Category Archives: Clarion News

Clarion 11 – new Unicode implementation

The C11 RTL implements new internationalization code all based on the OS locale and codepage settings. All Windows and controls in the new RTL are created and processed using the Unicode variant of Windows API functions. All text drawing also uses Unicode. C11 introduces the new USTRING data type (Unicode analog of CSTRING) and adds official support for the BSTRING data type.

The new internationalization code in the RTL supports conversion between ANSI and Unicode strings on the basis of the system codepage and locale. There are also two new built-in functions TOANSI and TOUNICODE that allow conversions that are not based on the current codepage.

There is a new Project level setting to tell the compiler what encoding to expect:

While Clarion has supported Unicode for a long time you were limited to the system locale setting in the “Regional and Language Options”.  C11 allows as many different charsets as you need.  This test program shows mixing several charsets, and the use of the “U” specifier to tell the compiler that the static string is Unicode text (and the program also uses the TOUNICODE function) –

running the test program produces this –

 

For more on the technical details read on:
The string stack supports Unicode strings, both ANSI and Unicode strings are handled by the same string stack. If a string expression has the USTRING or BSTRING type
(USTRING or BSTRING variable, Unicode string literal, result of function returning the *BSTRING, *USTRING or USTRING type, or any concatenation if at least one operand is a Unicode expression), then the corresponding element of the string stack is processed as Unicode.

If none of the above applies, then the string is assumed to be an ANSI string (with optimization for numbers). The LEN() function is now a compiler intrinsic. It returns the number of wide chars in the top element’s value, if it is Unicode, or number of ANSI characters, if the top element is ANSI.

* BSTRINGs were designed for use in API functions; they are not suitable for usage as USE variables.

The previous internationlization settings; CLACASE, CLACOLSEQ, CLADIGRAPH are still supported, but are considered as deprecated.

The LOCALE function in C11 supports the following additional parameters:
1) ‘CLALCID=n’ or ‘CLALCID=Windows’ or ‘CLALCID=”ll-cc”‘
Changes the default locale in the Clarion RTL.

If the value is “Windows”, the default Windows user locale is used.
If the parameter has the form “ll-cc”, it can be one of following:
“EN-US” – USA English, default sorting –
“EN-GB” – British English, default sorting –
“ES-ES” – Spain Spanish, default sorting –
“DE-DE” – Germany German, default sorting –
“FR-FR” – France French, default sorting –
“IT-IT” – Italy Italian, default sorting –
“NL-NL” – The Netherland Dutch, default sorting
“RU-RU” – Russia Russian, default sorting –
“ES-MX” – Mexico Spanish, default sorting –
“PT-PT” – Portugal Portuguese, default sorting
“EN-AU” – Australia English, default sorting
“FR-CA” – Canadian French, default sorting
“EN-CA” – Canadian English, default sorting
“EN-ZA” – South Africa English, default sorting
“PT-BR” – Brazilian Portuguese, default sorting
“ES-AR” – Argentina Spanish, default sorting
“JA-JP” – Japan Japanese, default sorting –
“KO-KR” – Korea Korean, default sorting

The locale string settings are case insensitive

2) ‘CLACODEPAGE=n’ or ‘CLACODEPAGE=Windows’ or
‘CLACODEPAGE=”cp”‘

Changes the default codepage in the Clarion RTL. If value is Windows, the
current default Windows user codepage is used. If the parameter is a string enclosed in double quotes, it must be one of following: –
– “WESTERN”
– “CENTRALEUROPEAN”
– “CYRILLIC”
– “GREEK”
– “TURKISH”
– “BALTIC”
– “HEBREW”
– “ARABIC”
– “KOREAN_JOHAB”
– KOREAN_HANGUL”
– “SHIFT_JIS”
– “SIMPLIFIED_CHINESE”
– “TRADITIONAL_CHINESE”
– “THAI”
– “VIETNAMESE”
– “UTF7”
– “UTF8”

(case insensitive)

3) ‘CLADOWNAME=s’ or ‘CLADOWNAME=Windows’ Changes the default full names of the days of the week. If the parameter is Windows, the names of days of week from default locale are used. Otherwise the parameter must be a list (enclosed in double quotes) of names to use.

4) ‘CLADOW=s’ or ‘CLADOW=Windows’ Changes default abbreviations of the days of the week. If  the parameter is “Windows”, the abbreviations from default locale are used, Otherwise the parameter must be a list (enclosed in double quotes) of abbreviations to use.

CLALCID and CLACODEPAGE (or SYSTEM{PROP:Locale} and SYSTEM{PROP:Codepage}) are replacements for CLASYSTEMCHARSET, CLACASE, CLACOLSEQ and CLADIGRAPH parameters of the LOCALE/ENV files and for corresponding SYSTEM properties. Old parameters/properties are still supported but locale and codepage are preferable, and all new programs should use them.

Clarion 10 update (Jan 2017)

Today we released an update for C10. This update fixes some SQL driver issues that were reported to us, as well as a couple of regressions introduced in previous builds. A note to the developers who received the internal build: thank you for your help verifying the fixes for the SQL related bugs!

The H5 technology continues to evolve and improve, you’ll find a number of fixes and new features, as well as performance improvements. If you want to deliver your app to mobile/tablet devices, jump in and give it a try. It also works great on the desktop while at the same time completely changing the UIX of your app.

Read about all the changes here

Clarion 10 update (November)

Today we released another update for C10. This build has a change to the VIEW engine; the engine now returns any GPFs that occur inside the View engine as errorcode 90, and the exception details are returned by a call to Fileerror(). It also has a fix for a regression whereby if you had a TIME(0) or TIME(1) column defined in MSSQL Server, and you did a BUFFERed retrieval, the time data would not come back correctly. We’ve also updated the Windows API prototypes to use the corresponding handle names instead of simple data types (LONG,SIGNED,etc.)

There are also numerous new features and changes (and some fixes) for the H5 technology based on feedback from all of you. Expect to see some nice speed improvements.

C10 update is out

Today (Sept 28) we released an update to Clarion 10 (free to all subscribers). This build fixes a problem (regression from a recent build) with the code generated by the compiler to push DECIMAL CONSTANTs with a fractional part to the decimal stack (affected both Decimal and Real data types).

And for those publishing web apps using H5, the App Broker has a fix for handling MEMO fields (> ~2500 chars) where you might get a time-out during an update.

Clarion 10 updated

We just released today (Sept 23) an update for Clarion 10. This build corrects a regression in the ODBC driver layer that affected TABLEs that had defined DECIMAL fields in the FILE structure that were smaller than the definition(s) in the SQL database. It also delivers fixes and new features for the H5 web app layer. You can read all the changes here

Clarion 10 new release is out

We just released (September 13) an update to Clarion 10; build 12327. We’ve updated the H5 template again in response to your feedback, including support for a javascript calendar and a date-time selector. There is more control from the template on the html output, and a lot of new functionality that you requested. The build also has some key fixes for the ODBC driver, and the SQLite driver.

You can read about all the changes here.

Clarion 10 update

We just released (Aug 11) an update to Clarion 10; build 12278. This release is available, free of charge, to all Clarion developers who have an active subscription plan. You can read the list of changes here.

We’ve updated the H5 template again in response to your feedback. There is more control from the template on the output, as well as new functionality, and fixes for reported problems.
I’ve postponed updating the new videos until the template UI settles down, so expect some next week.

Clarion new release – H5 updated

We just released (Jul 22) an update to Clarion 10; build 12258. This release is available, free of charge, to all Clarion developers who have an active subscription plan. You can read the list of changes here.

We’ve updated the H5 template to deliver some new bootstrap features and improved the HTML output. There is also more control from the template on the output, as well as fixes for reported problems.
I’ll post updated, and new videos, that highlight the H5 changes/features (all are listed in the readme).

Clarion 10 – new release

Today we released an update to Clarion 10; build 12104. This release is available, free of charge, to all Clarion developers who have an active subscription plan.

The update contains a number of important bug fixes and stability enhancements. We recommend that all developers upgrade to the latest version of Clarion 10 to maintain the highest level of performance and reliability. You can read about all the changes in this release here.

If you haven’t already renewed your subscription, now is the perfect time. Go to the Clarion store.