DM Secretary 5: Open Source Software
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Open Source Software
Occult Entertainment decided that DM Secretary version 5 would become open source software,Basics
the philosophy behind this being that, given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow
and that any user dedicated enough could contribute to the level of his brillance in bettering this product.
DM Secretary 5 is written in Visual Basic 6, Service Pack 6.How to set your coding environment
It makes extensive use of Object Oriented Programming and numerous API calls. Some sub-classing is also involved.I personally have Microsoft Visual Studion 6 professional.
You can probably get one through eBay from some programmer who has moved on from it for cheap.
Visual Basic 6 is not Visual Basic .NET (also known as Visual Fred) and there is no plan in the foreseable future to migrate the code from VB6 to dotNET.There was talk about migrating eveything to Real Basic, from Real Software, which would entail a whole rewrite, again.
However, on the plus side, this would make DM Secretary truly multi-platform (MS Window, Mac and Linux)I also have installed Visual Source Safe that comes with the Visual Studio 6 Pro.
You would also need the following:
• a good HEX editor, at least to examine the DMF file as for result. I have Ultra Edit but any free software could do the job credibly. Just Google it.
• a good file comparison software. I personnaly use Araxis Merge.
• my favorite 'notepad' clone: EditPad from www.jgsoft.com
• if you want to work on the help file (*.chm), ask us as this is a horse of a truly different colour.'Nice to have' documentation:
• Any Dan Appleman books that deal with Win32 APIs.
• Any books that deal in a mature fashion with hardcore coding.
• API guide, from www.allapi.net (free for download) or get it here if it fell off the map.
My favorites are:
• "Dan Appleman's Win32 APIs Puzzle Book and Tutorial for Visual basic Programmers": This one corrects some erroneous APIs as published by Microsoft itself !
• "Visual Basic 5 Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API": This applies to VB 6 directly.
• "HardCore Visual programming", from Bruce McKinney (free online), plus some extra info here. Sorry, there is no downloadable version.
• "Sub classing and Hooking with Visual Basic", by Stephen Teilhet.
• MSDN Library. The last one that deals completely with VB6 is dated October 2001.
• Really nice to have: the VB5 help file. I'll see if I can get it
To make this truly workable without fail, these steps have to be taken:Managing Changes• get the documentation describing the DM Secretary fileformat and the programmer's manual.
• get and place all OCXes and DLL in the correct system folder or
• get and install the full version, which will do it for you.
• get the archived source code and extract to some working folder. The whole directory structure will be replicated.
• open the .vbp file in notepad and do these actions:• open the project and if there are any OCXes not correctly loaded, close without saving, read the (form name).log and correct the vbp file in notepad, usually the path to those missing controls is wrong.• You will get as much mentoring as you can stand 8-D, from Aspar, lead programmer. Just put "Open Source" in the subject so it won't be deleted as spam.
• redo above until no error remains.
• build (compile) the application and fix any broken references that turns up. Mostly libraries references that point to the wrong folder.
• redo above until no error remains.• When you are ready to do an installation package, first open the PDM file in notepad (or EditPad) and correct all the paths according to what exists on your machine.
If you do not, the script will not be able to find any files with incorrect paths.
To make this truly workable without too much anguish, these steps will help both you and me:=============================================================• Contact me about what you would implement (features or add-ons) / debug and fix / any changes.
• After some thrashing out to make sure no one's machine will catch fire, just do it and test it on your home system.
• Send me any modified / added forms, modules, classes and usercontrols.
• Also send me any new DLLs and OCXes needed that I might not have, zipped.
• In that last case, also send me the .vbp file so I can update mine without too much voodoo.• The magick I will do is merge the new things into the master source code (sorry, Visual Source Safe 6 does not support forking), compile and test according to your indications.
• After some decent time has passed, a new source code will be uploaded here and so will a new build for download.• Oh, and you get your name / monicker in the "About" box, in the Kudos list, as you send it to me. Take a look to see what it's like.
You are now ready to take your first step.Welcome!
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Created:2009/04/07 Last update: 2009/10/20
Webmeister:Richard Jalbert (barn_cat_software@sympatico.ca
©Copyright 2007, Richard Jalbert. All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
