| Developer(s) | Real Software, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 2011 Release 4 / December 6, 2011 |
| Operating system | Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux |
| Available in | English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Italian, Japanese |
| Type | Programming |
| License | Proprietary software (Commercial software or shareware) |
| Website | http://www.realsoftware.com |
Real Studio is a programming environment developed and commercially marketed by Real Software, Inc of Austin, Texas for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, 32-bit x86 Linux and the web that uses an object-oriented dialect of the BASIC programming language known as Realbasic.[1]
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Real Studio was previously named Realbasic. Originally it was called CrossBasic due to its ability to compile the same programming code for Mac OS and Java (although the integrated development environment was Mac only). In 1997 CrossBasic was purchased by FYI Software and renamed Realbasic as well as renaming the company Real Software. At this time they dropped the Java target, later replacing it with a Windows target and database support. The IDE is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and 32-bit x86 Linux[2] and can compile applications for Windows (Windows 2000 and higher), Mac OS X (PowerPC, Intel, and Universal Binary) and 32-bit x86 Linux.
In December 2010 Real Software began shipping Real Studio Web Edition, which offers developers a single development tool to compile web applications. The applications created with Real Studio Web Edition are binaries and are much faster than PHP.[3]
The product was named Real Studio with 2010 Release 1. The programming language itself will continue to be named Realbasic.
On December 7th 2011 the Licence agreement was modified to include the following caveat:
2) To create any work that is to be distributed, sold, or provided to a product user that has a primary function of interpreting code using a work created by Real Studio. ”Primary function” is defined to mean that the work is primarily directed to accepting, creating, or manipulating source code as a primary purpose or critical component of the work. Works that compile, verify, or interpret source code as part of a tangential function of the work or as a feature that assist in the primary function of the software are not prohibited by this section.
3) To create any work that is to be distributed, sold, or provided to a product user that creates source code for compilation outside of Real Studio.”
Upon being contacted by a blogger by the name of Bryan Lunduke, they had the following to say ": They don’t want people to build apps that compete with their app… using their app."
Real Studio is a strongly typed language with minimal automatic type conversion, which supports single inheritance and interfaces, class methods and class properties, automatic memory management via reference counting, and operator overloading. Real Studio also includes Delegation (programming), type introspection, and namespace support, which allows modules to contain classes, interfaces and other modules.
The built-in framework supports:
The source file format contains window and control placement data and is proprietary, although XML import and export are supported. All source code can be contained in one project file, but it is also possible to have classes/modules in separate files in the same way as most other languages or dialects can. Realbasic compiles directly to machine language for each platform that it supports. Realbasic 2006 Release 3 and newer also supports a human-readable version control format which allows easy collaboration with tools such as Subversion or CVS.
There are three versions of the IDE:
Both versions of the IDE permit building the application's graphical user interface by dragging the controls from a toolbar to their parent window. Layout of the controls is helped by the IDE, which permits aligning them (both horizontally and vertically) and which gives information about the distance between controls or between a control and the window borders.
Like many modern IDEs, the code editor supports customizable syntax highlighting, autocompletion and refactoring tools. The IDE also includes editors for menus and database schema and viewers for multimedia files such as pictures, movies or sounds.
The IDE gives the programmer access to scripting features via RBScript, which allows control of the IDE for automating tasks such as running regression tests or doing nightly builds. The scripts can be either global or project-specific.
Realbasic supports incremental compilation, whereby the compiler needs to recompile only those parts of a project which have been modified. For instance, if only the body of a method is modified, then only the project item containing that method need be recompiled.