xHarbour News

2004-06-28

xHarbour reached BETA-1 status today. All binaries, contributions and sources are available from the download page.

Here are some of the fixes, and new features offered by Beta-1:

xHarbour Core compiler

• General optimization as a whole in xHarbour functions which is aimed to speed boost.
• Fixed all reported RDD, PP and RTL issues, except few minor issues in DBFNTX which is scheduled for a rewrite.
• Extension of several xHarbour functions<
• Bug fixes in compiler in relation with illegal characters and C output.
• New [] Array operator overloading.
• New Object Destructor.
• Many Debugger fixes and improvements.
• New GT Driver: GTWVT, allow to create apps more GUI friendly
full GUI is code is rewrite to use the full GTWVT power functions
• New GT driver: GTAlleg, this GT use the powerful Allegro library to
create windows also Allegro library is mostly used for game programming
• New C Extensions guidelines documentation.
• C structures: New enhancements to support more C syntax, like:
  MyCStruct := (struct SOMESTRUCT)
  MyCStruct := (struct SOMESTRUCT) SomeValue
  MyCStruct := (struct SOMESTRUCT*) SomePointer
  
• Improved to allow a Structure Tag to be used in StructureDefinitions.
• Improved to allow a Structure Synonyms to be used in Structure Definitions.
• Improved to allow astruct prefix to the Tag Name to be used in Structure Definitions.
• Added support for LONGLONG and ULONGLONG. Now practically full C syntax is supported
• C BIT Operators now support natively. (and, or, xor, shift-right, shift-left)
• 64bit preparation and testing.
• Greatly improved TBrowse.
• New TStream class
• Fixes and enhancements to TIP (Internet protocol library) classes.
• Added FOR EACH and WITH OBJECT to XBScript (former PP)
• Fixed and enhanced functions for background tasks
• Added GTSYS() which works in similar way as RDDSYS
• Added GTInfo()
• Better FiveWin integration.
• 4th parameter to Str()
• More enhanced Directory() function

DBFCDX

• Now DBFCDX is the fastest RDD in the XBase world.
• Extended DBF Field Types.
• Now a DBF can have these field types:
  {"FDATE", "D", 3, 0 } // binary date filed like in SIX
  {"FNUM", "B", 8, x } // binary double
  {"INT2", "I", 2, 0 } // binary short int (16bit)
  {"INT4", "I", 4, 0 } // binary int (32bit)
  {"INT8", "I", 8, 0 } // binary long long int (64bit)
  
• Added DBI_ISFLOCK to DBInfo()
• OrdKeyNo and OrdKeyCount are buffered now.
• New OrdWildSeek(cPatern, [lCont]) function
• New dbSetDBFVersion() to allow setting default DBF creation type to VFP 0x30. Valid options are 0x30 (Standard DBF) and 0x03.
• New function WILDMATCH( cPattern, cValue ) which works like SIX sx_WildMatch()

ADS

• New ADS 7.0 client files
• Several speed enhancements, especially for WAN or other slow connection.
• Added support for Time and Timestamp Fields in ADT tables
• Added several new functions. See ADS documentation for details.
• The default is now to require a v6 or later ace32.lib (and therefore client machine DLLs)
  To use an older lib or DLLs one would recompile RDDADS with
  #define ADS_REQUIRE_VERSION 5
• SET settings like SET DELETED are now synchronized when the RDD is initialized, so you no longer have to be careful to use SETafter the call to rddRegister()
• adsClearScope() method added