Clarion Edge » Tools

v5.3.1 of Textpad is out

brahn — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:04:52 +0000

This is just an incremental update on v5.3.0 but if you are not already on v5.3 then I think it is worth upgrading. Having the option to substitute TextPad for Notepad baked into the program alone is worth it!

Textpad, a great general purpose editor – http://www.textpad.com/download/index.html

#RUN parameter limits and hiding command windows

brahn — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:23:23 +0000

Recently I have been doing a fair amount of work trying to automate parts of the development process, in particular the version control aspects. I ran into what appeared to be limitations in the length of parameters accepted by the Clarion templates #RUN statement. Searching the newsgroups there were a few comments from people having similar issues and the symptoms were seemed a little sporadic. I decided that the safest way was to write the commands out to a temporary batch file and use #RUN to just call that.

This works great and has the added advantage of being able to execute, obviously, batches of commands in one go. The thing that is annoying about this is that you will get the command window popping up when the command is run. Often this is fine, especially for long tasks where it is nice to see the progress but sometimes it is annoying and it would to be nice to be able to hide the window.

There are a few ways to do this but essentially they all seem to revolve around the CreateProcess api Function.

Write a helper DLL that wraps the CreateProcess function and can be easily called by the templates.
Find something that already does this so I don’t have to.

If you want to go for option 1 in clarion you might like to look into PowerRun from Berthume Software which is available for free download. And of course you can dig right in and make the function call directly. However, if there is something suitable around I much prefer to use that.

After a quick search I found these two options:

CHP.EXE (Create Hidden Process) – http://www.commandline.co.uk/chp/
hidden Start (hstart.exe) – http://www.ntwind.com/software/utilities/hstart.html

I tried CHP first and it certainly does what it says it will but I found I wanted the option to wait until the spawned task was finished. In comes hstart. Hstart is pretty awesome. Lots of options and it also, funnily enough, does what it says it will…

For anyone interested, this is the template code I ended up with for calling hidden commands in a clarion template:

#GROUP(%RunCommandHidden, %Command, %TestMode=%FALSE),AUTO
#!
#DECLARE(%BatchFileName)
#! We need to write the command out to a batch file for execution because
#! the #RUN command seems to have issues with the length of the command!
#SET(%BatchFileName, 'run.bat')
#SET(%BatchFileName, FullName(%BatchFileName, 2))
#CREATE(%BatchFileName)
%Command
#CLOSE(%BatchFileName)
#! Now we call the batch file for execution
#! using cph.exe for "Create Hidden Process"
#IF(%TestMode=%FALSE)
  #RUN('hstart.exe /NOCONSOLE /WAIT ' & %BatchFileName),WAIT
#ELSE
  #RUN('hstart.exe /WAIT ' & %BatchFileName),WAIT
#ENDIF
#REMOVE(%BatchFileName)
#RETURN

Remote Desktop Manager

brahn — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:09:41 +0000

For anyone who finds themselves managing many different remote clients. Support for Microsoft Remote Desktop and VNC.

I have been using this great utility for some time now. It has become such a part of my day to day use that I often forget about it. Simple, unobtrusive and gets the job done.

Well worth a closer look: Remote Desktop Manager

Free Icon editor

brahn — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:11:09 +0000

Just came across a new icon editor the today called IcoFX and initial impressions are pretty good!

Well, for a start it works on vista which the last program I was using didn’t (SnIco). I kinda liked SnIco, it was simple and did the job but unfortunately it had a few quirks and lost my interest. It also seems to have been not updated for some time.

So far it looks like IcoFX is going to fill this void very nicely. Lots of features it seem but they don’t get in your way.

And most importantly, its free!

Note: We are not affiliated with this program, just thought it was cool.

Update (24-12-2007) – It seems that the IcoFX site is down at the moment for whatever reason. If you have a look on your favourite search engine you should be able to find a link to a download elsewhere. Try google for example.