Icetips Blog

Today we have discovered a problem in the latest Clarion 7.1 build 6849. This problem affects most of our products and will cause a GPF in the program at runtime. What I found out was that the #PDEFINE template statement, which we have used for years to add defines to the project, doesn't fire in this Clarion 7.1 build so classes that depend on their own defines in the MODULE and DLL attributes are not compiled correctly and will cause a GPF when the classes are instantiated.

I have reported this to SoftVelocity's Problem Tracker and I really hope that this will be fixed in the next build.

If you converted projects from Clarion 6 to 7.1 with our products in them, you should be just fine. This only affects templates that you have added to applications in this latest build of 7.1 and possible some of the latest builds as I'm not 100% certain when this stopped working.

I am also looking into an obscure problem in the SQL browse template that only shows up in 7.1, when the GreenBar is being used and only when a new column has been added. After then app has been closed and re-opened the problem goes away and also if the actions for the SQL browse have been entered after a new column has been added. It could be something in our templates or it could be something that is related to the #PDEFINE issue if some statements are not executing correctly.

Arnor Baldvinsson

We released two new builds today with minor updates to Outlookbar, build 2.0.122, and SQL Browse build 6.2.470.

We have added support for runtime translation to Outlookbar and also made a minor update to the documentation to clear up confusion about the mimic button option. The install was also updated to make sure it detects Clarion 7.1 installs correctly.

The SQL Browse had an issue with template code that, while it had worked for the past 10 years or so, was just plain wrong and could fail miserably in Clarion 7. It did not appear to affect existing procedures, but new procedures would have a problem and show an error message at runtime and completely lose connection to what columns should be displaying in the browse. As with Outlookbar, we updated the install to detect Clarion 7.1 correctly.

I had planned to get the Thread Limiter out into beta testing today but I had to take some time off last week to prepare for the webinar last Friday so it will not be out into beta until later this week.

You can now download the webinar download the webinar from Clarion Live and watch it. I went through how the Window Fixer works and also just scratched the surface of the Icetips Utilities.

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

Clarion 7.1 final release has been out for about 3 weeks now and so far no issues have been reported with any of our products in 7.1!

Claron 7.1 is getting pretty close to being a very productive product while there are still a few problems here and there I think that next build will probably take care of a lot of the snags that I have had minor issues with.

In February I will start moving the Build Automator to Clarion 7.1 and will report on how that process goes.

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