Second Life for Clipper Applications

Second Life

for Clipper applications

(ALASKA XBASE++)

You can change your old CLIPPER application to NEW WINDOWS APPLICATION in very short time(we talk about minutes) using ALASKA XBASE++.The story is: you have your CLIPPER application, get ALASKA XBASE++, install it, read this quid, addour PRG files, make small change to your PRG modules, make PROJECT file and recompile and link usingPBUILD. Now you have full WINDOWS 32-bit application. Give it to your users and then get back toALASKA to learn how to take full power of it. Your users will get new version, you get time to learn new product and everyone will be satisfied.

Aleksandar StefanovicAS Computer Software

Are you Clipper programmer with many DOS applications, someone who wants tocontinue to live and someone who think that Windows is not the end? What to do now?DOS applications can be executed under Windows platform but people want to go on, notto stay in the past. DOS is the past, and you, as programmer must live with that. So, isyour programmer life finished? Answer is NO. Your applications, source code can havesecond chance. Alaska Xbase++ is solution for you. Is this the only one? No, you haveother options but we believe that this is the best one.These days there is Alaska Xbase++ version 1.9 from Alaska Software. You can find itonwww.alaska-software.comFirst thing that you will read is that this is 100% Clipper 5.x compatible windows 32bit’s compiler. That is a right and that is not the end. This isonly starting point for you to transfer your old DOS Clipper applications to windows platform. I want you to remember this. Don’t use this compiler only to make your oldDOS applications, windows applications. As you know DOS and Windows are differentoperation systems, so logic you have in DOS time must be changed. Logic about howusers use your application. The best reason for this is that your application doesn’t havefull control over PC. This is just another process on it. Another thing is user interface thathave to be changed. You must use things that Windows offer to you in the way thatwindows users expect. You don’t have to reinvent hot water again. I believe that you asDOS Clipper programmer have full “know how” to use Windows. There is no reason toteach you how to use Windows, I believe that you already know that. If you don’t, thanthis text is not for you.We believe that Xbase languages have to live on. Easy, effective, clear. And after allthere are so many people who use it for decade (or more). Many other programmers(C/C++, Delphi…) don’t like Clipper and in one period of time they even don’t think about Clipper people as programmer at all. But this is not our problem. Clipper was oneof the best that happened in the past. Number of Clipper application is so big, number of Clipper programmers to. So be patient and forget what other said about this, and continueto make you living on it.How to start? First, install it. Please, don’t forget to install Xbase TOOLS because thereare many functions that you will need. You will get all you need in ALASKA directory. Now use command prompt instead of DOS and find yourself in environment you know.In the past you have Clipper.exe now you have xpp.exe.On your hard drive you will find this directory structure:

Environment variables are (here is AUTOXBB.BAT and AUTOXBT.BAT

@echo offSET XPPROOT=C:\ALASKA\XPPW32SET LIB=C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\LIB;%LIB%SET PATH=C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\BIN;C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\LIB;%PATH%SET INCLUDE=C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\INCLUDE;%INCLUDE%SET XPPRESOURCE=C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\RESOURCE\BITMAP;%XPPRESOURCE%SET XPPRESOURCE=C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\RESOURCE\ICON;%XPPRESOURCE%SET XPPRESOURCE=C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\RESOURCE\FONT;%XPPRESOURCE%SET XPPRESOURCE=C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\RESOURCE\POINTER;%XPPRESOURCE%@echo offrem Environment for XbToolsIIIrem created by XbToolsIII installation 5-18-2006SET PATH=C:\ALASKA\XBTW32\LIB;%PATH%SET LIB=C:\ALASKA\XBTW32\LIB;%LIB%SET INCLUDE=C:\ALASKA\XBTW32\INCLUDE;%INCLUDE%

You can have Clipper and ALASKA on the same system but you need to take care for environment variables, remember that.Please, remember what happened after starting CLIPPER.EXE. You sow compiler options. Just to remind you.Copyright © 1985-1993, Computer Associates International, Inc.Microsoft C Floating Point Support RoutinesCopyright © Microsoft Corp 1984-1987. All Rights Reserved.Options:/a automatic memvar declaration/b debug info/credits credits screen/d(<id>)[=<val>] #define <id>/es[<level>] set exit severity