Icetips Blog

Every now and then I do a "File | Save as" in C6 to clean out the gunk that Clarion collects in the apps from time to time. Been working on a fairly large app with a lot of browses and forms in it and today after adding a browse/form to it and doing some work the IDE crashed. Been working in this VM for probably 2 weeks or more without rebooting it (and Clarion 6.3 has been running that whole time) and decided it was time to do this trick again. The app file went from 7.8MB to 5.8MB! Now it loads much faster and generates faster also I don't know if this still applies in C7/C8 but wouldn't be surprised if it did. If you are not doing this regularly or semi-regularly to apps that you are working on a lot, your apps are collecting gunk that does nothing but slow Clarion - and you - down! It's simple:

1. Open your app

2. Use "File | Save As" to save it to a new name (I use appnameX.app)

3. CLOSE the app. This is an important step I have found.

4. Move the original app (appname.app) out of the folder for
backup IN CASE something fails (it has never failed for me, but you never know!)

5. Open the appnameX.app

6. Use "File | Save As" to save it back to the original name.

7. Keep going

I try to do this like once a month or so, depending on how much I work in the apps. After I posted this I received word from one guy who did this to his app and it went from 15MB to 1MB!!!)

My client reported a problem when attempting to run our project that was a bit baffling:

"The procedure entry point _18ProtectedHashTable__ct__@FiP15CriticalSection could not be located in the dynamic link library c60runx.dll"

Since all that we are sending back and forth are the applications and no binary files there was no way that we were mixing any binaries up, besides we are using the exact same builds of Clarion 6.3 - 9059 so this shouldn't be a problem at all.

After asking around I found out that the reason for this is that Clarion 7 includes a Clarion 6 compiled version of Topscan, which is not compiled local so they have to distribute the Clarion 6 versions of the DLLs with Clarion 7. In our case, the Clarion 7 Bin path has been added to the PATH variable, either manually or by an installer (we do not know which one if it has been done by an installer). Not just that, it has been added in front of the Clarion6\bin folder in the path causing the Clarion 6 application to pick up the C60RUNX.DLL from the Clarion 7\Bin folder rather than the Clarion6\Bin folder.

After some experimenting, I found that at least for Clarion 6.3 build 9059 I could have both BIN folders in the PATH as long as the Clarion 7 one was after the Clarion 6 one. The Clarion 6 apps still run without problems and the Clarion 7 Topscan also runs correctly and without problems as far as I can tell.

So, IF you want to put the Clarion 7 BIN folder into the path statement, make sure that you do that after the Clarion 6 BIN folder. Normally you do not need to do this, but if you don't want to copy DLLs to the application folder using the PATH do access the binary files is one way to do it.

Update: It appears that if you are using Clarion 6.3 build 9056 it does not conflict with the C60RUNX.DLL file in Clarion 7.

Arnor Baldvinsson

Currently there is no direct way to set a fixed filename for any of the output targets inside the Icetips Previewer, but you can easily do this on the report itself, rather than passing the name to the previewer and do it there. In fact this would probably be the preferred method since the report probably should determine the name and location of the resulting filename.

You need to put code into a single embed where you set the filename:

All the code that you need is just a call to the SELF.SetFileName() method. Please note that each output target has it's own Setup method so if you have multiple output target templates active you will need to do this for all of them. You can pass the filename as a string, variable or an empty string if you want it to open the file dialog in the Previewer when you print to PDF.

In this case you can use:

SELF.SetFileName('')  

This triggers the FileDialog to open in Previewer when you click on the PDF button.

SELF.SetFileName('myfile.pdf')

This writes the PDF file as "myfile.pdf" to the current folder.

SELF.SetFileName('C:\temp\myfile.pdf')

This writes the PDF file to specific folder, which is probably not what you want to do!

SELF.SetFileName(LOC:PDFFileName)

In this case a variable is used. You can prime the variable anywhere before the PDFReporter.SetUp method is called, or you can do it right before the SELF.SetFileName. Note that the PDFREporter.Setup method is not actually called until the report is in the Previewer so if you use a Global, Threaded variable, you can set this in the Previewer. Since the previewer and the report will always be on the same thread, you can just set this variable to be threaded and then there are not threading issues to deal with.

Here is an example of how this can be implemented. On the report I have changed the code to:

SELF.SetFileName(Glo:PDFFileName)

The global variable is a CString(2049) global variable with the "THREAD" attribute. To do that simply check the "THREAD" checkbox on the "Attributes" tab when you create the global variable - doesn't make a difference if you do it in the Global Data or in the Dictionary.

In the Previewer, all that is needed now is to set the global variable. Normally I would think that you would want to set the filename on the report, but this gives you an idea how to do it on the Previewer also. I have added an instance of our ITShellClass from the Icetips Utilities to the previewer procedure - in the "Local Data" embed I added:

ITS  ITShellClass

Now in the "Local Objects | Icetips Previewer | Clarion 6 Save Buttons | Before Save Dialog"

I have added this code:

  If GQ.GName = 'PDF'
    Glo:PDFFileName = ITS.GetSpecialFolder(IT_CSIDL_PERSONAL) &|
                      '\MyPDF.pdf'  
    !! Glo:PDFFileName must be be used in the report's 
    !! PDFREporter.Setup.

    If Not FileDialog('Select PDF to save',|
          Glo:PDFFileName,|
          '*.pdf|*.pdf',|
          FILE:SAVE+FILE:KEEPDIR+FILE:LONGNAME+FILE:ADDEXTENSION)
      Message('No PDF File selected, aborting PDF save',|
              'PDF Saving aborted',ICON:Hand)
      Exit
    End
  End

Note the "GQ.GName = 'PDF'". This allows you to just do the PDF if you want the default filename handling for other options. The GQ contains all the target names, such as "PDF", "HTML" etc. At the top of the routine that handles the targets in the Previewer, the correct item is selected from the GQ queue so throughout the routine you can use GQ.GName to determine what is the active target being printed to.

If you find new ways to use this, I would certainly appreciate if you would be kind enough to add a comment to this article so I and others can benefit:)

Arnor Baldvinsson

Roberto Artigas has sent us the latest version of his popular DCT2SQL templates and I have made them available for download on our download page.

According to Robert this new version is compatible with Clarion 7.1. He has fixed some minor issues caused by incorrect placement of #BOXED/#ENDBOXED pairs. And the templates are backward compatible with Clarion 6.3 so you can now use those popular templates on both IDEs

Arnor Baldvinsson

I had the need to create an install with Setup Builder 7 that would be time limited so that it would not run after a certain date. Obviously this is no foolprof method since it can easily be bypassed by changing the date in the computer, but for what I wanted it was perfect!

Set Variable %IT_TODAY% to FUNCTION:Get System Info
  (Current Date) -- Format "12"
If %IT_TODAY% Greater Than "20100228" Then
   Display Message Box "This time limited Beta build 
     install expired on Fe..." -- 
     "Time limited Beta install has expired"
   Exit Installation(99)
Else
   Display Message Box "Note that this is a time limited 
    Beta build instal..." -- 
    "Time limited Beta install"
End

Note that the lines wrap and in the actual script this is only 7 lines, which start out bold in the box above.

The first line get's the current date from the computer where the install is running in a "YYYYMMDD" format. The IF statement compares the value with "20100228" - February 28, 2010, and if the current date is greater, then it displays an error message and exits the install. If it is equal or less, then it displays a warning message about this being a time limited install and continues.

Arnor Baldvinsson

If Clarion 7.1 crashes on startup with something like:

Clarion Version : 7.1.0.6545
..NET Version         : 2.0.50727.3603
OS Version           : Microsoft Windows NT 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3
Current culture      : English (United States) (en-US)
Working Set Memory   : 38052kb
GC Heap Memory       : 1989kb

Unhandled exception terminated Clarion

Then the chances are pretty good that you do not have the Visual C++ Runtime Library update that is required. To fix this download and install this file from Microsoft: Visual C++ Runtime Library

This installs the VC2005 RTL and Clarion 7.1 will now load properly.

Arnor Baldvinsson

While exploring the Clarion 7 IDE I accidentally came across a neat way to change the font size in the editor. Hold the Control key down and scroll your mouse wheel! It will increase or decrease the font size in a nice smooth action. For old timers like myself this is a very nice way to be able to zoom in to a section of code that I need to take a really close look at!

This works in both the file editor and the embed editor in Clarion 7. You can also set the font size manually by going to "Tools | Options" and then select the "Text Editor" node in the tree on the left.

Arnor Baldvinsson

If you use the Enable Printer Selection extension on your Icetips Previewer to allow users to select a printer, then there is a bug that can cause problems. Fortunately it is very easy to fix it and it has been fixed in our sources for our next release.

The problem comes up if a user selects a page range to print from the PrinterDialog rather than selecting a page range within the previewer. This causes the FromPage and ToPage properties of the printer object to be set but there were two lines of code missing that reset those properties to default.

There are two places that you need to fix:

"Local Objects|Icetips Previewer|Print to Selected Printer|End of Routine"
and
"Local Objects|Icetips Previewer|Print current page to Selected Printer|End of Routine"

In both of those embeds, place the following code and the problem is fixed:

 Printer {PROPPRINT:FromPage} = -1
 Printer {PROPPRINT:ToPage} = -1

This has already been fixed in the next build which will be out later this week. It would be out today if it were not for a problem that we discovered before the weekend with Clarion 7. The cause of it has already been found and I'm currently working on a fix for it

Arnor Baldvinsson

Today I ran into a problem with a process on a SQL table. It was using a range limit and filters so it was only processing a subset of the data. However, the progress bar of course was stuck with the entire data set so it would go up to about 2% and be done. I have a procedure that I can pass some parameters to count the records in a table for a given filter so I knew exactly how many records the process was going to process. But I got stuck on how to reset the high limit for the progress bar. After some snooping around I found a property that I could set and everything worked like a charm.

 !! First get the number of records.  
 !! SQ is a global equate:     SQ Equate('<39>')

 Loc:Recs = CountSQLRecords(Name(MyFile),|
            'Parent_ID = ' & SQ & Loc:Parent_ID & SQ)
 ThisProcess.RecordsToProcess = Loc:Recs

Put this code into priority 8550 or higher in the ThisWindow.Init method in the process procedure and the progress bar will now go smoothly from 0% to 100%

If someone has a method to call for this, please comment on this post. I could not find any method that worked, compiled and ran! Setting the RecordsToProcess property seems to have no bad effects.

Arnor Baldvinsson

I got an email this morning from a customer who was trying, without any success, to change the text of items in a Drop Combo control in PowerToolbar at runtime. The simplest way would be to simply use:

Toolbar1.SetItemText(MyItem,'My Text')

Unfortunately that only works for drop buttons, not Drop Combos. I figured it would be a simple task to add a method to do this but ran into a brick wall. The brick wall was the APIs used to construct Drop down Combo controls do not have any messages or methods to change the text for a given item! It seems to be set in stone once the item is created. So what can you do? The simple answer is to recreate the Drop Combo items! It is very fast and as far as I can tell it does not cause any flicker.

If you want to restore the text in the entry field, you need a single CSTRING variable to contain the text. Below is the code needed to reset the items in the Drop Combo:

Loc:Str = Toolbar1.GetText(ID1_DropCombo)
Toolbar1.DeleteItems(ID1_DropCombo)
Toolbar1.AddComboItem(ID1_DropCombo, 'NEW Drop combo item 1', )
Toolbar1.AddComboItem(ID1_DropCombo, 'NEW Drop combo item 2', )
Toolbar1.SetText(ID1_DropCombo,Loc:Str)

In this case Loc:Str is a CSTRING(100) variable that is a temporary buffer for the contents of the Drop Combo edit control. The Toolbar1.DeleteItems deletes ALL the items from the list and the next two Toolbar1.AddComboItem lines add two new items to the list. The Toolbar1.SetText resets the text in the edit control and you are back where you started except you now have updated items in your list.

Arnor Baldvinsson