Visual Basic a Casualty of Processor War

On 8/17/06 3:52 PM, "e.lewthwaite" <e.lewthwaiteniwa.co.nz> wrote:

> Eric Eullman said that:
>
> I've read the articles and I've read the blogs. Sure, it's
> difficult--even
> impossible in current market conditions--to update VBS support for Intel
> processors or make it work within Rosetta (the PowerPC emulation layer).
> I'm not saying that Microsoft should find a way to do it no matter what.
> I work for a Mac...
>
>
>
>
> Is this really correct? Do VBA Office 2004 macros not work on the new Mac
> Intel's under Rosetta?

I've never tried but I'm sure they do work. I'm sure what Eric was referring
to was what one or more of the Microsoft bloggers wrote, that even if they
didn't rewrite the VB stuff to compile in Xcode (and presumably become
Universal), the effort just to make the Universal code work with the old,
crufty VB PPC code would be too great.

> How about MacBU investigating the use of RealBasic or contract the RealBasic
> people to bring VBA up to date??

MacBU blogger Erik Schwiebert pretty much covered all the options and seemed
to shoot them down (not all with explanations) in the article Matt linked
to.

http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic
 
> The pending demise of VBA in Office will be a right pain for cross platform
> compatibility especially in a corporate environment. Let's hope the MacBU
> folks reconsider their decision.

Is this something only Microsoft themselves can do? Could there be a "3rd
party opportunity" to add VBA macro support of some kind, at least running
them if not creating them, to the next version of Mac Office?

On 8/17/06 15:53, "Christopher Smith" <xxman.org> wrote:

>> Is this really correct? Do VBA Office 2004 macros not work on the new Mac
>> Intel's under Rosetta?
>
> What is probably difficult is leaving the VBA engine running under
> Rosetta while the rest of Office is running natively on x86, which is
> what Microsoft would have to do going forward iff they port Office to
> x86 but don't port VBA.

There have been a couple of blog posts explaining this quite well.

<http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/>

is one of the better ones.

>
> This is, ironically, the price we pay for having Office Mac really be
> its own code base. There was a time where Office Mac was basically
> Windows Office with some hacks to run on Mac, in which case it'd be much
> easier to reuse the VBA runtime from Windows

that was the Word 6 problem. Um...no thanks

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

I haven't read this whole thread so apologies if someone already brought
this up, but Microsoft is eliminating VBA support on everything.

They're moving to a technology called (be prepared for the syllable count)
"Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Applications"

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/extend/vsta/default.aspx>

This moves from a COM based technology to the .Net Framework. This is most
likely the reason for abandoning VBA in Office for Mac. Porting .Net to Mac
is just too much work and if they continued supporting VBA in Office on the
Mac, current Windows users may consider switching to the Mac to get VBA
support.

VBA will be in Office 2007 (except I believe the 64-bit versions) but I'm
not sure about the versions after that.

At 3:06 AM -0700 8/17/06, Bill Rowe wrote:
> >It's not just business. I support scientific researchers who do
> >extensive modeling in Excel that also happens to be cross platform.
>
>I've no reason to doubt what you write above, but the idea of using
>Excel to do "extensive modeling" is mind-boggling to me. Yes, with
>Visual Basic, Excel can be extended to do a great many things. But
>in my experience, this is far from optimum. And given reports
>available on the internet by a variety of researchers showing that
>numerical results from Excel are erroneous in cases, I simply would
>not trust Excel for any serious modeling of data. For fun, you might
>check out the statistical test suites available on NIST's site and
>run them through Excel.
>
>Software such as Matlab, Maple or Mathematica is far superior to
>Excel for the purposes of modeling data or other scientific
>modeling. Yes, these software packages are more expensive than Excel
>and require more effort to master. But these packages were designed
>with the scientific community in mind, unlike Excel that is
>basically a business application that has been adapted for
>scientific usage. IMOH, the added cost and effort to master
>something like Mathematica is more than justified by the results
>that can be obtained.
>
>Needless to say, the lack of Visual Basic in Excel will have no
>negative effect whatever on me.

Excel is one of the tools they use. Various of them also use
Mathematica*, SAS, Stata and even R. It depends on which model or
which simulation, who is writing it and how quickly it has to be
written.

We have some models that are so old that we have to keep old old old
Sun boxen just to run them. (They are both old enough and complex
enough that nobody wants to or maybe can rewrite the model. Think of
some of the old NASA hardware, like that old video format for which
there is only one machine.) This is not a brag, it's just a fact of
life.

I designed a 12-unit Xserve parallel processor cluster to run grid
Mathematica back when the DP G4 Xserve was brand new and g-M was
about the only thing that could take advantage of it. (I can't
remember now it that was summer 2003 or '04... Specced in some high
end superfast networking gear too... hm)

But none of these things are Excel and were not then appropriate for
mention in the thread. But if you bring it up, well then, here you
are.

So yes, we know that Excel is not the right tool for every job, but
sometimes it is good enough for some jobs.


--
Internet: living proof that when the world is reduced to the lowest
common denominator, we're dividing by zero.
- Vail, 9 August 2006

On Aug 15, 2006, Matt Neuburg responded to my question thus:

> > Will any of the announced or promised methods for running Windows
>> software on Intel Macs handle DOS-based applications and utilities as
>> effectively as VPC/DOS does?
>
>You'll still be able to run Virtual PC inside Windows on an Intel box. It is
>only the Mac version that is discontinued; Virtual PC remains an important
>Windows product. So if Virtual PC was handling this problem previously, it
>will still do so. m.

I'm not sure that statement is really an answer to the question which
I thought I was asking. Right now, I have VPC/DOS running on a Mac,
so I don't need Windows at all. I read Matt's words to mean that if
I migrate to an Intel Mac, I'll have to buy Windows in order to run
DOS, using VPC/DOS for Windows as a replacement for VPC/DOS for Mac.

Curtis Wilcox made it more specific:
>You could probably use OS X to run Parallels, Parallels to run Windows
>XP, XP to run Virtual PC, Virtual PC to run DOS and DOS to run your
>software.

I dunno - that seems kinda bass-ackwards to me. So I'll rephrase the question:

Will any of the announced or promised methods for running non-Apple
operating systems on Intel Macs support running MS-DOS as a guest
operating system, without requiring Windows as an extra (and
unwanted) layer?

Carl

The following is from Excel 2004's Microsoft Office Help, in the table of contents under Advanced Features -> Programmability -> About REALbasic ...

About REALbasic

REALbasic is a powerful and easy-to-use tool that you can use to build applications for automating Microsoft Office for Mac. It features a fully integrated, object-oriented, visual development and debugging environment. You can also use REALbasic to develop software for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

Running the REALbasic Editor

After REALbasic is installed, you can run it from Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Microsoft Excel by pointing to Macro on the Tools menu, and then clicking REALbasic Editor. You can also run REALbasic directly from the REALbasic folder.

Virtually all automation solutions that you develop with VBA can also be developed with REALbasic. Furthermore, there are certain advantages to using REALbasic: • Compiled code runs quicker in REALbasic because it is compiled into native code rather than interpreted code. • With REALbasic, you can write macros and distribute them as separate compiled files. You do not need to associate them with documents, as you do with VBA. • REALbasic makes it easy to create UserForms that comply with the Aqua interface of Mac OS X. Tip To easily migrate code from the Visual Basic Editor to the REALbasic Editor, simply copy and paste it.

On 8/18/06 15:10, "Kevin van Haaren" <kevinvanhaaren.net> wrote:

> This moves from a COM based technology to the .Net Framework. This is most
> likely the reason for abandoning VBA in Office for Mac. Porting .Net to Mac
> is just too much work and if they continued supporting VBA in Office on the
> Mac, current Windows users may consider switching to the Mac to get VBA
> support.

You can run a rather large chunk of .Net on a Mac now. Google "Mono"

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

At 1:10 PM -0700 8/18/06, Carl S Zimmerman wrote:
>I dunno - that seems kinda bass-ackwards to me. So I'll rephrase
>the question:
>
>Will any of the announced or promised methods for running non-Apple
>operating systems on Intel Macs support running MS-DOS as a guest
>operating system, without requiring Windows as an extra (and
>unwanted) layer?

I haven't tried it, but Parallels Desktop for Mac claims to run
MS-DOS 6.22. No shared folders for DOS, though.

--Mark

Kevin van Haaren wrote:
> I haven't read this whole thread so apologies if someone already brought
> this up, but Microsoft is eliminating VBA support on everything.
>
> They're moving to a technology called (be prepared for the syllable count)
> "Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Applications"
>
> <http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/extend/vsta/default.aspx>
>
> This moves from a COM based technology to the .Net Framework. This is most
> likely the reason for abandoning VBA in Office for Mac. Porting .Net to Mac
> is just too much work and if they continued supporting VBA in Office on the
> Mac, current Windows users may consider switching to the Mac to get VBA
> support.
>
> VBA will be in Office 2007 (except I believe the 64-bit versions) but I'm
> not sure about the versions after that.

But here they say that they don't plan to go this way on the Mac. On the
Mac they plan to go with AppleScript and put their efforts into other
Macintosh only things.

http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/

But this is a train wreak for a lot of folks. And many of the comments
on the Blog back this up. I work with architects. On a Mac losing the
ability to run cross platform macros in Word is a wipeout. The biggest
national trade association endorses a product called MasterSpec which is
used to generate construction specifications for building projects. Just
now it comes on a CD with documents that work on Macs and Windows
because they also supply Macros that install into Word to make things
work well. These documents are full of everything you might need and the
macros deal with pruning out what you don't need and keeping all the
references and numberings correct. And more. Plus there are other "spec
systems" out there. Plus architects have to trade documents with working
macros in them with contractors, permitting agencies, and on and on and on.

Bottom line, I (and others) would rather MS not issue a Mac 2007/8
release of Mac Office. Let us keep using Rosetta. It will only get
faster. Issue an enhancement but not a major step. We (designers) mainly
want our Photoshop and CAD software Intel native. That's the current
huge hold up for us going Intel.

Then have MS come out with a Mac v2010 or v2011 that incorporates the
.NET interoperability.

--On August 18, 2006 1:10:44 PM -0700 Carl S Zimmerman <csz_stlswbell.net>
wrote:
> Will any of the announced or promised methods for running non-Apple
> operating systems on Intel Macs support running MS-DOS as a guest
> operating system, without requiring Windows as an extra (and
> unwanted) layer?

Parallels should. I doubt Boot Camp can, but would be interested to see
someone try.

If anyone wants to actually test for Carl they can try FreeDOS and see what
happens, if it works MS-DOS should work (I'd test it but am stuck on a
PowerPC mini for awhile):

<http://www.freedos.org/>

Kevin

On Aug 18, 2006, at 4:10 PM, Carl S Zimmerman wrote:
> Will any of the announced or promised methods for running non-Apple
> operating systems on Intel Macs support running MS-DOS as a guest
> operating system, without requiring Windows as an extra (and
> unwanted) layer?

Yes. Parallels supports MS-DOS. I haven't used it much, or I would
have given a fuller report earlier, but it does run, and it does have
a specific configuration for installing MS-DOS.

Geoff

On Aug 20, 2006, at 4:53 PM, Mark R. Williamson wrote:
> I haven't tried it, but Parallels Desktop for Mac claims to run
> MS-DOS 6.22. No shared folders for DOS, though.

True enough. No shared folders. Virtual Hard Drives, Floppy Drives
and/or image files, CDs/DVDs and/or images. Those are the ways you
have to work with your data. The virtual hard drives can be mounted
as volumes, of course, as can the floppy, CD, and DVD image files,
naturally, so they can be seen from the main system, but not
simultaneously.

Geoff

--On August 20, 2006 1:53:29 PM -0700 "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com>
wrote:

> On 8/18/06 15:10, "Kevin van Haaren" <kevinvanhaaren.net> wrote:
>
>> This moves from a COM based technology to the .Net Framework. This is
>> most likely the reason for abandoning VBA in Office for Mac. Porting
>> .Net to Mac is just too much work and if they continued supporting VBA
>> in Office on the Mac, current Windows users may consider switching to
>> the Mac to get VBA support.
>
> You can run a rather large chunk of .Net on a Mac now. Google "Mono"

Except doing so from Office would require Microsoft to work with
open-source software on their A#1 application. Do you really expect them to
do that?

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006, Geoffrey Odhner wrote:

> On Aug 18, 2006, at 4:10 PM, Carl S Zimmerman wrote:
> > Will any of the announced or promised methods for running non-Apple
> > operating systems on Intel Macs support running MS-DOS as a guest
> > operating system, without requiring Windows as an extra (and
> > unwanted) layer?
>
> Yes. Parallels supports MS-DOS. I haven't used it much, or I would
> have given a fuller report earlier, but it does run, and it does have
> a specific configuration for installing MS-DOS.

DOSBox is also worth a look:

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/information.php?page=0
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php


--
Chris Devers

On 8/21/06 14:46, "Kevin van Haaren" <kevinvanhaaren.net> wrote:

>>> This moves from a COM based technology to the .Net Framework. This is
>>> most likely the reason for abandoning VBA in Office for Mac. Porting
>>> .Net to Mac is just too much work and if they continued supporting VBA
>>> in Office on the Mac, current Windows users may consider switching to
>>> the Mac to get VBA support.
>>
>> You can run a rather large chunk of .Net on a Mac now. Google "Mono"
>
> Except doing so from Office would require Microsoft to work with
> open-source software on their A#1 application. Do you really expect them to
> do that?

No, I don't, not while their CEO is essentially an immature used car
salesman. However, this isn't dependent on him. If Office:Mac supports .Net,
then Mono can end up being a good choice regardless of Ballmer's inane
ravings.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On Mon, 21 Aug 2006, Kevin van Haaren wrote:

> --On August 20, 2006 1:53:29 PM -0700 "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 8/18/06 15:10, "Kevin van Haaren" <kevinvanhaaren.net> wrote:
> >
> > > This moves from a COM based technology to the .Net Framework. This is
> > > most likely the reason for abandoning VBA in Office for Mac. Porting
> > > .Net to Mac is just too much work and if they continued supporting VBA
> > > in Office on the Mac, current Windows users may consider switching to
> > > the Mac to get VBA support.
> >
> > You can run a rather large chunk of .Net on a Mac now. Google "Mono"
>
> Except doing so from Office would require Microsoft to work with
> open-source software on their A#1 application. Do you really expect
> them to do that?
 
Wouldn't be the first time:

  $ sudo mount /windows
  $ cd /windows/WINDOWS/system32
  $ strings ftp.exe | grep California
  (#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.

http://uhacc.org/forums/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=1205

BSD license they're okay with; GPL they aren't so happy about.

Mono is multi-licensed (GPL / LGPL / MIT), so MS might or might not find
it approachable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)
http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing

It isn't impossible that they'd consider this.


--
Chris Devers

On Aug 22, 2006, at 8:14 AM, Chris Devers wrote:

> BSD license they're okay with; GPL they aren't so happy about.

Makes sense...BSD license is reasonable; GPL tells them they have no
right to exist.

   --John

johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:
>
> On Aug 22, 2006, at 8:14 AM, Chris Devers wrote:
>
>> BSD license they're okay with; GPL they aren't so happy about.
>
> Makes sense...BSD license is reasonable; GPL tells them they have no
> right to exist.

Ummm no....

GPL basically says "share and share alike", while BSD says "take what
you want, give what you want".

--Chris

On 22 Aug 2006, at 21:32, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:

> On Aug 22, 2006, at 8:14 AM, Chris Devers wrote:
>
>> BSD license they're okay with; GPL they aren't so happy about.
>
> Makes sense...BSD license is reasonable; GPL tells them they have no
> right to exist.

That statement is monumentally stupid. Please quote the part of the
GPL which implies in any way that they have no right to exist.

Microsoft is quite happy to use BSD licensed code because it gives
them free (as in beer) software with NO obligations whatsoever (now
that the advertising clause is gone - and TBH I never recall seeing
the advertising clause in any of Microsoft's verbiage, but I wouldn't
have read it too closely anyway).

In contrast, Microsoft doesn't like the GPL precisely because its
basic premise is if you take, you also should give (but not 100% of
the time, as people often seem to think. You're perfectly entitled to
take and use GPLed code e.g. within your organisation without making
the resultant source code available, as long as you don't distribute
it, for payment or otherwise. Once you do that, you must also make
the source available). From where I sit, it's perfectly reasonable to
be asked to share and share alike. Of course bullies have always
wanted to just take.

Kindest regards,

Niall O Broin

[No more discussion of open source licensing in this thread - it's a never-ending topic and it's already generating complaints to me. -Adam]


On 8/23/06 14:46, "Christopher Smith" <xxman.org> wrote:

>>> BSD license they're okay with; GPL they aren't so happy about.
>>
>> Makes sense...BSD license is reasonable; GPL tells them they have no
>> right to exist.
>
> Ummm no....
>
> GPL basically says "share and share alike", while BSD says "take what
> you want, give what you want".

Not quite. GPL holds a gun at your head and says SHARE YOUR CODE OR ELSE.
BSD says "Do as thou wilt, so mete it be". Or, as Jordan Hubbard says:

"The GPL is not something we really considered to be a license so much as a
political manifesto, and speaking purely for myself, I prefer to keep my
license agreements and my politics separate. I feel that code which isn't
being used in a situation where it COULD be used is code which isn't
achieving its full potential and the GPL scares a lot of potential users
away, which is simply counter-productive in my opinion. I don't care whether
or not the users give their changes back to me, that's just an added bonus
if it happens and nothing I'd want to try and enforce at the point of a
gun."

The GPL can call itself "copyleft" or whatever other cutesy names Stallman
wants, but it's as restrictive as it gets in what it forces you to do.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com