PureBasic Forum

I note that in 2002 the subject of printing out Purebasic code was brought up and it was suggested that a work-around wascopying the code to Notepad to Notepad++ and printing from there.

I wanted to print out code from the Purebasic IDE today, some 14 years later, and it still wasn't possible. I have never come across this before with any other IDE. Surely, if Purebasic wants to be considered a professional bit of software, something as basic as printing out its code from the IDE should be possible.

what is the advantage of printed code?

even in Microsoft Visual Studio the only thing it lets you print is the single source file you're currently viewing, so even then i'd still prefer to copy and paste it into Notepad so i can adjust the font and size, which Visual Studio won't let you do. So I personally reject your "if PB wants to be considered professional it'd have print to paper capabilities" suggestion; Visual Studio does a lame job of it, and printing to paper really has nothing to do with programming anyway, right? it's just an added bonus if it exists, although a bonus most wouldn't use. Personally i'd prefer Fred spent his valuable limited time working on actual programming functionality, because Notepad and Word give me all the word processing/printing functionality i need, and to hazard a guess I don't think many PB programmers find the need to print hard copies on paper too often, and when they do Notepad/Word pretty much handles most if not all they need anyway? #firstworldproblems

you can start a campfire with it to then make toasted marshmallows, and you can print it in a book if you're an author, but that's me out of ideas

It can be more pleasant to read, you can write notes on the paper, draw lines with arrows, it's an extra backup, you can take it with you to places where you don't have a computer.
But agreed with Keya, copy and paste is not a big problem.

PureBasic doesn't need such considerations; it is undeniably a professional software development tool in an unsurpassed class of its own.

Okay, this is the one and only usage, but to merge it with other text, i have to use copy and paste.

Well I don't know what has happened to the post I've just made, but it's not showing.

All the procedural languages I have used have allowed printing from the IDE. I don't like Visual Studio. Purebasic it's not a new language. If it was, I could accept it as an excuse. After all these years of existence, I think it's rather a weak excuse.

Perhaps the thing to do is to have a poll to see how important it is. If I'm the odd one out I can accept that.

Just to add to what I posted earlier, I would reverse the argument and say that you had might as well just code in Notepad++ and copy into Purebasic to compile the code. I believe some people work this way when they have a favourite editor and just use the compiler (whatever it is) to compile the code. Not the way I like to work.

I don't think PureBasic should allow printing of the code directly from the IDE. It would just waste lots of paper.
Remember the old days where printouts stood a half metre high with perhaps 5% viewed! Did look good, though!?

If I want a small amount of code to read, I simply take a screen-shot to retain the colour and print that onto a A5 sheet.
I don't print code very often, but I still consider I waste paper!

Now that sounds like a move in the right direction. I'll have a look at that, even though it is only black and white. Unfortunately, the link to a coloured version in a later post appears to be dead.

Do you know if it is for Wisnows and Mac OS? I'm working from tablet at the moment and don't have my computer to check.

Wisnows should be Windows (predictive typing - not a clue where Wisnows comes from!)

I think it's likely to be Windows only but I have not used it myself. Not sure but Paul may have added code for colour print-outs, he seemed to like the idea at the time.

there's also a post halfway down where somebody links to another program that prints code in color

Unfortunately, that it's the link that now seems to be dead. However, I didn't look at the 3 links at the bottom, on which that code was the inspiration. There is quite a bit of code there that I'll look at when I get back to my computer.