Temporary Forum Oddities

[bplus]

Ok, and what happens if you edit the post not touching the codebox, but just changing something in the regular post text and then save again?

That's what caused me misalignment in the code.

Dang I lost that nice edge, and the same trick won't get it back???

[mnrvovrfc]

Wow! I didn't realize Unicode could be such a pain in the rear...

Things seemed to be much simpler with 16-bit and CP437. Then Internet grew up and with that, the need to communicate in different languages. There has to be a compromise somewhere which is not a plug-in, please not another forum/web-browser plug-in! One that signals something like [QB=CP437=#233] for Greek "theta" commonly used for angle in polar trigonometry. Or maybe in HTML format like "ampersand start, semicolon end" notation?

It's a mess. It shouldn't be. This should have opened an opportunity for somebody to make a lot of money.

I have a solution which, sadly, is more than most people are willing to go through. Write a QB64 program that takes a BAS source code file as input, and scans it for high-bit characters. Then these characters are translated into some sort of codified UTF-8 or whatever so they display in the forum correctly, and they could be transferred safely back to code form. The problem is that somebody else taking it from the forum will require that same QB64 program, or perhaps another one to translate the encoded stuff into the CP437 high-bit characters.

It seems cannot use those high-bit characters in comments inside BASIC source code. It's logical in the QB64 IDE but remember that it's a nostalgic replica of an editor that worked quite well for 16-bit, and otherwise we should be using VSCode or other editor that doesn't sweat Unicode.

[RhoSigma]

Ok, and what happens if you edit the post not touching the codebox, but just changing something in the regular post text and then save again?

That's what caused me misalignment in the code.

Dang I lost that nice edge, and the same trick won't get it back???

Ya, no clue what's going on there, the only way to get it back is making a new export from the IDE and replacing the screwed codebox in the post with that fresh export.

[RhoSigma]

Wow! I didn't realize Unicode could be such a pain in the rear...

Things seemed to be much simpler with 16-bit and CP437. Then Internet grew up and with that, the need to communicate in different languages. There has to be a compromise somewhere which is not a plug-in, please not another forum/web-browser plug-in! One that signals something like [QB=CP437=#233] for Greek "theta" commonly used for angle in polar trigonometry. Or maybe in HTML format like "ampersand start, semicolon end" notation?

It's a mess. It shouldn't be. This should have opened an opportunity for somebody to make a lot of money.

I have a solution which, sadly, is more than most people are willing to go through. Write a QB64 program that takes a BAS source code file as input, and scans it for high-bit characters. Then these characters are translated into some sort of codified UTF-8 or whatever so they display in the forum correctly, and they could be transferred safely back to code form. The problem is that somebody else taking it from the forum will require that same QB64 program, or perhaps another one to translate the encoded stuff into the CP437 high-bit characters.

It seems cannot use those high-bit characters in comments inside BASIC source code. It's logical in the QB64 IDE but remember that it's a nostalgic replica of an editor that worked quite well for 16-bit, and otherwise we should be using VSCode or other editor that doesn't sweat Unicode.

The solution would be to have an import function in the IDE (in symetry to the export) which would convert the UTF-8 back to CP437. The code is already in there, that's actually exactly what I do when importing the Wiki pages into the internal F1 help.

But who want's to "import" code from a codebox? People usually just wanna copy and paste. So the best would be to make QB64 a full fledged unicode application, but guess that would require a rewrite from scratch, as it affects to many sections of the language. I'm going to say that will not happen soon, if ever.

Actually earlier I've always wondered why editors/word processors providing Export/Import facilities along with the usual Open/Save/Save As operations. Because there are converting tasks to be done which are not covered by the regular Open/Save operations or copy+paste clipboard operations. Now I know.