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Roberto Lopez wrote:

raumi75 wrote: That's right. People always say, that they want simple applications. But they want it to be powerful and full of features.

If you got a little time, you can watch this talk "Simplicity vs. Choice" by Joel Spolsky:
http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/08/19.html

Nice movie ..
I must agree that iPhone change my thinking about user interface.
After some time I started to remove msgyesno() and change design of my applications.

All my work is currently done on winXP and win7.
I would like to say to our clients that "Win7 is better than XP", but is not.
It is complicated, to many choices, slower than XP, UAC, etc.

At home I'm using Mac OSX.
Mac OS is faster, simpler, cleaner and more stable OS than any windows.
Clean interface and smart window/feature design of OSX/iPhone lead me to changes in thinking.

Now I'm trying to make easy to use software but more powerful than before.
Some applications can be seen on http://servis.bbm.hr (press ? for screenshot)
All applications and cgi's are written in harbour and minigui

So I believe that next year we will have dmg installer of HMG4

Thank you all for your great work.

Regards
Alen

PS:“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”. Albert Einstein

Roberto Lopez wrote:One, is the C/Unix culture, were read a long howto, download a lot of packages and runing config scripts to get the things running is ok.

Well, technically, that is true. But I think that Ubuntu (and most other Linux distributions) and Mac OS X (a BSD-Unix by the way) do a really good job at keeping it hidden from the user. Package managers like Synaptic (basically a colorful wrapper for apt-get) and Macports (based on the BSD-Port system) take care of installing your software AND keeping them updated. The UNIX philosophy is to write programs that do one thing and do that well. If you need functionality, that already exists, your program relies on another one. So if you install something, you first need to have the other stuff. Those are called dependencies.

But a package manager knows those dependencies, resolves them by installing the other packages and makes sure everything keeps working by preventing you from uninstalling something that is still needed. Updating your software gets done by the package manager. So you can install all updates to your OS and your applications in one strike.

Many people praise the iPhone for their App-Store. But it is nothing more than a package manager. Just you have to pay for some packages...

Roberto Lopez wrote:The other is the Windows culture (most of us) that not found that acceptable

Yes. Coming from Windows, it is a big paradigm shift, because you are used to downloading stuff from the internet and installing them yourself.

But If you are used to the UNIX-way, the Windows-philosophy is not acceptable

Take HMG for example: Because we still can't rely on dependencies on Windows, you have to bundle mingw (a huge package) with your software to create something that runs without hassle just seconds after downloading.

When you release a new version, your user has to update it himself or the software developer needs to write update functions. That is why many programs interrupt you for updates, they would like to perform. You probably know that feeling when you just want to look up something on the web, you start your browser and before you can do your task, it asks you to first update stuff...

Anyhow. The best philosophy is probably the one you are used to because you have learned to handle it.

solvox wrote:(press ? for screenshot)

How is that intuitive?

I am just teasing you. I hope you don't mind...

raumi75 wrote:

solvox wrote:(press ? for screenshot)

How is that intuitive?

I am just teasing you. I hope you don't mind...

You should see previous work ..
Don't have any old [?] but it's a total mess

raumi75 wrote:<...>
But I think that Ubuntu (and most other Linux distributions) and Mac OS X (a BSD-Unix by the way) do a really good job at keeping it hidden from the user.
<...>

I agree, but this is a relatively new phenomenon.

Moreover, there is lots of 'old-school' developers that still thinking that is acceptable that the final users must to accomplish various configuration tasks prior to get the things running.

raumi75 wrote: Many people praise the iPhone for their App-Store. But it is nothing more than a package manager. Just you have to pay for some packages...

Most Apple products are very good and I like it, but sometimes, they appears to be designed only as a sales platform

raumi75 wrote: Yes. Coming from Windows, it is a big paradigm shift, because you are used to downloading stuff from the internet and installing them yourself.

But If you are used to the UNIX-way, the Windows-philosophy is not acceptable

Take HMG for example: Because we still can't rely on dependencies on Windows, you have to bundle mingw (a huge package) with your software to create something that runs without hassle just seconds after downloading.
<...>
Anyhow. The best philosophy is probably the one you are used to because you have learned to handle it.

The current shape of HMG releases, comes from my experience, from a painful try an error learning.

The firsts minigui library releases were a zip file containing the library sources.

Then, I've received hundreds of request (literally) about how the library should be constructed.

Then, I've started to make releases containing the compiled library.

Moreover, hundred of requests regarding harbour installation/configuration still arriving...

Then, I've included a preconfigured Harbour binaries along minigui library releases...

Since I've still receiving lots of requests regarding C compiler installation and configuration, I've decided to include the C compiler in the distribution too.

Anyway, I've still receiving lots of requests since many people had problems setting paths...

So, I've arranged things in such way that configure a path was not necessary anymore.

Finally after various years of work, I've reached a 'zero configuration' scheme.

I've should realize about this from the start, only by looking at my own history as developer.

My favorite development tools on PC were GW-BASIC, Turbo Basic, dBase III+, FoxPro and RapidQ.

All those tools worked with zero configuration from the start.

Is highly reasonable that even an advanced user (as a programmer) ask for zero configuration as a minimal requirement and abandon a product if it present obstacles before the first run.

Fortunately Harbour has advanced a lot on this regard in the lasts times and IMHO this is a key feature for its new popularity.

Nice thoughts Roberto, Alen and Raumi. I enjoyed a lot!

Roberto Lopez wrote: My favorite development tools on PC were GW-BASIC, Turbo Basic, dBase III+, FoxPro and RapidQ.
All those tools worked with zero configuration from the start.

Oh Turbo Basic!! You brought a tear to my eye. I think TB was the first thing that impressed me and made me feel truly PRO. It was GW Basic the true language that was FUN for me, as it all was new and possible. All those hours in tidy gosubs and those routines for data entry made character by character with reverse video, inventing the @.. GET/@...PROMPT but in Basic And then TB could compile that. A shiny, golden EXE... No DBASE or Fox required. Obviously Clipper was the next obvious step. More happy time there.

And until Delphi 3, or probably Delphi 5 (thank God to my years "playing" with Turbo Pascal and those shareware libraries I bought in 5,25"..) I never felt that I could do anything in a language. Thanks to Open source (PHP, Harbour, Lazarus) the joy is going back!

cdsaenz wrote: Oh Turbo Basic!! You brought a tear to my eye. I think TB was the first thing that impressed me and made me feel truly PRO.
<...>

Oh yeah!

It was very impressing for me too.

I've started using in a 4.7 mhz XT.

It had an amazing compilation an execution speed. The IDE was very well designed. It was years ahead the competition.

I guess that I'll go to my archive and search for it.

Will it run in Windows 7?

I was very excited that a version of HMG for Mac OSX had been released. I finally found where I needed to download it over at SourceForge, so I downloaded, unzipped,etc. only to discover in the ReadMe file that the binary was only for the Intel version.

Could you please offer a package for the PowerMac? It seems to have been only a decision to compile an Intel-only binary instead of a universal binary.

Many of us do not rush out to buy the latest hardware and software the moment that a manufacturer decides to "upgrade."

Also, it would be useful to let users know the requirements before downloading.

Thanks for your efforts nonetheless.