Customer service.

[kornalius]

We would like to know what we can do to improve our customer's service. We do our best but what if we are putting too much effort in some areas while others are left behind?</p>

Maybe we are releasing too many updates, not enough?</p>

Maybe our response speed is not fast enough?</p>

Do we solve your problems?</p>

What more can we do to improve our support?</p>

Do you want more FAQ's?</p>

Do you want more Tutorials? (We try to add one a week)</p>

[plinydogg]

You guys do an excellent job of releasing updates, responding promptly to user concerns, and everything else. Seriously, so far Arianesoft has the best support I've seen anywhere!

My biggest problem so far (i.e., the thing keeping me from buying PPL) is that even though I have a basic understanding of C syntax and program structure, understand basic OOP concepts, etc. I'm NOT familiar with programming Windows at all. So I don't even know where to start when it comes to that stuff (is there a certain book I should read? What is it that I need to learn? Windows API? Windows Forms?Hwnd-ology?).

While the MSDN helps a lot, it doesn't explain basics. The example I keep coming back to is what are the parameters in this line of code:

Func EditProc (hWnd$, Msg$, wParam$, lParam$)

After searching extensively on Google, I found out that wParam$ and lParam$ are now 32-bit variables that are used to handle &quot;extra&quot; data associated with messages (Msg$?). What is a message? And for that matter, what is a Handle (Hwnd$)? I think a handle is just a window. Do we always need to include these parameters?

Questions like these are the only things really holding me back from fully embracing PPL and it would be nice to see more tutorials, or just references to other sources, in this area because until I learn this stuff I can't really use PPL.

I'm perfectly capable of teaching myself with a book (and asking questions on this forum) but at this point I don't even know what it is I need to learn or where to learn it.

In any event, as I said above, you guys are great! And PPL is great too! Keep up the good work!

[Paul Fielder]

I have just purchased PPL (Pro), solely on the strength of your customer support (and that from the little use that I have had I’m total impressed with the product); I'm struggling with OOP Classes and lists etc. Your help files have improved 10 fold (From the Beta version) however more use of &quot;See also&quot; hotlinks wouldn't go a miss from my prospective, detailed and well commented examples in both help and included tutorials would be a bonus. Also a version of the help for the Pocked PC IDE as this is the platform I seem to have the most time to tinker on. While I'm on the subject anyway of allowing more that one file open for editing on the Pocket PC?

Paul

[MagNet]

ArianeSoft's software support really rocks.

You're the example everyone should learn from (looking at you PdaMill and Infinite Dreams grr)

[kornalius]

Thanks guys. What were trying to do is exactly we would like to treated as customers.

plinydogg: By selecting an event in the list in the PIDE you can press CTRL+F1 to get more information on MSDN. I don't know if you knew this trick or not. I will look into writing a tutorial on Windows API programming but it will be hard to cover all events. The best source is MSDN for each event. I use it myself a lot.

Paul: We will definitely look into adding more content to the PocketPC IDE help. It is a little rough right now. It is on our to-do list. As for editing more than one file, it is not possible and I don't if it will. Brad will probably like the idea and look into it for a later version, like maybe 1.1 or 1.2. We'll see what he has to say.

[bmanske]

Paul,

Right now the editor on the PPC uses a windows edit control and the whole thing is pretty simple. It suffers from the limitations of the control also (no syntax highlighting, files limited to 64k, etc...)

In the future I plan on implementing the text editor with multiple windows, syntax highlighting, support for files up to 4G, undo, redo support. I'm just not sure how far into the future this is.

For those of you using the PPC as a development platform (as I do), I purchased a copy of CHM Ebook Reader from MicroOlap. It is very good and fast. For reference I have the PPL CHM help, I took the CHM files from my PC from when I loaded Microsoft Embedded Visual Tools, I picked up Charles Petzold - Programming Windows and Dougles Boling - Programming Windows CE from the bargin books at a local computer show and both came with CD with the books in CHM format.

Brad

[plinydogg]

Kornalius,

Thank you for the [Ctrl] + [F1] tip.

BManske,

Do you think that getting a book like Petzold's, written as it is for C programmers (I think), will help with basic Windows API stuff? For example, I found an online Windows API tutorial that is also aimed at C programmers and I'm not sure that it will help me too much with PPL since it is a different language.

Even though it may not be exactly the same, some of teh concepts on this tutorial seem like they might be true of PPL as well. For example, that tutorial says at one point: &quot;Any time the user moves the mouse, types on the keyboard, clicks on your window's menu, or does any number of other things, messages are generated by the system and entered into your program's message queue.&quot; This would seem to explain what the Msg$ parameter is that appears in so many PPL functions. Do you have any insight on how to procede learning basics such as these? Writing the word MSG$ and then using [Ctrl] + [F1] returns 250 results, which makes using it a little impractical in this particular case.

[kornalius]

No Msg$ won't return anything good. What you want to search for is the event message in the list of events in PIDE on the right side.

Each event, mouse down, up, move, key down, up, window resize, move etc... all have messages generated for them and passed to a procedure with hwnd, message, wparam, lparam. PPL goes over one level in simplicity eliminating the need to know what possible event can be triggered for each control type. You get a list of all possible events on the right side of the control in the properties tab. Click Events to display them. Then you choose which event you want to write code for. Now you need to know what parameters are being passed to this event. That is where you need to press CTRL+F1 by selecting the event in the list. The MSDN will tell you what is suppose to be passed in wParam$ and lParam$.

It's late here I hope I make sense at all.

[bmanske]

The real value in these books on Programming Windows is in learning the interactions with windows. I still have lots of problems with GUI programming and refer to them often. The paper copies sit here at my desk.

So the information is valid wether you are using C or Delphi, or basic. You just need to get used to the idea that behind every action in the system is an event message. Windows sends messages to tell you about a user actions as Kornalius describes, but you also control windows with actions. You send a message to windows to put a checkbox on a menu for example.

Another key concept is that almost everything is a window. Scroll bars, edit boxes, buttons almost everything is a window and can be sent messages. For example in the editor, it received a message from windows that the user has pressed a button, then a message is sent from the handler that received the message to the edit window to load the text. You are not limited to sending and receiving from your own program, you can also work between other programs in the same manor.

There are huge numbers of messages in the system at almost every point of execution. The trick to making it managable is that windows has default actions for every message if you don't write any code for it.

Why don't you start another thread in the support section for your questions. I think you'll find the books and Turorials (even though they are in C) will help a lot with understanding what a particular message does. We'll try to provide examples and explainations to keep you going.

Brad

[plinydogg]

K &amp; B, Thanks so much for your detailed replies. I will start a new &quot;Windows API for Dummies&quot; thread in the support section as soon as I get home from work, which will be in about 8 hours =( or maybe I'll do it at lunch. Thanks again!

[CerfVolant]

Hello evrybody,

Excuse me for my english, I am French and i learn english just at school.

I am very interest by your soft, i think i am going to buy it, but there no support in french, but you are a canadian guy who live in montréal, perhaps you speak french ?? or is there somebody who speak french to have a special topic in french in your forum ??

!dodge !dodge

[matteo.m]

Hello everyone , I bought pro version mainly because the software support and because by the fist time i started to follow this forum i learned a lot of things. I like a lot the newsletter and any kind of source example with comments into and also &quot;how to&quot; tips. I'm looking forward for the database browser that Eric said he's going to share :) . I would like to thank you all guys for this nice piece of software.

[plinydogg]

Bienvenue CerfVolant! Je suis sur qu'ils parlent Francais et je suis sur aussi que je ne peux pas parler Francais! Bonne chance!

[kornalius]

Salut CerfVolant, je suis de Montréal et je parles Francais! Je vais ouvrir un forum en Francais, je vois qu'il y a pas mal d'utilisateur PPL qui sont Francais.

Je vais effectivement faire un support en Francais.

matteo: I am happy that you learn new things in the forums. It's nice to know that what we do as a purpose other than just fixing bugs! :)

[MagNet]

Heh, how about some support in czech aswell xD

[kornalius]

Sorry that I can't! :)

[MagNet]

:(

[CerfVolant]

kornalius :

Merci d'avoir pris en compte ma demande, je suis sur que cela va ravir beaucoup de francophone qui ne sont pas forcement bilingue.