The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

October 1995

Out and About (Con't from page 1)

MES will be demonstrating tips and techniques de-

veloped for applications running at several client

sites, as well as discussing user interface issues,

system design, design tools, RAD and other devel-

opment issues.

December 18, 1995, 7:30 PM - The Annual LA Fox

Christmas Party. Last year, we were very fortunate

to be treated to one of the first previews of Visual

FoxPro. Who knows what surprises await us this

year? One sure thing will be George Dvorak’s

delightful treats that never disappoint. Plan for an

evening of fun and friendship.

Elsewhere

Advisor FoxPro Developers Conference in Phoe-

nix, October 22-25, 1995. Cost of the conference is

$795 if you register before 9/22/95, $895 after 9/22/

95. This is going to be a big one. To register, or to

get more info, call 800/368-3204.

Great Lakes Great Database Workshop is going

on November 5-7, in Milwaukee, WI. Cost of the

workshop is $225 before 9/9/95. $285. if received by

10/28, and $325 after 10/28, and will be featuring

many of the same speakers from the Phoenix con-

ference. For more info, or to register, call 414/224-

7654 or log on to CompuServe at 70651,2270.

Comdex/Fall'95.... The mother of all computer

shows, for mavens and minions alike, November 13-

17, in Las Vegas. Everybody that’s anybody exhibits

at this one. Costs range from $75 for an Exhibits

Only Pass to $695 for the Information Passport. You

can get updated information, or register, via the

Internet/Web URL: htpp://www. comdex.com :8000.

E-Mail and the Internet. Sponsored by Dunn &

Brad-street, these two intensive half-day sessions

provide a shortcut to the Information Highway on

December 1, 1995, in Anaheim. The morning ses-

sion covers getting started with E-mail and the

Internet while the afternoon session covers practical

and profitable business uses of the Internet. Cost is

$87 per session. To find out more, or to register, call

212/692-6600.

The Internet - A One-Day Seminar. Sponsored by

Fred Pryor Seminars, it promises to bring you up to

(Con’t, page 8)

VFP for the Non-Guru -

Multiple Instances of a Form

by John Melton

It was quite exciting to hear in some of the promo-

tional sessions concerning VFP how easy it would

be to do various things that were, for all practical

purposes, impossible in FoxPro for Windows. One

in which I was particularly interested was multiple

instances of the same form. In my zeal for VFP 3.0,

I even made the mistake of promising this feature to

a client before attempting to create it; it turned out to

be more difficult than I originally envisioned.

Thinking I could simply issue DO FORM from a

menu selection and it would execute the form as

many times as a user wished was particularly naive.

It turns out that certain properties must be set and

additional code written to accomplish the task.

The following explanation assumes a typical struc-

ture in which an APP or .EXE is built with a main

program (TestMain.PRG) calling a menu (.MPR)

from which a user chooses among various options.

In order to enable multiple instances of a form

(TestForm), the user choice calls a program

(TestPRG.PRG) which in turn calls the form

(TestForm) which would typically be bound to a table

in a database.

1. First, an array is created in the main program

(TestMain) to hold variables for the NAME option

when the form is called (see #3 below). The syntax

is DIMENSION TstArray(1). TstArray(1) does not

need to be given a value.

2. An appropriate menu choice is created for the

user. The syntax for the command called by the

menu choice is DO TestPRG.

3. The .PRG (TestPRG) which is called from the

user menu choice contains the following syntax:

This methodology,

adapted from an example in the

(Con't, page 9)

Page 5