Xblite.com will be going offline in February 2019

[D.]

Hi All,

For the past several years, there is has been very little activity on the xblite.com website

or message board. I have decided to retire the xblite.com website and allow the

domain name to expire in February 2019.

Thanks to all who have supported the xblite project!!

David Szafranski

[Guy1954]

Hi D.

So good to hear from you!

Regarding your message, maybe is it time to have the Xblite workbench hosted by SourceForge to ensure a future to XBLite?

I had countless happy hours of Xbliting, and I'd feel that I'd loose an old friend.

I worked on the Unicode support for Xblite, but I have a lot of problem cloning the STRING primitives from ASCII to UTF-16 LE.

However, I added the following features:

    1. GRAB statement:

GRAB "text file" works just the same as my good ol' COPY "text file" REPLACING ... (from my Good Old Time as a COBOL programer).

    2. STRIP directive:

STRIP removes "dead internal FUNCTIONs", and works with GRAB statements in order to weed out extraneous FUNCTIONs.

I provide also with the new folder \grab_bag, which is just a GRAB bag of code snippets!

I posted these evolutions in the Xblite Forum.

    3. I actively maintain viXen (I just posted viXen circa 2019):

viXen is a project started by John "prujohn" Evans, who felt that a WYSIWYG GUI designer for XBLite would be a good addition. He started the XBLite project "XBLite GUI designer" at SourceForge in mid-2006 and proposed a beta version for
download as early as 22 July 2006 (version 0.50a).

Now, viXen can generate a GUI program for:

- XBasic XUI

- Xblite Windows ANSI APIs

- Callum Lowcay's WinX

- a primer for GTK+

with the same "VXN project".

I believe that XBLite can offer a lot as soon as it handles Unicode in the same manner as it handles ASCII.

GoAsm was promising, but I have a hard time with assembly. However, I'm not about to give up...

Bye! Guy

[bushpilot]

It sure was a lot of fun, wasn't it?! Sorry i had to drop out of the project a few years ago, and I see way that I will ever be rejoining the fun and effort. Life just changes.

Thanks Guy, David, and others for all the effort. Maybe, as Guy suggests, it will live on at another home.

Greg

[Guy1954]

Hi D.

Thank you so much for keeping xblite available for download.

In addition, would you agree if I started an XBLite project at SourceForge?

I could merge to your latest revision my own additions: CODE, GRAB, STRIP and a few more.

Actually, since I didn't give up in allowing Unicode string support (UTF-16 LE), I am planning to post my port of the assembly routines from ANSI to Unicode, which is very tedious as they are hundreds of them.

I'm truly grateful for the thousand happy xbliting hours spent for the past decade,thanks to your dedication and hard work for even a longer time.

Best regards!

Guy

[Guy1954]

Hi Xbliters.

I'll be away from keyboard for 2 weeks; so I decided to create the xblite project at SourceForge in order to make available my latest revision of the xblite compiler.

Please check the XBLite project at URL www.sourceforge.net/projects/xblite.

I asked for the whole she-bang:

- GIT version control,

- website

- forum

- mail list

- and some more, thanks to SourceForge.net's generosity.

The XBasic community kept alive and well Max Reason's XBasic compiler;

let's follow their steps and ensure our XBLite compiler from D. (David Szafranski) a long and productive life.

Bye! Guy

[Julien]

Hi David,

Although having been away from xblite those last years (because of lack of time), I feel really sad xblite.com's website being down.

Even if activity was little those last years, xblite is well worth a dedicated website.

Thank you Guy, for what you did meanwhile, allowing xblite being still downloadable from Sourceforge.

I can provide a free quality hosting for xblite.com's website being brought back to life and do the website maintenance if wanted.

If necessary, I can also finance the renewal of the domain name if its cost is a concern.

It would be wise doing it quickly, before xblite.com falls into the public domain and some advertising company purchases it.

David, of course it depends on your agreement.

Cheers

Julien

[Guy1954]

Hi Julien.

Good to hear from you!

Regarding XBLite's future, I'm sure that we can all contribute in a way or an other.

For the past years, I committed myself to produce an XBLite compiler that could handle Windows Unicode GUI.

Since I never worked on compilers in my line of business, it was for me a trial and error on-going project.

I learnt a lot in the process, and I still believe that I can succeed.

As soon as I can generate UTF-16 LE GoAsm code, I will port, as a proof of concept, our Scintilla editor XSED from ANSI WinAPIs to Unicode WinAPIs.

This will ensure a future to XBLite, and we can all pitch in, as a community, to keep XBLite alive and well.

Bye! Guy

[Guy1954]

Hi Lucien.

For the past years, I have been involved as an IBM mainframe developer (COBOL/CICS/DB2/Visual Basic 6, VBA EXCEL) in the data migration of database contents into MySQL of new websites.

I must admit that my research on UTF-16 LE (Unicode supported by Windows) helped me to establish myself as the specialist of Windows to Unix data migration. I handled so far 2 data migrations, and I might start a 3rd migration next month.

Far from being only a hobby, working on XBLite's support of UTF-16 LE helped my carrier as an IT specialist.

That's the reason why I would gladly pick up on your offer to host an XBLite forum on your website.

Bye! Guy