Clarion

Notifications are going out now, and 7.2 will be in your hands shortly. There are many really great improvements in this release; from the OS style Menus, new additions to the MenuStyleManager class, and of course the new ReportWriter.  I’ve posted blogs on most of these, you can use these links to review them or just check the “Clarion News” category;

http://clarionsharp.com/blog/2010/06/coming-up-with-72/
http://clarionsharp.com/blog/2010/05/reportwriter-and-the-report-engine/
http://clarionsharp.com/blog/2010/05/clarion-72-menus/

7.2 has a great list of new features and many good bug fixes, you can see the complete list of features/changes and fixes here.

Please take note of this excerpt from the readme file:

Release Notes:
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- 3rd party component DLLs must be rebuilt with the Clarion 7.2 compiler and runtime.

- The .APP file format has been updated in this release and .App files opened in 7.2 cannot be opened with prior versions. When you open your. App file for editing you’ll be prompted to confirm that you want to convert it to 7.2 format. If you have a multi-APP Solution, you can initiate a generate all from within the Applications pad, and as each App is opened you’ll be prompted to confirm you want to convert to 7.2 format.
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We’ll be posting a lot more about the new Report Writer, but if you haven’t already used it be sure to take a look when you get 7.2. And if you haven’t even had time to start it up, here’s a couple screen shots (click on them to see full size)

There was a recent thread in the news group where a lot of people were saying how much they used (and missed) the availability of a list of an Applications’ Procedures. Seems that code completion wasn’t the best option when you can’t remember the name of the Procedure. And its quite understandable when you have many many procedures, possibly hundreds, in your .App. So thanks to some quick work by Diego, Scott and Alexey, we were able to slip this this new feature into the 7.2 release; the Data pad now has a “Procedures” node, and when selected it lists all template based procedures, the Procedures node is only activated when you are in any of the editors, and dbl-clicking on a procedure name in the list inserts the procedure name into the editor. The Procedures list also has a Windows Explorer style incremental locator.

For 7.2 we’ll deliver the new standalone ReportWriter, and provide support for integrating the new report engine into Clarion Win32, Clarion#, and C# applications.

The new ReportWriter has major improvements in both functionality and ease-of-use, and of course it’s fully compatible with the Windows 7 64bit OS. It is extremely easy to create great looking reports, and reports can be exported to PDF, HTML, Excel, RichText, CSV, MHT, Text, and a variety of image formats (PNG, BMP, etc.). The ReportWriter also has support to export to any of those formats and email them in one operations. You can also preview reports in HTML format.

You’ll definitely want to offer upgrades to your end users so they can start using the new ReportWriter. The new ReportWriter automatically converts existing TXR libraries into the new library format. For quantity purchases we’ll be offering custom branding opportunities.

Using the report engine

Clarion 7 has existing support to work with TXR based reports from within your applications (see the Invoice example to see how it’s implemented), and we’ll continue to support TXR based report libraries in version 7.2. So any programs that are using the win32-based report engine won’t need any changes. But now in the release of 7.2, the ReportEngine class supports working with both the old report engine (TXR based reports), and the new report engine. The ReportEngine class determines which engine to run based on whether it’s asked to open a .TXR or a .REPXL library (.repxl is the extension used for the new report library files).  And on the .Net side its equally easy to integrate the new report engine into your Clarion# or C# applications.

Bob Foreman is doing a ClarionLive presentation tomorrow (5/21), and he’ll be showing the new ReportWriter and showing how to integrate the new report engine into your applications.

For 7.2 we’ve come up with an implementation that allows developers to safely generate their application code from everywhere except from within the Window/Report Designers and the code Editor. We had previously added restrictions that prevented code generation being initiated with partial or unsaved changes, this new implementation ensures 100% consistency for code generation, but it allows you to generate code from anywhere on the Procedure Properties dialog or the main Application window.

We’re getting Clarion 7.2 ready for release, and I thought I’d make a few posts and talk about the changes and new features. Version 7 already has support for creating a very nice UI on your menu’s, and we recently added a couple new menu styles and support for using a 3d vertical separator. Using the Menu Styles lets you provide the exact same UI for your menu’s across all supported operating systems. No matter what OS your application is deployed on you have complete control of the menu colors and overall style.

Now in 7.2 we’ll introduce new support to make your applications use the OS menu’s. The new support doesn’t use the MenuStyleManager class, its only requirement is that your App is properly manifested, and with that your menus will match the menus on the users operating system. Here are some screen shots taken from different operating systems.

and for those who prefer using the C7 MenuStyleManager class you can be sure we’ll continue to enhance it, so that you’ll have complete consistency in your menu’s across operating systems