[News] Today and Tomorrow

Today it was swapping hard drives; sharing receipt printer; finding, downloading, and failing to get working the old touch-screen software; telling all the other machines to use LPT6 when running the POS application, but making sure that the POS machine itself still uses LPT1 (using Clipper 5.3); and getting the floppy drive to work in the SERVER.

Today I celebrated by 45th birthday. One of the gifts I received was a PLUG membership. Eventually the ancient source codes promised but never delivered on Code-a-holic will find their way there.

Tomorrow is the first day (of about 1.5 weeks) at Home Open working on the help desk. More news, and code, as it comes to hand.

[Pharmacy Software]

One of my clients has suggested I write pharmacy software. He has a home-grown Clipper app that does everything from Dispensing to Cash Register. I give him a hand with it from time to time. He reckons there's a market for a low-cost package which would fit the Western Australian situation better than the off-the-shelf ones now available.

So comes then the ever-present question: Closed Source, or Open Source.

No knowing a lot about how Open Source works as an income generator, I fear that there is the risk that my non-Open Source competitors may steal my ideas and woo my customers away because they have the resources to bring them (the ideas, not the customers) to the market faster than I can. Is that a valid concern?

Closed Source isn't without its problems either.

And then comes the other questions: programming language / IDE / RAD. I wonder if anyone's come up with a template for software projects in the style of Word / Excel / PowerPoint templates.

[EOC] End of Contract

I've got one more week and then I'm unemployed again.

I feel down. I wish there was something "cutting edge" I could do. Everything I can think of is diametrically opposed to the cutting edge, being either the blunt bit at the back of the knife or the even blunter bit on top of the chisel handle.

Who cares about MetaCard? Who cares about S*BOL but a few diehard fanatics (who are mostly older and greyer than me)? Who cares about Clipper or xHarbour but a few South Americans into retro memorabilia? As for VBScript, this is just one of thousands of websites and I'm a relative newcomer to a tool that's been around for very long time.

Eventually I'll have posted all my MoonRock BASIC, Fitted Software Tools Modula-2, Turbo Pascal 5 and Euphoria code. Whooptie do. Even if I finish my CCNA, learn Haskell, and write Kiwi CatTools equivalents ... who cares?

[Clipper 5.3 / xHarbour] .DBF to .CH (Clipper Header)

The client had Clipper 5.3. I had xHarbour. The client had a database of constants. I turned them into a .ch (Clipper Header) file with this bit of code which compiled both under xHarbour and Clipper 5.

procedure main()
        local cFName, vFValue
        local cCValue, cCName
        local nMax, i
        local h
        local cType
        local CRLF := CHR(13)+CHR(10)
        local cLine

        h := FCREATE( "./dispense.ch", 0 )
        ? h
        use numbers alias num
        goto 1
        nMax := FCOUNT()
        for i = 1 to nMax
                cFName := FIELDNAME( i )
                *? cFName
                cCName := "CONST_" + cFName
                vFValue := &cFName
                cType := VALTYPE(vFValue)
                *? cType
                DO CASE 
                        CASE cType == "C"
                                cCValue := '"' + vFValue + '"'
                        CASE cType == "N"
                                cCValue := STR( vFValue )
                        CASE cType == "D"
                                cCValue := DTOC( vFValue )
                        CASE cType == "L"
                                cCValue := IIF( vFValue, ".T.", ".F." )
                        OTHERWISE
                                ? "Don't know what to do with a cType of " + cType
                                QUIT
                END CASE
                cLine := "#define " + cCName + " " + cCValue + CRLF 
                ? cLine
                FWRITE( h, cLine )
                

        next
        FCLOSE( h )
        CLOSE DATABASES
        QUIT