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- *demo.prg
- *demonstration of windowing techniques for DBASE
-
- clear all
- clear
-
- set talk off
- set confirm on
- set bell off
- set scor off
-
- text
- Although dBASE is the defacto standard for database programming, version
- 1.1 leaves a bit to be desired with respect to screen handling. dBASE's
- video I/O is painfully slow. The assembly language interface that Ashton-
- Tate has provided is weak and quite limited.
-
- Inspite of this, I have managed to port a library of windowing routines
- initially designed for use in Clipper, back to dBASE. This library is a
- subset of the routines I created for Clipper, and as such, share many of
- the same features.
-
- Although there are routines available to save and restore complete screens
- for dBASE, I have seen none that permit working with portions of the screen,
- which of course is the essence of windowing.
-
- My library is based on the concept of pre-drawing display screens and saving
- them to disk files. At the beginning of the main program, these files are
- restored to video buffers (memory variables) where they can be quickly
- accessed. Since we can select to restore portions of an entire screen image,
- each can be thought of as a 'pallette' on which several images can be drawn.
-
- The library consists of 13 BIN files which occupy under 7K of memory. Each
- 'pallette' requires 4K of memory. Let's take a look at some of the routines..."
-
- endtext
- wait
- do features
- return
- *eof demo
-