Code editor control VB .NET - 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

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.

Location of VB.NET "source" code, similar to Java's JDK src.zip

Does VB.NET have anything similar to Java's JDK source code? When I used to work in Eclipse, I could right click and view the generated code, or "look under-the-hood" so to speak. I found this feature very helpful in understanding what was happening behind the scenes, and it helped me to write better, more simplified code.
I have so far been working with Visual Studio 2010's Object Browser, and I have also been looking at the generated designer files, but these often do not drill down far enough.
The best program to do this is called .NET Reflector and you can download it from here: http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/
It lets you see executables and DLL's under the hood
ScottGu has an old blog post about this:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/01/16/net-framework-library-source-code-now-available.aspx
You can also use the .NET Reflector to peek into the code for any .NET dll, but keep in mind it won't look like the code in Visual Studio :)
http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/

Active X Development: VC++ or VB or Other technologies

We are in the process of creating active-x controls used within our application.
Since Microsoft stopped supporting classic Visual Basic, is it wise to use Visual Basic to develop the Active X control or the latest VC++/ATL/MFC libraries provide more feature where we can create controls faster by leaving Visual Basic flexibility?
We will not be able to use .NET/VB.NET/C# since the application is supposed to work inside containers and containers may not support latest .NET runtime.
Any other language is best fit for Active X control development other than VB and VC++?
I, personally, would recommend using Delphi for this. It is still actively developed, and has the control you get with C++, but a rapid development environment more like VB.NET.
#nobugz: If you are really interested what is ActiveX in Delphi, look at docwiki. Normally it is 100% source code (yours + VCL, VCL is also available as sources) with autogenerated COM wrappers. So all potential security problems are also in source code. If you find a security problem in VCL, please send a bug report to Quality Central.
Here is a good example on how to create ActiveX Controls with C# .NET
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/CreateActiveXDotNet.aspx
By all means VB6 is the best language. After reading your question I feel that you are a VB6 developer. If you know VB6 and use it then why hesitate using it for producing ActiveX controls.
I program in Delphi as well as VB6 along with VB.NET and C# but creating ActiveX controls is the easiest in VB6 compares to all other development tools.
If you are hell bent on not using VB and if you are looking for an alternative then try out PowerBasic (commercial - very costly) or PureBasic (commercial but affordable) Get it from here or better still MinGW (a GNU C++ compiler).
I have to say that VB6 with a good book like Developing COM/ActiveX Components with VB6: A Guide to the Perplexed you will be up and running faster.

Open source runtime form designer

I'm searching for an open source runtime form designer (for SCADA, not searching for html designer), which is somewhat similar to modern IDE WYSIWYG's. So far, my list is empty.
Requirements are crossplatform and C++.
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE:
Currently I'm using wxWidgets as the GUI platform. So the possible solutions are either open-source wxWidgets based form designer, or the wxWidgets component/lib.
UPDATE 2:
Found the wxShapeFramework component which is I was looking for. At the moment this is the only option.
Maybe Qt would satisfy your needs. It is possible to extend it's functionality with new components. It's not out-of-the-box solution, but may fulfill this role.
How about Glade and gtkmm?
Qt allows you to use UI files created with the designer on-the-fly, without compiling them into your applications. You want the QtUiTools module. See: http://www.forum.nokia.com/infocenter/topic/Qt_for_S60_Developers_Library/GUID-ECBE8350-9D54-48D1-B777-264B895B9063/designer-using-a-ui-file.html and http://www.forum.nokia.com/infocenter/topic/Qt_for_S60_Developers_Library/GUID-ECBE8350-9D54-48D1-B777-264B895B9063/qtuitools.html.
I'm going to use wxShapeFramework, which purpose is exactly as described in question (SCADA runtime form designer). Especially because the project is based on wxWidgets.

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.