Hello fellow pdoxers! especially you PALers.


We're stilling using PDOX 4.0 ... running on winXP. pdoxrun stopped
working so we launch the scripts from inside pdox, but no worries
there. also, fwiw, we aren't doing anything networked data (table)-
wise.

a few Q's:

1. I'm not able to create an "L" (Logical) field type in pdox40.
What's the best way to save / retrieve boolean (logical, True, False)
data to / from a table / script?

2. I've been messing around with ShowDialog and dialog procs and I'm
curious if there is a way to determine what text is highlighted
(selected) in an Accept box.

2b. Since I couldn't figure that out, here's what I'm doing... In it's
current form, I check for 'DEL' and save the CONTROLVALUE() to a var,
then switch the EventList to Idle, letting 'DEL' do its thing. Once
Idle is caught, I save the new state of CONTROLVALUE() and compare the
before and after and if they are the same, i assume, nothing was
highlighted and can do my magic ( fake the deletion of the last
"return" and scroll the text from any Accept boxes under the current
one up ), then return the Eventlist back to its normal state.

thoughts / suggestions on all that?

3. This will be my "zany" Q. Has anybody started work on an
OpenSource Pdox 4.0 compatible db yet?

4. What db's have those that left pdox 4 gone to (and not regretted
it)? What db would you suggest? Do the free offerings, namely mySQL
and Firebird, have merit? i'm sticking with pdox4.0 for now, but am
considering creating a living failsafe... just in case.

thanks in advance.

peace & 42

you sure have a lot of un-associated questions there (g).. but I'll do my
best to answer them..


what errors are you getting from runtime?.. 4.0 regular and 4.0 runtime work
EXACTLY the same way.. download 4xguide from my web site and see if you're
running this stuff correctly..


an A1 field that's Y/N or T/F..


rather than try to decipher what you've got in the explanation, I'll just
ask "why do you want to know what's highlighted?" and hope that your
response makes it easier to understand..


all windows stuff works completely different than that, but they all have
the ability to use your paradox table data, one way or another.. DOS is
dead.. move on..


people have evolved in many different ways.. without knowing your needs or
knowledge, there is no specific answer..


--
Steven Green - Waldorf Maryland USA

Diamond Software Group
http://www.diamondsg.com/main.htm
Paradox Support & Sales

Diamond Sports Gems
http://www.diamondsg.com/gemsmain.htm
Sports Memorabilia and Trading Cards

On Jul 7, 7:27 am, "Steven Green" <gre... (AT) diamondsg (DOT) com> wrote:

I'll have to look into that, it's been years, but i think we have 4.5
runtime. i should
stress that we are of a mind that "if it ain't broke..."

(one *small* frustration was that limited length reports would print
one less LineFeed
or something like that.)

Thanks. Wasn't sure and had lots of "ideas," but was frustrated with
having to
compare the values read from the table rather than just use them. Has
anbody
chosen to use a value for True ('T' or 'Y') and a blank value for
False? just curious.

or how about creating an array called "bool" that would take 'T' and
'Y' as indicies...

that's a tough one. I'm not sure I remember. What I do remember is
that, at the time,
I wasn't certain how to go about an Undo. ex. if the user hit 'Del'
and wanted to get
the info they deleted back. rem. this is an Accept textbox in a
ShowDialog.

I'm pretty sure I can use a similar technique of switching the
Eventlist to Idle after
capturing the text in the Accept before the 'Del' is executed.
Actually, the only need to
switch it to Idle was to check to see if there was a change in the
value. So, in this case,
I could save the "before" state into a var and then if the user hit
'Esc' for instance we could
roll back the text in the Accept.

The 2nd idea was to be able to check if nothing was selected, which
may now be redundant.
Then if nothing was deleted after the user hit 'Del' we can assume
that the cursor was at the
end of the text in the Accept. Then I run the code to move the text
at the subsequent
Accept boxes up. ex. picture 5 Accepts same length vertically
aligned. user goes to the
end of Line 1 and hits 'Del'. The result of which would look like:

(contents of Line 1)(contents of Line 2)
(contents of Line 3)
(contents of Line 4)
(contents of Line 5)
(blank)

basically, the different Accepts will be pre-filled with info input
before on another screen. This
screen will be for the formatting of the info. I'm trying to make it
so that the user doesn't have
to retype info again.

I was hoping there was interest or even something that could "speak"
PAL. As for DOS...
not quite dead here. May I add, DOS RULEZ. ;o)

We know that we are *NOT* using Paradox 4 to it's full power. Yet, it
has worked
for us for some time. Currently, we have 2 computers networked to be
able to use
3 (dot matrix) printers. One pc is the input computer, the other the
lookup computer.

It doesn't look like I've mentioned this, so I will insert it here...
We are a small
print shop printing for direct sales ppl. We manufacture a marketing
kit which
includes: labels, a mechanical stamp, and bus. cards.

Change would be rather huge as the program (PAL scripts) I've written
and maintain
also interface with a previous version that I didn't write. This
program feeds the
lookup database which is accessed via a compiled .exe. (From what
I've read this
is TurboPAL, yes?)

So, *everything* would need to be redone. Something we aren't sure we
are ready for,
let alone have a budget for.

Still, suggestions appreciated.

I'd like to thank you for your time and help, not just by replying to
this post, but for your help in these forums.

peace & 42

....ditto...

I've never experienced that fellow, and don't recall any mention of it...

"Blanks" are sometimes treated differently from all any non-blank
value... eg, in Queries, Calcs, etc... So, I'd recommend to avoid them,
and, in case a Blank appears (eg, after a crash), ensure it's clear what
it means (eg, if it ain't "Y", it's assumed to be "N"). Better still let
the cleanup scrips change all non-Ys to Ns.

Seems overly complicated to me...

The syntax of Pdox-Win is quite similar to PAL, but, obviously, the
overall approach and structure is quite different.

IIRC, TurboPAL had a very short and eventful life, and was never
completed, and got slated for bugs, etc. I recall trying it briefly, and
abandoning it very rapidly. I think this would be an extreme case of "If
it ain't broke...". However, if you do hit a show-stopper, you can still
revert to Runtime.

- Mike

agreed.. but your original statement was that runtime IS broken..


can't say that I know of that problem, but without specifics it would be
hard to guess..


can't be much simpler than what I suggested.. anything else would be more
complex and less "normal"..


you're tring too hard (g).. K.I.S.S..


again.. K.I.S.S.. if you want to cancel what's in the dialog, just cancel or
reset the dialog and start again.. that's the simple, "normal" programming
approach..


there's hardly any interest in PdoxWIN these days, let alone PdoxDOS..
you're about ten years too late..


to expand on what Michael said, TurboPAL was an experiment that was never
completed, and essentially failed.. honestly, you might the only one in the
world still using it..

even w/o that, you're not doing yourself any favors by holding onto the old
DOS stuff like that.. even Mike and I struggle to find the time to help
people these days.. if you get hit by a bus, who takes over?.. if Vista or
the next version won't run your app, will you stick with outdated hardware
and software til it all breaks down?


thank you.. but I hope you're realizing that I'm gonna tell you what you
need to hear, not what you want to hear.. you should re-think your future
before it's too late.. disaster WILL strike, sooner or later, and there's
nobody left to bail you out..


--
Steven Green - Waldorf Maryland USA

Diamond Software Group
http://www.diamondsg.com/main.htm
Paradox Support & Sales

Diamond Sports Gems
http://www.diamondsg.com/gemsmain.htm
Sports Memorabilia and Trading Cards

pdox42 wrote:

The free offerings have a lot of merit as do the commercial offerings, but
let's draw an important distinction: Paradox as you know is both a database
engine *and* a database application 4GL programming environment. MySQL,
Firebird, (and MSSQL, Oracle, PostgresSQL, etc) are all just database
engines. You can move the data and relationships, but your code (scripts,
forms, reports, libraries) would also have to be ported to some other
language to provide a user interface.

What you need to do is figure out the business functions your Paradox app(s)
provide. In 1992, rolling your own apps made sense. In 2007, you might be
able to get a pretty good foundation for most business apps on the Open
Source community, and at least make a start at replacing them.

But you want to get started on that now, because no matter how comfortable
you are with the status quo, at some point you'll probably have to move, and
this process can't happen overnight.

--
Larry DiGiovanni

I've decided to reply to messages individually, which may cause some
splintering of the thread and/or repetition. if it would be better to
have one encapsulated reply, pls let me know and how to do it (where
to click reply). TIA.

On Jul 7, 12:50 pm, Michael Kennedy <I... (AT) KennedySoftware (DOT) ie> wrote:

per my initial post, this is not important to us. we are just fine
running things thru pdox. pdox can be sent a script in the cmd line
just like pdoxrun so there's no real extra effort to launch our input
app.

but since we are here, i *think* it had to do w/ RangeOutput on a
"C" (continuous) report. There is a difference of 1 LF between pdox 4
and pdoxrun 4.5. i haven't gotten to Steve's site yet to check out
the file he mention, but hope to.. even if this isn't that important
as we're not using pdoxrun.

cleanup scripts? wow. interesting concept. lots to learn. ;o)
good info. thanks.

perhaps it is. perhaps it would create more opportunities for bugs,
*but* my thinking is that the data going into the table was an array
of boolean (True/False) values, but when I extract the data later and
use it, I no longer get to use it as a boolean value. So, again
*thinking* maybe there is a way to simulate it's original form.

If that made sense, what would / have you do(ne)?
Is it common to compare a var named "isbold" to a 1 char value of 'Y'
or 'N'? or would the data be read and then converted back into a
boolean value?

IOW everything would have to be rewritten. Also, from what everybody
is saying (has been saying), even pdoxWin is long in the tooth and no
longer supported. So, why change over to pdoxWin?

the app that may / may not have been compiled with TurboPAL is not
mine. I do not have TurboPAL and never really knew if it was used for
this app. All I really know is that there is this compiled program
(.exe) that accesses a paradox 4 table. that's about it. the speed
increase it must have given, back in the day of 486's, must have been
quite large. now we are running winXP on celerons. not "new"
computers to say the least, but much much faster than what the dev's
of pdox 4 could have imagined, i'd say. and also fast enough to make
my scripts look polished. ;o)

i'm going to push other comments into my other replies to keep some
things more clean, especially when there's more than one reply to the
same Q / thought.

peace & 42

as per the beginning of my reply to Mike, I have decided to reply to
posts individually. If this causes too much grief, pls tell me and
how to fix it for the rest of this discussion. thanks.

On Jul 7, 1:08 pm, "Steven Green" <gre... (AT) diamondsg (DOT) com> wrote:
touché.

what i *meant* to convey was where we were at and ended up stating a
problem early on that was no longer a problem as we've lived w/o it
(pdoxrun) for years and are fine w/o it. (even if i take my time,
which sometimes i do, and even try to edit my posts, i still don't
explain things correctly. go figure)


i gave more details in my reply to Mike. testing this would be
hard ... since we can't run pdoxrun. but, we do have a 486 still in
operation that *only* has DOS... so if anybody is interested, i could
test it out.

"normal"? are there any websites or whatehaveyou that go into more
detail about "normal" as it relates to database programming?

yes yes. this relates back to my lack of understanding about what
"normal" is (as it relates to db programming).

in *this* case, I'm going for all the bells and whistles dialog box.
why? because it simply makes more sense to me. now implementing such
a thing might be too much and there may be the eventual "lightbulb"
moment when i finally understand what you're saying, but i'm not there
yet.

i have considered a picklist of "templates" that would fill in the 5
textboxes (Accepts) and related booleans (FYI, they are for Bold and
Caps). the way the info is filled in would change on the format the
customer desired. if i can get back to work on this particular dialog
box and approach your suggestion would work much more easily as the
user could "cancel" and then return to the picklist and choose a
different "templated" format.

a big fault to ourselves is that we've allowed our customers a lot of
free range. it worked fine when there were only 2 phone numbers, but
now ppl may have a phone, fax, cell, 800#, email and website and want
all of them including their name AND address ... all on a label 5
lines max at 6 pt type.

tell me about it! ha! P still, thank Goodness for newsgroups, eh?

I'd be honored, but we're just using a compiled (.exe) app that access
a pdox 4 table. I don't have TurboPAL.

thought provoking. depending on perspective the answer can be a
resounding "YES."

of course, there are other perspectives.

as for the part about getting hit by a bus... OUCH! Do you watch
Lost? Have you seen Stranger than Fiction?

I am not the one to paint a clear picture as I'd think I was doing
just that, but skipping key points along the way. so i ramble and
throw in a thought here or there like: remember the 486 we still have
online? well, we use it for accounting. another DOS based app.
anyway, part of it got confused after 2000. hee hee. yes, we
suffered from the Y2K bug. ha ha. anyway, I wrote a PAL script to
make up for the missing functionality. btw, the accounting app uses a
version of dbase III for it's database.

that's why I'm here now!!!!

I'm going to refrain from further rambling in this post and continue
in my reply to Larry.

On Jul 9, 8:32 am, "Larry DiGiovanni" <nos... (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote:
what languages would you suggest / recommend? I'm aware of quite a
few, but only aware of them. I can rattle off acronyms, but honestly
it wouldn't prove much as I don't know them well enough to use them.

my schooling comprised of basic, pascal, C/C++, Visual Basic, Visual C+
+, and Java. BUT and I really must stress this, *only* on a very
basic and introductory level. IOW I may have taken only one class in
each of these languages and pretty much took the "introduction"
course.

That said, I find some code to be rather complicated to do what should
be seemingly simple tasks, especially in some of the above languages.

Enter PAL. It seems pretty powerful and its interaction w/ paradox is
wonderful.

What language exists today that is as easily implemented / easily read
(non cryptic syntax) that you'd recommend to be the replacement to
PAL?

"business functions"? I don't think our scritps / input program are
that formally structured. I'm assuming you mean things like "payroll"
and "accounts payable" or the like? If so, again, it's not that
structured. We do get a "Daily Journal" to see if we balance and we
also create a disk, sneaker net, to be taken to the DTP pc's.
bascially it's a bunch of text files w/ the info we input in DOS with
a bunch of QuarkXpress xpress tags to format it.

As stated before, I'm not the best writer and may *sound* differently
than I hope to. For example I may sound "stubborn" or "hard of
hearing" etc, but that is not necessarily true. Remember, I am
here!!! I am asking these questions.

As for Open Source... it is a very large "community." I know of
SourceForge, but wouldn't have a clue what to look for. If you have
suggestions, off the top of your head, or if you can be more specific
I can search based on that information. Thanks.

Again, why I'm here.

Still, I'd like to shed some light as to what's being considered to
keep things running... and also some *proof* that you all are so very
right.

- today (well, yesterday now) one DOS box hiccuped. -- This is yet
another. Total count is 4 computers running DOS apps. this pc does
our cc clearing via a modem at a low baud. it kept locking up halfway
thru the clearing. TMI. OK, this pc's role has been considered for
replacement, but "it works" and we aren't setup for online ordering,
yet. So, some things will eventually be replaced as we move fwd. --
Anyway, this very much alerted me to the frailty of the situation.
Backups and a method of restoring whatever goes offline need to be put
into place. asap.

- Over the weekend, I upgraded the video driver on our email pc (no
worries, this isn't a DOS box) and I didn't find out until today that
pdox4 doesn't fair too well now in full screen mode. It flashes quite
horribly. windows gets fixed, but DOS gets beat up. conspiracy i
tell you! I plan to look into this further, but haven't gotten around
to it. Still, this pdox setup is just for testing / programming and
it still works fine in window mode.

- I'm considering Linux, maybe Linux with a DOS emulator.
- perhaps FreeDOS
- even willing to dual boot a pc to have a FAT 16 partition for pdox
although not necessary as it has been working on the winXP boxes for
some time.
- we currently have and use 3 dot matrix printers. 1 for an internal
use label, 1 for a shipping label and the 3rd for our wide format
reports. we manufacture our own tractor fed labels in house.

Last thoughts (for this post), this is *not* the first time we have
tried to "move on." We have been thru a lot and going from 3+
dedicated input pc's - w/ dedicated input ppl to ONE pc is a kick in
the pants. (it could be argued that we are slightly better off now,
even w/o upgrading the db engine as we have 4 phone fields now instead
of 2 ...) Anyway, prior attempts to learn something new and move over
to it were less than successful. Thoughts of creating an intranet db
app, one easily duplicated and used on more than one pc over a LAN and
then taking that "app" and just slapping it on the internet were but a
dream.

Well, it's getting late and the speed at which the thoughts are coming
has slowed. So, again, I thank all of you for your efforts in helping
us and for your time!

g'nite, peace & 42

Thank you for that info. Maybe I've never hit that combo; maybe there's
a stray "space" in a report layout somewhere that's confusing Paradox
and/or the Printer...

I think the former.

But, for nicer reading of the PAL code, you could implement some tiny
functions:

If Is_Bold() Then...

Proc Is_Bold()
Return IIF(Upper(IsBold)="Y",True,False)
EndProc

I did not intend to recommend changing to PDoxWin - sorry...

The database engine used inside Paradox was available as a separate
product for developers. Many apps were written in C, Pascal, etc, using
that engine to access Paradox tables, and the app was delivered as an
EXE. Perhaps that's what you have...

In another message you mentioned an issue with Full-Screen. Recently,
someone suggested that TAME might help in this matter - www.TameDOS.com.
However, TAME is usually not beneficial in PDox apps, in my experience,
for Keyboard issues, Mouse issues, etc...

- Mike