Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!bigtuna!pegasus!tleylan
From: tleylan@pegasus.com (Tom Leylan)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Clipper Libraries
Message-ID: <1990Dec2.072236.5845@pegasus.com>
Date: 2 Dec 90 07:22:36 GMT
References: <1990Nov29.230411.10062@oz.plymouth.edu>
Organization: Pegasus,  Honolulu
Lines: 38

In article <1990Nov29.230411.10062@oz.plymouth.edu> billj@oz.plymouth.edu (Bill K. Jackson) writes:

>     > dial the telephone from wihtin our application
>     > have basic word processing capabilities with mail merge
>     > include a calendar routine

There are any number of alternatives but at the moment a number of additional
considerations too.  I suppose that you are using Clipper S'87 at the moment
but either have or plan to upgrade to 5.0 one day ?

Some 3rd party library developers have yet to produce a 5.0 compatible
version so that could cause an additional wrinkle.  Specifically you can dial the 
the phone with just straight Clipper.  Redirect the output to the com port and
send the appropriate dialing sequence as if you were sending it to the printer.
If you need to handshake and receive characters then there are simple public
domain and shareware routines with C source code.  If you need to do heavy duty stuff then Silvercomm (they wrote a BBS in Clipper using it), AdComm or a new
player Telepathy would do the job.

Re: word processing w/mail merge.  Don't have an answer on that though I'm
working on such an animal.

Calendar routine, I published a simple one in Reference(Clipper) which is
an "object-oriented" pop-up calendar which permits you to scroll backward and
forward through the months and years.  If you want "calendaring" like your
entering appointments and such one doesn't come into mind right away but
something tells me there is one.

If you need a general purpose library that can help you write these things
you might want to look into Funcky.  I'm fairly certain that their 5.0
compatible version has been released.

Let me know if you need me to run on at the mouth more.

tom leylan
formerly Senior Systems Analyst - Nantucket Corporation
regular contributor to Reference(Clipper)
"opinion" columnist for Data Based Advisor (beginning with Jan. issue)
and all around reasonable person


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