The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

October 1999

FoxPro Q&A (Con’t from page 6)

This is the most bomb-proof I’ve come up with yet. I’ve fiddled

with many different means of getting unique values, including

various datetime-related values, and have settled on this. I

always pass the fulipath to the table and the name of the field to

increment.

FUNCTION GETPKEY(tcTable, tcField)

LOCAL Inkeyvalue, Inselect, Icalias, Ilopen

*_ Check for table & field.

IF PCOUNT()=0

tctable = “mrsys”

tcfleld = “bKey”

ENDIF

Save current work area

Inselect SELECT(O)

*__ Try to open the table

Icalias = justfname(tctable)

llopen = !USED(lcalias)

IF Ilopen

USE (tctable) AGAIN IN 0 ALIAS (Icalias)

ENDIF

SELECT (Icalias)

Lock and increment the value

IF RLOCKO

Inkeyvalue = &tcfield + I

REPLACE (tcfleld) WITH Inkeyvalue

UNLOCK

ELSE

lnkeyvalue = 0

ENDIF

IF liopen

USE

ENDIF

*__ Restore work area

SELECT (lnselect)

RETURN Inkeyvalue

(Gary DeWitt, CIS ID: 73512,57)

Q. How do I implement a splash screen in my application?

A. The quick and dirty way is to use the -b command line

switch to display a bitmap before the VFP screen is activated.

However, this depends on the command line to work, and may

get broken if the user messes with the shortcut. A more reliable

method is to use a form for this purpose. In CONFIG.FPW set

SCREENOFF, then in your main program call your own form

(with TitleBar =0-Off, ShowWindow =2-As Top Level Form).

Your splash form then can run a timer, or exit on user keypress,

setting _SCREEN.Visible = .T. on its way out.

About October’s Meeting

From Mike Vincent

One of my favorite ActiveX vendors is dbiTech. They have

established a specific arrangement for our FoxPro User Groups.

They are offering a 20% discount on all DBI Technologies’

products (ToolBox Ocx V.4, Solutions::PIM,

Solutions::Schedule and Solutions::Explorer), please make sure

when they are ordering that you tell the dbiTech sales reps

which user group you are associated with and include reference

to my name/presentation. Otherwise, a discount will not apply.

Removing Obstacles (Con’t from page 5)

That’s not much of a payback, but one of the department’s long-

standing goals has been to make this a continuous process,

instead of a daily batch. Well, now I’m about an inch away from

making that happen.

While I’m in the process of doing this, the company CEO gets

up in front of everyone and says that the guys up top are

planning deals. I’m likely to start getting my original data from

other sources, as well. No doubt, it’ll be in strange new formats.

Before, I’d have considered hari-kan. But now, I’m ready. All

because I removed an obstacle, instead of going around it.

fEd. Note: Brad Druiy is the President of the Orange County

FoxPro I)eve!opers Group. For more info on their group, point

your browsers to http:iocfox.org/.)

It Can’t Get Any Easier.......

We’ve come up with an easy way to submit articles to the LA

Fox Develper Newsletter.. one that has been overlooked for

a long time.

You can submit your articles to Barry Lee at CIS# 72723,3422

on Compuserve, orbrlee@earthlink.net.

These articles can be on any FoxPro-related topic, whether it

concerns a newtechnique you’ve discovered, a certain develop-

ment technique you may favor over others, book reviews, etc.

Editor reserves the right to edit or offer constructive comments

concerning submitted articles and accepted articles shall be

considered to be in the public domain.

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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