VBA Rubberducking

Duga

00:02

RELOAD!

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] 2 opened issues. 8 issue comments.

[Minesweeper] Games Played: 108, Bombs Used: 77, Moves Performed: 13874, New Users: 50

Hosch250

02:05

@HackSlash oh, that makes more sense

Changing jobs, @MathieuGuindon? Exciting!

Also, did I forget to say hi to @Vogel612? How did your time as a mod treat you?

Is this a pure C# job, Mat?

Mathieu Guindon

13:08

@Hosch250 looking like it; interviewing with another team (same place as earlier this week, different client) in an hour; it's C# and SQL Server, probably with some Javascript and some front-end work that I'll learn as I go along. Job title ".NET Developer" at last!

FreeMan

Mat! Mat! Mat! Mat! Mat!

</cheerleader>

Mathieu Guindon

=)

Hosch250

@MathieuGuindon Nice! What company?

Mathieu Guindon

Since this is a public chat I'll keep that undisclosed until it's official =)

but it's a nice, not-sinking, well-known one

FreeMan

13:32

"not-sinking" is a bonus...

mansellan

14:00

wonders if Mug has landed a job at Microsoft to update the VBIDE ;-)

this

14:11

@mansellan that presumes MSFT even wants to update VB*. :\

FreeMan

@mansellan ~~wonders if~~ ~~wishes~~ ~~hopes~~ prays Mug has landed a job at Microsoft to update the VBIDE ;-) <--FTFY

Mathieu Guindon

lol, it's not MSFT :)

IvenBach

15:26

I would think you have the experience and qualifications: you've gotten an MVP from Microsoft, herd ~~cats~~ ducks on an OSS project, contributed as a mod on CR, and anything else that's not mentioned. You have a bit of public exposure for everything you've done, just have to look in the right spot.

IvenBach

15:43

Right now I don't have the option to add a WPF window. I tried adding one manually and updating the file which caused other files to have errors.

this

do we actually use WPF winodws?

Mathieu Guindon

we don't/can't

that's why our windows are all WinForms dialogs

with an embedded WPF host thing

this

I was unsure about the popup dialgos like hte settings dialog and add/remove reference dialog but indeed those are WPF usercontrols

IvenBach

My mistake on using window. I'm unable to add any WPF item.

Mathieu Guindon

Pick "New Item..."

IvenBach

15:55

I'm used to seeing WPF options.

When I do, nothing WPF related is available.

Mathieu Guindon

they're just handy shortcuts that depend on the project type/template

@IvenBach there should be a "user control (WPF)" somewhere

IvenBach

Mathieu Guindon

could be you didn't install the Win32/Desktop workload for VS?

IvenBach

Same installation I've been using that had it previously.

I have the same list on work and home computer with the RD solution loaded.

If I open a WPF solution, that does have the WPF related options available.

Hence my confusion.

Mathieu Guindon

does look every bit like a project template thing. anyway if it's for RD then WPF is already there - pretty sure you could add a new empty file, give it a .xaml file extension, set its build properties accordingly, and then copy the <UserControl ...> markup (and adjust the contents accordingly) from any other existing control

IvenBach

16:01

I attempted to do that previously. That's when had other errors start coming up for InitializeComponent being duplicated.

I'll try again.

this

probably because of the designer

you don't deal with jsut one file; you have at least 2 I think

Mathieu Guindon

^

IvenBach

FooBar.xaml and FooBar.xaml.cs

this

yeah

IvenBach

Have to make sure they are related and one depends on the other.

Mathieu Guindon

16:03

that's what the class attribute does in the xaml

IvenBach

:derp: It's staring at me the moment I pasted it.

<UserControl x:Class="Hey.Stupid.You.Didnt.Update.Me.And.Thats.Why.I.Gave.You.An.Error.FooBarView"

this

:)

IvenBach

I wonder why I keep trying some days...

this

in order to lrean.

IvenBach

Still feels like I make every possible mistake. Repeatedly.

this

16:10

Let me try again. In order to laren.

Mathieu Guindon

@IvenBach that means you're learning every possible thing!

this

^

IvenBach

Experiencing every possible thing. One day it'll become learning.

Mathieu Guindon

and that is why you keep trying :)

IvenBach

17:26

@IvenBach For the next time Future-Iven has to build a xaml page manually. Don't forget on the file FooBar.xaml to set the Build Action property to Page - stackoverflow.com/a/8170509/7420518.

FreeMan

ummmm... two issues with the new Peek function:

It kinda stays on top of everything....

Mathieu Guindon

that's the idea, yes

FreeMan

and it resizes itself in width. If you've got something that's longer than what fits in the vertical box size, it'll jump in width based on... something... as I scroll

Stays on top of the web browser?

@IvenBach starred for future Iven to find #usingthestarfeatureasitwasintended

Mathieu Guindon

the dynamic resizing is known and indeed annoying, making it fixed-width would solve it

3rd issue: there should be an icon there

FreeMan

@MathieuGuindon an icon where?

Mathieu Guindon

17:31

top left

FreeMan

whelp, it does, in fact, seem to be missing...

you miss a code review, you miss a lot

what's the purpose of having it stay on top of everything, including web browser, email client, everything?

Mathieu Guindon

it's a WPF Popup, its intended purpose is for combobox dropdowns.

this is a complete hack

IvenBach

Is any software not a complete hack?

FreeMan

gotcha

IvenBach

@IvenBach Future-Iven reading: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/…

Mathieu Guindon

17:34

looks like there's a way to tie it to an owner window, ...but here the owner is a UserControl

3

A: WPF Popup ZOrder

I've tried to solve this issue as well, and have found no good solution. This seems to be the way it is supposed to work, and you can't override that. The only solution I've come up with is to just use a regular layout panel and raise it's Z-Index, so it is the top-level control (this sort of...

basically the intended use is to pop it up, drag it around, do your thing, and close it when you're done

FWIW it shows up on top of VS when you debug it, too

IvenBach

The present owner is a VB*CodePane?

Mathieu Guindon

no, the owner is the CodeExplorerControl

sad how it seems nobody else is [ab]using WPF the way RD does lol

this

yeah, there's a dearth of information on using WPF in non-WPF applications

there's lot of informations but only as long as you're using a WPF project

Mathieu Guindon

most of it works for what we do though

just, the odd little thing like setting a Window owner to some component, we can't do :)

this

or enforcing a consistent stylesheet for everything

Mathieu Guindon

17:47

hey easy just edit your app.xaml ...oh

this

^

I kind of wished it would have worked the same way then it would be less confusing even though we normally use a WPF element host rather than directly hosting an Windows.Application

FreeMan

18:07

I'll leave it to you to decide which and when to fix 'em

there's no way to For Each ... Next through an ADODB.RecordSet is there.

:(

this

18:53

@FreeMan how do you iterate when you don't know how many there are?

It's a bit like asking the farmer how many eggs his chickens has laid this morning before he has collected the eggs.

Mathieu Guindon

@FreeMan the default property of a Recordset is its indexed Fields property, so nope =)

mansellan

19:36

uh, was this reasonable? github.com/WaynePhillipsEA/twinbasic/issues/…

this

19:49

@mansellan of course I was.

mansellan

hehe.this vs @this

so tempted to rename my profile to "that" just to troll the channel ;-)

this

woah, woah, woah, we're lovers, not fighters. You all can have a peace of me instead.

;-)

mansellan

rofl

uh, so was... pauses... my GH comment reasonable?

this

Sure. :)

Mathieu Guindon

20:05

@mansellan why wouldn't it be? "can lead to boilerplate" is a massive understatement, but other than that...

mansellan

@MathieuGuindon heh yeah, I was worried about the "kinda OOP" comment... Thing is, VBx is polymorphic. It's just... inconvenient.

And TBF, that's because COM.

Mathieu Guindon

sure, but now we're looking at a brand new compiler and language - that COM can't consume an abstract class has never been a showstopper for COM-visible .NET objects...

this

^

mansellan

Yep, not disagreeing. But I've also been watching the VBF comments, and they're somewhat... change-wary.

this

at the COM level, everything's interface as to avoid depending on language features.

Mathieu Guindon

20:09

tB supporting inheritance has absolutely zero impact on back-compatibility

it's like tB supporting RD annotations

mansellan

vbforums.com/…

this

@mansellan Sorry, but I disagree. if all tB did was just do what VB6 did, then there's not much appeal for new adoption.

Mathieu Guindon

^

mansellan

Again, not disagreeing.

Just hope to take VB6 die-hards along for the ride.

this

I guess the point is that it'll grow with or without their consent. There's a bigger community to be had.

mansellan

20:11

That's fair

VB6, with modern syntax, could be a competitor to C++, Python, Rust... They're all in the same native space.

Mathieu Guindon

> We seem to see twinBasic.NET

ffs

mansellan

yeah I had to not bite

Oh wait, didn't mean to say Python, that's a different castle!

Mathieu Guindon

> How does TwinBasic intend to handle or introduce the concept of multi-threading to VB6?

people don't seem to just grasp the most basic thing about tB: it's not adding anything to VB6. VB6 isn't going anywhere.

mansellan

^^^

But they want VB7, which MS denied them. So they pin their hopes and dreams...

this

@MathieuGuindon yeah, I think that's totally the wrong approach.

Mathieu Guindon

20:15

VB6 is dead, long live VB!

this

Oh, btw, did you look at Mercury? It sounds like it's to VB.NET what tB is to VB6

Mathieu Guindon

yep

mansellan

VB6 had multi threading... STA, MTA... still have the PTSD...

Mathieu Guindon

I mean no I didn't look-look, but it's pretty much VB.NET continuing forward

@mansellan lol!

this

In fact, I missed the announcement that VB.NET was being dropped by MS

mansellan

20:16

It's not, at least officially

Mathieu Guindon

wasn't there something to that effect at last MSBuild?

this

Which frankly was a non-surprise (beside taking so long to finally admit the simple truth that it has been a 2nd class citizen)

Mathieu Guindon

thought I saw something

mansellan

It's just on a slower dev track

this

I wasn't there.

Mathieu Guindon

20:16

me neither

mansellan

They posted that they have invested in MSForms in the CLR just recently

They just won't support it for Razor/Blazor, which is heavily C#only

this

Clarify -- MSForms? The COM 2.0 version?

not WinForms?

mansellan

Sorry, WinForms

this

Ok that makes more sense. :)

mansellan

Lol too many product names!

this

20:18

Ironic as it may be, WinForms and WPF both are here to stay.

I have this pet thought experiment of what a killer UI framework would look like. All I know is none of those.

mansellan

Yeah, VB.Net apparently supports both. But I don't think they wanna support VB.Net WPF.

Mathieu Guindon

I predict WPF will be renamed MPF soon-ish

"Microsoft Presentation Foundation" goes right up there with "Microsoft 365"

mansellan

Take your pick... there's WinUI, Project Reunion... God knows how they relate to WinForms, WPF, UWP...

Kinda glad I didn't get involved with UWP, it's gonna die soon.

this

and thee's Xamarin

sometimes it feel like MSFT is just churning out every variants possible to do UI crappily

mansellan

^ That's gonna be WinUI

Or was in Reunion lol

this

20:21

sigh

and someone need to tell the marketing dept to cool it with renaming.

mansellan

Honesttly, how can they have a "project reunion", when there's another UI framework under active development?

way to miss the point.

Mathieu Guindon

Copy of Copy of Copy of UltimateUserInterfaceFramework-Final_Final-Final_v2.csproj

mansellan

Maybe Build will shed some light next week.

Mathieu Guindon

in the end, there can be only one. everything will be a <canvas> before we know it.

mansellan

Heh...we're mulling putting a Blazor island in our WPF app. Mostly to get towards web. Screw Win desktop, web is more stable (!)

this

20:26

coming soon to a desktop computer near you: Internet Explorer OS

or Google Chrome OS. Or Firefox Linux

Mathieu Guindon

no no no IE is officially dead now!

well, next year anyway lol

this

No, not IE. IE OS.

mansellan

@MathieuGuindon nonono! It's a "mode" of Edge. You're enterprise is safe, Promise swear!

this

@mansellan they did say it's on Chromium so....

mansellan

"You have ActiveX components your business relies upon? Here, we have a browser for you. And hopefully, your users will feel no need to go anywhere else. Ever."

Sooo... here's a GPO you can set to make sure they never ever install FF / Chrome.

Too cynical?

IvenBach

20:33

Anyone have some time to assist? I hard coded the values needed when adding a new component. I'm want to use a view instead but can't figure out the expected process to do so. I think I need to create a Presenter which requires a dialogFactory and I'm unable to find an example to lean for that.

this

You're making a dialog, right?

IvenBach

Yes.

Mathieu Guindon

take the settings dialog as an example

this

^

Mathieu Guindon

although, "about" is probably much simpler, but a lot of its data is actually hard-coded in the .xaml so it's kind of a bad example

IvenBach

20:39

I was trying to use the MoveMultipleFoldersView as an example but that hasn't panned out.

this

Start with this command: github.com/rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck/blob/next/Rubberduck.Core/…

then walk through the code to see how that all ties together.

M.Doerner

@MathieuGuindon Congrats on the new job!

@IvenBach What kind of dialog do you want to add?

this

hmm i'm wondering if it's even a good example. There's lot of specific stuff that might be not relevant.

IvenBach

One that allows a ComponentName and Folder to be specified when adding a new component via CodeExplorer>Add.

M.Doerner

The MoveMultipleFoldersView is based on a refactoring, AFAIR. For those, we have an entire abstract setup.

IvenBach

20:45

This is one reason why I always shied away from forms of any kind. I couldn't grok the concept. It had been easier to stick it in an Excel cell and pull it from there.

M.Doerner

The main complication here is that we load WPF controls inside WinForms dialogs. That really does not make it easier to understand.

Basically we load an MVVM style component into an MVP style dialog.

IvenBach

I mostly understand each one separately. Combined, I'm SOL and struggling mightily.

this

I don't think you should be worrying too much about WinForm - ti should be generalized; worry about hte WPF

Mathieu Guindon

^

@M.Doerner thanks!

this

I think it makes more sense to treat it as a refactoring action. So you should approach it as a new refactoring action.

Just in case you didn't see it already: github.com/rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck/wiki/UI-Design-Guidelines

IvenBach

20:50

That influenced my choice to use MoveMultipleFolders as my example.

Mathieu Guindon

@this oh crap I hope at least half of this is still valid lol

mansellan

Heh, should I mention that you can put a WinForms element inside WPF? Oh, wait... too late.

MS UI is a mess

IvenBach

I'll read that after traipsing through the SettingsCommand button as it executes.

this

@IvenBach No forget that.

I think a refactoring action makes for a better example

IvenBach

Forget what? I haven't ready anything...

this

20:53

@MathieuGuindon I browed quickly and it seems to be still current.... I hope.

IvenBach

It takes me a long while to internalize what I read.

this

@IvenBach settings form would not be a good example for you to follow

IvenBach

A better aligned suggestion would be a refactoring dialog?

this

because there's lot of stuff that are specific to the settings form that would be distracting. Any refactoring dialog --- I would probably start with rename dialog would be a better example.

Mathieu Guindon

aye, it's got many dependencies and services attached... multiple views, ...definitely the most complex dialog in RD

this

20:54

^

and given what you need to do, you need services that the setting dialog doesn't have but refactoring dialog will have.

mansellan

@IvenBach bear in mind: WinForns is basically close to how Windows natively renders things. WPF is an intruder - "gimme an area and I'll do the rest".

IvenBach

I've always had the Excel grid to use as my UI. Forms of any kind is all new.

this

The ghost (!) of Joel Spolsky continues to haunt all UI framework

yyooooouuuuu arrrrreeeeeee reeeeeinnnnveeeennnnntttttttiiiinggggg Excel

M.Doerner

BTW, the MoveMultipleFoldersDialog is basically a copy of the rename dialog.

IvenBach

The suiss army nife of teh all things.

mansellan

20:58

> At the end of the day, every requirement can be reduced to "Let me do this in Excel"

this

^

IvenBach

^^ That mentality carried me too far along.

If it's not gridded I can't understand it...

this

and everyone who opens Access for the first time hypervenilates. where's my limitless columns and rows?!?

mansellan

@IvenBach Excel is not a UI. It's a spreadsheet.

IvenBach

@M.Doerner would you suggest [Rubberduck/Rubberduck.Core/UI/Refactorings
](https://github.com/rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck/tree/next/Rubberduck.Core/UI/Refactorings/Rename) and [Rubberduck/Rubberduck.Core/UI/Refactorings/MoveToFolder](https://github.com/rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck/tree/next/Rubberduck.Core/UI/Refactorings/MoveToFolder)?

M.Doerner

21:02

Both are basically identical apart from the models used.

IvenBach

:deep-breath: Time to try again.

I'll eventually get this. I just want to understand how to do it properly once I finish.

M.Doerner

I think it would be easiest if you create a RefactoringAction for what you want to do with an appropriate model and then set things up like for rename.

this

@mansellan and user writes in, "I love your product! But could you add ability for me to move columns around and copy'n'paste rows? "

mansellan

@this bt;dt.

IvenBach

@mansellan Oh no... It's definitely a UI. Everyone else is just definitely doing it wrong.

mansellan

21:05

@IvenBach bt; dt.

honestly, both.

IvenBach

So for the XAML portion just do everything as is normal with MVVM. When it comes time to display the usercontrol that is when MVP takes over?

mansellan

Excel has a grid layout, formulas, and Alt-F11. It's crazy addictive, and I should know - it was my intro.

I just had the good fortune to outgrow it quickly.

this

@IvenBach well yes but I wouldn't say "take over" --- Winform & MVP is how we display the dialog which will have only a WPF host element control

the Winform dialog itself is dumb and does nothing interesting besides providing a container to house the WPF contents.

mansellan

^

this

22:10

Does anyone know of a spy++ equivalent that can work with context menus?

Son Goku ssj4

22:23

Just installed the last RD version.

What did you do???

It's bloody fast! After like 2 years it's immensely more usable now than ever! Loving this.

5

After my last cry few weeks ago (when I even posted gifs that it's unusable when clicking faster than 1 click per 5 seconds), I think something has changed for sure.

:-) You made my day.

Greger

23:46

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck]: 1340 stars vs. [decalage2/oletools]: 1550 stars

Transcript for