Calvin Allen

PBDJ Blog Post I spent a few hours today getting our PowerBuilder applications to properly spell check using Wintertree’s Sentry Spell Checking Engine. This spell check engine revolves around one DLL and a few dictionaries. Now, I haven’t gotten to the point of adding spell check as you type, but they say it is possible. I ended up with one non-visual user object that contains all my code. This user object has one public function of_spell_check(string as_text) that takes the text you wish to spell check as a parameter. To start, I needed to declare 6 local external function calls into the provided DLL: FUNCTION long SSCE_CheckBlockDlg(ulong hWnd, REF string textToCheck, long textLength, long newlength, int showContext) LIBRARY "SSCE5532.DLL" ALIAS FOR "SSCE_CheckBlockDlg;Ansi" FUNCTION integer SSCE_SetKey(long key) LIBRARY "SSCE5532.DLL" FUNCTION integer SSCE_SetU... (more)

Contribution: PowerBuilder

PBDJ Blog Post For the longest time, I’ve wanted to contribute something back to PowerBuilder – mostly in an OSS way. I signed up to be a developer on the codeplex hosted pfc code that Bruce Armstrong posted, but there is zero activity over there. I could fork PFC and start a new project, but what I could I add to the project that wouldn’t be better suited just being a part of PFC itself? I could start a new framework altogether, but that just seems like a lot of re-inventing the wheel. I don’t have the knowledge to come up with stuff like Brad Wery over at PowerToTheBuilder, so... (more)

Single Instance PowerBuilder Applications

PBDJ Blog Post One way I’ve found to do this is through a few calls to the system to query whether the application is already running or not. Placing the code in the application’s open event is one way of handling more than once instance. See example code below: OleObject locator,service,props String ls_query int num, ret   ls_query = "select name , description from Win32_Process where name = 'textpad.exe'" locator = CREATE OleObject ret = locator.ConnectToNewObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator"); service = locator.ConnectServer(); props = service.ExecQuery(ls_query); num = pr... (more)

PowerBuilder DataWindow Love

PBDJ Blog Post I haven’t been in the PowerBuilder game long, so I’m sure some of you already know about this tidbit of information. I was taught when you need to obtain data from a column in a datawindow for every row, that you iterate over the rows assigning each rows value to a particular index in an array of the same type. Sound familiar to anyone? Example: long ll_x, ll_rowcount string ls_people_ids[]   ll_rowcount = dw_people.rowcount()   if ll_rowcount > 0 then for ll_x = 1 to ll_rowcount ls_people_ids[ll_x] = dw_people.object.id[ll_x] next end if Sure, you can do that…if... (more)

Hunter’s Internet Debut!

Here is a short clip of our foster dog, Hunter, doing what he loves most! ... (more)