The Programmer's Billboard

Greetings everyone,

I just wanted to announce the release of a new Clarion application that may be of use to some of you.

http://www.wizardbook.com/wbs_products.htm - The Programmer's Billboard page
www.wizardbook.com/prgbb10.exe - this is a link to the install.

The Programmer’s Billboard (PRGBB) is a freeware package that can be used by programmers to help debug program and logic flow problems in their programs without having to interrupt the “flow” of their program by using MESSAGE(), STOP() or any other dialog windows or display type statements.

Background: I was developing an application that depended on a chain of events to happen based on windows events and timers.  When debugging the erratic operation of this application, I was attempting to do what most programmers do, insert code to display certain variable contents etc at the appropriate time.  It seemed that the more I “displayed” the worse things got.  That is when I decided to develop another application, independent of the first one, to capture and display diagnostic messages without interfering with the “Program Under Test”.  I decided that this application would serve as a “billboard” for these messages thus came the name.

The Programmer’s Billboard is written using Clarion for Windows (version 5B) by Topspeed Corporation  but is usable by any language/environment that supports Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). 

The Programmer’s Billboard can also be used by multiple applications at the same time.  For instance Program-A and Program-B are both in development.  The design specs dictate that Program-A and Program-B must interact in some way, like passing semaphores, data, files or some other form of inter-process communications.  Both programs can start conversations with the PRGBB and post messages simultaneously.  A stream of messages can be dumped to a temporary file and/or printed from within Program-A, Program-B or from the PRGBB toolbar.

Enjoy,

Best Regards

Wayne Haynes
www.wizardbook.com