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README
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1993-05-26
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Welcome to the dBASE IV Productivity Pack(R)
for dBASE IV version 2.0
Copyright (c) 1993 Borland International, Inc.
Borland(R) grants you permission to use, modify, reproduce and
distribute this dBASE IV Productivity Pack as a part of programs
or applications you write, without additional license or fees,
subject to the following conditions:
* All copies of your program or application must bear a valid
copyright notice. By "copyright notice," we mean either your
own copyright notice or the Borland copyright notice shown
above.
* Borland provides no warranties or guarantees with respect to
the dBASE IV Productivity Pack. Borland provides this software as
is.
* You will remain solely responsible to anyone receiving the
program or application for any support, service, upgrades or
technical or other assistance, and such recipients will have no
right to contact Borland for such services or assistance. You
will indemnify and hold Borland harmless from and against any
claims or liabilities arising out of the use, reproduction or
distribution of the Dialog Box builder.
* Your program or application may not merely be the Dialog Box
Builder itself or a competitive product.
All Rights Reserved. All Borland products are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Borland International, Inc. Other brand and
product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders.
This file contains important information about the dBASE IV Productivity
Pack, including installation and getting it started.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
-----------------
1. Communicating with Borland
2. Minimum System Requirements
3. Installation
4. Getting Started
5. The On-Line Help System and Documentation
6. dBEdit - A Modify Command Alternative
7. BDCDrive - A Front-end to the dBASE Compiler
1. COMMUNICATING WITH BORLAND
If you have any questions or wish to share ideas with us at Borland,
you can use the Template section 7 on the Borland dBASE Forum on
CompuServe. If updates becomes available we will post them on the
Template section. If you do not have access to CompuServe, you may
send your comments to:
Bill Ramos
Senior Engineer, dBASE for DOS Development
Borland International Inc.
1800 Green Hills Road
Scotts Valley, CA, 95067
or
MCI Mail: BRAMOS
CIS: 72110,2563
Please do not call Borland Technical Support.
The dBASE IV Productivity Pack is also available to members of the dBASE
Developer Partners Program at no additional charge. For more information
regarding this program, please call 1-800-331-0877.
As an experienced developer you can study the code in the programs
and templates and learn how to add new power to your programs. We
encourage you to use this tool and to try enhancing it yourself. As
you create innovative new design tools and features, let us know, we
may want to publish your work next!
2. MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
The following are the minimum system requirements for Dialog Box
Builder:
* dBASE IV(R) version 2.0 installed
* 3 MB of Free Extended Memory (for reasonable performance)
* BDCDrive.EXE requires 500k of available low DOS memory
3. INSTALLATION
To install dBASE IV Productivity Pack, do the following:
* Insert Disk 1 of 1 into your 3.5-inch disk drive
* Type in the letter of the drive followed by a colon. For example,
If your 3.5-inch disk drive is your A: drive, type:
A:
followed by the Enter key.
* Type in the following DOS command:
DBASE INSTALL
This command assumes that dBASE IV version 2.0 is in your DOS path.
Please review this README. file after the installation is complete.
The installation program does the following:
* Creates DBB.BAT and CONFIG.DBB in your dBASE home directory.
* Copies DBBDSGN.DBO, DBBLIB.DBO, DBEDIT.EXE, and SCR2DBF.GEN into
your dBASE directory. If also copies the DBBHELP.* help system
files and the DLGHELP.* empty help files into your dBASE directory.
* Copies BDCDrive.EXE and its BDCDRIVE.* help files into your dBASE
directory.
* Copies the sample files into a subdirectory named DB4PPSAM off
of your dBASE home directory.
* Copies the source files into a subdirectory named DB4PPSRC off
of your dBASE home directory. You will also find
DBB.MAK used to create DBBDSGN.DBO, DBBLIB.DBO, and SCR2DBF.GEN.
This allows you to use the MAKE.EXE program that comes with the
dBASE Compiler or other Borland language products to make your own
enhancements to dBASE IV Productivity Pack.
4. GETTING STARTED
To test drive the Dialog Box Builder portion of the dBASE IV Productivity
Pack, do the following:
* Go to the DB4PPSAM directory under your dBASE home directory. For
example, if your dBASE is installed at C:\DBASE, type:
CD \DBASE\DB4PPSAM
* Start dBASE using the DBB.BAT file by typing:
DBB
* To run the TVDIAL dialog box sample, select the TVDIAL item from
the Forms Panel. Press the Escape key to exit the dialog box.
* To review the layout for the TVDIAL dialog box, highlight the
TVDIAL item in the Forms Panel and press Shift-F2 Design.
The Dialog Box Builder is hooked into dBASE using the Open Architecture
of the Control Center feature. This means that you access the design
features using the "Invoke layout program" menu item from the
"Layout" menu in the Control Center Forms Designer. There is also a
dialog box to control code generation off of the "Open custom
utility" menu item from the "Catalog" menu.
5. THE ON-LINE HELP SYSTEM AND DOCUMENTATION
The documentation for dBASE IV Productivity Pack is contained in its help
system data files. This file is named DBBHELP.DBF. Dialog Box
Builder comes with a report form named DBBHELP.FRM. You can use this
report form to print out the help system. To print the help file
from the DOT prompt, type in the following commands while in your
dBASE home directory.
* USE DBBHelp ORDER File_Name
* REPORT FORM DBBHelp TO PRINTER
To see the help system in action, do the following steps starting at
the DOT prompt:
* Press F2 for ASSIST
* Press Alt-C O to open custom utility. This brings up the
dBASE IV Productivity Pack's options dialog.
* Press F1 for Help on the Developer mode check box item.
* After reading the help frame, press C for the Contents. This
displays the items that you can receive help on for this dialog
box.
* Press Ctrl-PgUp for the global table of contents. This
provides you a table of contents for all the help in Dialog Box
Builder. Stay in the main menu for now.
* Type in the work "Common", this will take you to the Common
Questions help topic. Press the Enter key to select this
category. Go ahead and browse through the various help
categories and topic. When finished, press the Escape key.
6. DBEDIT - A MODIFY COMMAND ALTERNATIVE
dBEdit.EXE is text file editor created using Borland's C++ and Turbo
Vision. dBEdit allows you to edit multiple files at one time. What
makes dBEdit interesting is that it uses the active screen as its
background and can start-up within specified window coordinates. After
installation, dBEdit.exe is placed in your dBASE home directory.
This way, it will be available, assuming you have dBASE in your DOS
path.
The following is the list of supported keyboard commands:
Command Main Keystroke Alternate
----------------------------- ------------------- ---------
Cursor movement commands
Character left LeftArrow Ctrl+S
Character right RightArrow Ctrl+D
Word left Ctrl+LeftArrow Ctrl+A
Word right Ctrl+RightArrow Ctrl+F
Line up UpArrow Ctrl+E
Line down DownArrow Ctrl+X
Page up PgUp Ctrl+R
Page down PgDn Ctrl+C
Beginning of line Home
End of line End
Top of file Ctrl+PgUp
Bottom of file Ctrl+PgDn
Insert and delete commands
Delete character Del
Delete character to left Backspace
Delete line Ctrl+Y
Delete to end of line Ctrl+Q Y
Delete word Ctrl+T
Insert mode on/off Ins
Block commands
Set beginning of block Ctrl+K B
Delete block Ctrl+K Y
Copy block Ctrl+K I
Copy to Clopboard Ctrl+Ins
Cut to Clipboard Shift+Del
Delete block Ctrl+Del Ctrl+K K
Paste from Clipboard Shift+Ins
Extending selected blocks
Left one character Shift+LeftArrow
Right one character Shift+RightArrow
End of line Shift+End
Beginning of line Shift+Home
Same column on next line Shift+DownArrow
Same column on previous line Shift+UpArrow
One page down Shift+PgDn
One page up Shift+PgUp
Left one word Shift+Ctrl+LeftArrow
Right one word Shift+Ctrl+RightArrow
End of file Shift+Ctrl+End
Beginning of file Shift+Ctrl+Home
Block Commands
A block of text is any amount of text, from a single character to
hundreds of lines, that is selected on your screen. There can be
only one block in a window at a time. Select a block with your mouse
or by holding down Shift while moving your cursor to the end of the
block with the arrow keys.
When you choose Edit|Copy or press Ctrl+Ins, the selected block is
copied to the Clipboard. When you choose Edit|Paste or Shift+Ins,
the block help in the Clipboard is inserted at the current cursor
position. The selected text remains unchanged and is no longer
selected.
If you choose Edit|Cut or press Shift+Del, the selected block is
moved from its original position and held in the Clipboard. It is
pasted at the current cursor position when you choose the Paste
command.
Other Editing Commands
Options|AutoIndent toggles the automatic indenting of successive lines.
File|Open allows you to open an existing file for editing. dBEdit uses
the file extension of the file you started it with as the default file
extension.
Exiting the dBEdit
Alt-X terminates the edit session and returns you to the calling program.
dBEdit will also exit when you have closed all the active windows by
clicking on the window's close icon or by pressing Alt+F3.
dBEdit.EXE takes two parameters. The first is a set of four values
that represent window coordinates. The second is the name of the
file to edit. If you do not specify the window coordinates, the
editor will show a full size window. If you do not specify a file
name, the editor will use the name NONAME.PRG as a default. For
example, in config.db, you can specify an editor to use for MODIFY
COMMAND with the TEDIT option. Try adding this line to your
config.db file:
TEDIT = DBEDIT 5 5 19 75
The next time that you start-up dBASE and issue the command, MODIFY
COMMAND, dBEdit will bring up your program file in a window.
dBEdit can support file sizes up to 64k.
7. BDCDRIVE - A FRONT-END TO THE DBASE COMPILER
BDCDrive.exe is a dBASE compiled program that you can use as a front-end
to the compiler. The user interface for BDCDrive was created with the
Dialog Box Builder. The following files are installed in the DB4PPSAM
directory:
BDCDrive.PRG - Main program
BDCOpt.SCR
BDCOpt.PRG - Generated from BDCOpt.SCR
BDCLink.SCR
BDCLink.PRG - Generated from BDCLink.SCR
BDLDrvr.PRG - Driver program for BDCLink
BDCEdit.PRG - UDF to call file editor
BDCFill.PRG - UDF to update dialog box after editing .CFG file
BDCOk.PRG - UDF to validate dialog box entries after selecting Ok
textdbf.bin - Actually a .dbf file, see BDCEdit.prg
textdbt.bin - Actually a .dbt file, see BDCEdit.prg
BDCDrive.lst - A dBASE Compiler .lst file for compiling and linking
BDCDrive. This file assumes that DBBLIB.DBO is in
the parent directory of DB4PPSAM.
The following files are placed in your dBASE home directory:
BDCDrive.EXE - Requires dBASE.RTL in your DOS path and is the
compiled version of BDCDrive.prg
BDCDrive.dbf - Help file for BDCDrive
BDCDrive.dbt - Help file for BDCDrive
BDCDrive.mdx - Help file for BDCDrive
If you wish to make modifications to BDCDrive, you can recompile
BDCDrive.prg as follows:
* Go to the DB4PPSAM directory under your dBASE home directory.
* Type in the following command at the DOS prompt:
BDC @BDCDrive.lst
This command compiles and links BDCDrive.exe
* Copy BDCDrive.exe back to your dBASE home directory.