Bob Z and the present and future of Clarion

by David Harms

On Friday morning Bob Z bookended the conference sessions with his Clarion roadmap first thing in the morning and a Q&A session at the end of the day. Since he touched on some of the morning topics in his afternoon session I've combined them into one report.

Bob’s morning topics included:

• Unicode
• 64 bit integers
• Touch support next phase
• H5
• PHP templates
• Possible GoFundMe projects

Unicode

There is a major upcoming RTL change (no ETA yet) for Unicode, and when it is complete all windows and controls will be created with the Unicode API. That means that all text is drawn with the new Unicode functions. 

In support of this functionality there's a new UString data type. The BString (Microsoft binary string) type, which has been present for some time now, is being legalized. 

Unicode support raises issues for TPS files. There are two options:

•  Modify the TPS file format to allow fields of UString type. New programs would be able to read old files without problems.
• Do not modify the TPS file format but use codepage name attributes to tell the program that the strings contain unicode values. Old programs would be able to read new files but of course would just use string fields as regular strings. In any case the string fields would need to be twice as long to support unicode values. 

Bob demonstrated a small Clarion program with unicode support using the Cla$ToUnicodeA function, which receives a string and an equate for the code page. The program showed some text in four different Unicode  code pages, in English, Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic.

The compiler however is currently only compiling ansi source not Unicode so in the demo the strings had to be coded individual characters.

Upcoming touch enhancements include functions to determine device screen compatibility, as well as recoding internal window classes so that the OS handles both the open and close of the on-screen keyboard properly. There have long been problems with the Windows code for keyboard management.

Themes – Bob referred to the still-missing template which will be posted soon. See http://clarionuix.github.io/Gen1/

The PHP templates are or have been enhanced with Bootstrap.

Diego says the long-promised H5 is only a few weeks away. 

Bob mentioned the T4 templates, and the T4 template engine that is part of the Clarion.NET product. SoftVelocity is considering making the T4 engine available outside of the APP context which raises a number of interesting possibilities for code generation.

The T4 templates, ASP.NET templates (Bootstrap enabled) and the WinForm templates will all go up on GitHub. 

Another possibility for GitHub is the ABC library files. Should SoftVelocity do this, and if so who would contribute? 

Funding enhancements is tricky - which resources should be allocated where? One possibility is to use a crowdfunding site like GoFundMe to raise the money needed. 

Initial projects could include:

• Bigger, wider template dialogs
• Remember just where I was in the IDE (lists of all kinds)

Mobile Product Announcement

Bob Z stated that H5, NetTalk and similar products are all stepping stones to true mobile apps. SoftVelocity is promising 100% web mobile apps using a full JavaScript stack with Apache Cordova, with generated code and modeled on the Clarion app methodology. Zero JavaScript knowledge is needed to build working data driven apps.

You will be able to put apps on the web or on IOS, Andorid, Windows Phone, Windows 8/10, Blackberry stores. 

The one overriding development principle is to make something simple to use it must actually be simple. 

There will be an official announcement on January 25, and a live generated app will be available for download on the apple App Store and the Google Play Store by Feb 25^th.

Does your vertical market need a mobile or tablet app? SV will partner with you at no risk to you.  

Q&A

My thanks to Mark Goldberg for passing along his notes, as I was somewhat occupied with microphone duties during the Q&A session.

Which (server-side) JS framework will the mobile solution use? It will be Node.js-based. 

What about Clarion.NET? An update release is coming soon. 

Will Unicode be all or nothing? Yes.

What is the status of the 56 bit compiler? This is tied into unicode, the path will never be a short one. There are other limitations, for instance the ISAM drivers (including DAT and TPS) will not make the trip to 64 bit. There is no time frame. 

What are the top three differences between PE and EE? The many included classes, such as JSON, communications etc; IDE improvements such as caching of ABC classes; handling circular references in multi-app solutions. SV is planning on moving to a single edition. 

Paul Epner, who gave an excellent presentation on succession planning, asked Z what his succession plan is? Z admitted he doesn't have one but is motivated to do so. 

Are there any plans to add exception handling? Or namespaces? No but send Z a proposal. 

Would SV consider using a commercial bug reporting system with the option to vote on issues? Possibly, send Z product suggestions. 

Will there be free educational licenses? There are, one was recently issued. 

Will the mobile solution tap into WinRT? No.

How are PTSS issues reviewed/triaged? Z suggested a return to something like TeamTopspeed could help. 

Will SV consider moving to a subscription model? Possibly. Somewhere around 50% show of hands in support. 

Will the mobile solution allow the use of custom JavaScript controls? Yes. 

There will be an email (since sent out) with discounts for conference attendees. 

Request for a PDF viewer. 

Can the training videos be updated? Z suggested an appeal to the community. 

Will there be Git integration for better team development? You can have this now with Rick Martin's toolkit (search ClarionShop for Upper Park). 

What's the long term view of Clarion.NET? Z commented on how Clarion.NET gives you 64 bit out of the box, but is missing the templates to drive it. He also mentioned freeing up the T4 generator so it could be invoked from the editor, could have access to the DCT.