Public Beta or Premature Release?

[zehlein]

Dear PPL team,
after toying around with PPL I am more and more convinced that PPL at the current stage is an environment that shows a high potential but is not usable as such at the moment.
Let me explain:
*Everyone of us who has given it a try has found at least a dozen of bugs and flaws so far.
*It begins with the install routine that leaves wrong paths to be manually corrected.
*The VFB does not work correctly. Its not usable concerning the PPC version and it is painful to work with on the PC.
*Conclusion: despite of the GameAPI (looks impressive but I can't comment on it) I am not able to build an decent GUI and therefore can't write useful programs (other opinions may ofcourse differ from that view)

Please don't get me wrong. I appreciate your work and energy found in this project and as mentioned think of it as a "high potential programming environment". I will eagerly await any updates and hope they will solve most of the problems. If so, I would happily buy PPL, no doubt. But what I have on my computer now is Beta-Software and not a stable release as advertised on your homepage.

[MagNet]

Well it's still free when you use a trial so let's give kornalius 15 days to fix as much as he can.

I guess he just couldn't wait heh :)

[kornalius]

Rest assure we will fix all the bugs. You also have to understand that PPL is a huge project there are tons of areas to cover.

We didn't make it clear on release but the VFB was not ready for prime time yet. We are sorry about this but we had to release on the 14th. We couldn't delay anymore.

Can you explain the problems with the install routine please? We'd like to fix it ASAP.

Why can't you build a working form on the PC? Are you using the PIDE to build your forms? What can we improve to simplify the process?

[kornalius]

Oh and btw, we are planning on releasing 1.03 which will fix more install issues and most of all more fixes in PPL and the PIDE. If need be, 1.03 might come out soon too.

We are dedicated to this product and will make sure it satisfies our customers.

[zehlein]

kornalius:
what is still tricky with the install routine: the path you set via project options/Intel PC/ is supposed to be the "project ppl installation path" - that is as I understand the directory I installed PPL in (let's say \program files\ppl\). That gives me the error "ppl.exe not found..." trying to compile a project. Solution was giving the path to ppl.exe (in our case \program files\ppl\runtime\). Not a great thing but took several minutes to work out for me.
Concerning the VFB: I can build a working form with it but that gives me a hard time. I for instance tried to work with the group container, i.e. place a few radio-buttons in it. So far so good but don't you dare to move the damn thing over other components on the form, it will kind of "swallow" them and they are gone...
I repeat again: great work so far kornalius but just too buggy for me to use. And thats why I would give it development state public beta testing at the moment.

[kornalius]

Well the installation paths will be fixed in the next release.

As for the VFB are we talking the PIDE or the VFB on the PocketPC? If you are talking about the PIDE on the PC then I will definately look into this for next release.

Sorry that you find PPL in beta state but I can assure you that any programming language on the market have gone through this phase for several major versions. Some of them are at version 6 and sometimes more. Give PPL time and I promess you'll be amazed.

[PointOfLight]

For a version 1.x release, PPL is a pretty amazing product. I have been helping with testing and other parts of the development process for a couple of years now, and I am continually impressed with the functionality that already exists in this project. Since it's been mentioned a couple of times on this forum already, another product I've worked with quite extensively is NSBasic (if you look in the Files section of the Yahoo group under the Styskul folder you'll see my work), and comparatively speaking, the desktop forms editor in PPL is much nicer to use.

I can't speak for the PPC version because personally, I have no need to develop on my device nor would I want to. There may be a few quirks left in the system, but I have seen ArianeSoft's commitment to PPL and know they will address all issues as quickly as they can. I hope you'll continue to watch PPL and give it a try as new updates are released, but unless you want to go with Microsoft, who has had 20 years to perfect their IDEs, you'll be hard pressed to find a decent alternative to PPL. I've tried out many environments since I've had my PocketPC, and I haven't found a better one yet.

[mmtbb]

I can speek for the PPC version. It works really good for version 1.0. zehlein: Version 1.0 works just as good as any version 1.0 for any program. Give Korn a break. I know for a fact that he will work hard to fix all bugs found, and quickly. I undersatand you may be frustrated, but all will work out. Support goes both ways :-) Support PPL and it will support you.

[zehlein]

@mmtbb: I will as I said stick to PPL for quite some time. As you guys do, I believe in the power of PPL. Thats exactly the reason to come out with this thread.
@kornalius: I fiddled around some time to get straight what I meant. The VFB on PC has the following bug: place a groupbox on a form. You might place some components in it: that works fine. Now try and place a component *outside* the groupbox. Next move the groupbox over that component and drop it. Try to move it away again and you'll see your component is gone. The groupbox took the component located outside of it (and therefore meant to stay there) away to its new position. If you delete the groupbox and you will see the component again.

[kornalius]

Hi zehlein, this bug has been addressed in 1.02. Each control is assigned a group parent now internally. So the only way to add a control to a group control, you have to make sure the group is selected before you click to add a control to it. This was the control is assigned to that group and no other controls will be moved into the group just by moving around.

[zehlein]

Thanks, thats how it should work!