About:
GNOME Basic is an attempt to provide a 100% compatible replacement for Visual Basic, VBA, VBScript, and other associated languages. It was originaly focused at making VBA macros work inside gnumeric, but due to scope slippage it executes some forms, parses most VB, and executes simple ASPs. With better Bonobo integration, a fully compatible MS environment will become feasible.

Author:
Michael Meeks / Jody Goldberg <michael (at) helixcode (dot) com> [contact developer]

Rating:	reset 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
7.99/10.00 (1 vote)

Homepage:
http://www.gnome.org/gb/
Changelog:
http://www.gnome.org/gb/gb-0.0.20

Trove categories: [change]

[Environment]		X11 Applications :: Gnome
[Intended Audience]		Developers
[License]		OSI Approved :: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
[Topic]		Desktop Environment :: Gnome, Software Development

Dependencies: [change]
No dependencies filed

 Branches

Branch	Version	Last release	License	URLs
Default	0.0.20	01-Aug-2002	GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

 Articles referencing this project

• Linux -- The New CP/M?
  by Kenneth Broll , in Editorials
  Sat, Oct 28th 2000 23:59
  
• Why are we bringing VB to Linux?
  by Marc Boorshtein , in Editorials
  Sat, Oct 14th 2000 23:59
  

 Comments

[»] Gnome Basic
by Enrique Rodríguez - Nov 28th 2000 20:29:36

Do we need another VBasic?

As a software developer, my answer is: yes and no please!

It would be nice having a cool prototyping tool, that you can have a lot of windows poping up, as the target user starts clicking everywhere.
Note that I say prototyping, not production.

Also if one can make small apps like a calculator or an Address book, it would be great.

A project like KBasic (www.kbasic.de) is on the way to bring a language that provides the same functionalities that VBasic brings, but without being a VBasic clone and not chash so often :)

Today Linux developers uses tools like JBuilder, Forte, KDevelop, etc. to make complex applications. To do this, we don't need another VBasic.

We need things like Genexus. This is a very powerful tool that allow you to create a complete database application in minutes. Yes minutes! The process to create a Genexus application is quite simple:
1- Design the transactions (with a visual designer)
2- Design the workpanels (with a visual designer)
3- Design the reports (with a visual designer)
4- Generate the application

Note that in none of this steps is the database design. Genexus is &amp;quot;inteligent&amp;quot;, and can create a database scheme knowing the transaction an its rules. So you don't need to take care about the database, just the logic of the application.

The last step is related to the application generation, Genexus doesn't have an interpreter nor a compiler; it generates source code for VBasic, Java, Fox, C/C++, RPG, and soon for C#. And uses the database engines like Oracle, SQLServer, Access.

Genexus can be obtained free (with a time limited licence) for educationals pruposes from many Genexus user groups and retailers around the world.

I don't try to sell you Genexus. Artech (the creators) is only supporting Windows and is the only tool like this that i know.

So, no more VBasic with a lot of features that no body needs. Please, entusiastic, go a step forward, not backward.

Thanks for the reading and excuseme my engligh.

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[»] Re: Gnome Basic
by Attila Molnar - Mar 16th 2001 03:14:45

Freedom means - among other things - freedom tho chose bad things...

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[»] Hmm
by Misha Nasledov - Nov 28th 2000 02:32:35

Could someone please explain to me why such a horrible/pointless language is being ported to Linux? It's nowhere near as powerful as C or Perl. Why do we need such a primitive scripting language like basic when we have languages such as Perl? Pretty soon I bet this will be included with Helix GNOME and as many users use GNOME because it is so "easy to use" they will probably have this installed. What's next? Evolution will run VB scripts with GB if a user tries to open a vb script that is an attachment? I think this brings us one step closer to Windows...

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[»] Re: Hmm
by Hub - Mar 8th 2001 09:24:08


> Could someone please explain to me why
> such a horrible/pointless language is
> being ported to Linux?
The only reason I see this development having sense is because there are a lot of stuff in Microsoft shops done with VB or VBA. If you want to rule the world, you have to take over it, not rebuilding it. So, the purpose of this project is to provide *compatibility*.

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[»] Re: Hmm
by Benny - Mar 20th 2001 18:26:03

I wonder if any of you has ever used VB.
I have been a Unix programer for many years, mostly C/C++/Corba/XWindows. I think VB is a great language/technology. It is the only real component technology out there, millions of components available, It's built into great applications like Excel and Word, it's very stable, very fast (yes, when compiled it's very fast), great development environment, great debugger, and runs on only 95% of the computers in the world. And the language? who cares! is it any worse that K&R C?
If you guys would stop being Microsoft bashers long enough to take a good, technical view at VB you would also be impressed.

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[»] Re: Hmm
by Neil Trodden - Apr 12th 2001 18:04:25


> Could someone please explain to me why
> such a horrible/pointless language is
> being ported to Linux? It's nowhere
> near as powerful as C or Perl It would mean I could persuade my team to move it's intranet site off MS onto Linux and they don't need to learn a new language.

I can then produce the things in Perl that VBScript/ASP can't do or even move the SQL databases over too.

I'm not deliberately trying to be a Linux advocate here, I just want our system to be as good as it can be.

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[»] Re: Hmm
by DrV - Apr 23rd 2003 14:03:16


> Could someone please explain to me why
> such a horrible/pointless language is
> being ported to Linux? It's nowhere
> near as powerful as C or Perl. Why do
> we need such a primitive scripting
> language like basic when we have
> languages such as Perl? Pretty soon I
> bet this will be included with Helix
> GNOME and as many users use GNOME
> because it is so "easy to use" they will
> probably have this installed. What's
> next? Evolution will run VB scripts
> with GB if a user tries to open a vb
> script that is an attachment? I think
> this brings us one step closer to
> Windows...
First, Visual Basic, is not horrible, nor is it pointless. It is a very useful and powerful language. It is also not a primitive scripting language. Recent versions of Visual Basic can compile to machine code just like C or C++. Yes, it has a runtime, but that's not a big deal; it's only a few 100k.

It's useful for things beyond screenpainting and database front-ends. I use it to write games and multimedia applications. It might not be quite as fast as a traditional language like C++, but it's fast enough for me. The code format is much nicer in my opinion than C or C++; I can't stand all that punctuation. English is a wonderful language, so why don't we make the most of it? And it is easy to use, as is Windows. If Linux is to become successful on the desktop, it must replicate the features and ease of use of other platforms, particularly Windows. Have you ever used VB?

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