Toolbox help

that got out of hand,

It did, rather. Anything for a bit of excitement. ;-)

If temp% points to such a large buffer, my first thought is that it should work. Instead of size% pass 10001 in R5 (the length you have DIMmed). I assume that you are not expecting larger text than that. The text should be copied at the start of the buffer. It might be worth checking that the value in temp% is still valid.

I have just knocked up a test app in Basalt and written this working function:

DEFFNSaveText
 LOCAL size%,buff%
 SYS"Toolbox_ObjectMiscOp",0,Main,&401B,0,,0 TO ,,,,,size%
 DIM buff% LOCAL size%-1
 SYS"Toolbox_ObjectMiscOp",0,Main,&401B,0,buff%,size%
 SYS"OS_File",10,"TextArea:Documents.Text",&FFF,,buff%,buff%+size%
=FALSE

Not quite the format you want, but it should be good to to check against.

Using Basalt in its OOP format I could just do:

SAVE ('Main#0.Text),"TextArea:Documents.Text" OF &FFF

;-)

I was thinking about Basalt. It’s a module.

Even in Basalt that would not be a very good idea. Basalt has dynamic memory handling in app space.

In BASIC, what’s wrong with DIM meh% ?

Do that inside procedures and you are liable to run into “No room”. Not recommended as an example of “the way to do it” to a beginner.

I am struggling with the documentation, its just so confusing.

I want to know when a text file is loaded into the textarea, I found a message “TextArea_DataLoaded” Ox140180

What is Ox140180 ?

For BASIC, just replace the hex prefix 0x with &

Thank you Stuart

Do that inside procedures and you are liable to run into “No room”.

That’s why DIM LOCAL, if you’re not using a global block.

Wimp poll blocks are a useful source if 256 bytes in a pinch – just so long as all the Wimpy stuff has been done.

Not recommended as an example

Plenty of good examples around as to why teaching programming is hard. Habits and language ambiguity lead to…

What is Ox140180 ?

Just to clarify as nobody has said, 0x (zero x) is how C denotes hex numbers, when it’s not using \x instead.

You may also stumble across (though not around here) an “h” suffix, like 140180h. I know this from x86 assembler, but it’s pretty common.

Other places with better typography might use a subscript “H” suffix, like 140180H

Yet others use a dollar prefix, like $140180. Pascal, Forth, quite a few assemblers in the 8 bit era…

And, of course, there’s always a prefix or suffix that just says “16”.

Hex numbers are like brace placement. Everybody has their preferred way to do it, and everything else is simply wrong. ;)

OS_ReadUnsigned accepts any base from 2 to 36, so 17_g is 10_16 (aka &10), or 2_10000, or 4_10. Just to be confusing!

This was the finished code just in case it helps anybody else.

file$ = File name and path to save to.
type% = File type to create &fff
temp% = A block of memory:- DIM temp% 10000

   30:
   40 DEF PROCsave_data(file$,type%)
   50 LOCAL size%,at%
   60 SYS &44EC6,0,winid%,16411,0 TO ,,,,,size%
   70 SYS &44EC6,0,winid%,16411,0,temp%,size% TO ,,,,at%
   80 SYS "OS_File",10,file$,type%,0,at%,at% + (size% - 1)
 100 ENDPROC
 110:

Remember that you can’t supply type$ to OS_File, use: type%=&FFF

Thanks for the heads up Stuart, I accidentally posted an old one. It is corrected now.

What is Ox140180 ?

0×140180 is the code of the toolbox event that is raised when text is imported into a textarea gadget, eg by dropping a textfile on it.

Not much use though as it’s not implemented in the RO5 toolbox, it’s only available on the other branch of RISC OS, alas.

This was the finished code […]

That’s a potentially dangerous bit of code. If your buffer is 10k and your text 20k then the toolbox will happily attempt to copy those 20k into your 10k buffer.

You should pass the size of the buffer (rather than size of text) to TextArea_GetText method to avoid the risk of the buffer being overrun.

For a fixed size buffer I’d suggest using something like this:

TempSize% = 10000
DIM Temp% TempSize%

DEF PROCsave_data(file$,type%)
LOCAL written% : REM bytes written to buffer, excl terminator
  SYS &44EC6,0,winid%,16411,0,Temp%,TempSize% TO ,,,,,written%
  SYS "OS_File",10,file$,type%,0,Temp%,Temp% + written%
ENDPROC

HTH

Thanks Fred, things have changed a lot since getting my head around the toolbox and its strange and painful documentation.

I now claim lumps of memory from the heap as needed and return them when finished with so the DIM is gone.

The code will eventually run on RO4.39 RiscPC so the Ox140180 call works fine.