Today is the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year, and in the U.S., where I live, it is Veterans Day. It’s a day to honor all those who have served our country. Whether they saw combat, or served during times of peace, all who have worn the uniform of any of the five branches of the U.S. Military, are heroes and we salute them.
Category Archives: Clarion News
Report Writer, Clarion.Net and C8
We have a busy week coming up next week. The end-user version of Report Writer will be officially available for purchase, we have a new release of C8 scheduled, and we’ll do the first release of the .Net AppGen. This weekend we’ll setup the SVN repository for the .Net templates and next week we’ll push out a new Clarion.Net install with the .Net AppGen. We plan to do a video tutorial for template writers and the following week, after folks have had a chance to get their feet wet, we’ll do a webinar to answer template writing questions, and questions on using the templates.
Clarion 8 is gold!
Clarion 8 gold shipped out on August 29th, and we want to thank all of our users who helped us get here. Version 8 has over 90 new features and improvements, about 100 changes/optimizations, and over 350 bug fixes. And as of today you should have received notifications with download links for the version 8 add-on drivers.
During the early-release phase we worked closely with a few Clarion developers who were in the process of deploying applications based on version 8 into the field. Robert Paresi of InnQuest had one of the largest deployments, and as of about a week ago had successfully deployed his roomMaster application, based on the Clarion RTL version 8, to about 1900 sites (most sites have multiple workstations). His successful deployment (after a few tweaks to the RTL), helped us close down version 8 with a lot of confidence, thanks Robert!
Looking forward to seeing some of you at the CIDC conference in just a short few weeks! We’ll be posting here each day of the conference making sure you get the latest information even if you can’t attend.
We still get asked about subscription renewals; if you purchased your CSP twelve months or more ago, then you are up for renewal. So if you haven’t already done so, you should jump over to the web site and renew your subscription today.
Clarion 8 – getting very close to gold release
A new update is going out right now, and next week v8 installs will go out for all our add-on products; a gold release is likely within 1-2 weeks. After the gold release we’ll start to let loose some of the new features that are being done in the background, but are not yet ready for release to production.
Clarion 8 update
We pushed out a new C8 update today with a nice set of fixes and improvements, check it out and see what you think.
Update on the Developer’s conference
Its official, the developer conference location has been changed to Orlando, and the dates have
been finalized: September 26th – October 1st 2011
John Hickey and Arnold Young, hosts of ClarionLive organized a great conference last year in Denver.
This year SoftVelocity is working with them to make the Orlando conference an even better event.
I’ll be there along with Diego Borojovich and Pierre Tremblay. We’ll be doing the morning session
at the start of each day talking about Clarion 8 and Clarion.Net, integrating Clarion.Net code into your
Win32 app, and creating web and mobile applications. The rest of the day will be filled with sessions
presented by well-known Clarion developers; Mike Hanson, Rick Martin, Bruce Johnson, Andy Wilton, and Dave Harms.
You can read more about the event and register to attend at CIDC 2011
This is sure to be a great event where you’ll have the opportunity to learn a lot!
Clarion 8 update
A new update is on its way to you just over a week after our last update. This one kills some GDI leaks that could affect programs on XP and Win Server 2003, and brings back the “Column 1” check-box for the Embed Tree dialog.
We’re steadily progressing to a gold release!
Clarion 8 update
An update for C8 is on its way out as I type; our focus was on fixing issues related to the Embed tree nodes, and we’ve fixed all issues that we were able to reproduce.
A new feature in this release; FREEZE/UNFREEZE can now be used for Menu controls, using the special value 10001h, or the EQUATE “Freeze:MenuBar” (defined in EQUATES.CLW). FREEZE/UNFREEZE for Menu controls might be needed if the Frame Menu control is being changed from an MDI child thread.
Another feature is new support for 256×256 icons under Vista/Win7.
Clarion.Net update
An update for Clarion.Net is out today. It has a good number of fixes and delivers the previously described feature that automatically exposes Procedures you select so that they are visible to Clarion Win32 Apps. I wrote about this a while ago, so I’ll refresh you on it (this is straight from the Help file):
1) In the Clarion# Program’s GLOBAL MAP, add both the NAME and PUBLIC attributes to the PROCEDURE prototype
For example in your Clarion# global Map:
MAP
! Procedures exposed for Win32 access must have both the NAME and PUBLIC attributes
SayHello PROCEDURE(),NAME(‘SayHello’),PUBLIC
SayTheName PROCEDURE(string theName),NAME(‘SayTheName’),PUBLIC
END
2) On the Clarion# Project properties dialog, turn on the checkbox: Export Global named procedures and create Clarion Win32 LIB file
This step causes a .LIB file to be created, its location is set according to your RED file, or you can specify the output path in the Project
3) Copy both the .LIB and the Clarion# DLL to your Win32 project folder. You also must copy any assemblies (DLLs) that your Clarion# DLL references, for the minimum you need:
SoftVelocity.Clarion.Runtime.Procedures.dll
SoftVelocity.Clarion.FileIO.dll
SoftVelocity.Clarion.Runtime.Classes.dll
ClarionDrv.dll
4) In the Clarion Win32 program prototype the Procedure(s), and add the PASCAL and DLL attributes. If you need to pass a string value by address also add the RAW attribute.
MAP
MODULE(‘ManagedDLL.dll’)
! Calling Clarion# Procedures, you must use the PASCAL Attribute and set DLL(true)
SayHello PROCEDURE(),NAME(‘SayHello’),PASCAL,DLL(TRUE)
SayTheName PROCEDURE(*cstring theName),NAME(‘SayTheName’),PASCAL,RAW,DLL(TRUE)
END
END
In the initial implementation (its already changed internally), you might run into a “gotcha” when you get to step 2. In order to expose the Procedures for use in a Win32 program the binary Clarion# DLL file has to be disassembled back to IL code, the IL code is then modified, and then the IL code has to be assembled back to a binary (PE format) file. To do this there are two programs from the .Net SDK that have to be found; Ilasm and Ildasm. In the current implementation the location for those files is stored in an external .config file, and if they are not found (Ilasm and Ildasm), you’ll get an error message telling you to edit the path stored in Dllexport.exe.config. In the next release we’ll have an improved implementation that finds these automatically on all OS’s (32 or 64 bit).
You’ll find an easy to understand example showing how this works in the .SamplesWin32toDotNet folder.
DevCon, Clarion8, Clarion.Net and more
I did a short talk at the start of today’s ClarionLive session. John and Arnold had posted that I’d be there and the room filled up really fast. In case you missed it, here is what I covered:
1. SoftVelocity and ClarionLive are co-organizing the next Clarion DevCon, which will be held in Denver Colorado, (same location as the last ClarionLive conference) for November 11-13, 2011. It’s sure to be a great event! I’ve heard the venue is incredible, and I know the content will be even better. In the weeks ahead we’ll be announcing the details on the session topics.
2. The initial early release of Clarion8 is going out today!
A few notes on the C8 release:
– You’ll get your chance to try out all the new UI features, like the Gradient support on Toolbar controls, the new Slider control, the 3-state Checkbox control, the vastly improved look for disabled images and icons, PROP:NoThemed support to allow transparent SHEET when the application is using a manifest, and much more.
– All told there are already over 65 new features and improvements, as well as about 150 fixes and changes.
– You’ll have some long sought after improvements in the IDE; like remembering the last edited EMBED point, and the ability to edit data as Text. But you’ll have to delve into the readme for the complete list. A lot of hard work has gone into this release, and we hope you will love it.
– What to expect after the install:
- Clarion8 inherits all Clarion versions set up in Clarion 7, so you can start using the Clarion8 IDE right away
- You should check with the 3rd party vendors that you use – but if you copy your .ClarionAccessory folder from your Clarion7.3 install folder into your Clarion8 folder most of your add-on tools should be ready to use as-is in a C8 App. The exceptions are those that have explicit checks for the Clarion version number, unless they use a greater than or equal condition. Also any tools that ship local link LIBs should be rebuilt just as a matter of routine sanity/safety.
- The Dictionary format was updated in Clarion8, so expect an upgrade message upon open of the Dct or App
And that’s about it, this update should be absolutely painless, and it brings some very nice new features that your end-users can see, and some big productivity gains.
Back to the announcements:
3. Next week we’ll release an update for Clarion.Net – no AppGen.Net yet, but it will deliver the bridging technology that allows you to very easily call .Net procedures from your Clarion Win32 programs without the use of COM or C++ wrappers.
4. I’ll be doing short talks on ClarionLive at least twice per month in order to share the latest news on what we’re up to, and in general what’s happening with Clarion. I can’t thank John and Arnold enough times for the incredible resource they have created for the entire Clarion community!