The Rebirth of Programming In The Spirit of Windows
by
Bruce Braunstein
Editor FoxMasters Magazine
1015 Gayley #288
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(800) 93-FOXPRO (310) 281-7533
FoxPro 2.5 for Windows is now here. It is a reality and it is one of those things that will take some getting used to. Switching from DOS to Windows is a greater paradigm shift than switching from CPM to DOS. But if you are used to programming in FoxPro 2.0 you are more than half way there. FoxPro for Windows extends the windowing built into that product into a true Graphical User Interface. While 2.5 will run your old code unchanged, you will most probably want to update it to take advantage of the new features of Windows.
I have just finished the technical editing for Jeb Long's book, which you have just purchased. Going through his book is one of the best ways I know of to get up to speed in FoxPro 2.5. This book differs from the others on the market in that it gives you a good insight into the language.
Jeb is one of the architects of the Xbase language and its predecessor JPLDIS. Because of his experience with the language he gives you the background to make the built in Power Tools work for you. Of course anyone can design screens with the Screen Builder, but unless you understand how that language that it generates works you will not be able to make it do anything useful.
The book includes a number of useful programs and much sample code. The main examples are from Jeb's book. These include a complete scientific calculator, a mortgage calculator, a stock market graphing program and much more. The main programs can be accessed through the main FoxMasters reader window. The smaller programs are all grouped together in the MISC sub directory.
As a FoxMasters bonus we are also including a shareware DLL for compressing text files. This will let you save greatly on disk space.
For your entertainment Tom Rombouts, who worked with Jeb and I at the Ashton Tate Development center, is including a FoxPro version of the classic computer game of Life. Also we are including Gerald Garcia's computer game POPTRIS, a FoxPro version of the Russian game of Falling Blocks.
Last, but not least, I am including a sample program that I wrote, that accesses the Windows API calls to tell you how much GDI memory you have left. GDI memory is that memory area in which Windows and user defined objects resides. In Win 3.1 it is limited to only 256K. That means that even you have 16MB of main memory, your GDI memory is only 256K and you can run out of memory and the built in FoxPro MEMORY() function will not give you a clue as to what is going on. The people I spoke with at Microsoft didn't have a clue as to how to tell how much GDI memory was left, but after much digging I was able to track it down. And I will pass this information on to you. Shortly we will be publishing a library of hundreds of API calls that you can access from FoxPro for Windows.
If you like what you see give us a call at (800) 93-FOXPRO.
We would like to hear from you. FoxMasters is published bi-monthly for a normal price of $179.00. Because you have purchased Jeb Long's book you may suscribe for only $99.95--if you pre-pay. Add $30.00 outside the USA. Add 8.5% in California. Satisfaction Guaranteed.
