Sorry about the lack of information or not well written info. I am not exactly sure how to fully explain everything. Also, sorry about my slightly bad English. I will have a demo posted up very shortly, most likely by tomorrow morning with full documentation.
About:
Dark NET allows you to use the .Net Framework version 2.0 in your DarkBASIC project. All commands must be hand written by me, so not every command will be included. Most commands will be available over time, and some commands will not be included because of DBP incompatibility.
Dark NET will be a language in itself, DBP commands can be used along with Dark NET commands but Dark NET will not be able to access the DBP window (program stream) itself. The original DBP commands do are not changed in any way, and can be typed and used like normal. You will, however, need to embed the DBP window inside of another windows form in order to have access to the form (window) DBP is located on. You will be able to do this in a single command, or you could even code it yourself. All the command will do is dock the DBP window inside a picture box that is located on another window. The picture box can them be the full size of the window (does not have to be though), making the DBP window not look different at all. I know this sounds odd and complicated, but like I said before, I am not sure how to explain it well.
Dark NET will feature thousands of new commands. Using Dark NET you can write full .Net applications that have the speed and compatibility as if you wrote them in .Net yourself. Write anything from console applications to full multiple windowed form applications. I have tested a lot of commands so far with speed tests. Each test consisted of executing 500 different .Net commands one right after the other with the speed calculation being the time when execution started to the time after every command had executed and completed. The average speed loss was 9 milliseconds per second.
Dark NET will be a series of large DLL’s, each of them must be paid for separately. None of the DLL’s are finished as of now. The system framework DLL is the DLL currently being worked on. Why are the DLLs so large and why must they all be paid for separately? For those who have used .Net, this is a no brainer. The system framework is very large. It covers consoles, threading, application control, security, windows forms, and much more. The windows forms framework will be similar to BlueGUI, but have nearly 3x as many commands and gives you full control over windows forms, and that’s just that single framework.
Debugging:
You will have full .Net debugging with most functions. There are 2 debugging options with each DLL. Other debugging, which is debugging of everything but functions, and function debugging, which is the debugging of the actual functions themselves. Most functions will not cause any program errors when they fail. They will silently stop without anything happening. When function debugging is on, full debugging info will be printed out to the console screen if and when a function fails. You will get the same messages as if you programmed them in any .Net language. Debugging will handle exceptions such as IOException, OutOfMemoryException, ArgumentOutOfRangeException, FormatException, ArgumentNullException, SecurityException, HostProtectionException, ArgumentException, and most of the other exceptions in .Net.
Frameworks:
The frameworks that I have planed to be included are the System framework, the DirectX framework, the Data framework (XML, SQL, etc), and the Networking framework (most likely will be a part of the data framework DLL).
System Requirements:
* A .Net supported operating system:
Windows XP with Service Pack 2
Windows Server 2003
Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3
Windows ME
Windows 98 Second Edition (SE)
Windows 98
* Microsoft .Net Framework version 2.0 or higher
* DLL's tested with versions 6.0 and 6.1 of DarkBASIC Professional
* Any requirements that are required by DarkBASIC Professional (DirectX 9.0c, etc...)
Current Project - Dark NET System Framework DLL
Percentage - 14%.......Lines of Code - 9,171
This Info Updated - 6/18/06 12:10pm