Miscellaneous Enhancements

Article
06/18/2008

Visual FoxPro contains the following miscellaneous enhancements. You can click Collapse All to view a list of enhancments.

Printing Dialog Boxes and Printing Language Enhancements

Visual FoxPro includes various enhancements for its printing dialog boxes and printing language.

Visual FoxPro uses the latest operating system dialogs for Printer Setup and other related printing operations. If the user is running on Windows XP, the dialogs will appear Themed.

The following language functions contain new enhancements that impact general printing operations:

SYS(1037) - Page Setup Dialog Box
APRINTERS( ) Function
GETFONT( ) Function

Contains an additional setting to display only those fonts available on the current default printer and clarified values for the language script.

For more information, see Language Enhancements.

Improved Support for Applications Detecting Terminal Servers

Visual FoxPro now automatically includes support for applications that are generated by the build process to detect whether they are running on a Terminal Server and prevent loading of unnecessary dynamic-link library (.dll) files that can impact performance. For more information, see BUILD EXE Command.

Updated Dr. Watson Error Reporting to 2.0

Visual FoxPro includes and updates its product error reporting to support Dr. Watson 2.0. This version includes new and improved error reporting, logging, and auditing features. For example, errors are logged while offline and are posted when you reconnect.

Anchor Editor Application

Visual FoxPro 9.0 allows you to create a custom property editor through extended metadata attributes for class members. Through this new extensibility model, you now have the ability to extend the functionality of class properties and methods, allowing you to create design-time enhancements such as a custom property editor. For more information about creating custom property editors, see MemberData Extensibility.

A sample custom property editor, Anchoreditor.app, is included in Visual FoxPro 9.0 and is located in the Wizards directory. This application is run when the Anchor property is double-clicked in the Properties window, or by choosing the Anchor property in the Properties window and clicking the ellipsis button (…).

Term	Definition
Anchor but do not resize vertically	Specifies that the center of the control is anchored to the top and bottom edges of its container but the control does not resize.
Anchor but do not resize horizontally	Specifies that the center of the control is anchored to the left and right edges of its container but the control does not resize.
Border values	Displays the current settings for the border values.
Common settings	Selects commonly used settings for the Anchor property.
Sample	Click the Sample button to test the current anchor value on a sample form.
Anchor value	The Anchor property value that is the combination of the current settings for the border values.

Class Browser

You can open and view class definitions that are specified within a program (.prg) similarly to class libraries (.vcx). You can select a program (.prg) from the File Open/Add dialog box. See Class Browser Window for more information.

CursorAdapter Builder

The CursorAdapter Builder contains a number of enhancements that correspond to improvements added to the CursorAdapter class. See CursorAdapter Builder for more information.

Toolbox

The Toolbox (Visual FoxPro) is now dockable and can be docked to the desktop or other IDE windows.

Code References

The Code References Window has been updated with the following minor enhancements:

For the results grid, the Options dialog provides a new setting to show separate columns for class, method, and line, rather than concatenating them all in a single column.
You can now sort by method name by right-clicking on the method header or selecting the Sort By menu item from the right-click menu.
With the results tree list, the following new right-click menu options are available:
- Expand All - expands all nodes
- Collapse All - collapses all nodes
- Sort by Most Recent First - puts the most recent result sets at the top of the list rather than at the bottom

Note

The results beneath a tree node are not filled until the node is expanded. This is done to increase performance if you have a large result sets.

GENDBC.PRG

The Gendbc.prg program which generates program used to recreate a database has been updated with following minor enhancements:

Support for new Varchar, Varbinary and Blob field types
Support for AllowSimultaneousFetch, RuleExpression, and RuleText properties for views

Environment Manager Task Pane

The Environment Manager Task Pane has been enhanced with the following features:

Form and Formset Template Classes - you can now specify template classes for new forms and formsets with each environment set. This is setting specified in the Forms Tab, Options Dialog Box.
Field Mapping - you can set classes to use for when you drag and drop a field onto a form with each environment set. This is setting specified in the Field Mapping Tab, Options Dialog Box.
Resource File - the Environment Manager now supports setting of a Resource File. If one does not exist, the Environment Manager will optionally create it when the environment is set.
The Environment Manager now contains a new <default field mapping> environment set. This set is created the first time the Environment Manager is run so that the original default Options dialog settings for Field Mapping and Form Template Classes can be saved and restored later if desired.
For more information, see Environment Manager Task Pane.

Data Explorer Task Pane

The Task Pane Manager includes the new Data Explorer Task Pane which allows you to view and work with remote data sources such as SQL Server databases.

For more information, see Data Explorer Task Pane.

MemberData Editor

The new MemberData Editor lets you edit MemberData for your classes. The MemberData Editor is available from the Class menu when the Class Designer is active. The MemberData Editor is also invoked silently when you right-click on an item in the Properties Window and select the Add to Favorites menu item. The MemberData Editor application is specified as a builder and can be changed in the Builder.dbf table located in your Wizards directory.

For more information, see MemberData Editor and MemberData Extensibility.

New Foundation Classes (FFC)

The following are new FoxPro Foundation classes added to this version of Visual FoxPro:

_REPORTLISTENER.VCX - a set of core classes you can use when creating custom report listeners.
_FRXCURSOR.VCX - a class library used for working with report (FRX) files.
_GDIPLUS.VCX - a set of classes you can use for GDI+ handling. This is intended primarily for use when creating custom report listener classes.

New Solution Samples

Visual FoxPro 9.0 contains many new samples that show off new features in the product. To see a list of these samples, select the Solution Samples task pane in the Task Pane Manager and expand the New in Visual FoxPro 9.0 node.

Partager via