This is something I discovered by accident a while ago, maybe you already know about it…

Use the mouse to move a window around and then, while you still have the left mouse button held down, press the escape key. The window will be returned to its original position!

Ok, so it isn’t very useful but it was new to me

Clarion IDE Fonts & save your eyes ? 17/12/2005 3:44:38 PM

I found that by careful tweaking of the registry values it was possible to alter the fonts used by the Clarion IDE!

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes

It’s not quite as straight forward as simply specifying the fonts you want as it seems that not all fonts will be accepted. I have no idea if this is the Clarion IDE or the windows font substitutions fault but I think it is best to take what you can get at this point!

Important Note:
It is required to restart Windows to allow a new or changed font substitution to take effect.

First, lets go straight to the before and after pictures:

And now for a little more detail on just how this works…

For demonstration purposed I have used Segeo Script in all these examples. You will have to play with it and work out what suits your tastes best.

The After pictures employes these techniques:

• Font substitution to change the IDE fonts
• CWPlus with custom ClarionEdge icon set!
• Custom background specified in the C60PE.ini/C60EE.ini file. (I think the one I am using here cam from 1stLogoDesign at some point)

There are three main registry string that we are going to play with:

1. MS Shell Dlg
2. Helv
3. MS Sans Serif

The last one, MS Sans Serif, is a new registry string that you will have to add to make this work.

Helv

This one covers most of the IDE – procedure Tree, template dialogs, etc

New String: MS Sans Serif

File picker, All the other IDE property boxes such as the Populate column toolbox and things like the main IDE Tabs.

Finally: MS Shell Dlg

This one will change all window dialogs, you will notice it a lot more in other places than just the ClarionIDE

e.g.

Not hard but nice to have.

Thanks Mark for the assistance!

Some examples:

1. 05-Oct-2009 + 1 Month = 05-Nov-2009
2. 31-Oct-2990 + 1 Month = 30-Nov-2009

AddMonths PROCEDURE  (LONG pDate, BYTE pMonths) !,LONG
originalDay BYTE
returnDate  LONG
  CODE
  originalDay = Day(pDate)
 
  returnDate = Date(Month(pDate) + pMonths, Day(pDate), Year(pDate))
 
  IF Day(returnDate) <> originalDay
    returnDate = Date(Month(returnDate), 1,  Year(returnDate)) - 1
  END
 
  RETURN returnDate

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

I have just started using this and so far it looks really good and appears to still be in active dev – http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/

Yay!

The magic line to add to your addin file is this:

<StringResources file="Resources\StringResources.resources">

Then for each language you intend to support you create a new resource file with the correct name e.g. StringResources.nl.resources for dutch.

In the download you will find the C# project files as well as the addin itself. Also included is a BitmapResources.resources file containing all the Silk icons from famfamfam which I thought were pretty neat to use as menu icons

Download:	AccessoryMenu.sdaddin
Version:	0.1
Updated:	June 2, 2009
Size:	618.58 KB
Downloads:	72

Download:	AccessoryMenu.zip
Version:	0.1
Updated:	June 2, 2009
Size:	1.82 MB
Downloads:	68

This is the addin file in case you want a quick look:

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<AddIn name        = "AccessoryMenu"
       author      = ""
       url         = ""
       description = "Common menu for all addin writers!">
 
	<Manifest>
		<Identity name="AccessoryMenu.Addin" version="0.3"/>
		<Dependency addin = "SharpDevelop" version = "2.1"/>
	</Manifest>
 
	<BitmapResources file="Resources\BitmapResources.resources"/>
	<StringResources file="Resources\StringResources.resources"/>
 
	<Path name = "/SharpDevelop/Workbench/MainMenu/Help">
		<MenuItem id = "Accessory" 
		          label = "${res:Addin.Menu.Accessory}" 
		          type ="Menu" 
		          insertbefore = "SDKHelp">
			<MenuItem id = "About"
					  label = "${res:Addin.Menu.About}"
					  icon = "Icons.Silk.plugin"
					  link = "http://www.c3pa.com/"/>
		</MenuItem>
	</Path>
 
</AddIn>

1. Download the addin file – Clarion3rdParty.sdaddin
2. Start the Clarion 7 IDE:
   
3. Go to the Tools menu and select the Addin Manager:
   
4. Click the Install Addin button:
   
5. Find the Addin file you downloaded in Step 1
   
6. You should now see the new addin listed in the Addin Manager, restart the IDE to see what it does!
   
7. And there you have it, a new menu item under Help–>Web !
   

Simply adding a menu item is very easy with the new Clarion 7 IDE. I suppose the hardest part is finding the correct names for everything and getting them in the right place. The Clarion3rdParty.sdaddin file you downloaded at the beginning is just a zip file containing one XML formatted “addin” file. This XML simply tells the IDE what you want to do and where to do it.

This is the XML used in the Clarion3rdParty addin:

<AddIn name    = "Clarion3rdPartyAddin"
   author      = "Brahn Partridge"
   url         = ""
   copyright   = ""
   description = "TODO: Put description here">
 
	<Manifest>
		<Identity name="ClarionEdge.Clarion3rdPartyAddin" version="0.1"/>
		<Dependency addin = "SharpDevelop" version = "2.1"/>
	</Manifest>
 
	<Path name = "/SharpDevelop/Workbench/MainMenu/Help/Web">
		<MenuItem id = "Clarion3rdParty" label = "Clarion 3rd Party" type="Menu">
			<MenuItem id = "ClarionEdge"
					  label = "www.clarionedge.com"
					  icon = "Icons.16x16.WebSearchIcon"
					  link = "http://www.clarionedge.com/"/>
		</MenuItem>
 
	</Path>
</AddIn>

And the download again in case you missed it:

Download:	Clarion3rdParty.sdaddin
Version:	0.1
Updated:	May 20, 2009
Size:	471 bytes
Downloads:	148

Just yestarday I managed to duplicate these symptoms in my development environment and discovered that the problem was being triggered in the InitSetEventOffset ROUTINE of the Debuger class we are using.

You can download the class over at Radfusion Free Downloads.

The helpful folk over at the clarion skype chat were able to narrow this down to a problem with the length of the CSTRING used in the call to DebugerNameMessage.

Further analysis shows that this only manifests as an issue under very specific circumstances:

• The class instance is created using New().
• The application is compiled with debug mode set to “off” (or in other words, in “release” mode).
• The application is run “asInvoker” on a system with UAC tuned ON.
• There is no “EventOffset” entry already in the WIN.INI file*.

_{* That last point will depend on the version of the debuger class you are using. The one we have here is “6.0.2″ but there are others around that no longer use WIN.INI and they might work OK. Note though that when I say “OK” the problem hasn’t gone away and you will still see the APPCRASH error the first time your program is run but subsequent executions will be able to read the offset from the INI file and this bypasses this bug.}

Changing the variable from CSTRING(20) to CSTRING(128) fixed the problem (Thanks Larry!) but I was still curious to find out what the cause was.

First lets look at the prototype forDebugerNameMessage :

MODULE('C%V%RUN%X%')
  DebugerNameMessage(*CSTRING, UNSIGNED EventNum ),NAME('WslDebug$NameMessage'),RAW   !Note: use   EVENT() + EVENT:FIRST else will get WM_*
END

And it’s usage:

Debuger.GetEventDescr             PROCEDURE(LONG ArgEvent)
LOC:Retval   CSTRING(20)
LOC:EventNum UNSIGNED
  CODE
  DebugerNameMessage(LOC:Retval, LOC:EventNum)

(I have removed all the other code from the above method just for clarity in this example)

The call to DebugerNameMessage crashed just after giving this result:

LOC:Retval=WM_OTHERWINDOWCREATE, LOC:EventNum=66

When the LOC:RetVal is changed to CSTRING(128) we see that the next call is this:

LOC:Retval=WM_OTHERWINDOWDESTROY, LOC:EventNum=67

The reason for the crash I guess is Len(WM_OTHERWINDOWDESTROY) > 20

There are 2 questions remaining and I think I have the answer for one:

Why does it only crash when the class is instantiated with New()?

I am pretty sure this simply because when using New() the “EventOffset” is different and so the InitSetEventOffset routine attempts to find the correct offset and thus triggering the problem with our too small variable.

Why does it only happen when the program is compile with debugging turned OFF?

I guess in debug mode the code it is not so sensitive about the buffer overrun it still seems kind of strange that it should work at all.

Hopefully someone reading this will be able to give a hint as to a possible reason?

The good news though is that I have since found a much nicer program for assigning your own icons:

Types

“Types” is a free and lightweight utility for Windows that allows you to edit program associations, icons, context menus and other properties of various file types displayed in Explorer.

http://types.sourceforge.net/

When I first tried it out way back in the beginning of last year I had a few difficulties but when I recently setup a new development VM and had a need once again to customize my clarion file associations I gave it another go. This time round they have made great improvements in stability and it performed beautifully and did what it said it would. No more, no less.

Hopefully someone will find this useful too.

To use the Mozilla example you will need to download and install the Mozilla ActiveX Control from here:

http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/control.htm#download

Enjoy!

Download:	EmbMozilla.app
Version:	0.1
Updated:	March 16, 2009
Size:	48.25 KB
Downloads:	116
Details:	Clarion App file created with Clarion 6.3

Download:	EmbMozilla.exe
Version:	0.1
Updated:	March 16, 2009
Size:	1.03 MB
Downloads:	101
Details:	Executable compiled with Clarion 6.3. in local mode so it should run as is. (Don’t forget to install the mozilla OCX!)