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<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> What is BasicMaker? |
BasicMaker is an easy to use development environment for the programming language SoftMaker Basic.
Note: BasicMaker is available only under Windows. It is not included in all versions of SoftMaker Office.
What is SoftMaker Basic?
SoftMaker Basic is modeled after the industry standard Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) from Microsoft.
It is a rather easy to learn programming language that is optimized to work in tandem with applications. For example, with some simple Basic statements, you can change fonts in a TextMaker document, open another document, etc.
BasicMaker does not produce directly executable program files, as it does not contain a compiler that creates executable files. Instead, you build so-called scripts with BasicMaker. These can be opened and executed from within BasicMaker.
An overview of the language elements of SoftMaker Basic and its application can be found in the chapter Language elements of SoftMaker Basic. For an A-Z reference of the Basic statements available, see the chapter Statements and functions from A to Z.
What does BasicMaker consist of?
BasicMaker consists of the following components:
▪The control center of BasicMaker is the script editor, for you to create and edit SoftMaker Basic scripts. For information on how to operate the editor, refer to the chapter Using the script editor.
▪Integrated into the editor is an interpreter for the programming language SoftMaker Basic. This interpreter is responsible for the execution of the scripts. SoftMaker Basic scripts cannot be compiled to executable programs, but have to be started from the script editor.
| You can also execute a script from inside TextMaker or PlanMaker. In either of them, invoke the ribbon command File | Scripts group | Run script and select the script to run. BasicMaker will then execute the script. |
| Further information about running scripts can be found in the section Starting scripts. |
▪Beyond that, a debugger for testing scripts is integrated in the script editor. With it, you can process a script step by step and inspect variables. This helps to find errors. You can find more information about this in Debugging scripts.
▪Finally, BasicMaker contains a graphical dialog editor. You can use it to create dialog boxes which allow users to interact with your scripts. For more information, see the section Using the dialog editor.