Friday, February 27, 2009

What's fixed in CA-Clipper 5.2a

The following information on the CA-Clipper 5.2a patch was extrated from 52doc.txt which came with the patch.

PROBLEMS ADDRESSED BY CA-Clipper 5.2a

o C3049 - String Space exhausted. - Change to CLIPPER.EXE The compiler has been changed to increase the available string space. Developers whose applications compiled with this error in previous versions of Clipper should no longer receive this error message.

o Debugger Break Point Handling. - Change to CLD.EXE & CLD.LIB The debugger has been changed to improve Break Point handling. Developers who noticed difficulty in setting break points or noticed that break points were lost upon application restart will no longer have problems.

o Memoedit() double spacing problem. - Change to EXTEND.LIB The Memoedit() function has been changed to alleviate a double spacing effect which sometimes occurred. The only developers who noticed this problem had memo field data which had a trailing space at the wrap point. While this problem was uncommon it could be very disconcerting in applications where the format of memo field data is important.

o Inkey() setting Lastkey() to 0. - Change to CLIPPER.LIB The Inkey() function has been changed. The Inkey() function in CA-Clipper 5.2a will only set the Lastkey() value when a key is drawn from the keyboard buffer. The Inkey() function in version 5.20 set the Lastkey() value to 0 when there was no key in the keyboard buffer to retrieve and the time value expired. The 5.20 behavior had an adverse effect on several systems which use Inkey(); for example Memoedit() with a custom UDF() where the UDF() had been coded to expect the last navigational key pressed to be available via Lastkey() would receive a value of 0.

o OrdSetFocus() tag in lowercase. - Change to DBFNTX.LIB The OrdSetFocus() function will now accept parameters in any case. Developers who changed their applications to use order names rather than order numbers noticed that unless the name was in upper case the order established would be natural (no) order. This problem was unique to the DBFNTX driver.

o NATION support. - Change to NAT_OBJ.EXE The change here is only in the internal structure of the nation drivers. The drivers will now make a function call into CLIPPER.LIB to retreive clipper version information. In the future should a specific driver require updating this change simplifies that process.

SUPPORT NOTES CA-Clipper 5.01 vs 5.2x

o _GET_() - Changed in 5.2 and may effect 3rd Party products. If you have noticed that sometimes GETs don't appear then your application is probably making a call to _GET_(). The call to this internal function may be invoked from a 3rd party product.

The CA-Clipper internal function _GET_() has changed from version 5.01 to 5.2x. In 5.2x _GET_() no longer displays the GET. The GET is now only displayed after a call to the get_object:Display() method. Developers or 3rd parties who depended on the old behavior will either have to re-write the offending code, recompile, or ask the 3rd party vendor to supply a 5.2x compatible version of the library.

o Avoid calls to Internal Functions. As a reminder. Developers should not rely on the behavior of internal functions, (those that start with one or more "_"). Calling internal functions is strongly discouraged by Computer Associates as there is no guarantee the behavior of these internals will remain consistant between versions.

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Welcome to Clipper... Clipper... Clipper


In 1997, then using Delphi 3, I had already created 32-bits Windows applications for HRIS, ERP and CRM. In 2007, using Ruby on Rails, an AJAX powered CRM site running on Apache & MySQL was created and I am now using Visual Studio .Net 2008 to create web-based projects and Delphi 7 for Win32 applications using SQL2005 & DBFCDX.

So, why then am I reviving the Original Clipper... Clipper... Clipper via a Blog as CA-Clipper is a programming language for the DOS world ? Believe it or not, there are still some clients using my mission-critical CA-Clipper applications for DOS installed in the late 80's and up to the mid 90's. This is testimony to CA-Clipper's robustness as a language :-)

With the widespread introduction of Windows 7 64-bits as the standard O/S for new Windows based PCs & Notebooks, CA-Clipper EXE simply will not work and it has become imperative for Clipper programmers to migrate immediately to Harbour to build 32/64 bits EXEs

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TIA & Enjoy ! (10th October 2012, 11:05; 13th November 2015)


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This is the original Welcome Page for Clipper... Clipper... Clipper, which I am republishing for historical and sentimental reasons. The only changes that I have made was to fix all the broken links. BTW, the counter from counter.digits.com is still working :-)

Welcome to Chee Chong Hwa's Malaysian WWW web site which is dedicated to Clipperheads throughout the world.

This site started out as a teeny-weeny section of Who the heck is Chee Chong Hwa ? and has graduated into a full blown web site of more than 140 pages (actually hundreds of A4 size pages) ! This is due to its growing popularity and tremendous encouragements from visiting Clipperheads from 100 countries worldwide, from North America, Central America, Caribbean, South America, Europe, Middle-East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. Thanx Clipperheads, you all made this happen !


What is Clipper ?

You may ask, what is this Clipper stuff ? Could Clipper be something to do with sailing as it is the name of a very fast sailing American ship in the 19th century ?

Well, Clipper or to be precise, CA-Clipper is the premier PC-Software development tool for DOS. It was first developed by Nantucket Corporation initially as a compiler for dBase3+ programs. Since then, CA-Clipper has evolved away from its x-base roots with the introduction of lexical scoping & pre-defined objects like TBrowse. As at today, the most stable version ofClipper is 5.2e while the latest version, 5.3a was introduced on 21 May 1996.

As at 11th November, 1996, an unofficial 5.3a fixes file was made available by Jo French. See the About CA-Clipper 5.3a section for more details. BTW, Jo French uploaded the revised 5.3a fixes file on 20th November, 1996.

Latest News

The latest news is that CA has finally released the long-awaited 5.3b patch on 21 May, 1997.

For 5.3b users, you must a take a look at Jo French's comments on unfixed bugs in 5.3b.

BTW, have you used Click ? If you're a serious Clipperprogrammer and need an excellent code formatter, Click is a natural choice. How to get it ? Simple, access Phil Barnett's site via my Cool Clipper Sites.

32-bits Clipper for Windows ?

Have you tried Xbase ++ ? Well, I have and compared to Delphi (my current Windows programming tool of choice), I'm still sticking to Delphi.

Anyway, you should visit the Alaska Home Page. Give it a chance and then draw your own conclusions !.

The Harbour Project

Is this the future of Xbase ? Take a look at at the Harbour Project

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