Our March 2003 GRAFUG Meeting went very well and we really appreciated our guest speaker, Rick Schummer, who came from Detroit.
Beginner’s Jumpstart
The Beginner’s Jumpstart has really fizzled out and not much interest has been shown by GRAFUG attendees. Therefore, we are going to discontinue the jumpstart portion of our meeting. If you REALLY want us to continue this and have specific topics you’d like covered, please send me a private email. I’d be happy to show up early and help anyone that is interested, but I’m not going to keep showing up early if nobody else is!!
Regular Meeting
- Thanks to Bill Winters for bringing the donuts!!
- Rick Schummer graciously gave away a copy of his new Hentzenwerke book, “Mega Fox”. The winner of the drawing was Martha Kroll. However, she probably doesn’t know it yet because she left the meeting early!!
1st Main Presentation “Creating and Using Real World Builders – Made Easy” by Rick Schummer
Rick told us about the builders that are included in VFP as well as how to create our own builders and tie them into VFP. It was an awesome session and I saw a lot of people have “that look” in their eyes as they started to think of all the ways builders will help them become more efficient and keep their applications consistent, especially in a team environment.
Rick will be presenting this session at Essential Fox in April and I encourage everyone to see this session if you get the chance. As Rick told us, it takes a lot to get your head around the whole builder concept so you need to see the session and read the white paper more than once before it all sinks in.
Rick gave us a list of resources to help research this topic some more. They are as follows:
www.g2tools.com – A Geeks and Gurus website
www.stonefield.com – A whitepaper by Doug Hennig
www.hentzenwerke.com – The “Hacker’s Guide to VFP 7”
2nd Main Presentation “Fishing with a Project Hook” by Rick Schummer
Project Hooks can make your life easier by easing repetitive tasks.
Hacking the project (PJX)
-
VFP has documentation (even though it’s called
6.0)
-
It has a “user” column that you can use for
anything you want
Project Hook Class
- immediately instantiated when open a project
Once you hook up the class to the project .. close the project and reopen it.
If you delete the class while it’s still assigned to a project .. the project won’t open anymore. You can however, MODI PROJ xxx NOPROJECTHOOK, to get around it and then change the project.
What to do with a PH
-
Change the default directory
-
Adjust the customized path
-
Field mapping utility
-
Cleaning out hardcode printer information in
reports
-
Project Audit
-
File backup capability (create “BAK” files
for some of the ones that don’t automatically do it)
-
Displaying compiler/build messages where you
want them
-
Instantiating toolbar or menu with project tools
-
Copy build EXE/APP/DLL to a test directory
-
Integrate with source control
-
Bounce windows services like IIS (so you can
build com objects)
-
Email status of builds to team and customers
Project Objects and File Objects
COM access to the VFP Project File
_VFP.ActiveProject
_VFP.Projects[1]
Project Object PEMs
_VFP.ActiveProject.Files[1]
File Object PEMs
Project/File Object Usage
-
Basic application wizard
-
Create a project file
-
Add/delete files from project file
-
Build a project file
-
Process report files
-
Set file descriptions
My notes really don’t do this session justice, but again, you can see this session at Essential Fox in April.
Miscellaneous tools
Rick showed us some tools that are available from Geeks and Gurus (www.geeksandgurus.com). Some are free and some are for purchase.
-
HackForm (free)
-
HackCX Pro ($50)
-
ViewEditor (earlier version is free)
-
ViewEditor ($75)
-
Both HackCX
and ViewEditor -- $100
April Meeting
The April meeting is scheduled for April 12, 2003. Unless we hear otherwise, there will not be a Beginner’s Jumpstart session. The regular meeting will begin at 10:00 and end at 12:00 (or somewhere around that time.) Cathy Pountney will be giving a practice run of her “Hidden Secrets of the VFP IDE” session that she will be presenting at several upcoming conferences.
Session Description: FoxPro has always had several different ways to do the same thing. How many times have you looked over the shoulder of another developer and said, "Hey! How did you do that?" This session will uncover many ways to work within the IDE, especially those that aren't so obvious or aren't documented. You'll learn several different ways to improve your productivity. Even experienced developers are bound to learn something new in this session.
Final Words
Speaking of conferences, there are several VFP conferences planned for 2003. I urge you to plan to attend at least one of these conferences. The information you learn in the sessions, as well as the social conversations that happen outside of the sessions, can be a tremendous asset to you!!
Essential Fox, Kansas City, MO, April 25-28, www.essentialfox.com
DevTeach, Montreal, Canada, May 10-13, www.devteach.com
Advisor DevCon, Palm Springs, CA, June 15-18, http://advisorevents.com/event/CMX0306
Great Lakes Great Database Workshop (aka WhilFest), Milwaukee, WI, October 11-15, http://www.hentzenwerke.com/glgdw/zglgdw.htm
As usual .. if you have any topics you’d like to see presented .. or better yet, want to present a topic … just send me an email and let me know!!
FOX ROCKS!!
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Cathy Pountney
GRAFUG Secretary
http://www.grafug.com
http://www.foxcentral.net