Build 329

Today's build implements SET NOTIFY. While there are currently no messages that are suppressed by SET NOTIFY, this is one command less that you would need to remove from your code. When Guineu encountered an unknown command, in the past you got an error message stating line 1 as the culprit. The latest version accurately reports the compiled code line that caused the problem

Tab order handling: The TabIndex property is now available for all controls on mobile devices. For desktop controls TabIndex has no effect, as of now, but doesn't cause an error, either. For desktop controls the property will be available shortly.

Two other reported bugs have been fixed: Passing THIS and THISFORM to a function doesn't raise an invalid type error anymore. Furthermore, accessing a non-existing object brings up a proper "Member not found" error message instead of a .NET runtime exception.

New online help

The online help (http://guineu.foxpert.com/help) has been enhanced. Not only does the help file now contain additional content. There's also a new search feature available that performs a full text search on the entire documentation.

Build 322

When a package is delivered to your home these days, you don't sign on paper anymore. Instead, the delivery person is asking you to sign on their mobile scanner. The same requirement came up for multiple Guineu applications, be it to sign for delivery, for receipts, etc.

I'm happy to report that such a control is now available in Guineu. Before you can use the new Signature control, you have to activate the Signature base class with the new SYS(8008) function. This SYS function provides additional base classes that are not in Visual FoxPro. To remain compatible with Visual FoxPro, these classes are disabled by default.

There's also a new Signature sample project with the form you see on the figure. Signatures can be stored in a memo field in either a binary format that can be loaded into the control, or as a bitmap. You can use an Image control and assign the content of the memo field to the PictureVal property to display the signature. PictureVal has been added to the Image control in this release, as well.

Build 317

Currently I'm at the SouthWest FoxPro conference in Phoenix giving various sessions. Among them is one session about doing mobile development with Guineu.

The last few versions have seen a number of bug fixes. GuineuIDE is now faster as forms and classes are only regenerated when they have changed. New in the language is the BOF() function as requested on the forum. During yesterday's session support for writing memo fields has been requested. That's also available in the new build. Forms now support the Unload event. Editboxes and Textboxes do have the ReadOnly event.

The help file has been updated. As it turned out, a number of functions have been implemented, but weren't documented.

Build 302

In the past I've been using a combination of Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 to develop Guineu. I finally upgrade Visual Studio on the build machine, as well, and moved development completely to Visual Studio 2008. As a user you aren't affected by this move since Guineu remains a .NET 2.0 application.

The past few releases mainly fixed a number of bugs: SELECT 0 does now move to the next free work area. Edit boxes have a vertical scroll bar just like in Visual FoxPro. Checkboxes deal properly with the Value property. Deleted records are not shown in the grid. Replacing a string field with an empty string clears the field now.

A new support forum

I've frequently been asked if there's a place for Guineu users to exchange ideas, ask questions, get help, and request features from the developer. Previously I created a newsgroup on my own server assuming that offline availability is a big plus. It seems though, that I was wrong in this assumption. Even worse was probably the decision to make the newsgroup password protected. Hardly anybody found it.

Today I finally got around installing a web based forum (phpBB) on my web server. The new forum is not hidden, not password protected and easily discoverable: http://guineu.foxpert.com/forum. For now there are only three sections, one for each language: English, Spanish and German. I'm looking forward to seeing you all there!

Build 295

The past builds have fixed a number of small bugs. There are also some internal changes to prepare for future features and extensions. The STORE command and the TTOD() function are newly implemented. Some other functions like MESSAGEBOX() have been extended to cover more scenarios.