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Blue Ice Source Code
Blue Ice is open source, which means you get the source code to the program along with the program itself. Blue Ice was written in Visual Basic 6.0, and the source code is installed to the program directory in a .ZIP file named blueNNsrc.zip, where NN is the version number. The terms of use for this code are included in the source package under gpl.txt. Basically, you can use this code in your own programs, and you can also modify/redistribute the program for free or for a price, as long as you include the source code.
There is not currently a lot of documentation for the source code, other than the code comments themselves and an included file called src-readme.txt which gives some basic pointers.
Read This Before Submitting Code
This is a little manifesto of what Blue Ice is mainly about. I don't mind if people change things and redistribute the program, but if you want to send me source to add a "feature" to the main distribution, you should read this first. This will help prevent runaway featurism in the software.
Design Philosophy
When I started learning C++ programming on a 386 that I built, running DOS, I came across the coolest editor in the world: EC Editor. This editor was geared towards programmers. It allowed you to shell to a prompt, run your compiler, and scroll through the output after it was done. It had keystroke macros and text macros. It had a text status bar at the bottom that gave you just enough information without cluttering up your screen.
Most non-WYSIWYG HTML editors today are distinguished from Windows Notepad or DOS Edit only by the fact that they give you a toolbar button and a menu item for every tag you can think of. Their authors are beleaguered with requests to "support" new tags by adding toolbar buttons and menus for them. Their is nothing in these editors that helps you get your work done faster because they have all the wrong features. Their toolbars and menus clutter up the screen and waste memory and hard disk space. This is their idea of an HTML editor.
Now, when you are programming, there is a lot of repetition in what you type, and in this regard it is similair to writing web pages. EC Editor managed to be a fast, handy programming tool without toolbar buttons and menu options to type every function and keyword for you. It had a few, fundamental, necessary features that made it extremely flexible, such as customizable keyboard macros.
My particular distribution of Blue Ice is not heading in the direction of adding tag creators for every tag. If a webmaster needs a tag for which I have not created a feature, let him look it up and type it in by hand. That is what the online HTML and CSS help is for. He will improve his knowledge of HTML in the process, and perhaps next time he will remember how to use that tag and type it in with more ease than if he was still dependent on a menu item. If you want to make your own distribution, load it up with toolbar and menu items, fill it with clipart, and distribute the whole 15 megabyte package on your own, I welcome you to do so. You may have a hard time marketing something that has been done many times before already. But don't feel offended if you send me code to allow Blue Ice to generate <frobitzem> tags and I decide not to go there.
Ideas? Bug Reports? Comments? Post them on the Blue Ice discussion board.
"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other."
- Poor Richard's Almanac
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