PBB Hints and Tricks / Builder Builder update

Time to finally post some of the stuff I've been working on for the past few months on my site.

PBB Hints and Tricks

This thing has been sitting on my desktop forever. When the new forums were introduced I decided I'd better try and preserve some of the PBB stuff that has been posted on the Newsgroups over the years. So I mined them for all the hints and tricks, etc. that I posted and stuck them in a web page. They're only my own posts for the most part (with the odd exception). That's because sorting through my posts is easy, going through all of them is hard.

You can find this stuff posted here. If you have a collection of your own posts or others that you think are important but are missing from this list you can send them to me at jmccomb@jcmc.ca and I will endeavor to add them to the page.

Builder Builder and Scratchpad upgrades

The main reason why it took me so long to add that "Hints and Tricks" page was because reading those old posts made me realize that much of Builder Builder was designed to work around limitations to the PBB compiler at the time. So I was distracted into working on the app. Every time I do that I start thinking,. "Oh I should make this better, or I should fix this or I should add this", and the task becomes endless. Anyway I think I'm going to work it to completion this time. I posted an upgrade with a lot of fixes and Enhancements. The main enhancement so far is to allow the user to save files in either unicode or Ascii (with HTML ampersand encoding for high order characters... i.e. the old way). Since we can work in unicode I also added an option for the user to view the source editor in unicode as well.

The next thing I'm going to do is start building some decent help files for the app and then move on to completing the "Project" specific stuff. In the mean time I'm hoping that this final compile will fix whatever was causing some users instances to crash for no explainable reason. At the very least, the crash report utility has been updated to send crash reports to my new email and I've made sure that the source for this release has been properly stowed away so that these things can be investigated without any question marks.

You can find the new download page here. The new Scratchpad downloads have the version with the print button that I posted earlier for testing.

Yours in Christ

John

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Comments

Don

Thank you for your many contributions, especially Builder Builder. Your hard work makes us more productive.

Jerry Smith

Thanks John, your work has multiplied my abilities to do the things I do!

Jerry

Gerald Rodgers

Hi John

Thanks for update. Much appreciated. Only one problem - when I run the program I get the following message - Unable to Register in ROT. Can you help me get rid of it please? Thanks, Gerald

John McComb

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6019#Comment_6019

Hi John

Thanks for update. Much appreciated. Only one problem - when I run the program I get the following message - Unable to Register in ROT. Can you help me get rid of it please? Thanks, Gerald

Really? Which program and what operating system are you running it under?

Yours in Christ

John

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6026#Comment_6026

Hi John

Thanks for update. Much appreciated. Only one problem - when I run the program I get the following message - Unable to Register in ROT. Can you help me get rid of it please? Thanks, Gerald

Really? Which program and what operating system are you running it under?

Yours in Christ

John

I get the error message also. I use Vista Business SP2, Czech Version.

Bohuslav Wojnar

Since we can work in unicode I also added an option for the user to view the source editor in unicode as well.

That is great. Now I can also use it, because it does not change the way how the text is displayed. Before it always changed it to display codes instead of my Czech characters, what was quite annoying. Now it leaves the text with the Czech characters (I think it is made by the ability to work with the Unicode). Thank you John for your excellent work.

John McComb

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6036#Comment_6036

I get the error message also. I use Vista Business SP2, Czech Version.

Ahhhhh, I knew it. Rats. The "Czech version" doesn't make any difference at all. That's just the installer language. Builder Builder doesn't have any language versions. English only.

The short story is that not registering in the ROT is not a horrible thing. However, the method that is failing is just a registry lookup for the Progid and that's disconcerting. If the Progid isn't there then the automation won't work meaning no communication between Builder Builder, Scratchpad or Libronix.

I wonder if I could get you to help me with a few preliminary questions. You need to have Scratchpad installed to answer all of them so, if you didn't install it the first time, I wonder if I could get you to reinstall with Scratchpad included.

1) After installation you should have a new button in your Libronix toolbar area called "Paste to Builder Builder" ( ). In Libronix open any resource. In the resource window select some text. With the text selected and keeping the window active click on the "Paste to Builder Builder" button. Sometimes Libronix toolbar buttons don't respond the first time you click them (a focus anomaly I guess) so you might have to click it more than once.

Questtion: What happens?

Does Builder Builder start up when you do this?

Is the text you selected pasted into the Builder Builder editor window?

Does nothing happen at all?

2) If you install Scratchpad along with Builder Builder there should be a Scratchpad button in the toolbar area ( )

Question: Is the button there and what happens when you click it?

Does Scratchpad open?

Does the toolbar expand to give you two more buttons? (i.e. )

3) if ScratchPad and Builder Builder are both open at the same time then ScratchPad should have a "Paste to Builder Builder" button ( ) on its toolbar. Type some content into the ScratchPad window, select it and click this button.

Question: What happens?

Are the contents pasted into the Builder Builder edit window?

Do you get an error message?

4) If you have the expanded ScratchPad toolbar you will see two extra buttons. One ( ) is for copying the contents of the ScratchPad window into the Builder Builder editor window. The other ( ) is for pasting the selected content in the Builder Builder window into the ScratchPad window. Please test these buttons and let me know how they work.

Let me know about any error messages that may be displayed when you are trying these actions and, if one of them causes a program crash (I'm kind of hoping it will) please forward on the Crash Report.

Thanks

Yours in Christ

John

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6042#Comment_6042

Hello John,

I tried to do what you asked for and I installed both BuilderBuilder and ScratchPad. It put a few new icons to my toolbar. They are not collapsible. They are simply there. I put certain paragraph to the block. When I hit the Load to BuilderBuilder button, it does nothing. When I hit Load to ScratchPad button, it does nothing. When I hit Start ScratchaPad, it starts it. Then when I hit Load to ScratchPad, it loads the text. When I hit BuilderBuilder button on the ScratchPad toolbar, It says it is not able to open BuilderBuilder.

That is all I tried so far. When I play with it a little bit more, I will let you know what I found.

John McComb

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6046#Comment_6046

I tried to do what you asked for and I installed both BuilderBuilder and ScratchPad. It put a few new icons to my toolbar. They are not collapsible. They are simply there. I put certain paragraph to the block. When I hit the Load to BuilderBuilder button, it does nothing. When I hit Load to ScratchPad button, it does nothing. When I hit Start ScratchaPad, it starts it. Then when I hit Load to ScratchPad, it loads the text. When I hit BuilderBuilder button on the ScratchPad toolbar, It says it is not able to open BuilderBuilder.

Yikes! This is very confusing. Too many programs, too many toolbars and too many buttons. I'll tell you what, let's number the buttons so we can we can communicate a little more clearly.

In Libronix we have:

The Builder Builder Paste toolbar ( ) (one button on a single toolbar)

Let's number this button #1

and The ScratchPad toolbar has five buttons

Let's number these #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6 from left to right.

And

in Scratchpad we have

Several buttons but only one that concerns us. That is the "Paste to Builder Builder" button ( )

Call this button #7

And

In Builder Builder we have

One toolbar with three buttons (two of them are only visible when ScratchPad is open). It looks like this .

Number these ones #8, #9 and #10 from left to right.

Then, from now on, when someone talks about clicking a button let's call out the number of that button so it's easier for us to understand what the other is saying. O.K?

Yours in Christ

John

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6060#Comment_6060

Yikes! This is very confusing. Too many programs, too many toolbars and too many buttons. I'll tell you what, let's number the buttons so we can we can communicate a little more clearly.

OK. The picture may be says it better. When I hit the #1, nothing happens. #2 opens ScratchPad OK. #3 also works OK. #4 works if ScratchPad was opened already. #5 and #6 also loads correctly. While being in the ScratchPad and I hit the #7, I get the message "Unable to connect to BuilderBuilder" (I show in the picture). When I open BuilderBuilder from the Desktop and hit the #8, it says "Unable to open BuilderBuilder" but it opens ScratchPad in spite of that. The #9 and #10 turns live and work OK then.

John McComb

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6068#Comment_6068

OK. The picture may be says it better.

Thanks Bohuslav. That description is very clear and you're a good tester.

So, in Vista ScratchPad is registering fine but Buider Builder isn't . Well, you still have partial automation functionality because both Builder Builder and Libronix can communicate with ScratchPad. I can get rid of the error messages easily enough and that should give you a useful program that is lacking a small bit of functionality. I'll get that posted in the next day or so.

Then I'll try to figure out how to get Builder Builder properly OLE registered in Vista. Don't hold your breath on that one though. I think I would probably need a Vista machine to work on and I don't have that.

If I asked you to do some searches in your registry later would you be able to do that? Don't say yes if you feel uncomfortable working with regedit. I wouldn't ask you to change anything, just tell me what's in there.

If anybody from Logos is reading this who can offer me some advice as to why MFC OLE registration is not working in Vista I would appreciate your input (Just a link to an article talking about such things would be just dandy).

Yours in Christ

John

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6070#Comment_6070

If I asked you to do some searches in your registry later would you be able to do that? Don't say yes if you feel uncomfortable working with regedit. I wouldn't ask you to change anything, just tell me what's in there.

OK John, no problem working with regedit. I will do what I can. I am quite busy right now so it might take time before I answer but I will be happy to do that. Have a great day.

John McComb

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6112#Comment_6112

OK John, no problem working with regedit. I will do what I can. I am quite busy right now so it might take time before I answer but I will be happy to do that. Have a great day.

Thanks Bohuslav. It will probably be a while anyway. I don't even have a clear starting point to pursue an investigation at the moment. Moreover, if these new downloads prove to be satisfactory for Vista users I think I need to give these help files a higher priority. The documentation for this project is very poor.

Yours in Christ

John

Bill Anderson

John,

I want to thank you for your work with Builder Builder. I have lived in it for almost two years now and I wouldn't have been able to produce the PBBs for the Logos community without this program. I am excited that you are developing it once again.

Bill

wafik yacob

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6114#Comment_6114

Dear John,

I have a question,Does the pbb works on the arabic books .I mean can I build arabic libronix books using it .

Thanks

felo

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/63128#Comment_63128

Does the pbb works on the arabic books .

In L3 it did. Your base was simply any HTML document. I'd be utterly shocked if the L4 equivalent does not.

Alex Scott

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/6139#Comment_6139

John,

I want to thank you for your work with Builder Builder. I have lived in it for almost two years now and I wouldn't have been able to produce the PBBs for the Logos community without this program. I am excited that you are developing it once again.

Bill

Speaking of whom, what ever has happened to John? - there has been nothing from him since early September.

wafik yacob

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/63128#Comment_63128

Dear brothers, I started to work by builder builder for the first time and after going through the various steps of editing and so on ,I am wondering which is

the key or thecommand to transform the html document to libronix file. thanks for your help.

wafik yacob