Category: Icetips Products

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It's taken a while, but all our product installs are now compatible with Clarion 11 and available for download!

This process took quite a bit longer than I expected, mostly because this required considerable amount of work for most of the templates to make them look better in Clarion 11.  But I think it was definitely worth it!  While I did not do a lot of design work, what needed to be done was duplicating a lot of code to make it work with both Clarion 10 and older as well as with Clarion 11.

I also took the opportunity to add more standardization to the Setup Builder install scrips as well as my Build Automator scripts to make builds easier in the future.  Same applies to the templates, where for example template headers look exactly the same in all our templates now, and the support tab is now 100% identical everywhere to make it easy to access.

Another task was to change all the templates from using .hlp help files to use .chm help files.  .hlp files are not really supported any more on Windows 10 and the IDE has supported .chm for a few versions now so there is no reason not to use it.  So I decided to pull the plug and change all the templates that had help file access to use .chm files.  This required a minor change also to every HLP link in the templates.

For the first time I did not do any testing with the old IDE, i.e. Clarion 6, apart from making sure the templates registered, since I still have a few Clarion 6 apps that I need to maintain for a while longer, so I still need them to work in the old IDE 😉  But by the end of the year, I will ONLY support the new IDE and generally just the last 3 versions.  So 9.1, 10 and 11 by the end of the year.  Keeping everything backward compatible has limited me in certain visual design aspects.  Clarion 6 is 15 years old  (2003) and Clarion 6.3 is 9 years old (2009) and it's time to let it rest 🙂

Since there have been quite a few changes in both the templates and in the build process, I would really appreciate if you would let me know as soon as possible if you have any problems with the installers - or the templates!

Enjoy 🙂

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Build Automator uses MSBuild to compile projects and solutions no matter if they are in Visual Studio or in Clarion.  By default, MSBuild is a single thread program, but there is a way to tell it to start multiple processes to compile.

After some experiments on a virtual machine, I'd say it's definitely worth it to try it out and see if it helps.  What you need is the /maxcpucount parameter which you can add to the "Additional Parameters" tab on the "Call MS-Build" action in Build Automator.

Compile with MSBuild

The benefit may not be as much as you had hoped for, but it definitely does improve performance.  Here are some numbers.  This was tested on a Windows 10, 64bit virtual machine in VMWare 12.5.  It is set up with 5.7GB of RAM.  In the first test it was set to use 1 CPU and 2 cores.

15:42:59.898
15:45:54.809 00:02:54.911  without /maxcpucount
15:33:22.832
15:36:04.000 00:02:41.168 with /maxcpucount:2
15:52:48.811
15:55:21.083 00:02:32.272  with /maxcpucount:8

In this test, I was able to shave off about 38 seconds with the 8 CPU setting.  Your milage may certainly wary as this may be different outside of virtualized environment and it may be different depending on what CPU you have and a lot of other configurations.  No errors were reported and everything seemed to compile correctly.

All generated files were destroyed before each test and ClarionCL.exe was used to generate.  The Clarion IDE was not involved at all in this process and was closed while the testing was performed.  Only command line utilities.

Bottom line is if you are compiling larger solutions with Build Automator, then you should check out the /maxcpucount parameter.  For more information about this parameter, please see the information on the MSDN Website

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Automator_wallpaper2016-sm

We have released Build Automator 2016, build 6.2.1359

The full install can be downloaded from the Build Automator website at http://www.buildautomator.com/downloads.php or by using the "Check for Updates" option under the Help menu in the program.

This build has several fixes including:

  • Clarion 9.0 installs were not always detected correctly.
  • Clarion 10.0 installs did not always show up as available version if only one more Clarion version was installed.
  • Icons were missing from some buttons as well as from some windows.
  • Maintenance Plan verification did not always work correctly.
  • Registration window was too short to show all the information.
  • In some circumstances {#INCLUDE(FileName)} could add 2-5 characters at the end of the resulting file.

There were some bugs in the Clarion 9 and 10 implementation.  I have simplified it so it should be easy to add new versions of Clarion as they are released.

The {#INCLUDE()} statement for the "Write Text To File" action had a bug in it causing extra characters to be written at the very end of the final file.

For more information, and some extra tips please read the full blog post on buildautomator.com

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On October 15th, 2015 the renewal prices for expired Icetips subscriptions will go up. Until then you can renew for the same price as non-expired subscriptions and save money!

If you go to http://www.icetips.com/compare.php and look at the second table from the top, "Prices for Gold & Silver Subscriptions" you see a column with "Renewal Price Expired"

Those prices do not take effect until October 15th, 2015!

On October 15th all subscriptions that have been expired more than 30 days will have to be renewed at a higher price.

Check it out and log into your account to check your subscription status.

Arnor Baldvinsson

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Autumn (or spring, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere) brings changes in weather and landscape, and Icetips, too, has some changes this season.

MONTHLY & AUTOMATIC BILLING OPTIONS

First, weve made it easier to pay for Icetips software subscriptions by adding automatic billing options and monthly payment options.

To buy a new Gold subscription, you can now make a partial payment of $149 up front, then pay the balance in 11 monthly installments of $15.  Or, you can pay for the whole thing up front, as always.

To renew a Gold subscription and have continuous access to all Icetips Software products, updates and support you can opt for a small, ongoing payment of only $15 a month.  Or, if you would rather, you can still pay your renewal fee once a year.  Now, though, you have the option of having your annual billing paid automatically (and get a discount!).

Solo and Silver subscriptions also have automatic annual payment options and discounts (but no monthly payment options).

For more information about our new payment options, please see our page on recurring/automatic subscriptions.

PRICE CHANGES

Icetips introduced the Gold Subscription in 2007 and we have held prices constant since then.  Unfortunately, costs have gone up – but we're still keeping our prices as low as we can.

If you opt for automatic renewals, prices will be the same as always.  For those who choose to renew their subscriptions manually, prices have increased a small amount.

Some people let a little time go by before renewing their subscriptions.  For those who renew their subscriptions over 30 days after the subscription has expired, renewal costs will be slightly higher.

For more information about our new price options, please see our subscription page.

ARNOR FOR HIRE

Whether you need just a little extra help, or a whole lot of lot of help, with a new or ongoing software or SQL project, Arnor is available for contract work.  $80/hour, 1 hour minimum, references available upon request.  For more information about hiring Arnor, please see the Icetips Solutions website.

HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY, ICETIPS.COM

Twenty years ago this month, Arnor Baldvinsson and Rick Beckemeyer began working together to make a website for Clarion developers.  In October of 1995, Icetips.com was born.  In the early days, Rick took care of the URL and hosting, while Arnor took care of the website design and content.  In 2001, Arnor took over the administrative side, too.  Shortly after that, Arnor's business partner and wife, Sue Pichotta, began helping with Icetips' website design and some of the content.  There have been a lot of changes over the years, but through it all, Arnor and Sue have always been happy to be part of the Clarion community.  We're looking forward to the years ahead.  Happy Birthday, Icetips.com!

If you run into any problems with our new subscription system, please let me know!  This required a lot of changes and while I have tried to make sure everything is working 100% I may have missed something!  So please let me know if you see anything that doesn't look right or if prices are not showing up correctly!

Arnor Baldvinsson

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Yesterday I uploaded some changes to the Icetips website that I hope will help make the site more accessible.  I'm working on a redesign that will be fully responsive, but that's going to take some time to complete.

We have changed the basic fonts so text is now more open and there is more white-space on the pages.  Colors have changed as well and the site as a whole is a bit brighter.  All the product pages now have tabs where there is information about features, compatibility, downloads and screenshots.

I have also added a "Version History" tab to 5 products, Utilities, Previewer, Outlookbar, Powertoolbar and Taskpanel.  The version history for the rest of the products will be up there soon and I will keep this updated as new releases are made.

The login page also has tabs with the latest downloads, blog entries and your profile, so it's easy to get to it all on one page.

For those of you in the US, I wish you all a happy 4th of July tomorrow:)

Arnor Baldvinsson

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I have released two new product builds this morning.  Icetips Utilities build 1.2.2433 and Icetips Previewer build 2.7.392.

The Previewer build fixes a problem with the Page of Pages template which I found out was not working with the Legacy/Clarion template chain.  This build also includes the fix to scrolling under Clarion 10.

There are two new features in the Utilities that will come in very handy when dealing with importing comma separated files.

First is a new property, pDelimterStartsLine, to the SplitString method.  It allows it to split strings where the delimiter is the beginning of a line, not the end of it.  Normally SplitString splits strings based on CR+LF (<13,10>) characters at the end of the line.  Recently a customer needed to split a string that had no CR+LF pairs, but each record started with a specific string.  By implementing this change he was able to split up his file and read the data correctly.

The second new thing is the ParseCSVLine method.  It takes a line of comma separated CSV data and splits it into fields, stored in the CSVFields property of the Icetips String Class.  This method can take regular old CSV data and parse it into easily accessible field data. It handles commas in strings without problems so there is no worry about it getting out of sync if the data is otherwise properly formatted.  I have made it flexible so that you can specify if strings are quoted or not (if they are, the code will look for and ignore commas inside the string) as well as specify the delimiter to use (up to 4 characters).  The pStringsAreQuotes parameter defaults to TRUE and the pDelimiter defaults to a comma (,)  Check out the demo code in the help:

ITS  ITStringClass
S    STRING(255)
I    LONG 
F    LONG
X    LONG 
  CODE
  ITS.FileToLines('testcsv.csv')
  LOOP I = 1 TO Records(ITS.Lines)
    GET(ITS.Lines,I)
    F = ITS.ParseCSVLine(ITS.Lines.OL)
    ITS.ODS('Line: ' & ITS.Lines.OL)
    IF F
      ITS.ODS('  ' & Format(F,@n_3) & ' Fields from ' & ITS.Lines.OL)
      LOOP X = 1 TO F
        GET(ITS.CSVFields,X)
        ITS.ODS('    ' & Format(X,@n02) & ' ' & ITS.CSVFields.OL)
      END
    END
  END
ParseCSVLine example code (image)
ParseCSVLine example code (image)

There are also some fixes in this Utilities release:

March 10, 2015 The template could cause classes to export an older version which could cause "xxx is unresolved for export" errors when compiling exporting dlls.  Fixed.
May 24, 2015 Fixed a potential memory leak in the AddIntoParenthesis method.
June 27, 2015 Image Class ResizeImage method did not work correctly on reports.  Fixed.
June 27, 2015 Image Class ResizeImage did not correctly size images when it was called multiple times for the same image control.  Fixed.

Arnor Baldvinsson

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I do quite a bit of small hand coded test projects. Usually just a few lines of code to test some code or concept.  One of the things I like to do is add the Icetips Utilities to those projects so I can use methods like ODS (OutputDebugString)

Below I go through the steps and at the bottom is a short video of the whole process (1 minute, 31 seconds)

To create a small project like that you need to create a project using the "Win32 EXE" option when you create the solution.

CreateNewSolution
Creating a new source solution in Clarion 10

I also always uncheck the "Auto create project subdir" as I have normally create the folder before I create the solution, but if you haven't check this and it will create a sub folder with the name of the project.

The next step is to change the project settings.  In the Solution Explorer right click on the project node and select "Properties" from the popup menu.

Clarion10OpenProjectProperties
Opening the Project Properties in Clarion 10

In the project properties, select the "Compiling" tab and in the "Conditional Compilation Symbols" enter:

_ABCDllMode_=>0;_ABCLinkMode_=>1;_ITUtilDllMode_=>0;_ITUtilLinkMode_=>1
Clarion10SetProjectProperties
Setting Conditional Compile Symbols in Clarion 10

This will compile both the ABC classes and the Icetips Utility classes.  Note that this setting is for an EXE.  If you are compiling a DLL, then you need to switch the 0 and 1 in the settings above.

The first thing you need to do is to include the main header file:

  INCLUDE('ITUtilityClass.inc'),ONCE

I do this above the MAP statement.

Now you can use any code from the Icetips Utilities in your project.  For example:

ITU ITUtilityClass
 CODE
 MESSAGE('Icetips Utilities: ' & ITU.EXEName)

In the video below (no sound) go through each of the steps to make this happen:

I hope this may help some of you to use the power of the Icetips Utilities in your source projects 🙂

Arnor Baldvinsson

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I have released Icetips Previewer build 2.7.391 with a fix to the problem with mouse wheel scrolling in the previewer window under Windows 10 that I blogged about yesterday. The fix seems to take completely care of the problem and have no ill effect on previous versions of Windows that I can find.  If you run into any problems with it or it seems to behave differently, then please let me know!

Arnor Baldvinsson

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Update: This has been fixed, see this post.

It appears that something in Windows 10 breaks the mouse wheel scrolling in Icetips Previewer!  In the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview (10130) and at least some previous ones if not all of them, it just doesn't work at all. 

computer-mouses

I haven't been able to find any references to a problem with scrolling in Windows 10 so this must be a very isolated case.  Guess it's time to take a look at that sub-classing code I added in back in March 2006 - more than 9 years ago!  My gosh, how time flies! 😎   This does not seem to be Clarion version specific as this is happening in applications compiled in Clarion 6.3 as well as Clarion 10 and with new and old builds of Icetips Previewer.

Hope you all have a good weekend - I'll be spending it with debug view on my Windows 10 virtual machine!

Arnor Baldvinsson