Editing vb.net in netbeans - vb.net

My work dropped a vb.net program in my lap that I need to modify. Die vb. Die.
Anyway, I work in Netbeans and can't find a module that will allow for syntax highlighting of vb. Is there a creative solution out there for this that doesn't involve using a different IDE?
Thanks guys.

As mentioned in the accepted answer to this question, there is a tutorial for setting up custom syntax highlighting in Netbeans here (direct link to tutorial instead of link to FAQ provided in linked question).
I think you might well find that it's less hassle to just install Visual Studio than to set up Netbeans to highlight VB.Net syntax, but that's up to you. Good luck.

Related

outlook addin: how to I develop my own one?

I am afraid this is an untypical "unspecific" question...
I have a lot of code in Outlook, and this should also be used by other users. Up to now I am exporting the modules and forms from my Outlook, and import them on the other machines. But this of course is quite a hassle on every change.
So I thought about turning them into an adding - easy to do for example for Excel...
I have done some Research now and the following questions are left:
is it right that the only software really useful is Visual Studio?
i did download the Trial Version of Visual Studio, and digged into it... but it seems I can not copy/paste the existing code, but there are a lot of changes necessary in the code - is that right? Is there a Kind of "translation" for the most common things?
Thanks for your answers,
Max
Not sure if by trial version you mean Visual Studio Express which you can find here:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2013-express
In any case this should allow you to copy/paste your code. Also if you are a student/academic you can download the full version for free (https://www.dreamspark.com).
If you don't want to use VS, you could try SharpDevelop and NetOffice as an alternative.
I wrote a series on my blog about how to create an add-in for Outlook. There are quite specific instructions on how to get started, pitfalls I encountered along the way and tips/tricks to help you.
Here is where the series starts: http://www.midniteblog.com/?p=6. You can see all the links for the series here: http://www.midniteblog.com/?s=outlook.
Hope this is helpful for you!
P.S. You definitely want to use Visual Studio for a project like this because of the nature of Microsoft product integration.

Code editor control VB .NET

Does anyone know if the code editor used by VSTO IDE is available to use in my own projects?
I need to use a code editor in my project. I Googled to try to find one, but I found several third party solutions (pay or free) but they don't fit my needs.
In same way as Webbrowser control, is the "sourcecodeeditor" control of VSTO available to use as a project component?
In same way as Webbrowser control, is the "sourcecodeeditor" control of VSTO available to use as a project component?
[. . .]
Exists the class "MSVSTOSourceCodeEditor"? This is the question. Thanks
Unfortunately, no. Microsoft doesn't allow you to subclass its source code editor, nor do they provide a version for use in your own projects. As I mentioned before, they don't really want to encourage you to rewrite Visual Studio. They'd prefer that you bought it instead!
Have you considered creating a plug-in or extension for Visual Studio instead? It's a little bit different way of going about it, but it just might work for you. Your developers might find it more convenient since they won't have to switch back and forth between two programs.
If you're really set on rolling your own custom solution, probably the best thing to do is check the source code for some of the open-source, Visual Studio-style IDEs, and see how they've written the code editor:
MonoDevelop
SharpDevelop
KDevelop

Is there an $end$ version in vb.net for snippets?

I'm making some snippets and i want to position the cursor. I've come acros "$end$" but all examples i see are in c#. Since recently i've started programming in vb.net again and it seems $end$ isn't recognized or doesn't work here. Is there another keyword in vb to do the same?
thanks in advance.
To the best of my knowledge, no. MSDN doesn't do the best job of documenting the meta-languages of snippets so reverse engineering tends to be the best way to figure things out. Looking through all of the VB snippets I can't find any usage of $selected$ or $end$. When I insert Microsoft-created snippets in VB I also can't press enter to go to the inside of my snippets like I can in C#.
If you install SharpDevelop, it has a translator that will convert C# code to VB.NET.
Just open a .cs file and then Tools->Convert to->VB.NET

IDE for MSIL

There's any number of questions about MSIL on SO but none that directly answer this.
I've been using Textpad which does have a syntax definition file for MSIL and then using ILASM in a command prompt window.
I did find a reference to ILIDE but the link is broken.
Is there an IDE or add-on / plugin to Visual Studio / Eclipse for MSIL that allows syntax highlighting, intellisense, code completion, debugging etc.?
Use MonoDevelop
You can build specially MSIL projects. It's very useful for these issues, also you can use it in both Windows and Linux. What is better than this? :)
I made an extension for Visual Studio 2010 that supports syntax highlighting for IL files (.il) and includes projects with full debugging support for C#, F# and Visual Basic that support embedding and calling IL code directly.
IL Support extension
Enjoy!
I believe you can do it in #develop IDE.
No intellisense though.
I have exactly the same question!
I have found ilide eventually :
http://nida.se/ilide/
(note : strangely, some links to ilide are broken, some of them even mentioning earlier links that are broken , but then supply a link that's broken too. I was able to dowload it and Installed it succesfully from the link above though).
further :
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=112895
seems a very good debugger.
cheers, ph
xacc.ide has syntax highlighting for MSIL, and another odd 20 .NET languages.
See some screenshots here.
IIRC, Visual Studio will give you debugging, if you assemble with /debug.
I think MS had a demo or sample of some VS plugin that helped a bit with IL. I'm not sure what it was named or if it was released.

An alternative IDE for Sybase Powerbuilder

Does anyone know of an alternative IDE for Sybase Powerbuilder? It feels pretty clunky, after working with VS2008 and Eclipse.
If not, has anyone successfully worked with this language outside the IDE? I'm not against using a simple text editor, but I find edit-import-regenerate-test-export-edit is clunkier than simply using the Powerbuilder editor.
To date, the only tools I have had any success with are:
PowerGen, for builds (with NUnit and CruiseControl.NET)
ConTEXT, which has syntax highlighting for Powerbuilder
PBL Peeper, which has some interesting features not present in the IDE
EDIT: I added a bounty to draw some wider attention to the question. It would be a very nice thing to have, if it exists.
EDIT: Well that was disappointing. The bounty apparently did not cause even 1 new person to look at the question.
None that I'm aware of, although you could probably use a source control tool, edit in your source control repository, and Get Latest Version from the PB IDE to shorten your text editor cycle. Be warned that there are hacks required to edit anything over 128 ASCII. (My guess is that this is to allow everything Unicode to be source controlled in the most restrictive source control tools.)
As Paul said, PB12 is coming with based on the Visual Studio shell, and will include things like collapsible code blocks, Intellisense, etc.... However, for PB12, this will only be used for WPF targets and a few .NET-type targets (like assemblies), last I heard. Win32 targets will continue to use the "classic" IDE.
Good luck,
Terry.
P.S. Thanks for the PBL Peeper compliment.
The PowerBuilder IDE is clunky, but I don't think developing completely outside the PowerBuilder IDE is a good idea. I think there are just too many dependencies right now.
However, the IDE for PowerBuilder 12 will be built using Microsoft's Visual Studio Isolated Shell so it ought to be much better when that is released. Also, I believe they'll be doing away with the PBL format which ought to make source control much easier to work with.
Certainly something to watch.
What I do is right-click the object and edit source. Then I copy the text and paste it into Notepad++ to edit. I copy and paste back to PowerBuilder, then I can save and see any errors. I've got a fairly decent User Defined Language for PowerScript if anyone's interested.
Added:
Please be aware that I've seen the PB Source editor corrupt DataWindows. They were all large DataWindows. To be safe always export DataWindows to edit.
One tool that will most probably make your PB experience way better is Visual Expert, which provides a good source browser. Such a tool should have been integrated into the PB IDE a long time ago, IMHO. Only problem is that it's not free, as opposed to the other tools you mention.
Regarding using external source editors, you can probably take advantage of OrcaScript, which is a scripting language that lets you perform actions such as export and import of PB objects from outside of the IDE. It will require some effort, but you can setup a basic dev env using batch files with ORCA scripts and some additional external tools. However, this setup will lack any visual editing capabilities, which means no (feasible) GUI or DW work. If you're mostly into NVOs, it could work. But then if that's the case, why use PB in the first place?...
I too have heard PB12's use of VS will be limited to some .NET stuff, which will probably benefit only a very small portion of the PB programmers community. I'm afraid the rest of us are stuck with the awful IDE for years to come.
Other than exporting the source and editing it I don't know of another IDE for PB. One problem you may have is that the exported source contains a lot of syntax that is not documented in the manuals. The PB IDE generates this code but there is no support for creating it by hand. I think you are stuck with the PB IDE
In my modest five Years of experiences starting with Powerbuilder 5/6, now using PB 10, I tempt to :
build my own browser from the classdefinition object based on Powerbuilder
tried to use autohotkey in order to open datawindows comfortable (we have several thousands in the project and i am two-finger-driven)
truly investigated in the idea using an external editor/IDE suppoted by an autohotkey script which is undermined by sybase allowing only mouse-click-usage of PB
using Visual Expert which is neither a truly integration in the IDE, nor is really worth in analyzing datwindow/powerscript interaction
ending by build hopes on PB12 Visual Studio, which lacks - depending on compatibility issues - ...
... i came to the conclusion that there will be no chance in improving Powerbuilder to an state-of-the-art language
In my philosophy - I obtained during those years - I distinguish between two types of OOP-oriented languages:
the one that award using object-orientation like C#, Python, Ruby (C++) etc. and very much the Java-Eclipse/Netbeans-Universe does
the other one that punish using object-orientation like Powerbuilder and the old Visual Basic, for example (which is causative the OOP-Idea comes afterwards and is "plugged in").
Especially the demand that all object should always be compiled (regenerated) and that you could't work with ancestors and descandants concurrently makes it painful to use real OOP.
...In memory of the good old Unix(Solaris)/C++ days...
I was researching a replacement solution that would be similar to PowerBuilder and I came across two that caught my eye.
The first was 'React Studio' https://reactstudio.com/ which I found via Alternativeto.net .
And the second was from an ad at the top of some Google searches but it was similar enough and looked good enough at first glance for me to want to take a closer look at it, and it's called 'Servoy' https://servoy.com/ .
Still researching but I currently have React Studio at the top of our list.
The TextPad editor has a syntax definition file for PowerBuilder 6.x contributed by anr#aon.at that I downloaded for free and customized several years ago. It works fine for later versions (including 8), doing keyword color highlighting on PowerScript srx files. Editing large source files in PB could get it to crash so it's usually safer, faster and more convenient to export to srx file, edit outside the IDE then re-import.