xHarbour - what about after conversion?

[bs6600]

I've just discovered xHarbour - thanks to this forum. I'm a long term Clipper programmer and have some old apps to upgrade. Ihope that conversion will be easy.

Q1. Presumably it delivers a character based user interface (CUI)?

Q2. If so, how should I plan to develop that app to a GUI? (if I have to develop the Clipper source, it will always be a CUI)

If anyone has migrated and developed an app, I'd be glad to hear any experiences.

Thanks

 

[mspratt]

Hi,

Do you have FoxPro? I just finished several conversions from Clipper87 to xHarbour, but I used VFP8 to create the structural indexes. I am doing this because VFP and xHarbour utilize the same indexes and honor each others record/file locks.

Regards,

Mke

 

[bs6600]

Thanks Mike, I have VFP and have rewritten several FoxPro apps to get event driven. The cost of this for the Clipper ones scares me, let alone the client.

After more than 5 years of hoping, I am reconciled to accept that all the converters just give you a 32 bit version of the same program(cf FoxPro2.6 v FoxProDos); and the old language is a bad way of developing for Windows.
Since my apps all work fine in Clipper I don't really want to change.

Still, I can dream can't I?

 

[mspratt]

If your version is VFP8 I wrote a utility that does most of the conversion for you. You still will have to "tweak" it though.

My long term goal is to completely rewrite in VFP and Clipper87 and VFP are incompatible excepting the fact that if you leave all your tables free Clipper87 can still access them. You just have to convert anything that adds records to the table to xHarbour to avoid .cdx corruption.

One advantage of 32 bit apps is they run in their own memory space and don't take up DOS memory.

Regards,

Mike

 

[rob444]

bs6600,

perhaps you should have a look at

http://www.xharbour.com

where you can find a complete visual xharbour package.

Rob.

 

[bs6600]

Thanks for your replies. I downloaded the xharbour demo package and am working my way through all my Clipper code, changing the style and correcting some syntax differences. I haven't got to an .exe yet.

My concern is that if the source code remains the .prg which is limited to "@ x,y say ... get ... ...; Read" then the only advantage is a 32 bit app which doesn't need Dos memory. The app remains character based and sequential in execution like one big method (there's a word for that but it's gone, an age thing!).

Please tell me if I'm thinking the impossible in expecting to get objects, properties and methods.

 

[rob444]

bs6600,

You're not thinking the impossible in expecting get objects, properties and methods.
As I wrote in this thread before look at

http://www.xharbour.com

and have a look at the visual xharbour package which gives you what you want.

Rob.

 

[mspratt]

You might want to also check htt://

http://www.xharbour.org

for the free open source version. There also links to newsgroups there.

Regards

Mike