About WinUI 3 ...

[Jean-pierre Leroy]

Dear all,

I'm curious to know if we could find a way to use the modern controls and styles contained in WinUI 3 to build modern Windows applications with either :

- FireFly and PowerBASIC ?
- WinFBE and FreeBASIC ?

and/or if theses controls could be incuded in the WinFBX framework ?

More info here:

https://microsoft.github.io/microsoft-ui-xaml/

[Paul Squires]

In theory, it could be done.... in practice, the translation of all of the system files would be a tremendous amount of work.

[Petrus Vorster]

That would be something!

While on this topic... .NET has a lovely barcode tool that does the encoding of the check digit, perfect drawing to PNG of the actual barcode in many barcode formats.

But is there a way to incorporate those .NET libraries into winfbx?
Alternatively, there are C++ libraries, but it WAY above my head.

Just curious, because it could open a  huge doorway.

-Regards, Peter

[Johan Klassen]

hello Petrus Vorster
have checked out https://zint.github.io/ ?

[Petrus Vorster]

Hi Johan

I quickly looked over there.
Most of it looks like C++
Is this a Freebasic library that one can use in WINFBE projects?
I have no clue how on earth to use C in Freebasic.

I once wrote an encoder for Powerbasic for EAN128 that encodes the barcode and then uses a font for the barcode, but my EAN128C code has a bug that i cannot find. I gave up eventually.
I made a tool here that simply uses 3of9 code but the standard is EAN128C.

Someone whom i haven't seen here for a long time, Klaas Holland also came looking for a barcode generator he can use in business. The problem is that the PNG quality required by International Barcode authorities are very high and the i have been looking at the .NET output which matches the requirements.

I was hoping there was a way one could use a part of .NET for the barcoding as one of my tools depend greatly on output of a list of barcodes to be printed on a label printer.

Thanks for the input.

Regards, Peter

[Petrus Vorster]

I was wondering if i could not convince Josè to write such a class?

AFXbarcodes. That would be an amazing tool.
code 128B&C , EAN13 and QR.

It would open up a whole lot of application possibilities in the future.

Josè, are you not up for the challenge?

-Regards, Peter

[Johan Klassen]

hi Petrus
I extracted zint.dll from the installer to have a look at the symbols, unfortunately zint.dll is 32-bit
here are the symbols

LIBRARY zint.dll
EXPORTS
DllGetVersion
ZBarcode_Buffer
ZBarcode_Clear
ZBarcode_Create
ZBarcode_Delete
ZBarcode_Encode
ZBarcode_Encode_File
ZBarcode_Encode_File_and_Buffer
ZBarcode_Encode_File_and_Print
ZBarcode_Encode_and_Buffer
ZBarcode_Encode_and_Print
ZBarcode_Print
ZBarcode_Render
ZBarcode_ValidID

the symbols are not mangled and the source files that I looked at were C so this should work with FB
[edit]
unfortunately the project at GitHub hasn't been worked on for at least 9 years and I was unable to compile from source

[Petrus Vorster]

Thanks Mate

My current knowledge of Freebasic is to say the least 'elementary'.
But i will read up on Dll use in FB, and what i can make of it.

Thanks a million

-Peter