Font Problem - AMS alternatives

[sycore]

Since I can not seem to fix my font problem when users have increased their windows DPI settings to 125% or 150% when using a 4K monitor, can someone recommend a program similar to AMS? Here is my original problem with the font being to big for users with increased DPI settings.

https://forums.indigorose.com/forum/autoplay-media-studio-8-5/autoplay-media-studio-8-discussion/301107-font-does-not-fit-if-user-has-125-or-150-selected

[ItzMagdy]

Visual studio 2017 is better than AMS but harder

[BioHazard]

Look into Visual Basic 6. It's 'old' but produces very small, highly-secure executables. And does not require the .NET Framework dependencies of Visual Studio. It's also a lot simpler than any of the Visual .NET languages. Anyone with a decent grounding in Lua can pick up Visual Basic 6 quite quickly.

If you're willing to 'trust' downloading an unsigned exe file, I've zipped and attached the very first thing I ever made with Visual Basic 6. It's just a simple little executable designed to autorun from the root of one's USB thumb drive. But it'll give you a fairly good idea of just what sort of 'rich' and 'dynamic' stuff you can actually make with Visual Basic 6, despite its age.

Below are some hash-strings for both the zipfile & executable contained within (in case you want to take a look but are concerned about downloading an 'unsigned' binary).

Name: USB eMail Home.zip
Size: 737041 bytes (719 KiB)
CRC32: FBE49BFB
CRC64: 8144910A8DE1E4FF
SHA256: A3BC9404754F1E441AC132152E6ED54B91C91CEB3C51C8DE7F9A7D7E1FEF8A9E
SHA1: 4F4EC551D2C1DA083E425FE52A4C9373D252DBAD
BLAKE2sp: 034768643058ADBCDD80A58DF41BCBB44D1C454E84196A3093A96B315BAE1227

Name: USB eMail Home.exe
Size: 1130496 bytes (1104 KiB)
CRC32: 32EEB241
CRC64: 138424DEE51653D3
SHA256: 142E11B1036FF51C92669EC68773F122416CD999A361DA67BC6A2E4090CFFC42
SHA1: 98981CFDA977B747C8D0E71699E6E8FF7F1B25A6
BLAKE2sp: 593DC926F324824770971C9CE9887F627076CECDD5CE7D66B56B493DE0EBF354

Other than that, my recommendation would be to look into PureBasic. IP codes in PureBasic for some of his stuff and he endorses it (so 'nuff said, right?). But be warned, the learning curve with PureBasic is quite steep. I struggle with it myself and find it quite 'intimidating'.

[Imagine Programming]

C# is also a pretty solid language these days with a lot of constructs aimed at developing scalable software; you could then choose to use .NET Core instead of .NET Framework when creating a project and use a nice package for graphical interfaces. .NET Core is supported on all major operating systems, not just Windows. Visual Studio 2017 (and soon 2019) are extremely useful IDE's for any supported language - when combined with ReSharper (which includes support for C++, one of my favorite languages) is unbeatable in my opinion.

I see why Bio would suggest Visual Basic 6, but I must add that the .NET dependency is not a hog anymore. C#'s compiler for example produces highly efficient binaries, they aren't too big and is probably more future proof considering it's a language you can use on any platform (including mobile, but WebAssembly as well soon). VB.Net or C# can also serve as RAPID development tool, however the learning curve for C# might be steeper than for VB6 or VB.Net. I'm afraid that Microsoft will slowly step away from VisualBasic though, as they seem to focus heavily on C# and their MSVCC (C++) compiler these days.

Aside from that, PureBasic is another nice suggestion. PureBasic is a Basic language originally inspired by QBasic I believe, but is far from Basic these days. It's a very understandable procedural language with support for object oriented programming if you really want to. The reason why I suggest C# first (and I would even suggest C++ or perhaps even VB first) is that PureBasic is not natively object oriented and (in my estimation) not very future proof. It does come with an absolute massive framework of functionality for pretty much anything. It has direct interfacing with the OS API (Windows, Linux or MacOS), libraries for anything from GUI, Image manipulation, 3D rendering, networking (server/client) and so forth.

I also agree with BioHazard that the learning curve for PureBasic might be a brick wall you have to punch through, however once you get the hang of it it's a pretty good package (and cheap).

I myself focus more on C++, C#, C and Lua these days. Nonetheless, PureBasic is still my RAPID tool of choice. I'm working on something in my favorite languages that will expose one of my favorite languages, and I need these languages to do so.

Anyhow, in my honest opinion (and with respect to the IR team) I truly believe that AMS is dead. I think if people want to keep developing nice tools and software, they should quickly decide where to go next. One day, the knowledge of AMS will become outdated and obsolete - but the experience will help you move on; I suggest people start looking around.