Speak Method in REALbasic

Speak takes a string (or any variant that can be expressed as a string) and uses the Windows or Macintosh text-to-speech engine to speak the text. The speech is asynchronous, allowing normal program flow to continue. By default, subsequent calls to Speak before the first call has finished will queue up and speak after the completion of the previous call. If the optional interrupt flag is used and set to True, the previous Speak calls will be stopped immediately. Speak is not supported on Linux.

Speak Method example

We can for example read the text available in TextArea Control. I hope this example is clear to understand. If you like you can change some settings (like system voice, reading speed etc.) in System Preferences -> Speech. I think that Windows offers also this kind of options somewhere.

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if TextArea1.Text < > "" then
  speak TextArea1.Text
else
  speak "Please insert some text in TextArea because it's empty"
end if

MagicSpeller for REALbasic

MagicSpeller allows you to use a dialog-based spell check system as well as an inline system that checks spelling as you type. Both options provide a customizable number of suggested corrections that are automatically prioritized to maximize accuracy. Inline correction highlights misspelled words as the user types. The dialog based option allows for correcting multiple text fields or strings all at one time.

MagicSpeller’s dialog-based spell correction allows for the correction of styled text fields. Corrected words automatically maintain the previously set style of misspelled words to make corrections effortless. Additionally, multiple fields of styled text can be checked all at once so corrections are efficient and convenient.

The MagicSpeller system is completely cross-platform compatible; supporting both the REALbasic IDE and project builds on Macintosh and Windows. Truly an easy solution to code once and compile for your platform of choice.

More informations

MagicSpeller for REALbasic home page
Download MagicSpeller 1.6 for REALbasic

Creating the GUI

Drag and drop to Window a Rectangle Control.

Displaying system Color Selector

Go to code editor and in Rectangle1 Function MouseDown () enter this code. Now when the user selects a color it will be automatically in our Rectangle Control.

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Dim b as Boolean
Dim c as Color
 
c = Rectangle1.FillColor
b = SelectColor(c, "Select a Color")  // displays the color selector
Rectangle1.FillColor = c

HTMLViewer with WebKit engine on Linux

HTMLViewer use default libgtkhtml library to render HTML on Linux… but there is a option to use WebKit. To do this simply install on your system libwebkit-1.0-1. If you like you can make a class that will install this library automatically.

Creating one line browser in REALbasic

To create a our web browser add to the Window HTMLViewer control. Set its LockLeft, LockTop, LockRight, and LockBottom properties so that it resizes as the user resizes the window. Now add a PushButton control and insert the code:

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HTMLViewer1.LoadURL(http://tutspolis.com)

Opening link in new Window

If you like to have a option to open a link in new window add to HTMLViewer Function NewWindow() in code editor this code.

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 Dim w as New Window1 //name of Window where is our HTMLViewer control
 
 Title = "new Window" //title property of new window
 w.Show //show the window
 Return w.HTMLViewer1 //render html

Page load progress in ProgresBar control

HTMLViewer can easy display the progress of page loading in ProgresBar control. You can make this using few lines of code in HTMLViewer Sub DocumentProgressChanged.

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if percentageComplete = -1 then //if it cannot be determined
ProgressBar1.Maximum = 0 //display indeterminate progress
else
ProgressBar1.Maximum = 100
end if
ProgressBar1.Value = percentageComplete

Building the GUI for USD to EUR converter

Use two TextFields Controls and one PushButton. Try to get result something like on this image. Please note that you can make this application on Windows or Linux too. I prefer Mac OS, you can use what you like – REALbasic is cross-platform.

Creating and setting up HTTPSocket Class

Go to Project TAB and create Class called cHTTP. Then add to Super value HTTPSocket. In code editor for cHTTP Class create a new Property and in Declaration type code and in As type String. Great! Now Add Method and enter for Method Name: convertHTML for Parameters: KeyQuery As String, KeyQuery2 As String, data As String and for Result: String. Insert then the code below:

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Dim KeyStart As String = KeyQuery 
Dim KeyEnd As String = KeyQuery2
 
Return Mid( Data, InStr( Data, KeyStart ) + Len(KeyStart), InStr( Data, KeyEnd ) - (InStr( Data, KeyStart) + Len(KeyStart) ) )

Create new Method called downloadHTML and use this code. When we type in Google search ex. 20 USD to EUR we will get the result between h2 class=”r” style=”font-size:138%” and /h2. If we know this than we are done with work.

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Dim Data As String
 
Data = Me.Get ("http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=" + (Window1.TextField2.text) + "+USD+in+EUR&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1", 3 )
 
code = convertHTML( "h2 class=r style=" + chr(34) + "font-size:138%" + chr(34) + "&gt;<b>" , "</b></h2>", Data )
 
Window1.TextField1.Text = code
 
Me.Close

Finishing work in 2 lines

PushButton1 Sub Action ()

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Dim tuts As new cHTML
 
tuts.downloadHTML

Running REALbasic

When we start REALbasic on Mac or Windows or Linux we will see this window. On active TAB Window1 we can use controls and its properties to build GUI (graphical user interface) for our applications. Depending on the operating system the appearance of controls will be different. In Windows we will have windows like controls (buttons, windows skins) , on Mac OS we will have mac like controls etc.

Property and Value

Property in GUI builder is a place where we can change some options for current selected control or window. In case of selected Window we have a options like width, height, title, backcolor etc. Of course we can also change the values even if our applications is running. But we must add this values to our code. We will learn this later.

Controls in REALbasic

In Controls list we can find all available with REALbasic components to create our software. There are such Controls as Canvas (for using images), PushButton (simply a button), MoviePlayer (for loading movies) etc. To use each Control we can simply drag and drop it to our application Window. Some of them (example IPCSocket) are not visual components like ListBox but powerful intermediaries in using ex. protocols, cpu threads etc. Each Control has got its own properties and values.

Creating a simple application in REALbasic

OK, we know so much so we will try to create our first easy application. Drag and drop on Window1 controls: PushButton and TextArea. Now double click on PushButton control. PushButton1 Sub Action()

Editing code in REALbasic

We are now in REALbasic code editor witch looks like this. In others tutorials we will lean how to use it and now simply enter the code below in Controls -> PushButton1 -> Action.

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TextArea1.Text = "REALbasic City"

Project Tab in REALbasic

I almost forgot Project Tab in REALbasic. We can create here new Window, add a Class, add Module, add Folder with files, images etc. add Menu Bar and Toolbar. We will use this Tab in other tutorials. Every element in Project Tab has got own properties and values.

Running the application

To check if our application is running correctly we can simply press the green Run button in REALbasic Main Toolbar. As you can see on each operating system the application is working good. The only difference is the GUI style.