2 FoxTalk December 1998 http://www.pinpub.com
Bug Fixes Available at microsoft.com Whil Hentzen IN the olden days of Fox Software, the gang would fix bugs and release patch disks. Some of you remember the 11 sets of patches for FoxPro 2.0, including two that were released, ahem, four days apart. The patches were shipped out for free (I think), but you had to know about the patches and request them. Distribution of bug fixes is a lot easier these days— nearly painless—because of the Web: Just go to the site and download them. But you still have to know about them. And if you don’t “know someone,” how are you going to find out? You could visit the Web site of the manufacturer of every product you use, but that’s not always a great solution. And even if you had the time, sometimes it takes a lot of digging. Visual Studio SP-1 (”SP” = Service Pack—softie speak for bug fixes) is now available for free order and download from Microsoft. It addresses specific binary compatibility issues with certain runtime files in Visual Studio 6.0—none of which I found applicable to VFP—but it’s probably still worthwhile getting. A more important update—and one that’s fairly well hidden—is the new Setup Wizard. If you’ve gotten to the point of shipping a VFP 6 application, you’ve possibly run into one or more of the half-dozen defects in the current Setup Wizard. A couple were pretty ugly, I think, but remember that FoxPro 2.5 shipped, and then <strong>Un</strong>-<strong>Mapping</strong> . . . Continued from page 1 through the <strong>Network</strong> Neighborhood—something a user who’s used to having a network drive mapped is unlikely to do. The getdir() function is even worse. There’s no way of getting it to return a UNC path to a folder (except in one specific instance—see the sidebar “Returning a UNC Path from getdir()” for details). Not only do the functions not return UNC paths, but VFP doesn’t provide any way to convert a mapped path to a UNC path. Win32API to the rescue! The Windows 32-bit API provides a function that accepts a mapped path and returns the UNC path that From the Editor FoxTalk everyone found out that the Standard version didn’t work—period. Turns out everyone was testing the Extended version with their brand-new 386 machines. Similarly, testing the Setup Wizard is pretty tough, considering you need a functioning app first. What’s been fixed? Options for creating a DEP file are now saved in WZSETUP.INI. Set Mark To “.” doesn’t blow out the distribution disks; neither does installing multiple OCX files in the source directory. FOXHHELP.EXE is now copied correctly if you check the HTML Help Engine check box. And if you have two files with the same name but in different directories—like if you were shipping a couple of sets of tutorial data—each is copied correctly now. There’s also an updated VFP 6.0 Component Gallery, updates to several FoxPro Foundation Class (FFC) files, and an ActiveX control updater that will automatically update the Treeview, Listview, and Imagelist controls to the latest versions. Where do you get these new updates? Pop over to msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro, and select Samples and Downloads, Product Updates, or, if you want the direct URL, try http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro/ downloads/updates.asp. Note that your copy must be registered before you can get access to the page. ▲ corresponds to that mapped path. I searched through the API documentation and found a function called WNetGet<strong>Un</strong>iversalName() in MPR.DLL in the system directory. The function will accept the path to either a file or a folder with or without a trailing backslash. <strong>Un</strong>fortunately, this function is only available under Windows NT. I found this out the hard way, having developed and tested a routine using WNetGet<strong>Un</strong>iversalName() on my WinNT development box, I proudly installed it on a client’s Win95 machine, only to have it not work . Microsoft has a Knowledge Base article confirming that it doesn’t work under Win95 (there’s no mention in the article of Win98). So much for a single, consistent Win32API! http://www.pinpub.com FoxTalk December 1998 3
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