Copyright: Copyright ® 1994 by Dana W. Cline
Citation: Reprinted from VB Shareware Review ® 1994 by Dana W. Cline


Contents
Visual Basic Shareware Review
Volume 1	July, 1994

Information

About this HelpZine
Submitting your Shareware
Index to Previous Issues
Credits
Letters to the Editor
Reviewers Wanted

Reviews

TITLESPY.VBX	Title and System Menu VBX
CANIMATE.VBX	Graphics Animation VBX
VB2DOC6.DOC	WinWord Print Macro
VBASM.DLL  	Assembler routines in DLL
VBVALET.DOT	WinWord Print Macro


About this HelpZine

The Visual Basic Shareware Review is published as a HelpZine for the Microsoft Windows operating environment.  The intent is to provide reviews of shareware tools for the Visual Basic programmer.  The majority of these tools are available on CompuServe, in the MSBASIC forum.  If you can't find a copy, contact the author of the program.  This HelpZine is published as freeware.  Contributions are welcome.  While the intent is to publish one issue a month, schedule conflicts may prevent this.

I generally get the shareware from the MSBASIC forum on CompuServe, and I try to review the latest versions (within the month previous to release of this HelpZine).  Some things change quickly, so please contact the individual authors for information on the latest versions.

Contacting the Editor

Disclaimers


HelpZine
A zine is an abbreviation for a magazine.  In the world of science fiction fandom, a fanzine is a small magazine, generally published by fans, for fans.  I've warped the definition some, to create a helpzine as a help-file magazine.  It follows the philosophy of the fanzine because it is published by a software engineer, for software engineers.


Contacting the Editor
Contact the editor at:

Dana W. Cline
TANSTAAFL Software
P.O. Box 260075
Lakewood, CO  80226
(303) 989-7389

CIS
73700,3053

GEnie
TANSTAAFL

Internet
73700.3053@compuserve.com


Submitting your Shareware

All submissions from shareware authors are welcome.  You can employ several methods of getting it to me.  US Mail is adequately reliable, and sending a diskette is fairly cheap (any size is OK).  Or, send me the file via CompuServe or GEnie.  If you've already sent your file to a CompuServe or GEnie forum, send me email telling me where it is and I'll download it.

Contacting the Editor


Disclaimers
The reviews in this HelpZine are copyrighted by Dana W. Cline.

Many of the names of various software products mentioned are copyrighted or trademarked by their respective owners.

The opinions expressed by the reviewers are their own.


Index to Previous Issues

There are no previous issues, but when there are, this is where the index will be.


Credits

Editor/Publisher

Dana W. Cline

Reviewers

Dana W. Cline

Contacting the Editor


Letters to the Editor

There are no letters to the editor yet, but when there are, this is where they will be.


TITLESPY.VBX
TITLESPY.VBX   Reviewed by Dana Cline

Author: Alex Spektor

Order information

This custom control lets you do two things - add items to the system menu, and change the size and orientation of the title bar.

To modify the title bar, just add the control to your form and set the TitleSize and TitlePlace property.  Title bars can be almost any size, and can either appear in the standard position at the top, or at the left.  The caption size will automatically adjust to the height of the title bar.  If you use a vertical title bar on the left you can only see captions if you use a True Type font.

This control takes an interesting approach to adding items to the system menu.  After placing the control on your form, you add a line of code to your program that does an AddItem to the control, just like adding stuff to a list box.  In this case, you would add the menu item text and an ID number.  The control has a SysMenu event, which will get passed the ID of the selected menu item.  You can add a separator by setting the ID number to zero.

TitleSpy comes with a 91K VBX, an executable demo with source, and a readme file.  The demo source was saved as binary, so it is not readable outside of VB.  There is no help file.

The only limitation mentioned is that the fonts used in the caption may not display when rotated, or may not have underline or strikethru when rotated.  Other controls (in particular, Sheridan Software's Designer Widgets) have the limitation that title bars like this cannot be used on windows that have menus, or on MDI children.


Alex Spektor
610 Valley Stream Circle
Langhorne, PA  19053
(215) 741-5611

CIS:
73321,1525

Internet
aspektor@susq.com


TitleSpy Screen System Menu


Order TITLESPY.VBX
Regular registration
Price: $36.00 plus shipping $3.50

CompuServe registration number 2493


CANIMATE.VBX
CANIMATE.VBX   Reviewed by Dana Cline

Author: Componere Software

Order Information

This control will let you create fast animation within Windows (yes, it is possible).  The VBX contains two related controls, the stage and the player.  The stage can be thought of as a container control for multiple players.

A stage is necessary to contain players, and is used primarily as a backdrop.  A stage can have a colored background or bitmap (Picture property), and provides timing (Interval property)for all actions that take place on the stage.  You should only have one stage, as they are resource hogs.  The stage only has four events: Click, KeyDown, KeyUp and KeyChar.  The KeyChar event gets called for every keypress, while the KeyUp and KeyDown events throw away multiple keys if they are the same.  You must create a stage before creating players.

Players are the actual animated objects, and must be created on a stage.  Players may be moved off of the visible part of the stage, but the player to stage link is permanent.  Players have lots of interesting properties, such as Interval, movement amounts, ZPosition, and lots of flags.  The author did one interesting thing that I have not yet seen in a VBX...you can set flags to determine which events get called for this player.  For instance, if you don't need to be notified when a player collides with another, then the Collide event does not get called.  This feature is very useful, because the best way to have smooth animation is to use as few CPU cycles as possible during the animation.  Toggleable events include Collide, Cycle and AtTarget.

Players can consist of one or more graphic frames.  Players with one frame can be moved, and players with more than one frame can be moved and cycled.  Multiple frames are used, for instance, to show a person walking.  The player cycles through the frames, then moves and cycles again.  The Cycle event gets called every time the player completes a cycle through all of its frames.  The Collide event would get called for a player when it collides with another player, passing in the other player's ID number.  The AtTarget event gets called when the player reaches a predefined location on the stage.

Although the author's name is not mentioned, I suspect this VBX was written in part, at least, by Andy Barnhart, a former co-worker who just recently published an article about C++ animation classes in one of the developer magazines.  In any case, this VBX is a great example of a niche-market tool.  Very few VB programmers will need it (mostly game programmers), yet it is a bargain because it would take a fair amount of work to duplicate the functionality and ease of use.  This control may spawn a whole new batch of animated shareware games!

The control comes with an example program, with source, of a simple stage with several players.  The VBX is only 82K, and comes with a help file several times larger.  The help file includes plenty of "what went wrong?" information and includes a discussion of the heavy resources used by the control.


Componere Software
1381 Kildaire Farm Rd. #119
Cary, NC  27511-5525
Fax: (919) 481-0919

Internet
componere@aol.com


Order CANIMATE.VBX
Regular registration
Price: $39.00 development plus runtime, $19.00 development only

CompuServe registration available


Reviewers Wanted

Reviewers are necessary for this HelpZine to continue in a robust fashion.  Please contact the editor if you have any interest in contributing.

Contacting the Editor


VB2DOC6.DOC
VB2DOC6.DOC   Reviewed by Dana Cline

Author: Eddie Juden

Order Information

This product is a document template/macro for Word for Windows 6.x that pretty-prints Visual Basic source code.  While it has been available for Word for Windows 2.x for some time, it has just been upgraded with new features.

After installing the .DOC and .HLP files into the WORD\TEMPLATE directory, you can create a new document based on VB2DOC6.  This macro first asks for a .MAK file containing a VB project.  It then shows a dialog box where you decide what it should do.  You can print some or all files in the project (both .FRM form files and .BAS code files).  You can choose the font for comments, function names and regular code.  Other options include removal of the form descriptions (a waste of space in most listings) and indexes for variable names, structures, constants and global variables.  One check box is marked "Construct Document as Book" but, unfortunately, it does not print the document as a booklet.  What it does do is to offset even and odd pages to the left or right, to leave a bindable margin.

This program runs very slowly, probably due to the interpreted nature of WordBasic.  Once it has done it's work, you're left with a standard document containing formatted code.  You can edit, print or save for reuse.  The shareware version prints a large watermark diagonally on all pages containing the program and author's name.  While it may be overpriced, it is quite useful for printing VB code, and it is the only macro I've seen that does this.

I had problems using the shareware version.  In the process of formatting the Basic files, my shell had a GPF.  However, Word continued to execute its macro.  It eventually printed the pages, then dumped me to DOS.  This may be a quirk of the shell I'm using, but nothing else has ever made the shell have a GPF.  I reported this and several other minor quirks to the author via CompuServe, and have (2 weeks later) not received a reply (implying that support may be a problem).  Plus, I believe that $49 is a bit overpriced.


Eddie Juden
P.O. Box 900062
Plano, TX 75074-0062

CIS:
72154,1324


Order VB2DOC6
Regular registration
Price: $49.00


VB2DOC6 Dialog Box


TitleSpy Screen Top Bar


TitleSpy Screen Left Bar


TitleSpy Screen Large Bar


VBASM.DLL
VBASM.DLL   Reviewed by Dana Cline

Author: SoftCircuits Programming

Order information

VBASM is a collection of routines in a DLL.  These routines were all written in assembler, resulting in both fast routines and a small DLL (8K).  Some of these routines can be found in other DLL's, such as LoWord and HiWord, LoByte and HiByte, MakeLong and MakeWord.

Other routines have been present in previous versions of Basic for DOS, such as Inp and Inpw, Out and Outw, Peek and Peekw, Poke and Pokew, VarPtr and VarSeg.  Some routines allow you to easily do things that can be done in Visual Basic, albeit in a roundabout way.  Routines falling into this category include ShiftLeft and ShiftRight (however, there are no RotateLeft and RotateRight routines, which may be obscure but are arguably useful).

The remaining routines are interesting in that you could shoot yourself in the foot if you're not careful.  One routine returns the MODEL structure from any Visual Basic control.  I don't know what you would want to do with this, but it could be useful.  You can copy bytes to and from any data type, and you can get the address of any variable.  One routine to be careful with will allow you to call DOS or BIOS interrupts.  This routine will call the interupt in protected mode.  There is another call to switch to real mode before calling the interrupt.

The package contains the DLL, a Write file with documentation on the routines, a text file with the VB function prototypes, and two zip files with examples.  One of the examples is called Snooper, which implements a detailed look into the guts of the computer it's run on.  You can learn a lot about calling the Windows API by reading the source code.  Well done!


SoftCircuits Programming
P. O. Box 16262
Irvine, CA  92713

CIS:
72134,263


Order VBASM.DLL
This program may be used and distributed freely on the condition that it is distributed in full and unchanged and that no fee is charged for such use.  This program may be incorporated as part of your programs.  You may distribute such programs without payment of royalties on the condition that such programs do not duplicate the overall functionality of VB-ASM.


VBVALET.DOT
VBVALET.DOT   Reviewed by Dana Cline

Author: Robert Haduch

Order information

VBValet is another Word 6 macro to read a .MAK file and format all of the .FRM and .BAS files to produce nice-looking printouts.  This program is very similar to VB2DOC6, although it seems to work much faster.

Rather than creating a new document based on a template, VBValet installs itself into the NORMAL.DOT template.  You start the process by opening a .MAK file and selecting VBValet from the Tools menu.  The first dialog box (which was obviously developed on just one video resolution) lets you decide whether to include a table of contents.

After choosing which files to include in the printout, VBValet goes to work and produces (in a very short time) a document containing your program code.  The default styles and fonts look good, and may print in color if you have a color printer.  I could find no way to change the fonts/sizes/colors.  When this process is finished, the program shows a series of dialog boxes that detail how to do things like add or delete page breaks or add cross referencing.

The only problem with the dialog box tips is that they are wrong.  The cross referencing feature is not on the Tools menu.  I was only able to access the additional features by running the macro itself by hand.  The cross reference feature allows you to select what is included.

Overall this product works good.  A little more flexibility to choose fonts and such would be nice.  At $30, it is much more reasonable than the alternative.


Robert Haduch
Friedheimstr. 24
CH-8057 Zürich Switzerland
041-01-312 1062

CIS:
100116,3443


Order VBVALET.DOT
Registration $30

Make checks payable to Robert Wydler Haduch in U.S. Funds

CompuServe SWREG #2306


first dialog box


cross referencing


what is included