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The LA Fox Developer Newsletter
March 1994
Books and Toys......
Toys and Books
by Barry R.
Lee
This article is the second in a series featuring add-
on products and books supporting
FoxPro.
This
time, we’ll be looking at what! refer to as
“FoxPro
2.5.. .The Inside Series”.
Inside FoxPro 2.5 for DOS
and
Inside FoxPro 2.5
for Windows
, by Bob Grommes, are a valuable
addition to any developers arsenal. For those of
you not familiar with Bob, he is the new editor of
FoxTalk,
having taken over for Lisa Slater recently.
His company, B&G Microsystems, specializes in
custom
FoxPro
programming and he has worked
with Fox products since 1986. He is also a contrib-
uting writer to
Databased
Advisor
and
FoxPro
Advisor.
These books are pretty hefty reading at about
1100 pages for the DOS version and over 1300
pages for the Windows version, but he shares
some worthwhile insight, not only into
FoxPro,
but
the development process in general. Grommes’
goal is to develop the ultimate bullet-proof event-
driven application.
This series is somewhat unique in that each book
contains a complete application that is built from
the ground up. Prior to building the application,
different issues related to product development,
user interface, and
FoxPro
are discussed. The
application is then built and subsequent chapters
discuss the techniques that were used in building
the application. Some of the chapter titles will give
you a hint of what’s inside: “Error and Event
Trapping”, “Context-Sensitive Help”, “Multi-User
Programming”, “Programming for Speed”, “Outfox-
ing
FoxPro”,
“Debugging”, “Cross-Platform Issues”.
Special use of invisible buttons is a highlight of this
book. Grommes places invisible buttons on the
screen, as the first and last screen objects, to act
as “Window Bumpers”. These bumpers prevent,
among other things, the cursor from moving into
another window when the end user moves beyond
the first or last object in a window, and effectively
sets the
FoxPro
system variable “_CUROBJ” to
the object number specified as its parameter, usually
an object at the other end of the window.
Most of us make use of
FoxPro’s
help system in our
applications, but Grommes takes a slightly different
slant on this issue. Rather than just supply an end
user with a help system that may or may not cover his
needs, Grommes uses a technique whereby an end
user can add help topics and text in “real-time” so that
the person to whom a system is turned over can
further expand on the help system to clarify the expla-
nations of what may be going on in the screen input
and other areas of the system.
Included with the books are companion disks which
contain all of the code discussed, as well as a support
library of routines called ‘WinLib” which takes care of
a lot of the basic housekeeping chores associated with
FoxPro
applications. “WinLib Pro”, also associated
with this series of books can be purchased separately
and is a cost-effective investment. But be forewarned
about “WinLib Pro”. A separate maintenance/support
agreement comes with ‘WinLib Pro” and I learned the
hard way that this agreement is probably worth the
money.
Both books are available at local bookstores, such as
Barnes and Noble. The DOS version retails for
$34.95, Windows for $39.95.
It Can’t Get Any Easier.......
We’ve come up with an easy way to submit articles to
the
LA Fox Developer Newsletter
one that has
been overlooked for a long time.
You can submit your articles to either Chuck Williams
(72330,2326) or Barry Lee (72723,3422) on
Compuserve.
These articles can be on any FoxPro-related topic
whether it concerns a new technique you’ve discov-
ered, a certain development technique you may favor
over others, book reviews, etc.
The quality of this newsletter really depends on the
members that support it, not just read it. And I think
we’d all be surprised by the useful information that
could be circulated around the membership.
So
How 'bout it?
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