I’ve toyed around with RealBasic a few years ago (more than 5, I’m sure), and I have more or less the same reason for wanting to revisit it. I’ve often been frustrated by the task managers available, they’re either too much, or not enough. I’d like to write something that functions much the way that OmniFocus does, and to my own tastes. I had then asked whether RealBasic (now Xojo) had what it took to create an outliner, and the answer then was “not really, unless someone codes up a plugin in C++.”
Does this answer still stand?
I haven’t downloaded the demo yet. The answer will guide my choice in the matter.
Very true
The ‘hard part’ is the business logic.
You cant get a plugin for that…
the visual part is ‘how do you convey this information onscreen’
Xojo has lots of standard controls.
Many of the ‘nice looking’ things are customised listboxes, or customised canvases.
Theres a lot of work to be done, no matter which coding tool you use.
But Xojo is as good as any for an app like this, and I’d be happy to use it to do that kind of app if I wanted to build one.
If it can handle the internal managing of hierarchical nodes and has the capabilities to display the kind of widgetry necessary, then I’ll spend some time poking around. I cut my teeth scripting in Userland Frontier in an environment that looks a lot like this: http://littleoutliner.com/
I’ve been hooked on outliners ever since. If anyone has seen the skeletal code for a basic outliner in Xojo, I’d appreciate it if you could point me toward it to give me a sense of how Xojo would handle it. Thank you for your answers.
Do I as a developer have the imagination, knowledge and expertise to leverage a tool such as XOJO to create an outliner?[/quote]
Sorry, but I’ll disagree. Does AppleScript have what it takes to create a photo editor like Photoshop? Can I use a hammer as a screwdriver? Implicit in the question was the issue of not cobbling and kludging and tearing one’s hair out on a duct tape and bailing wire solution.
The good news, I’m told, is that Xojo should have the toolkit to handle it.
[quote=220709:@Frank Marion]the answer then was “not really, unless someone codes up a plugin in C++.”
Does this answer still stand?[/quote]
Language snobism, or sheer ignorance, IMHO. Whomever told you that may not have had enough mastery of RealBasic to realize that it was already perfectly able at that time to carry out such a project. Since then, Xojo came with even more.
Xojo and C++ offer the same possibilities. Except Xojo will most of the time allow you to complete an app in a fraction of what Visual Studio for instance will take.
The level of abstraction in Xojo is much higher, so you do not have to reinvent the wheel at every turn. That is a decisive advantage for user interface design, a big part of the requirements for a modern task manager app.
Another strong point of Xojo that is not a matter of pure engineering is this forum, where people actually share knowledge and assistance, in a way I have never seen in Microsoft forums.
