How to run Clipper Application [closed] - clipper

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I have a legacy code base written in CLIPPER. I don't have any idea of CLIPPER programming language.
How do I get started with it and deploy this application? Is it a scripting language OR some sort of OOPS language any study reference will be helpful
Thanks in Advance
Kaushik

Clipper is 16-bit compiler for character-based (not GUI) applications running on MS-DOS platform. There are, however, 3rd-party tools that will allow to produce 16-bit Windows GUI applications.
It's still owned by Computer Associates but all future development and support was delegated to GrafX long time ago.
The last released version was 5.3 but many developers stayed with 5.2e. The last update was around Y2K.
There are Harbour and xHarbour open source projects that developed their own compilers for this language (which in the beginning was similar to dBase III).
You can find information about the language and some 3-rd party libs in a Clipper section of this web-site.
Native Clipper compiles all its code into a single executable that runs on user desktops. Its data and index files are usually placed on a network share. Executable itself can also be placed on a share with user desktops having a short-cut to it.
Native Clipper applications (16-bit) will not run under 64-bit Windows. There are emulators (like DosBox) that allow to overcome such limitation.
Clipper related questions can be asked on comp.lang.clipper newsgroup.
If you have more questions add them as comments here.

Another good resource is Norton Guides for Windows, you can download it from a great site with lot of information about Clipper:
Download NGW from www.the-oasis.net.
I was unable to find the .NG files on that site, but you can see them online here if you want or try to found the files googling them.

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Is it possible to install a openvms image (iso) on VirtualBox? [closed]

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Whanted to get a openvms dev enviroment, where could use it to learn the basic command's to get feel for it without worrying about breaking anything.
So whanted to know if its possible to install a openvms iso image in Virtual Box
In case its possible where could get a openvms image or needed first to get installation cds and from those generate the iso?
if the cds are needed is there some online store that can be bought or the price is only afordable for companies?
only making inqueries to see if its possible and feasible, other wise gona give up the ideia of having a development enviroment.
Well what do you know so far, and what do you have so far?
Do you know that OpenVMS has a 40+ year history, was originally written for the (32 bit) VAX platform, ported to 64-bit Alpha (30+ years ago), then ported to Itanium and X86 (64 bit).
That X86 port will boot natively and you may want to ue VMware, Virtualbox or similar - within the current constraints and offeringg - visit vmssoftware.com for details.
For initial learning I recommend to just to use an Alpha or VAX emulator.
Those could run on a virtual machine, but there is no good reason.
Just run as process on whatever laptop/server your have running Windows (and some Linux options I think).
There are are several emulators out there, both free and commercial - google is your friend.
I happen to like/use FreeAXP for Alpha running under 64 bit windows - just Google.
There is no Itanium emulator.
Do you have access to the software distribution somehow?
For starters, why even bother trying to get your own system?
Just timeshare to get a feel for it.
For example SSH to decuserve.org [184.168.131.241 - ooops: 104.207.199.162 ] - ask for an account - presto!
Other timeshare options are available - and very valid to learn the basics (file system, editors, compilers,...)
Good luck!
Hein.

Does Anyone Use FileMaker Pro to Build iPhone Apps? [closed]

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My company has an app built using FileMaker Pro, and it is not a great app. It's not user friendly and it is hard to use. It also doesn't do everything that we need it to do. I don't know anything about Filemaker Pro, but it seems like it's an older system. Most people building iPhone apps are coding in objective C and swift right?
Does anyone have any input on Filemaker Pro? Anything you share would help. Is it old? Does it have a lot of limitations? Is it popular to use when building apps? Does anyone still use it or are most apps built in Objective C and Swift with a text editor?
Thanks for the input!
Your question is really off-topic for StackOverflow, but I will provide a couple of pointers:
FileMaker is not old - it's very current.
FileMaker is not a tool for building iOS apps. FileMaker is a tool (or set of tools) for developing and deploying cross-platform database solutions. One of these tools is FileMaker Go - an iOS app that will run a solution developed in FileMaker. This appears to the user as a native iOS app.
If the solution does not fit your needs, the fault is more likely to lie with the developer than with the platform.
If you're not running FileMaker as part of your business, then FileMaker Go is probably not the best choice for you.

How to manage community documentation of open source software [closed]

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Can anyone give advice, or point to any guides, on how to manage a community of open source software developers in writing api documentation?
A typical, unmanaged, starting point for most projects is to have a project wiki where anyone can freely create pages, add content to existing pages, edit existing content etc. The problem is that, despite people's best intentions, the wiki can easily end up being a disorganised, poorly written, incomplete, written in disparate voices etc etc.
So, what to do to improve the quality of the documentation?
I suspect a key ingredient is clear editorial/style guidelines, something similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Encyclopedic_style#Information_style_and_tone. Can anyone point to an example of such a guide tailored specifically to software apis?
Are there any other practices that people have found useful? E.g. form a core team of editors and accept that most documentation that gets added by the community will most likely need to be 'strongly edited'?
The short answer, that the solution is social/human and not technical. The way to get good documentation for any project is to have someone with time, in charge of doing high level organization for the documentation, and then being involved in the development and user communities to ensure that the documentation remains up to date and continues to address the problems and confusions that users typically have.
Community projects have accepted that you need point people (i.e. "managers," for aspects of the project like "translation," and "release," and for various components. The same thing needs to happen for documentation.
As for tools, Sphinx is really great though it's not "wiki like," exactly you can use whatever version control system your project is comfortable with to store documentation and configure your web server to rebuild the documentation following commits/updates/pushes. Which has always worked just fine for any project I've worked on/with.

history of programming in ... DOS times (not console) [closed]

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first of all - thank you in advance for all answers.
Second - I'm not asking about writing console programs working on modern systems (like Ubuntu 11.10 or Windows 7) nor batch files.
Third - I'm not going to become DOS 6.22 nor Windows 3.1 programs developer. Maybe I will write small program only for educational purpose.
I am wondering how programmers works on early (I refer to 70's, 80's and begining of 90's) days of computer. On wikipedia there's many information about, let's caled it "ancient times", but there's not enough about "middle ages" (I'm referring to 70-90's) in programming definition. Although in DOS times programs higly depends on used machines (because they directly call hardware IRQ), I can't believe that there wasn't something like today Integrated Development Environment and that some of them were written in high level programming language. Is it possible that Prehistoric 2 has been written in Assembly? I don't think so, but I assume that early versions of BASIC can't receive such possibility.
Could you recommend any good article or source of information? I'm interested both MS (DOS, Windows 16-bit) and Unix platforms.
See also Borland Turbo C++ and Borland C++, commonly used in the early 90s.
If memory serves, Commander Keen was built using Borland tools. It's probable that other same-era Apogee/id games (like the original 2D Duke Nukem) were built under Borland as well.
Later on (early-to-mid 90s), id Software started using Watcom and the DOS/4GW DOS extender to build games like the original DOOM.
I was working in that period on Windows 16-bit and DOS (also DEC VAX and Alpha).
Mostly I used Turbo Pascal and Delphi 1 both of which provided IDE's. This was in the early 90's

Looking for a skeleton application for a native macosx application (w/ installer script, notify icon, user preferences) [closed]

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I have a relatively simple application which I need to make native Mac OSX version of. I find it's easiest to learn from examples and I have never setup/developed/packaged a product on Mac yet. So, I was hoping to start from a project which has basic packaging scripts and includes as many components listed below as possible:
Installer build script which installs the program and makes the program run on startup.
Notify Icon (or whatever the Mac equivalent of a System Tray Icon is called) w/ a context menu
User Preference Storage (.Net equivalent of Settings files)
Anyone know of a say an open source project with those characteristics?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're out of luck. In the few years I've been surfing the web for Cocoa-related stuff, I've rarely come across skeleton applications. Lots of sample projects, but not skeletons.
For your three requirements, you've happened to list them in order from most difficult to least.
Installer build script - running on login happens one of a couple ways. Either the application can be added to the user's Login Items or you can load a launchctl script to run the application as a LaunchAgent. The first option would be much simpler and the 'proper' way to do it.
That's called an NSStatusItem, and examples abound on the internet.
There's a handy class called NSUserDefaults that's used for saving application settings. You can easily set and read objects into this hash-table-like object, and it will handle saving them to disk for you.
Typical Mac applications don't use an installer. You distribute them on a DMG (disk image) or in a zip, the user (or the browser) mounts the DMG or unpacks the zip and the user copies the application to their Applications folder.