Ken,
>First, Antonio, my intention was to see what FW was capable of; hence my interest in the demo. I finally produced a working executable but it would have been nice if FW provided a little more introductory info such as:...
Probably a good idea, but at this point I suspect there are very few people looking at the Demo. You are one of the last DOS holdouts.
>I would like to clarify whether it is possible to migrate to FW in stages, that is, use some screens as a text console while others as GUI? From the little I have learned so far, I would assume your answer to be no.
No, and I can't see why you would want to. Your users certainly wouldn't like it and you couldn't sell an application like that.
Windows programs have a whole different set of interface standards. An application that had mixed Windows and DOS interfaces would be a nightmare for users.
I will also make this point. My advice is not to try to make your Windows version of your DOS applications look and work like a DOS application. If don't do this and you have a current user base, they might complain for a few weeks, but that will end quickly.
If you do make a Windows app that works likes a DOS app you might not get as many complaints, but you just have a poorly designed Windows application that still needs to be reworked to use Windows interface design standards. It is much less work and easier for the users in the long run to redesign it to Windows standards while you are converting it to FW.
>I really can’t afford to purchase both xHarbour and FW at the moment.
I am guessing that you are not aware that the free version of xHarbour comes with FWH. So, you only have to purchase FWH. There is another version of xHarbour (that costs) that provides additional features, but many of us either don't need them or are unwilling to pay the price.
>It may be callous but I feel that a number of xHarbour functions are still in the development stage especially debug.
Such as? In my experience xHarbour is far more stable and advanced than Clipper. And it is 32bit which eliminates all kinds of memory problems that Clipper has.
>Also their documentation provides little info on most of xHarbour’s extended functions. There have been complaints regarding the documentation. While new documentation has just been released; who knows just how complete it is. One post asked about a GUI problem and the response was to use GTGUI, a non supported library that needed to be created instead of the supported GTWIN. I do not feel like paying for a package that is still in beta.
As I said, xHarbour is free and just because it is called "beta" doesn't mean that it is not as stable as Clipper. Poor documentation is always an issue with any language, but you have an excellent support system in the newsgroups.
>At least FW has been around for many years and they have concentrated primarily on GUI. As a result, I would hope the documentation is detailed and the change from text console to GUI would be smooth.
Again you can always turn to the newgroup for questions not answered in the documentation.
>Gilbert, to respond your comments. I was quite happy using the basic Clipper 5.3. Only within the past year did I add-on PageScript for Clipper.
Hmm. You were quite happy, but what about your users? As programmers it is our job (generally) to make users happy, not ourselves.
>Prior to that I could run the app in either DOS or Windows; but now only Windows. I compile using Blinker 1.0 that came with 5.3 and the resulting executables works with all flavours of Windows OS’s (at least Win 95 and up) without any problems. I found that as my files got larger I had to resort to moving more code to the overlay. I tried Exospace by I had problems especially when using debug so I just stuck with Blinker.
How many DOS or Win 95 machines are there still? Not a market I would be going after.
No more EXE size limits nor memory problems with 32bit.
>With the introduction of Vista next year, Microsoft will finally say good bye to the 16 bit apps and including DOS. It is for this reason that I am moving now while I have time to learn, experiment and perfect. I would not want to miss a potential sale by not being able to run on Vista.
May I ask what type of application you are producing. I can think of very few, such as cash-register apps, that would not be much easier to sell with a Windows interface.
>Fortunately, I have ported to xHarbour with few problems so you could say I am now Vista ready. The existing xHarbour Achoice and Tbrowse functions did have bugs but were quickly fixed although they not yet part of the Open Source or commercial libraries. I assume FW has replacements for these functions.
Yes, you won't be using either achoice or tbrowse under FWH.
It sounds like you are still using Clipper + FW. I would agree with James that it is better to move sooner rather than later, that is unless you are under a time constraint.
I would say all the more reason to go directly to 32bit when one is under a time constraint. I can't tell you how many hours I spent trying to solve memory issues with FW/Clipper. Then there are printer driver issues too. And long filename issues, and...
>My situation is more dramatic in that I must move all my displays from a text console mode to Windows. On the other hand since I currently do not have FW, it was easier, and cheaper, to port to xHarbour.
I highly recommend that you get a copy of Alan Cooper's book, "About Face 2.0, The Essentials of Interaction Design." There is no better book on Windows interface design, and I consider it to be the most valuable computer book I own. You really need to read this BEFORE you start any conversion. You can find details about it on my website.
There are also several articles I wrote about FW there. There is one, "Introduction to FW" that will be most useful to you at this point.
Find them here:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage ... rogram.htm
Regards,
James
