Back onto HUD-1
There have been many bumps on the road to completing the Print Preview form, including a major upgrade to my computer which diverted me for two entire weeks. The most vexing bump was the fact that I wrote code blindly into the HUD-1 program after upgrading to FoxPro 9, without testing it. After running the main HUD-1 form in Beta Version .9, I ran into the problems created by this lack of testing.
So, I had to write my own code to make up for the deficiencies in the FoxPro functions that didn’t work the way I needed, as well as breaking the previously working HUD-1 form. I tested those new function (in C) and they worked. Except that…. Well, the functions only work when the file actually exists, and will fail when the file isn’t already present in the file system. Which means that writing a brand new file will fail because the functions need to work before the file exists and the file won’t exist until it exists.
Yesterday and today I have spent my time re-writing the new functions to accommodate the possibility that the file does not exist. I am not entirely satisfied with this code because it will split the file and pathname in exactly the same was as FoxPro does (which is what I don’t want) when the file does not exist. I will take the next few days and re-write the code so that the pathname splitting function can be called separately, with the IsFile() and IsFolder() parameters settable outside the function.
I’ll have to make some changes to this entire branch of the FLL code, but it will be backward compatible with upper level code in FoxPro. I’ll work on this tomorrow and Friday, and then switch back to STRUCT for Saturday.
On Monday, I’ll be creating the new Print Preview form. I anticipate about one month’s work on that, and from there we shall see!