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what_s_new_in_version.htm
Navigation:  What's New in this Version? >====== Archived updates in Clarion Win32 ====== Previous pageReturn to chapter overviewNext page

Here is a categorized listing of some of the many new features that were available in Clarion Win32. This topic is mentioned for the benefit of developers who have migrated from Clarion 6 or earlier versions

IDE

Clarion Win32/Clarion# marks the first 32-bit IDE, in part using the critically acclaimed Sharp Develop (#Develop) technology. However, this IDE is unique and special to Clarion, particularly in the area of rapid application development with a new Dictionary Editor and Application Generator.

With Clarion Win32/Clarion#, multiple instances of the IDE can now be opened

·A New Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on .Net Framework 2.0 and higher.

Dictionary Editor

·Display Graphical views of tables and relationships with the new Dictionary Diagrammer

·Scan all important elements of your active dictionary using the new Diagrammer Reports View

·Open multiple Tables for simultaneous editing

·Arrange your own personal layout for editing of Fields, Keys and Relationships

·Powerful new List view with Edit-in-place that allows you to specify which Dictionary attributes to display

·Validity check option now supports “Allow Null”

Application Generator

•   Completely re-factored for blazing code-generation speed!

•   Improved views of Procedures and Classes

•   Simultaneously Open multiple app files

Project System

·Create 'Solutions' which can contain any number of individual Projects. This allows you to build any number of Executables and DLLs from a single solution

·Build both Debug and Release configurations from a single solution

·Ability to build any Project with any installed version of Clarion back to Clarion 4, using the corresponding versions' compiler, templates, and include files specified in the Redirection file.

·Ability to pre-process any project with local or global information

·Add extra tasks to any Clarion project via the MSBuild system,(the new and extensible, XML-based build engine that is included with the .NET Framework 2.0).

Enhanced Database Drivers

·TopSpeed driver has new Encryption supportUse any encryption algorithm, supported by any encryption provider that plugs into the Windows encryption subsystem; including the Microsoft Base Cryptographic Provider and Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider.

·SQL driver(s): many enhancements designed to improve flexibility and performance.

New Source Editor

·New productivity features such as code folding, access to the Dictionary from within hand-coded projects, Code Regions, and Procedure and Class navigators

Templates

·Powerful “Toolbox” support

·Built-in extended Vista manifest support

·New ClarionCL executable included to allow you to register templates outside of the IDE (replaces outdated DDE support).

New Template Editor

·Editing your template files has never been easier. New productivity features such as code folding, quick section searches in drop list, and fast symbols and declaration searches in the context menu

New Report Designer and Window Designer with many productivity enhancements.

There are many enhancements. Here are just a few:

·Ability to multi-select controls and mass update common properties.

·Ability to multi-select controls in List Box Formatter and mass update common properties

·Switch between compatibility modes

·Enable Visual Styles in design mode

·New and improved Page Layout View in Report Designer

·Hide or display controls that are marked as hidden by default.

·Toggle of visual transparent controls

·Quick copy of controls (CTRL + DRAG)

User Interface (UI) improvements, including:

•   XP Office style Menu's

•   Tabbed MDI windows

•   Four new Graphical styles for Sheet/Tabs

•   Complete XP Theme support for all controls

•   RichEdit support upgraded

•   support embedded Tables and URLs

Language Reference:

·FILE structures can now be TYPE'd. The importance of this is significant, where it is now possible to have two separate record buffers on the same thread.

·PROP:ThemeActive can now be used to test a specific control.

·New SYSTEM properties for hooks for OPEN and CLOSE windows and reports

PROP:OpenWindowHook

PROP:CloseWindowHook

PROP:OpenReportHook

PROP:CloseReportHook

Template Language Reference:

·Addition of new EDIT and ICON type attribute for #PROMPT

·New SPLIT and UNSPLIT built-in template procedures

·Extended library support for the #PROJECT statement

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Updates made in Clarion 7.1:

IDE

New Windows 7 manifest support, built into the application's template support.

Expanded support and customization for the Command Line Interface Utility (ClarionCL). You can now build and run applications and convert dictionaries from outside the IDE.

The “Most Recent” list is now preserved even if the IDE crashes and if you have multiple copies of the IDE open, the Most Recent list will show the most recent from all copies of the IDE

You can specify dictionary (DCT) files are automatically imported and exported to text format. See the Tools/Options/General/Binary File auto-export/import dialog for how to configure this

New option in the Tools/Options/Clarion/General dialog controls the default project setting for automatically copying referenced DLLs to the output directory.

Application is now the default quick start project type when creating a new project.

TPSFix utility now supports fixing TPS files encrypted with enhanced encryption.

Initial release of new Property Grid. Modified “SmartPropertyGrid” sources have been added to the Libraries IDE folder. New Property Grid features include; allow tab key navigation, display checkboxes for true/false, spin box for integers, undo/redo, auto-expand child properties and more.

New Subversion support:

Subversion options can be accessed via the context (popup) menu for solution items

Subversion options can be accessed via the context menu for Clarion for Windows projects

Subversion features of the IDE will use the text representation of a dictionary rather than the actual dictionary (DCT) if the dictionary is registered to auto import/export.

Application Generator

Expanded Menu Styles ' new choices, and you can now set the style to use the active theme of the operating system.

The templates now have support for CSIDL locations for INI and data files.

Window and Report tab controls have been replaced by Buttons. Additional ellipsis buttons added to call the Window or Report Editor to view source.

If you press either the Window or Report buttons on the main application tree, you now return to the application tree when you have finished using the formatter.

New Save and Exit button added to Application Tree. This distinguishes the Save and Closing of the Application Generator from other dialogs.

New Application Option to control the size of the recovery file before an AutoSave occurs. You can also disable application recovery with a setting <;= 0.

New and improved Window Preview option built into the Structure Designer, with advanced data configuration options!

You can now set the tab style that the Window Previewer will use via the Tools > Options > Clarion > Window Previewer panel.

New and improved Expression Editor interface!

You can now open multiple solutions that access the same dictionary in multiple instances of the IDE.

Tab Order Assistant: New buttons; Move First/Last, Show in Code order, Show in Z-order.

The Related Files list in the relationship editor is now sorted depending on the dictionary options table sort order.

You can now open multiple solutions that access the same dictionary in multiple instances of the IDE.

New “Show tab order” Smart Tag Feature added to context menu of report bands.

Class Browser

New option in Class Browser Settings that allows to show/hide entities from included files. Class Browser Settings is a dropdown button on the Class Browser toolbar, and the new option is located at the bottom of the dropdown menu. Objects from included files are hidden by default.

Database Browser

New toolbar button and right-click support to specify picture token, heading and justification.

Data/Tables Pad

Ability added to copy field definitions from source code and paste them into either the Data / Tables Pad or the Dictionary Editor. When copying and pasting the details of a field that has an initial value from the Dictionary Editor or the Data / Tables Pad, the definition now includes the default value where possible.

Data/Tables Pad now has Expand All/Contract All buttons.

When a group or queue has focus in the dictionary editor or data pad, you can now add a field to the start of the group/queue, to the end of the group/queue or after the group/queue using either the context menu, the INSERT key, or the drop down list on the add button on the toolbar

If you double click on a file, field, or key in the data pad while a text editor is open, the appropriate label will be pasted into the text editor

Dictionary Editor

TopSpeed Driver String Builder dialog now includes support for the TopSpeed Enhanced Encryption Support driver strings.

Support for alternate field and blob names for SQL drivers for specific SELECT, UPDATE, and INSERT clauses.

The driver string builder for ODBC based drivers now allows you to set the ZERODATE switch to any date value.

Ability to set headers of pool fields to blank and when you derive from them the headers of the derived field are not destroyed.

New “Ask Before Partial Save” Option in the DCT Options Dialog. Option to enable/disable the Message asking for change when the Column changed values. When disabled, the Save and Cancel buttons will be disabled in the Entity Browser, and no dialog will pop-up asking for save. The changes will be always saved to memory.

“Incremental Search Timeout” Option in the DCT options Dialog to set the value used in the DCT/Data Pad tree locator.

Dictionary Synchronizer and Driver Enhancements

Improved support for handling Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data types.

You can now set the ODBC Catalog and Schema when importing/synchronizing tables from an ODBC data source.

The MSSQL driver was not prioritizing the new “SQL Server Native Client” ODBC driver before the “SQL Server” ODBC driver, thus not allowing MARS support on machines that had both of these installed and the “SQL Server” driver appeared in the registered driver list before the “SQL Server Native Client” driver.

Examples

Added new Examples on how to work with XML in C71 using the XMLGenerator and the new XMLParser (QuickXMLParser)

Language Changes

New PROP:TextLeftMargin and PROP:TextRightMargin properties for ENTRY, SPIN, COMBO, TEXT, RTF controls and for drop-down list-boxes

New built-in GETREGSUBKEYS function to gather names of all sub-keys of given registry key.

New built-in GETREGVALUES function to gather names of all values of given registry key.

PROP:LastChanceHook SYSTEM property.

If a printer supports printing of multiple copies, the RTL restricts the maximum value of PROPPRINT:Copies to the maximum number of copies reported by the printer driver.

New variant of PRINTERDIALOG ' PRINTERDIALOGA allows you to invoke the Print and Printer Setup dialogs for an opened report. See also PROP:PrinterDialogAHook.

SETEXITCODE and GETEXITCODE built-in functions to set/query program's exit code (error level) without the necessity to immediately close the program.

New MSGMODE:FIXEDFONT flag in the last parameter of the MESSAGE function to show message text using the fixed-pitch font

Two new built-in functions FREEZE/UNFREEZE with the purpose of reducing flicker in some situations.

New conditional operator support added to the OMIT and COMPILE directives.

New PROPLIST equate (LISTZONE:GroupHeader) used to determine if the mouse is clicked or moved inside the list box header, but outside of the field part of the header. This change has been used to provide better highlighting of themed list box headers.

See: FORMAT() List Box Mouse Click Properties

Ability to use substitution of exported name in the EXPORTS section of the EXP file. The entry in the EXPORTS section can have format [<;substitution name>=]<;external name> @?

New LARGE_ADDRESS manifest and linker statement.

New IMenuStyle property - menubar gradient mode. Its setting has an effect only if the normal menubar background brush is a horizontal gradient brush. If the gradient mode is set to BarGradientMode:Rightmost (default), the gradient is applied to right edge of rightmost menubar item without the RIGHT attribute. If the gradient mode is set to BarGradientMode:Full, the gradient is applying to the entire menubar.

The PRIVATE attribute is now allowed for TYPE declarations.

Setting PROP:Active to TRUE for an IMAGE control (runtime only) makes it active: it can be a parent/child of other controls and is painted separately without caching into the metafile of the owner window's background (i.e.,IMAGE controls with scroll bars).

ReportWriter

The Clarion ReportWriter beta release is included in the initial release of Version 7.1. See the ClarionRW HTML help file for more details. This release also support conversion of TXR files.

Template Language

New support for pre and post build events using the #PROJECT statement

New PASCAL attribute for the #RUNDLL statement. The WIN32 attribute is now deprecated and ignored.

Updates made in Clarion 7.2:

·The C7 ReportWriter is now a gold release, and a stand-alone version is now available for end users.

·Enhanced support for Operating System themes for Clarion menus (Win7 and Vista) if the executable (EXE) has a manifest and no style class is applied.

·The Win32 interface to Report Writer now supports both .TXR and .REPXL library formats. In addition, the interface is backward compatible with previous versions of the Report Writer interface.

·Incremental search now supported in the source embeditor (CTRL + E to activate).

·You can now configure the project system to copy multiple files when a DLL file is being copied because a library is attached to a project and configured to copy the DLL to the Output folder.

·Smart auto formatter options separated from Tools > Options > Text Editor > Clarion specific options > General to their own options panel located in Tools > Options > Text Editor > Clarion specific options > Smart Formatter. The Smart formatter options set is also extended.

·Added global template option to set the PROP:LineHeight for the LIST/COMBO/DROP controls in a window.

·In the Dictionary Column dialog, You can now press the ellipsis button to select a “derived from” field, even if the label for the field has not been set

·A Procedures node has now been added to the Data/Tables Pad.

New Properties/Events implemented in Clarion Win32

New Properties:

Support for tabbed MDI windows are now added to the Clarion Win32 runtime library.

This capability is implemented by using the following new properties that are applied the application frame window:

Property Values Description
AppFrame{PROP:TabBarVisible} TRUEFALSE Turns on/off visibility of the tab bar
AppFrame{PROP:TabBarStyle} 1 ' “black and white” in Office 2003 style2 - colored in Office 2003 style3 - squared tab4 - boxed tab Specifies the visual style of the tab bar
AppFrame{PROP:TabBarLocation} 0 ' at the top of the frame window1 ' at the bottom of the frame window Specifies location of the tab bar
?CurrentTab{PROP:TabSheetStyle} 0 ' “black and white” in Office 2003 style1 - colored in Office 2003 style2 - squared tab3 - boxed tab Specifies the visual style of the sheet/tab control

New properties for coloring selection bar frame:

PROPLIST:BarFrame

PROPSTYLE:BarFrame

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New SHEET Property:

PROP:TabRect

Returns the coordinates of a target SHEET control.

New Control Properties:

PROP:TextLeftMargin

PROP:TextRightMargin

Controls the non-displayable margins for ENTRY, SPIN, COMBO, TEXT, RTF controls and for drop-down list-boxes. Useful when working with large fonts. Property value is in dialog units.

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New printer properties:

PROPPRINT:SupportCopies

A READ-ONLY property that returns TRUE if the current printer supports output of multiple copies.

PROPPRINT:SupportCollate

A READ-ONLY property that returns TRUE if the current printer supports collating of copies.

Click here for an example that demonstrates the usage of PROP:SupportCopies and PROPPRINT:SupportCollate.

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New Events:

EVENT:NestedLoop

This event is posted on entry to a nested ACCEPT loop

New Template Symbols:

New Template Symbols added:

%LocalDataID, %LocalDataFull, %ModuleDataID, %ModuleDataFull, %GlobalDataID and %GlobalDataFull are added to make clear the differences between %GlobalData and %ModuleData/%LocalData for fields of compound structures with a prefix.

what_s_new_in_version.htm.txt · Last modified: 2021/04/15 15:57 by 127.0.0.1