The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

August 1995

VFP Books (Con't from page 3)

tion classes which are subclasses of the supplied

collection base classes and are used to integrate

forms, toolbars, business objects, menus, etc.

without having to write any code. Menus are

included here even though the Menu Designer

hasn’t been changed much in VFP (they’re not

objects). The Codebook solves this limitation by

supplying a menu dass library, basically wrapper

classes for FoxPro menus (again using the

Codebook collection model). I am currently hard at

work on a Menu Builder which will be a visual

interface (including drag-and-drop) for creating

custom menu classes and will fully support menu

inheritance. So not only will these menu objects

integrate with toolbars (mostly by just setting prop-

erties), but you’ll be able to subclass menus, pads,

popups, and bars. You’ll be able to use a FilePad

class in a custom menu, and the 00 benefit is that

you’ll be able to chose any popup class to be

associated with the pad, and you’ll be able to reuse

any of these components. Although the Codebook

menu classes eliminate the need for the Menu

Designer and GENMENU/GENMENUX, that

doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t ever use them.

The Codebook menus follow a simple methodology

of keeping menus very simple, so some of the

custom features found in GEN-MENUX will not be

supported (colors, fonts, etc.) though you could

subclass the Codebook base menus to add that

ability. Its really nice to be able to send a Hide or

Show message to a menu pad or bar just like you

would any of the VFP classes!

“Outside of the technical issues, the Codebook

framework has been adopted by many third party

developers. For example, the upcoming Visual

FoxExpress will be built around the Codebook

framework, and will include many visual tools and

utilities to implement applications even faster.

Flash, Micromega (FoxFire!), and Neon Software

(FoxExpress), worked together to create a VFP

database container (DBC) extention class library

called DBCX which will be public domain, It is

designed with an architecture to assist developers

and 3rd party products in extending the functionality

of the VFP database container. Over 13 compa-

nies are currently committed in adopting the

Codebook framework and/or DBCX.

“You may find the book useful for more things than its

application framework and class libraries. For ex-

ample, the book text itself offers great depth

on various technologies seperate from the implemen-

tation side of development. You may want to use the

framework and the supplied sample

application as a learning tool for VFP, 00 and C/S.

As you will see, the Codebook is much more than a

methodology and standards handbook.

“The Codebook for Visual FoxPro 3.0 by Y. Alan

Griver will be available through bookstores and from

Sybex, but not through Flash directly.”

So there you have it. It looks like it'll be a few months

before we have anything besides the VFP docs to

reference. But from the sound of it, the wait will be

well worth it. And, as Chuck mentioned in his column,

I’ll be more than happy to publish any reviews submit-

ted by members of the group.

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 artides 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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