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Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

xyplorer.com

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Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#51
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was magical that dropping a telephony component into a form enabled the form to make phone calls the magic of COM[0]! But when it crashed it crashed hard. And the underlying programming model (beyond just using premade ones) are a bit hard to grok and fraught with footguns that shoot not only yourself, but the OS as well. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

And COM/OLE/ActiveX components (whatever Microsoft fancied calling them that year) could have been used just as easily from Delphi. And you don't even need COM. You could do the same things today with RAD components in, say, Java. But it's just no longer a fad. Programmers nowadays don't think that dragging a component that makes phone calls and linking it to a button. Nowadays, they would just write "npm install tel…

The way COM model worked, is that an application (for example, microsoft word) would implement this COM interface (that they'd have to anyway, for various reasons such as interoperability), and it would become available as a component to be used in another application.

It's a grandiose vision. It just didnt work out because of how complicated it is in practise to implement the COM interface(s), and not enough apps did it anyway.

It is slightly different from a library, since that library would have to be useable from your language (or have some sort of FFI mechanism).

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#52

I used XYPlorer for about 5-6 years until I made the switch to using Linux on all my machines last year. The scripting, speed, dual panes, customization, portability between machines (i used Syncthing to sync my configs between 3 machines) on XyPlorer are phenomenal and I've sadly not been able to find a Linux native file manager that's at the same level. Dolphin comes close but even with qdbus commands it sadly not…

What did you script in XYPlorer? I've used Explorer for so long that's a feature I can't even imagine what I would use it for.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#53
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels weird to pay for this. I’m definitely spoiled by open source tooling.

With Moonbit and Wolfram Language, it feels like a renaissance of paid programming languages.

Wolfram ie Mathematica language predates VB1. Being commercial was the norm back then, and due to its academia widespread use has remained as such.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#55

I think VB is totally fine. It's a pragmatic solution to a real problem, and the ugliest things about it today are all a product of hindsight. On the other hand, this rubs me the wrong way: > So, wouldn’t it be logical to conclude: If such an application can be written in VB6 then VB6 cannot be that bad after all? Yes, it absolutely could be bad. Our industry consists, in no small part, of turd polishing. Plenty of g…

I agree with your conclusion, but when you say "VB is totally fine" do you mean VB6? I can get Modern iterations of Visual Basic such as VB.Net. The syntax and semantics hurt my eye and my brain, but if that's your thing, yeah the language is very serviceable. It's a modern language with modern features and a lot of legacy baggage. It's not worse than PHP or maybe even JavaScript (though I would much prefer JavaScrip…

Could you specify what legacy baggage you would like to eliminate, and what modern features you miss in VB6?

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#56
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Moonbit and Wolfram Language, it feels like a renaissance of paid programming languages.

Wolfram ie Mathematica language predates VB1. Being commercial was the norm back then, and due to its academia widespread use has remained as such.

[deleted]

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your conclusion, but when you say "VB is totally fine" do you mean VB6? I can get Modern iterations of Visual Basic such as VB.Net. The syntax and semantics hurt my eye and my brain, but if that's your thing, yeah the language is very serviceable. It's a modern language with modern features and a lot of legacy baggage. It's not worse than PHP or maybe even JavaScript (though I would much prefer JavaScrip…

Could you specify what legacy baggage you would like to eliminate, and what modern features you miss in VB6?

The author has listed quite a few like unicode and 64 bit support ^^

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#59

I used XYPlorer for about 5-6 years until I made the switch to using Linux on all my machines last year. The scripting, speed, dual panes, customization, portability between machines (i used Syncthing to sync my configs between 3 machines) on XyPlorer are phenomenal and I've sadly not been able to find a Linux native file manager that's at the same level. Dolphin comes close but even with qdbus commands it sadly not…

My one thing was “Everything by Voidtools”. It piggy backed on the NTFS index, something no tool does for Linux-native filesystems. Does XYPlorer work with Wine?

>Linux-native filesystems

Because they lack something (for worse or better depending on one's requirements) equivalent to NTFS' MFT & USN Journal. Closest is building own file db by first-time full scan and then updating via fanotify/inotify. This is what FSearch tool does.

Re: Is XYplorer really written in VB6?

#60
post #52

I used XYPlorer for about 5-6 years until I made the switch to using Linux on all my machines last year. The scripting, speed, dual panes, customization, portability between machines (i used Syncthing to sync my configs between 3 machines) on XyPlorer are phenomenal and I've sadly not been able to find a Linux native file manager that's at the same level. Dolphin comes close but even with qdbus commands it sadly not…

What did you script in XYPlorer? I've used Explorer for so long that's a feature I can't even imagine what I would use it for.

Not the OP, but I've been using XYplorer for 10 years now. I have a sidebar with a few scripts. Here are the ones I use the most:

- Extract selected archives

- Flatten current folder

- Convert selected file(s) to various formats (e.g. JPG to WebP or vice versa)

- Optimize selected image file(s) (smaller file size)

- Prepare image file(s) for publishing on my photography blog: strip irrelevant EXIF, create two variants (thumbnail and a bigger picture); see my post: https://darekkay.com/blog/photography-website/#pipeline

- Prepare image file(s) for sharing - similar as above, but more for sharing vacation photos with my family on WhatsApp)

- Rename files to a certain format (e.g. images to "YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss")

- Check selected file with Virus Total

- Start a weekly backup to my external drive

- Backup my server files to my local drive

- Create a rectangle "album art" file, see my post: https://darekkay.com/blog/resize-album-art-images/

Many of those are just shell scripts and apps that I run right from XYplorer, but it's way faster than through CLI.

I've documented some of the XYplorer stuff here (see also the "scripts" folder): https://github.com/darekkay/config-files/tree/master/xyplore...

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