Hi Jeff,
Xojo has an algorithm for windows that paints quite poor. I rewrote the OpenGL commands and displayed drawing in a GLFW window. No double buffering was needed, skipped frames no longer existed, drawing was rapid, and graphics were visually pleasing.
I don’t know what Xojo does for drawing in the background, and there is a large amount of room for improvement on Windows.
Xojo is suffering severely from the not-invented-here syndrome. Doctor, can you save the patient?
Since they are using Win32 native controls at the very lowest level - even for drawing the listbox & others that arent “native” they use a Win32 control to draw into
Win32 has 0 support for composing based on whats in front of what like macOS does
So they have implemented their own pseudo transparency layering to compose views together more like the Mac does
And it has issues - to say the least
In part the issue is that Windows is what it is and at the level Xojo uses it its not very capable
Moving to one of the newer UI frameworks is a huge task BUT you do get better handling of transparency and more mac-like behaviour for composing views together
The issue there was “which one to move to” since even MS seemed hesitant
So Xojo never moved off using Wind32 controls (or whats now called WinUI)
And MS has now decided, after a decade or more, to update WinUI to be the common framework going forward so MAYBE they will introduce transparency and compositing like macOS has had since … forever?
easy-peasy, as you’re saying it’s on their roadmap now 
<cough>
android
</cough>
need I say more ?
is this API3 or some Web3 thing?
Still a secret, will be revealed at XDC 2035.
Will be released soon after the 3020 release…when I am allowed to write there again for at least one hour
our stable genius is 59 years old, in 2035 he will be 71…
well every normal working man, even those who consider themself as “genius” should retire somewhen between 62 and lets say 65… of course there are some maniacs like Putin, who missed this sweet spot of retirement somehow…
As I said before, within the next 5-7 years Xojo will become abandonware… (if no fundamental change happen, e.g. open sourced)
He may well seek a buyer for it. Would be a reasonable business opportunity.
Good luck with it.
Only at the right price.
My former client was interested in buying out one of their customers. But their asking price and conditions were way, WAY beyond what was economically feasible for a buyer. They had been shopping themselves already for years with no one kicking the tires, much less buying.
My client thought, well, they’ll come around to reality. So we got them embedded in our internal processes, dependent on us doing all sorts of favors for them, etc. Years passed. The owner died. His brother took the helm. Same demands.
Our CEO confided to me that talking to these guys was like Groundhog Day, it was the same thing over and over again.
In the end when Giant Intl MegaCorp acquired us, one of the VERY few decisions they made that I wholeheartedly agreed with was that we were going to stop doing these people favors for free.
Their response was to withdraw their data from our system and go back to how they did it before us, which was to hire people in India to process their data manually using Excel. MegaCorp took a brief look at acquiring them too, the same time they acquired us and they were on an acquisition spree. It didn’t survive the light of day for more than a few hours. They are a joke.
Yet to this day they continue to want 20x what they could ever get being acquired. (One example of their technical debt, they are still using Sql Server 2000 and the consultant who set that up is dead and they are afraid to touch that house of cards).
It is rather like someone with a rundown older home stubbornly insisting that the agent list them for $100K over market value because of what they paid 30 years ago and some random factor like inflation since or general market increases without taking into account that the roof leaks and there’s mold in the walls.
Or my late wife’s uncle stubbornly insisting he won’t pay more than $20 for a pair of shoes because that’s all he paid in 1943.
People have all sorts of irrational attachments to ideas. Geoff is HIGHLY unlikely to be an exception.
Really shows how closed source can be a bad choice. Everyone worries about the company going out of business or being bought up and shuttered.
I never really thought about a company just not caring anymore… But that’s where we are.
So glad to be using PHP right now.
Been there tried that didnt find one
I expect the business to continue, Geoff to step away and a new CEO to be appointed by the board
Lets just say I’m not sure that we’ll see things improve in any case
He’s not
At least not in my experience he isnt
Is he accountable to a truly independent board of directors? Or are they more of a figurehead – family members or cronies?
It’s a privately held company and he owns more than half of the shares. So he can always override any other of the board members.
If Geoff open sourced this, it might become something. I’ve posted before that he would need to hire tens of programmers in a coordinated effort over a year or two to right the ship. Open source solves the staffing problem, and he might even be able to leave a check in the plus column for his life’s work rather than what he is experiencing now. History will not be kind to him, neither are the customers that he has abandoned.
If the thing won’t be sold off, the company will be buried with the Pharao.
Well its true he doesnt get pulled off to follow someone else’ shiny objects
He follows his own
Dim/Var is just one example
