An explanation about HMG …

Posted on November 11, 2014 by vivaclipper

An explanation about Harbour, HMG and HMG-IDE

By Sri Rathinagiri » Mon Sep 08, 2014 12:44 pm

Clipper programmers sometimes find it difficult to accommodate with HMG. The reason is the difference between TUI (Text User Interface) and GUI. In GUI, the program control is in the hands of the user and it is event driven. User can click on anything (say minimize button, maximize button, even another program running behind or any controls). So, it is our duty to design the whole window and wait for user’s action and write procedures for each and every action of the user.

GUI offers many innovative controls like Grid, Combobox, Button, Spinner etc., as against only textbox in TUI. So, we have to eventually accommodate events for all these controls.

Now, coming to HMG as not only a GUI library but a bundle of all. Even though HMG is directly based on the latest Harbour versions, HMG comes as a bundle. You need not install any other software to build a windows application. Full stop. 🙂 It contains the GUI library, PRG compiler, C Compiler and all the supporting software products to successfully build an application.

People (at least me) sometimes misunderstand GUI and OOP as one and the same. GUI and OOP are different and independent to each other. GUI can be made to work with or without OOP and vice versa. HMG is based on Win32 API system. Win32 API system works on handles and hooks. Every window/control in HMG is provided with a handle (like the file handle in clipper) and events are hooked on that particular handle. Once any hooked event is fired by the user (say a click of a button) immediately Win32 API searches for a CallBack function which is provided by the developer via HMG. The beauty of HMG would be, the developer is made free from handling all these internal affairs, handles, hooks and callback procedures. Instead he can concentrate on what is to be done if the event is fired.

You will be astonished to see how a ‘define window’ statement in HMG invokes 100s of lines of Harbour and C code. Please see the source folder of HMG if you want to know in detail.

Again, the advantage of HMG is, you need not include any dlls with your executable code as it is based on Win32 API. The application would run in XP to Windows version 8 (even in Windows 97 some cases).

Now coming to your questions.

1) How to get a lot of of source codes containing of samples to handle screen-menus ; from basic up to complex/advanced screen-menus?

To answer this questions, pls help us by showing links which permit us to download. And by sharing your source-code available for public.

Screenshoot attached herein, is a sample screen handle we need to implement on our application, ASAP. Being programmers for long time, we need any advanced skill in order to satisfy our users/clients currently still using our DOS-apps-versions.

You can start with Your HMG Directory\SAMPLES\Basics\TUTORIAL folder. It contains various tutorials for basic programmers. Then you can see basic and controls sub-folders of samples. I don’t think that any advanced skill set is required to satisfy our existing DOS clients. Actually ther will be happy to update their programs to Windows version as it is user friendly and more flexible.

2) How to avoid one app/EXE is double-run by users in the same computer?

This problem never arise under DOS who own a single window. I noticed when exercising HMG-ID (executing IDE.EXE) to build project, the RUN (F5) function fails to detect the problem. that’s way HMG-IDE made run-time error as if the mistake came from source program.

Yes, it is a valid point. In HMG-IDE previous version there was an error marking ‘Is the program still running?’. I don’t know what happened to that in the recent versions. I will request Claudio to look into this. Thanks for reporting.

3) Why stable version release from official Harbour-Project differ from this forum?

The project says the latest stable version is 3.0.0. while this forum says HMG 3.3.1. Any clarification in this matter is urgently needed to avoid confusion.

Because they are entirely different projects. As I have discussed earlier, HMG is based on Harbour. But it is a bundle by itself. Some major implementations have been made after the versions HMG 3.0. Introducing Unicode in 3.1. Made it to a stable version in 3.2. And the latest and significant achievement is HMG in 64 Bits, which made it to 3.3 series.

HMG Extended is also developed and released parallelly and they have their own version numbering system.

IMHO, we can use the latest stable versions for the development.

4) Pls help us describe what the differences between this 3 services you’ve been provided: Harbour Compiler, Harbour Mini GIU, Harbour-IDE. We need to know exactly when and why use them?

Harbour compiler is the core. Habour MiniGUI is the Win32 wrapper library to access the GUI aspects of the programs. HMG IDE is a tool to develop and build our software in Harbour MiniGUI.

You can use simply Harbour if you need only console mode. If you want GUI support, you can use Harbour MiniGUI and its build.bat ( even without using HMG IDE at all).

If you need Forms Designer and an easy build system, you can use HMG IDE which can co-ordinate your forms, database, resources (icons, pictures etc) and linking other third party libraries.

Sri Rathinagiri
Sivakasi, India

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Courtesy of author, this article borrowed from here.

HMG 3.3.1 (Stable) Released

Posted on November 5, 2014 by vivaclipper

File Name: HMG.3.3.1.exe
File Size: 46.91 MB
Date: 15. July 2014

Description:

-HMG 3.3.1 (Stable) 2014/07/15

– Updated to latest Harbour Nightly Build (2014-07-15)

– New property in Label control

– NoPrefix

– New New property in DatePicker control

– FORMAT <cFormatDate> (see demo)

– New Now all controls (Button, CheckButton, ToolBarButton, ComboBox, Grid, Tab, Tree, Menu, etc) loaded images: BMP, GIF, TIF, JPG and PNG

– New Now all controls (Button, CheckButton, ToolBarButton, ComboBox, Grid, Tab, Tree, Menu, etc) support the NOTRANSPARENT property

– New Grid control support the NOTRANSPARENTHEADER property

– New Print images in formats: BMP, GIF, JPG, TIF, WMF, EMF, CUR and PNG.

- @ <nRow> , <nCol> PRINT IMAGE <cImageFileName> | <cImageResourcename>
WIDTH <nWidth>
HEIGHT <nHeight>
[ STRETCH ]
[ TRANSPARENT ]
[ TRANSPARENTCOLOR anTransparentColor ]

– New functions for read Keyboard and Mouse (see doc)

– SET CONTROL <ControlName> OF <FormName> ONKEYEVENT <FuncName> | NIL

– SET CONTROL <ControlName> OF <FormName> ONMOUSEEVENT <FuncName> | NIL

– HMG_GetOnKeyControlIndex ( [ @nSubIndex ] ) –> nIndex

– HMG_GetOnMouseControlIndex ( [ @nSubIndex ] ) –> nIndex

– New functions for control edge (see doc)

– SET CONTROL <ControlName> OF <FormName> CLIENTEDGE

– SET CONTROL <ControlName> OF <FormName> STATICEDGE

– SET CONTROL <ControlName> OF <FormName> NOTEDGE

– New Functions:

– GetKeyboardLayoutName()

– ActivateKeyboardLayout()

– GetKeyboardLayout()

– GetKeyboardLayoutList()

– LoadKeyboardLayout ()

– UnloadKeyboardLayout()

– TerminateProcess ( [ nProcessID ] , [ nExitCode ] )

– GetWindowThreadProcessId (hWnd, @nThread, @nProcessID)

– IsWow64Process ( [ nProcessID ] ) –> return lBoolean

– return TRUE if a 32-bit application is running under 64-bit Windows (WOW64)

– return FALSE if a 32-bit application is running under 32-bit Windows

– return FALSE if a 64-bit application is running under 64-bit Windows

– WOW64 is the x86 emulator that allows 32-bit Windows-based applications to running on 64-bit Windows

– New: VirtualKeyboard (see doc)

– VirtualKeyboard.OPEN [ SHOW ]

– VirtualKeyboard.OPEN HIDE

– VirtualKeyboard.Show

– VirtualKeyboard.Hide

– VirtualKeyboard.Release

– VirtualKeyboard.IsRelease

– VirtualKeyboard.IsOpen

– VirtualKeyboard.IsVisible

– VirtualKeyboard.IsMinimize

– VirtualKeyboard.IsMaximize

– VirtualKeyboard.Handle

– VirtualKeyboard.Title [ := | –> ] cTitle

– VirtualKeyboard.Row [ := | –> ] nRow

– VirtualKeyboard.Col [ := | –> ] nCol

– VirtualKeyboard.Width [ := | –> ] nWidth

– VirtualKeyboard.Height [ := | –> ] nHeight

– VirtualKeyboard.FileName –> “OSK.EXE”

– VirtualKeyboard.FullFileName –> GetSystemDir()+”\OSK.EXE”

– Fixed Numeric Textbox bug –> http://hmgforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=34890#p34890

– Fixed bug in Grid control build in 64-bits –> http://hmgforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=34946#p34946

– Fixed bug in FocusedControl Property (reported by Tiampei)

– Fixed Windows problem of overlap between ToolBar Bottom and StatusBar

– HMG IDE

-Fixed when not found the text editor calls notepad.exe of windows (reported by Roberto Lopez)

-Updated Polish language in Unicode (contributed by Marek)

HMG.3.3.1 Portable : ( Patch 3 (Unicode) applied )

HMG.3.3.1 Root.zip 664.53 KB

HMG.3.3.1 DOC.zip 2.02 MB
HMG.3.3.1 HARBOUR.zip 21.17 MB
HMG.3.3.1 hfcl.zip 85.50 KB
HMG.3.3.1 IDE.zip 1.75 MB
HMG.3.3.1 IDE_ANSI.zip 1.74 MB
HMG.3.3.1 INCLUDE.zip 207.78 KB
HMG.3.3.1 lib.zip 588.89 KB
HMG.3.3.1 MINGW.zip 80.84 MB
HMG.3.3.1 RESOURCES.zip 97.55 KB
HMG.3.3.1 SAMPLES.zip 9.99 MB
HMG.3.3.1 SOURCE.zip 697.39 KB

HMG Samples

Posted on December 26, 2012 by vivaclipper

About HMG Samples

Language Related

Controls

Browse

Quick Search

Combo box

Dynamic ComboBox

Edit Box

Word wrap in EditBox

Grid

Get Data Into Grid via IDE

Text Box

Auto fill in text box

Search in and Fill Box (SFilBox)

Tree

Tree Menu

Two Methods for Tree

Functions

Drives, Directories and Files

Drives and Directories

Directory List

Fill Directory List

PutFile() with default file name

Messages

HMG Message Functions

Message for multiple values

Message Extended

Where Is It ?

Improvements in Message functions

Miscellaneous

Is application running ?

Get Process ID

Simple Error Handling

Funny

Cuckoo Clock

Untouchable window

Warn Lazy User

Pegs Game

Drawing

Play Draw

Draw Border

Printing

Text Mode

Using printer under Windows

Obsolete ways

Send to File

Print File

GUI Mode

HMG Print

HMG Print ( Mini Print ) for beginners in 10 easy steps

Print a plain text file by HMG Print – 1

HMG Report

HMG HPDF

HMG_HPDF — Bill

Unicode

HMG Unicode

Utilities

DBA : Data Base Assistant

Low-Level DBU

x-Base Modul List

Mini Search Machine (2014)

Dynamic ComboBox

Posted on November 9, 2011 by vivaclipper

Dynamic means changeable at runtime.

Download ( source only ) here.

Directory List

Posted on November 1, 2011 by vivaclipper

Reinvention of wheel ?

Not quite …

Main difference is allowing file(s) and folder(s) selection together.

Another difference is implementing of <lNoChangeDir> parameter. Unlike GetFile(), GetDIRList() uses this value for allowing change directory ability to user.

Furthermore sorting grid columns by three (not two) ways, GetVolumLabel(), List2Arry() and Arry2List() functions may be useful.

Also, test program ( TestGDL.prg ) may be a sample for .fmg based application.

Download here ( source only ).

More Choices II

Posted on October 29, 2011 by vivaclipper

HMG Tutor 8

More Choices II

Another alternative to get an user’s choice is the COMBOBOX.

@ 10, 10 COMBOBOX Combo_1 ITEMS {'Option 1','Option 2','Option 3'}

Using a ComboBox, is similar to ListBox.

#include "hmg.ch"
Function Main
DEFINE WINDOW Win_1 ;
   AT 0,0 ;
   WIDTH 400 ;
   HEIGHT 200 ;
   TITLE 'Tutor 08 - ComboBox Test' ;
   MAIN
   DEFINE MAIN MENU
      POPUP "First Popup"
         ITEM 'Change ComboBox Value' ACTION ;
               Win_1.Combo_1.Value := 2
         ITEM 'Retrieve ComboBox Value' ACTION ;
             MsgInfo ( Str(Win_1.Combo_1.Value))
         SEPARATOR
         ITEM 'Add Combo Item' ACTION ;
             Win_1.Combo_1.AddItem ('New List Item')
         ITEM 'Remove Combo Item' ACTION ;
             Win_1.Combo_1.DeleteItem (2)
         ITEM 'Change Combo Item' ACTION ;
             Win_1.Combo_1.Item (1) := 'New Item Text'
         ITEM 'Get Combo Item Count' ACTION ;
             MsgInfo (Str(Win_1.Combo_1.ItemCount))
      END POPUP
   END MENU
   @ 10, 10 COMBOBOX Combo_1 ITEMS {'Option 1','Option 2','Option 3'}
END WINDOW
ACTIVATE WINDOW Win_1
Return

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
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An explanation about Harbour, HMG and HMG-IDE

1) How to get a lot of of source codes containing of samples to handle screen-menus ; from basic up to complex/advanced screen-menus?

2) How to avoid one app/EXE is double-run by users in the same computer?

3) Why stable version release from official Harbour-Project differ from this forum?

4) Pls help us describe what the differences between this 3 services you’ve been provided: Harbour Compiler, Harbour Mini GIU, Harbour-IDE. We need to know exactly when and why use them?

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HMG.3.3.1 Portable : ( Patch 3 (Unicode) applied )

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Language Related

Arrays

Conversion

National Issues

Windows

Controls

Browse

Combo box

Edit Box

Grid

Text Box

Tree

Functions

Drives, Directories and Files

Messages

Miscellaneous

Funny

Drawing

Printing

Text Mode

GUI Mode

HMG Print

HMG Report

HMG HPDF

Unicode

Utilities

Rate this:

Rate this:

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HMG Tutor 8

More Choices II

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