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                    *          DB/C Newsletter          *
                    *          September 2002           *
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                              News and Comments

     DB/C DX 12.1 was released recently.  This month's article provides
an overview of its new features.  The UNIX ODBC interface feature that we
had hoped to include in DB/C DX 12.1 is not included because we ran into
problems.  We will continue to work on getting this feature to work and
hopefully will include it in a future release.

     We continue to work on the Eclipse-based IDE (Integrated Development
Environment) that will replace FDE in DB/C DX 13.  We hope to have an early
test version of the IDE available in October.  If you are interested in
trying it out and/or participating in the testing process, send us an email
at admin@dbcsoftware.com and we will contact you when it's ready for testing.

     DB/C FS 3.1 is now available for Mac OS X.  You can purchase it via
the Online Sales and Update System at www.dbcsoftware.com.  As Mac OS X is
actually BSD UNIX underneath, we were able to do the port with very little
effort.  We currently have no firm plans to port DB/C DX to Mac OS X because
quite a bit of work would be required to do a native GUI implementation.
However, if you want to run your DB/C application on Mac OS X, then the
combination of DB/C FS and JX (formerly known as DB/C JX) should work fine
(Mac OS X is a great Java development and deployment platform).

                                                     don.wills@dbcsoftware.com


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                                DB/C DX 12.1

     The new features of DB/C DX 12.1 consist of a new verb and several new
GUI features.

     CLIENTROLLOUT is the new verb.  (Interestingly, it is the first new
verb added since DB/C 9.1!)  CLIENTROLLOUT allows for the equivalent of a
ROLLOUT to occur on the client computer in a Smart Client environment.
When not running under Smart Client, CLIENTROLLOUT does nothing.

     Several GUI features have been added.  Here is a list of these
features:

     . The MAXIMIZE parameter in the PREPARE statement for a window
       device causes the window to be initially shown in the maximized
       mode (i.e. the window fills the screen and has a title bar).

     . The NOTASKBARBUTTON parameter in the PREPARE statement for a
       window device causes there to be no task bar button associated
       with the window when the window is minimized.

     . The NOFOCUS parameter in the PREPARE statement for a window device
       causes the window to be initially shown in the background.

     . The MINIMIZE, RESTORE and MAXIMIZE change functions allow a window
       device to be programmatically changed between the 3 window modes:
       minimized (not displayed), restored (normal size), and maximized
       (fills screen).

     . The MINSERT change function allows for multiple lines to be
       inserted in a listbox or dropbox in a single CHANGE statement.
       The purpose of this feature is to provide for better performance,
       particularly in a Smart Client environment.

     . The text color of one or all TREE control lines can be set with
       the TEXTCOLOR, TEXTCOLORLINE and TEXTCOLORDATA change functions.

     . The EXPAND and COLLAPSE change functions allow an item in a TREE
       to be programmatically opened and closed.

     . ITEM messages are sent when the user changes the currently selected
       item in a TREE control.

     . The CONSOLEFOCUS change function causes the KEYIN/DISPLAY window
       to become the frontmost window and have keyboard focus when running
       under the dbc.exe runtime.

     In addition to the new GUI features, here are two other new features:
 
     . The dbcdx.errordisplay=off runtime option causes the DB/C DX
       runtime to immediately terminate without any messages when an
       untrapped error occurs.

     . The default memory allocation (dbcdx.memalloc runtime option)
       has been changed to 2048.


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                          DB/C DX Class Schedule

   Class:     DB/C DX Fundamentals
   Date:      January 2003
   Location:  Oak Brook, Illinois

For information, send email to admin@dbcsoftware.com.


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