Bob Zaunere talks about Clarion 10 features on ClarionLive

Owned by David Harms
Last updated: Jan 11, 2015
3 min read

The planned release of the first Clarion 10 beta is Monday, January 12 2015. That release will go out to third party providers so they can rebuild libraries; the wider release may (or may not) go out at the same time. It will go out to everyone with an active CSP. 

You can view the webinar here. Note that there are no screen shots or demos of Clarion 10 in the video. 

New features include:

  • DateTime pictures (in part thanks to a writeup Bruce did on all the ways users wanted to display datetimes). These pictures use metasymbols that let you define your own picture types. 
  • A new scanner for the compiler. This has been used internally for over a year. Features include nested omit/compile blocks (up to eight), and using the code page settings for symbols, allowing native language identifiers. 
  • A new implementation of status bars.
  • Faster project system, and the ability to copy files right after the source file is compiled.
  • Support for Amazon S3 cloud storage. There will be templates for this as well. You could use this for automatic data backups, program updates, 
  • Language extension templates for email and SMS. 
  • Support for web requests (e.g. REST) using HTTP or HTTPS. There are two function calls, one to write the response to a buffer, the other to return the response to a file. 
  • Updated TCP/IP sockets library, which lets your program run as a client or server or both. You can use socket communication for all kinds of communication apps such as notification, chat etc. 
  • A new exception log viewer. If you load the crash file into the viewer the IDE will load up the map files and let you go directly to the offending source. If loading a crash report from a customer you will of course want to have the map and source files for that release on hand so you get accurate information. Version control is your friend! There was a question as to whether rebasing would affect the result, and Bob did not think it would. 
  • Replace functionality in the dictionary. Use with caution, and always do the search first so you know what you're changing.
  • ClarionCL (the command line interface) now uses custom redirection files if present. 
  • MS SQL driver gets SCOPE_IDENTITY support (which is generally a better choice than @@IDENTITY)
  • Find All in the text editor is now a background task.
  • Option to turn off wrap to top option in search. 
  • A new implementation of the report and window structures will come later (10.1?), along with 64 bit integers and unicode strings. 
  • The alpha will also not have a complete H5 implementation. 
  • RTL changes have been made to support a new class that implements image buttons. You create versions of the button image (in any size) for each of the supported button states, e.g. one for enabled and one for disabled.
  • There will not be an HTML control, at least not initially. The most likely way to do this is to use IE, but that introduces an IE dependency. 
  • Not C10-specific, but a major update to the SV web site is coming. 
  • Work is being done on the debug info that is generated, so that eventually you can use other debuggers (e.g. Visual Studio debugger) with your Clarion apps. 
  • An early form of H5 may show up in January/February.

There was some discussion of 64 bit compiler support. That is a huge project, and steps have been made toward that end. But it is not an urgent priority issue as even Microsoft recommends running the 32 bit versions of Office for most purposes. 

There were also a number of requests for changes and improvements in the webinar, but those aren't announced for C10 I haven't included them here. 

Bob talked a bit about his interest in hybrid web apps, which are run through a WebView control. There's some background work being done in that direction. 

Friedrich Linder will have C10 support in SetupBuilder within 12 hours of release.