Hiya folk! I am trying to turn this guide into a true eBook.
The files you're now reading's been generated from a LinuxDoc source. Of course, the fact that it contains pictures means that I've edited it later, and makes it really an unelegant solution. I try to concentrate on the content, and will get my mind on elegance later. I plan to upgrade this Guide to the DocBook format.
I thank Ruben Alfonsin for his suggestions, which I followed in making this "new edition" of my Guide, and apologize for the long time since the last update.
I see that many people are interested in this page (it is the most visited
page in my website) and so I feel that I must complete it soon and well. I have
tried to complete some of the arguments I had written in the index and I now
have a very detailed index that covers many of the aspects of Open Source
Clipper programming. When finished, it will prove a complete guide to Open
Source Clipper programming. However, this page is still very incomplete. Quite
important sections like "Object Oriented Programming" or "Writing libraries and
extensions for the XYZ compiler" are missed. I am going to add the two sections,
perhaps sooner if someone on the newsgroup comp.lang.clipper or on the mailing
lists HarbourUsers (http://lists.harbour-project.org/mailman/listinfo/harbourusers) gives me help or clues.
To apologize for its
incompletedness, I can only say that this page contains everything I know about
Clipper and xBase programming.
I'll continue developing this tutorial and I will produce a PDF when I'll feel it is big and complete enough.
I have decided to name this tutorial "The FDL Guide to Open Source Clipper" and not "The FDL Guide to Open Source xBase" because I like the name Clipper, and as you can see by watching at the open source compiler I discuss (Clip and (x)Harbour) the influence of the name Clipper is great. Only x2c doesn't recall the name Clipper.
This Guide was born because I had to follow a small project (the port of an old Summer 87 application to Windows) and I saw the many Clipper compatible open source compilers available, but noticed also that there were no tutorial and that the books about Clipper/xBase/Visual Objects and so on couldn't be found in any bookstore.
The first of 8 issues of a Clipper course, found in an Italian
bookstall in 1993, defined Clipper as "the easiest way to realize
professional applications". I think that this definition is still true
for the modern Open Source Clipper environments. They offer a very convenient
way to manage databases, inherited by their ancient dBase roots, and easy-to-use
GUI libraries (MiniGUI offers a quasi-RAD development under Win32).
If someone notices mistakes, I would like to know so that I can fix. Contact me for comments, reporting errors or giving clues and informations at my email address [email protected]. If you want to help you should read the FDL text, accept it and send me to the same email address ([email protected]) your contribution.
Appearently as an immediate feedback to the announce of this page, a Google
group for Clipper programmers was created. The address is http://groups-beta.google.com/group/clipper/
and its email address is: [email protected].
Don't forget that "Google groups" is
beta!
This guide too, it is still at an early stage. It will be much more complete
when it will be finished, and, at present, it is being developed: the version
on-line will be very bad for a long time. I use the logs to determine which
arguments are more requested, and I will develop them consequently.
The HTML
code is bad, as I edit it with word processors. I will clean it later.
I plan
to produce a PDF version of this guide, when the HTML guide will be complete
enough.