Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!forty2!eichi
From: eichi@forty2.UUCP (Stefan Eichenberger)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Clipper 5.0
Message-ID: <1330@forty2.UUCP>
Date: 11 Oct 90 23:50:11 GMT
Reply-To: eichi@forty2.uu.ch (Stefan Eichenberger)
Organization: Exp. Physics University Zuerich
Lines: 44

In article <1990Oct9.095923.321@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> b39y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
> I'm keeping S'87 but will be doing all new design in
>Clipper 5.0 - the program has (in my opinion) amazing potential, but you must
>remember that Nantucket is trying to market 5.0 as an upgrade, while developers
>HAVE to look at it as a new language.  I'm sure that a port of old applications
>could be made to work, but, at least with my code, the S'87 works fine as it
>is, and I'm not willing to spend the time to rewrite it all to make minor
>modifications which could be made in S'87 just as easily.  Besides, all that
>code is (sort of :-) optimized for S'87 anyway...
>
>Good luck - feel free to ask questions here or via Email
>
>Dave Rodger	B39Y@VAX5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU
>Cornell University

May be I missed the discussion on it, but could someone comment on the 
difficulties to port S'87 programs to V. 5.0? My problem is as follows:
   - I've some 12000 lines of S'87 code, which I originally wrote for
     dBase II (yes, that's right!) and ported all the way to S'87. In the
     meantime I changed jobs and have no time anymore to invest great
     amount of time for yet another port.
   - Every now and then, a little new feature has to be added, making the
     program size growing and growning.
   - The program has now a two level overlay structure and just loads under
     novell.
Now, the questions:
   - How much work would it be to make it up and running under 5.0 without
     using new features of the language?
   - Can I pack the *.dbt memo field files in 5.0 short of copying the
     entire database to another file, which currently breaks my memory
     boundries.
   - Pack currently has insufficient memory - does anybody know, whether
     requirements changed?
   - do I gain in load size with the new automatic overlay structure?
   - has the memoedit() function been improved - the number of things
     you can do to a text to edit it, was a bit limited in S'87.

Thanks a lot for your comments

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UUCP:      ...mcvax!cernvax!forty2!eichi         Stefan Eichenberger
BITNET:    K807817@CZHRZU1A                      University of Zurich
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