Why you should recompile your CA-Clipper DOS applications to Win32

CA-Clipper for DOS was, once hugely popular amongst Xbase programmers from Summer'87 right up to Version 5.2e. Apparently, 5.3 onwards were not vey popular. Even now, it is amazing to discover that there are still many CA-Clipper programmers out there. However, CA-Clipper for DOS programs don't do well under Windows, and may not run at all in Win'98, ME, XP , Vista or on fast processors, or they may have problems printing. In addition , the interface is text-based , hogs processor time which slows everything else down, and can't communicate with Windows programs.

So what's the solution & I am not talking of GUI ?

Simple, recompile your existing CA-Clipper source codes using a 32-bit CA-Clipper compatible compilers such as the Harbour Project, xHarbour or Xbase++. If you prefer open-source the Harbour Project & xHarbour will definitely be your choice. However, if you require more support, I guess that xHarbour.com & Xbase++ will be the way to go.

Clarification from Ron Pinkas

xHarbour is first and foremost a free open source project, exactly as
Harbour.

In *addition* to being completely free, it's *also* distributed by
xHarbour.com, as a commercial distribution that includes numerous Add-on
Tools & Libraries, as well as tech support services.

Needless to say, the existence of the xHarbour.com commercial distribution
does not take away from the freedom of xHarbour, the opposite it provides
even more resources to the free project.

So what are the benefits of having your familiar CA-Clipper application as a true Windows 32-bit Executable ?

A quick list of the benefits of being a true Windows application is that it can:

• Utilize all the available memory, no more DOS boundaries
• Use bigger sized variables, no more limits such as 4096 array elements, 64K data segment, etc.
• Use any kind of printer installed on Windows, including network printer, Fax printer, PDF printer, etc.
• Use Windows resources easily, eg. clipboard, common dialogs, etc
• Collaborate with other Windows application, eg. Excel, Internet Explorer, etc.

You may want to read about my own experience in porting a sizeable real-life Accounting application (still in use in some customers) from CA-Clipper 5.2e to xHarbour

• Migrating from CA-Clipper 5.2e to xHarbour (Part I)
• Migrating from CA-Clipper 5.2e to xHarbour (Part II)
• Migrating from CA-Clipper 5.2e to xHarbour (Part III)- Updated 2nd March 2009