to download with out having to pay again?

https://www.bbcbasic.net/bbcwin/faq.html#q14

[Ric]

Thank you Richard, I was hoping that was not the answer. I have checked everywhere on all backups etc and can not find the bbcsetup.zip
Is there another way or should I resign myself to paying for it again? Heres hoping.

[Richard Russell]

I have checked everywhere on all backups etc and can not find the bbcsetup.zip

That's easily resolved (with one caveat, see below). Re-visit the download link, which you originally received by email, and you will see a large button labelled 'Request Additional Downloads'. Click on that button and it will set into motion sending you a replacement download.

The caveat is that, for obvious security reasons, the replacement download will be sent to the same email address that the original purchase was. So this method only works if you have not changed your email address since then, or at least when the original mailbox is still active and can be accessed.

You will appreciate that approaches like 'activating' a trial version by entering your serial number are far too insecure, because anybody with a valid serial number could get BBC BASIC for Windows entirely free - and valid BB4W serial numbers are easily found online.

By linking a free replacement with your email address, as the PayLoadz mechanism does, there is a good chance it will only go to the legitimate original purchaser. Increasingly, your email address is becoming a de-facto 'digital ID'.

As you well know, I would personally recommend that you use BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 which is completely free and avoids all this complication. It's true that the BB4W IDE has some 'quirks', but they are invariably ones that I don't like. Here are a few features of the BB4W IDE which I find really annoying:

• The indentation and syntax colouring happen only when you move the cursor out of the line, not 'live'.
• The functions and procedures in your program are listed in the order they appear in the program, there is no option for alphabetical sorting. This is really awful and makes it very hard to locate a FN or PROC in a large program.
• If a BASIC program crashes, it brings down the IDE with it, since they run in the same process. This is the most idiotic design decision, I expect I did it because I didn't know how to spawn new processes then.
• There are no breakpoints, other than by manually inserting TRACE STEP statements in your program.

When I designed the BBCSDL IDE I had the opportunity to put all these annoying things right. If there are features of the BB4W IDE which you prefer to the BBCSDL IDE what are they? It might be possible to incorporate them, after all the BBCSDL IDE is itself written in BBC BASIC so is amenable to alteration, even by the end user.

[Ric]

Unfortunately, that boat sailed a long time ago. I had an attack on my system and as a consequence have no email history from about 2 and a half years ago.
I presume there is no other way?

The thing I miss most about bb4w ide is the right click to bring up the list of procs/fns, but generally I think the bb4w ide is a more slick application. I develope my software in the bb4w ide and transfer if I need to to the SDL ide if I'm working on a pi project for example.

[Richard Russell]

I had an attack on my system and as a consequence have no email history from about 2 and a half years ago.

OK, so you'll need to contact me privately (by PM or email) with your Registration Key (Serial Number) and the email address you used when it was ordered. So long as it was purchased from me (rather than from Rakewell Limited for example) I should be able to cross-reference them using my own records.

The thing I miss most about bb4w ide is the right click to bring up the list of procs/fns

As I said, the list of PROCs/FNs in the BB4W IDE is largely useless because there's no way to sort it alphabetically. In a large program that can make it almost impossible to locate the one you are looking for, because you have to scan visually through possibly hundreds of them in 'random' order (i.e. the order in which they occur in your program) maybe over two or more 'pages'. This is so unsatisfactory that on the rare occasion that I use BB4W I often use SDLIDE_for_BB4W.

But if you particularly want the List FNs/PROCs option in the right-click context menu - and personally I can't see why you would, given that it's more effort than simply left-clicking in the list box - that would be a trivial change to SDLIDE.bbc. Feel free to make that change yourself if you want to; PROCcontextmenu() is where you would need to add it, and the command ID is 334.

generally I think the bb4w ide is a more slick application.

Explain "more slick". In most respects SDLIDE is modelled on the BB4W IDE, so the 'slickness' should be the same. Where they do differ, I am in no doubt that in most respects SDLIDE is better. The only major feature I'm aware of that the BB4W IDE has but SDLIDE doesn't is support for drag-and-drop editing. That can't realistically be implemented in SDLIDE because it's very Windows-specific.

[Richard Russell]

As I said, the list of PROCs/FNs in the BB4W IDE is largely useless because there's no way to sort it alphabetically. In a large program that can make it almost impossible to locate the one you are looking for, because you have to scan visually through possibly hundreds of them in 'random' order (i.e. the order in which they occur in your program) maybe over two or more 'pages'.

Here's an example of what I mean. This is the first of three pages of FNs and PROCs; I have tried to make it a little easier to find what I want by adding some comments and partially sorting them myself, but it's no substitute for the option of automatic alphabetical sorting that SDLIDE has.

listfnproc.png

x

[Ric]

Thanks Richard, I will DM later.
I do agree that searching through the list is tedious, I took have programs with a few hundred proc/fns.
"Slick" the way the program feels, the scrolling of the text is SDL is not as smooth as in the bb4w ide

[Richard Russell]

the scrolling of the text in SDL is not as smooth as in the bb4w ide

Well, it's very curious that you should say that because of the two only SDLIDE supports 'smooth' (per pixel) scrolling, the BB4W IDE doesn't support smooth scrolling at all, it can only scroll an entire program line at a time! I implemented smooth scrolling in SDLIDE as one of the enhancements.

Being written in interpreted BASIC, SDLIDE may well require a faster PC than you would need to get the same performance from the native Windows controls used by the BB4W IDE, but it's absolutely fine on this quite ordinary (Dell) laptop.

[Ric]

Sounds like such a silly question, but how do i message you directly Richard, I can not find a way on this forum, nor an email anywhere?