"Dialect" as script language for my APPs and GUIs

Overview

Several years ago I have decided to use Dialect for producing most of the scripts for my applications. I got fedup with the many GUI generators whith an elaborate IDE which force on you a certain type of workstyle I do not appreciate. The same holds for the many "web generators" I find of no use at all. A text editor like Edit plus and a small repertoire of HTML, Java script and CSS words and syntax are all I need for my simple web site.

Most scripts on the chemsoft.ch site are offered as executables and as source code. You are invited to look at the code to understand its working, and eventually to change it to your liking. For this purpose I have also bundeled Dialect.exe, the master program for composing the scripts and making their exes. I now remove that program from individual script packages and insert Dialect and its auxiliary files, incl. source code, on this page for downloading. When George Harth, its creator, has stopped developing Dialect at about 2001 he has made it open source and given it to sourceforge.net for distribution. However, most Antivirus software refuses to download the original(?) last binary DialectWin32Install-1.16.exe. The compiled Dialect.exe within that package seems to be infected by a trojan. Now, by making a Dialect script into an executable it is tokenized and appended to the end of Dialect.exe, hence every script built catches the virus, too! Therefore, I have recompiled Dialect.exe from the (clean) sources with the help of MS Visual C++ 6.0. Both versions, Dialect-Standard and Dialect-Pro are now free from any malware and so are all my scripts.

Dialect Standard

is all you need to modify the Dialect scripts on this site.
InstallDialectStd.exe is an original installation package of binary Dialect Std, version 1.15 (2002). It installs in C:\Program Files, gets registered, and can be called systemwide.
Dialect Std 1.16 has been compiled as mentioned. It can be installed in any directory and is not registered.
  
  

Dialect Professional

has additional features which you might be interested in, see the Dialect manual, below.
DialectPro1.16.zip contains the files with the last original binary but a fresh, virusfree, compilation of Dialect.exe. It is not anymore assembled into an automatic installation package. The "Arial" font has been replaced by "Courier New" for output of numerical tables with fixed character width. This can also be downloaded as Dialect_ProCour.zip alone. The original, but recompiled, Dialect_ProAr.zip with "Arial" is perhaps better suited for text-based output.

Dialect sources and compilation

C++ sources, header and project files are contained in dialect-1.16.zip. This is ready for building with MS Visual C++ 6.0. It does not build with the current MS Visual C++ 10.0 nor 8.0 unless you construct new project files. If you cannot find the old version 6.0 mail me to get it.

Dialect manual and remarks

An extensive 85 page "Dialect Language Reference" guide is included in several of the downloads pointed to above. This download gets it to you separately. There is also a compiled (.chm) HTML version of this available in some of the downloads and callable from the help button on the Dialect menu.
  • Since a Dialect exe script is in a tokenized pseudocode, not in compiled native C/C++ code, it is slower than the last. Therefore, my scripts compose input and interprete output. Computationally demanding operations are written and compiled in Fortran or C/C++. They are transparently called from the scripts as external execs. Results are exported into binary or text files, that the scripts are reading after termination of the external programs.
  • Dialect.exe and all derived sripts run flawlessly under Linux. You have to call them with the wine emulator, e.g. wine Dialect. Please make sure you have MFC42.dll from Windows in the same directory.
  • I've been using many different script and GUI generators. None has been as efficient as George Harth's Dialect. I wish to thank him for donating this marvelous tool to the public.