Heard it through the Bit-vine - Notes and News about the products you use

by Tom Hebenstreit, Review Editor

Published 1999-06-01    Printer-friendly version

I’m amazed. I’ve seen not one, not two, but THREE very favorable reviews of Clarion 5 in various big name publications this past month (ok, ok, two of them were the same article, but at least they were three publications). PC-Week, InfoWorld and Network World all had nice things to say about Clarion 5 in general and Internet Connect specifically (i.e., the C5EE ‘Web’ Edition).

Could it be that TopSpeed is actually, finally, getting the word out?

Attack of the killer B’s

Well, last month I reported that C5 A had been officially released. This month, TopSpeed has been busy, busy, busy as well, turning out not only C5EE B Candidate Release 1, but C5 B CR-2 and CR-3 as well. Who knows, by the time you read this there might be a CR-4 out (or even - *gasp* - the real thing). I must say it is nice to see them addressing problems in such a timely manner.

Probably the biggest news about release B is that the Wizatrons are now supposed to be ‘code-complete’, i.e., finished but for the bug stomping. That does seem to be where the action is now, as the CR-3 read-me lists 21 Wizatron related fixes and/or enhancements versus 11 items for the rest of CW.

Another tip – As of C5 B, ‘ASTRING’ and ‘BSTRING’ are now reserved words, so watch out if you have used them for variables, etc. This is a result of new OLE enhancements that will be coming down the road at a later date. For example, BSTRINGS are the native OLE string format.

As usual with these beta CR patches, each must be applied successively over the previous one. In other words, you must be have applied CR-1 before you can apply CR-2 (before you can apply CR-3, etc.). The usual caveat as well: these are NOT official ‘gold’ releases; they are beta releases for testing. There have also been some problems reported with rolling back these beta installs, so DON’T use them on your production environment unless you are ready to live with the consequences.

Also, be aware if you install any of the C5 B CR patches, you will need to register all of your templates again. Remember, though, that you can register all of your templates in one fell swoop by pressing the usual Windows Ctrl-A (select all) combination when selecting templates in the registry.

In other TopSpeed news, C5A Internet Connect is now available for download as well.

All these goodies can be obtained from the usual source: http://www.topspeed.com

Cast your votes before June 23rd.

TopSpeed has a page on their website where you can vote on various sessions that you would like to see presented at this year DevCon in Florida. Get on over there and let them know what YOU want. It’s your chance to help shape this DevCon into the perfect one for YOU to attend. http://www.topspeed.com/dc99/feedback.htm

The return of ETC!

Joy! Joy! Those bold souls at the Knoxville Clarion Users Group (KCUG) have announced that they will definitely be hosting ETC 2000 (East Tennessee Clarion Developers Conference). The tentative date is the week of May 22, 2000 (ooh, all those twos!), but they haven’t hammered out the exact details yet. And guess what? You, too, can help in the hammering. If you are interested in attending this conference, go to http://216.82.30.86/etc2000.html and fill out a preferences poll.

Moving day

This last month I needed to move my entire Clarion environment from a Windows 98 machine to an NT 4 Workstation machine. Seeing as how that currently encompasses CW 2.001, CW 2.003, Clarion 4b, Clarion 5EE SR-1, Clarion 5EE A and Clarion 5EE B CR-3, I found the thought of having to re-install EVERYTHING more than a bit daunting.

How do I keep three versions of C5 installed? Easy. All are on the same drive, and each was a copy of the preceding environment. In other words, before I installed, say, SR-1, I copied my entire Clarion5 directory structure to a new one, renamed them so that the original way ‘Clarion5 Gold’, and the new copy was ‘Clarion5’. I then applied the SR-1 patch to the copy. Ditto for C5 A. A copy of SR-1, and then the patch installed over the new copy, with the original now named ‘Clarion5 SR-1’. "Rolling back" to a prior version is as simple as renaming a folder.

The key to this is that the environment is fairly self-contained. The entries in the Start menu and in Win.INI are generic – they just tell Clarion how to find itself (along with the all important Environment variable). At any given time then, I can switch versions just by renaming one of the folders to ‘Clarion5’ and all my menu options, shortcuts, etc., continue to work as usual.

Back to the problem of moving. After a moment’s thought, here’s what I did:

1. Copy the folders lock, stock and barrel to the new machine.
2. Rename them so that NONE of them is the official installed name.
3. Run a standard install from the CD for each version (2, 4 and 5). This got all of the menu items, INI file entries and so forth put into place on the new machine.
4. Delete the folders where the new versions were just installed.
5. Rename my desired versions back to the official folder names.

I now had everything set up and running on the new machine. No worries about trying to register the myriads of templates for each version, much less find all those old disks, download and patches from CW 2.000 onwards.

I also normally install all Clarion 3^rd party tools into a Program Menu group called CW Tools. Because I had them all in one place, I could also just copy that folder from the old \Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder to a new location under the NT Programs folder. Voila! I basically had all my third party tools set up again. A few of them needed files left behind in the old \Windows folder, but a bit of testing and copying set them right as well.

Install tip: Did you know that you can create a multi-level menu path when installing most programs? For example, when installing CapeSoft’s MakeOver for review this month, it of course wanted to create its very own MakeOver program group during the course of the installation. Seeing as how every program wants to do that, one quickly ends up with a gigantic Start menu from hell. However, when it presents the program group name for itself for confirmation, e.g., ‘MakeOver’, I changed it from this:

‘MakeOver’

To this:

‘CW Tools\MakeOver’

This automatically placed the MakeOver group within the ‘CW Tools’ group. I have found this technique to work fine with most installers, including Wise and InstallShield.

Where’s the darn path in NT?

This final tip for anyone else moving from Win 9x to NT, is that the CW 2 and Clarion 4 installations didn’t correctly set up the required path statements. They said they did, but who knows where it actually went (I couldn’t find them in any path setting anywhere). Clarion5 EE, on the other hand, installed fine from the get go.

Since neither CW2 nor C4 will run without their respective ‘\bin’ statements in the path, I had to do the following to get them working:

1. Start->Settings->Control Panel, then double click on the System icon.
2. Click on the ‘Environment’ tab, scroll down to the ‘Path’ statement and then click on it. This will place that item in the edit boxes.
3. Add any required statements, in my case: E:\CW20\BIN;E:\CLARION4\BIN
4. Click Ok to save. The changes will take effect immediately (for once, I didn’t have to reboot Windows!).

Keep in mind that you may get different path statements if the NT Workstation machine is set up for multiple users and you sign in under another name.

Other news

Here are some tidbits and announcements gleaned from the TopSpeed forum and elsewhere over the last couple of weeks. If you see any products here which you would like to see scheduled for a full review in Clarion Online, let us know!

• LodeStar Software is moving their web site again, so you may experience some difficulty in reaching them. The affected domains include www.lodestarsoftware.com, their FTP site and www.kcug.com.
• Cowboy Computing Solutions has web site of their own now (they used to be a sub section of the LodeStar site. Check it out at: http://www.ccscowboy.com.
• This isn’t Clarion specific, by I want to remind everyone that Adobe has released version 4 of their free Acrobat Reader. If you have ANY occasion to read PDF files, get this new version. Much, much better than 3.0. http://www.adobe.com
• From Pete Halsted of NextAge Consulting: "Version 1.03 of the Imaging Templates has been posted to the website. This version fixes a bug that would cause a compile error when using BLOB's to store the images files. Also it seems that I forgot to mention one very important fact in the documentation. The imaging OCX's will only work with a 32bit program. Sorry". He also released a version 1.04 last month as well, and said the templates are now shipping with both ABC and Legacy template support. More info at: http://www.thenextage.com
• Mike McGloughlin of Sterling Data announced a new addition to his ‘Flash’ family of templates called ‘SearchFlash’. It is a new Template set that looks like it combines quite a few powerful functions for querying, searching and tagging items. Price is $149, it includes all source and it works with everything from CW2.002 on up. For a demo and more info visit them at: http://www.sterlingdata.com
• Dave Troxell of Encourager Software has released a NEW Clarion Profile Exchange file. From him: "Latest ps32data.zip (May 28, 1999). Important NOTE: You must have the newly released Version 3.5 of Product Scope 32 Bookmarks to view these data files". More details at: http://www.encouragersoftware.com
• Gus M. Creces has released an update to his Handy Tools product. Lots of details can be found at their new web site: http://www.cwhandy.com
• Jesus Moreno of Gitano Software announced the release of G-Calc 4.2. Some fixes, a few enhancements and a bunch of new features highlight this release of the best calculator tool around (received an ‘Excellent’ rating in a Clarion Online review last month). Version 4.2 is free to registered users of version 3.0 and higher, and can be found at: http://bizweb.lightspeed.net/~gitano
• Also from Gitano: "A new utility is now available to provide a graphical runtime selection of calendar or calculator type. This is a free utility to all GCalc and Gcal registered users." Same address as above.
• From Tinman Development: "We have made a few changes to the Tintools report viewer. If any one would like to test the changes before we include them in a Tintools update you can download them by using the link below. Some of the changes include the following. 1) Copies / Collate support even if the printer does not support them. 2) Page of no longer requires the report to be viewed. But does require the report extension to be use. Also, both of these features do not require the user to preview the report." http://www.thetingroup.com/ftpfiles/tintrptv.zip if you want to try it out.
• From compression experts Linder Software: "We have uploaded a LSPack (32-bit) hot-fix v2.02 to our web site at www.lindersoftware.com. This hot-fix fixes a bug in the 32-bit compression library (LSPACK32.DLL). Under some circumstances the LSPack software GPF when updating an existing .lsp archive on Windows NT4 SR4."
• From George Petrov of Princen IT: "The Final version of Send Internet Mail 3.03 is RELEASED! It is a free upgrade for all users of 3.x versions. Go and get it from www.princen-it.nl/clarion. There is now even 16/32 bits demo choice in the install! And of course a lot of bugs are solved - see the Whatsnew.txt"
• Vince Sorensen of free ABC and API templates fame, posted the following: "I've completed a first-draft of a help file for the ABC Free Templates and Tools set, briefly detailing 123 templates, and the tools. If anyone would like to review it, and perhaps offer suggestions, it's part of the latest set http://www.dlcwest.com/~sorev/topspeed" This would really fix up about the only drawback to his great tools. Go check it out! (Special Note: Vince released another update on June 4^th, but that set will only work with C5A or B due to the use of some new template symbols.)
• From CapeSoft: "We are proud to announce the release of Special Agent - the newest product from the team that brought you File Manager 2, EzHelp, Secwin and a host of others. Essentially Special Agent build the Microsoft Agent OCX directly into your 32 bit Clarion 5 program. ( Clarion 4 & 16 bit support expected soon ). For those who haven't seen it, the Agent is an animated character which can roam around the whole screen." Yup, you too can now have animated paper clips, etc. in your programs just like MS Office. For details, examples, samples, etc.: http://www.capesoft.com
• From Carl T. Barnes: "New Clarion Source Search Beta 4 at <http://www.carlbarnes.com/CWAS.htm>. Read about it, see sample screens, download it. It's only an 80k download and easy to use. It's free for now and completely unlimited." Do check it out – it’s way cool.
• Ralf Schoeffler announced a new CWCM compile manager v1.2. It can be downloaded from: http://www.ralfs.de, Section Clarion.
• Martin Allen has released a set of free ABC replacement sources: "These Replacement ABC Library source files are exactly the same as the original Topspeed files, except all the "embedded" Window and Report structures are moved to external "include" files. All the "built-in" window and report structures are replaced with INCLUDES which "includes" Window and Report structure from these external files." They can be downloaded from: http://www.jdinternational.com/files/

Can't beat that price…

One of the really nice things about using Clarion is the overall generosity of the user community. (Go ahead, all of you give yourselves a pat on the back!) Often, this manifests itself in truly useful templates or tools which the authors have made available to the rest of us for that most favorite of prices: FREE! Each month, this column features a handy free template or tool which you might want to add to your bag of Clarion tricks.

Note: If you decide to download and try out any free items mentioned here, please remember that you get what you pay for – don't expect support from the author like you would from a commercial product.

This month's jewel (or tool) is:

Ummm… a bunch of useful stuff from Mark Geisinger

This isn’t a particular package as much as it is simply some interesting and useful examples of using the Win32 API, using Catalyst’s SocketTools libraries, some handy links and more. Also there is a sample WISE script that demonstrates several good techniques.

NOTE: If you are a Clarion third party tool vendor and you use WISE, I strongly recommend that you download this script. It alleviates some serious problems that can happen when just accepting the defaults in WISE…

An excellent example of someone generously sharing their knowledge with the rest of the Clarion community. Thanks, Mark!

Check it out: http://hobbyist.bugsbugme.com

Next month: Who knows? You'll just have to come back and find out!

About the Bit-vine

Each month, this column will provide you with the latest in Clarion news, tips, rumors, freebies and basically anything else that seems interesting about the going's on in the Clarion world.

So, who determines what's most interesting? YOU DO!!

What do you get for contributing? Well, you'll see your name up in lights (phosphor, to be accurate) here in the Bit-vine credits. For especially useful bits, you may even win an autographed GIF of an official Clarion Online shirt or other similarly valuable prize. Come on, how can you resist?

Let me hear from you! The magic address is TomH@ClarionOnline.com

The disclaimer

Everything in this column is the sole opinion of me, the author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of this magazine, its publisher, or even of Tulley the Bozo Dog. Don't bet the farm on anything you read here: consider it a starting point for your own inquiries and research. The point here is that this column is intended to both enlighten and entertain, and that in the fast-moving world of software development this month's truth (or product release date) is often next month's "What I really meant to say was…".

'Nuff said!

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942