egs@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Schnoebelen) (07/21/88)
Hello NetLand!
Can anyone tell me if there is a Clipper Compatible compiler for
the Mac? For those who don't know, Clipper is a dBase III+ compiler (
with extensions ) for the IBM-PC family. If there is such a beast, who
makes/sells it? How much ( approx. )? Any other info?
We need to port some of our Clipper code to the Mac for one of our
customers, if we can find a compiler for it. We know of FoxPlus, but we
would rather have a complete compiler, rather than an interpter.
Please e-mail, and I will post a follow up summary if there is
enough info/requests.
Eric Schnoebelen
John W. Bridges & Associates, Inc.
Lewisville, Tx
(214) 436-8334
{ ihnp4, mit-eddie, many more } !killer!u-word!egs
u-word!egs@killer.dallas.tx.us
egs@killer.dallas.tx.us
( a Cyclone in Mustang/Longhorn country )
[ looks like I need to add two newsgroups to my .newsrc ]djp@aero.ARPA (Dennis J. Persinger) (07/21/88)
In article <4866@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> egs@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Schnoebelen) writes: > >Hello NetLand! > > Can anyone tell me if there is a Clipper Compatible compiler for >the Mac? For those who don't know, Clipper is a dBase III+ compiler ( >with extensions ) for the IBM-PC family. If there is such a beast, who >makes/sells it? How much ( approx. )? Any other info? What you should look at is McMax, which I think is also made by Nantucket (the maker of Clipper). As I recall, it purports to handle all Clipper files, unchanged, and does include a compiler in addition to an interpreter. Unfortunately, the way that they accomplish this is to throw up a single window in 9 pt monaco and present everything as it would be on a PC screen. (Well what did you expect from an application that handles all PC program files unchanged?) I think that it allowed some limited Mac customization by letting programmers insert simple button dialog boxes (e.g. "Save this file?" "Yes" "No" "Cancel"), but for most Mac users, the resulting application is quite annoying (computing in 'The Brave New World'). However, the cost isn't too bad I think (a couple of hundred), and it does let you get existing applications up and running quickly on the Mac. I suppose you could use it as a stopgap and port the code into FoxBase if you needed a permanent, long-term solution. Dennis Persinger The Aerospace Corp. djp@aerospace.aero.org somewhere in usenet
alexis@dasys1.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) (07/23/88)
Recently, egs@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Schnoebelen) wrote: > Can anyone tell me if there is a Clipper Compatible compiler for >the Mac? For those who don't know, Clipper is a dBase III+ compiler ( >with extensions ) for the IBM-PC family. If there is such a beast, who >makes/sells it? How much ( approx. )? Any other info? > > We need to port some of our Clipper code to the Mac for one of our >customers, if we can find a compiler for it. We know of FoxPlus, but we >would rather have a complete compiler, rather than an interpter. And djp@aero.ARPA (Dennis J. Persinger) responds: >What you should look at is McMax, which I think is also made by Nantucket >(the maker of Clipper). As I recall, it purports to handle all Clipper >files, unchanged, and does include a compiler in addition to an interpreter. >Unfortunately, the way that they accomplish this is to throw up a single >window in 9 pt monaco and present everything as it would be on a PC screen. >(Well what did you expect from an application that handles all PC program >files unchanged?) [etc.] I would STRONGLY suggest that you give careful consideration to FoxBase+/Mac. While Nantucket sells "McMax", a dBase clone, it is not a compiler. It also is inferior in every way to FoxBase. It was written by a West German company, so support and upgrades are problematic. Nantucket claims that an upgrade is in the works. They have let this (once promising) product slide for too long for me to take anything on faith now. (I am not suggesting that they are lying. I suggest that they may have as much trouble getting an upgrade out the door as any Mac-inexperienced company.) At any rate, I believe that Dennis is wrong on three counts- 1) McMax does not have the Clipper extensions. (There is a small chance that I am wrong, but it surely didn't support them the last time I looked.) 2) McMax does not, to the best of my knowledge, have a compiler. It has a TOKENIZER. This is *VERY DIFFERENT* from a compiler. FoxBase (and Omnis, and Fourth Dimension, etc.) all have tokenizers. 3) McMax DOES NOT handle all PC files unchanged. It handles ".DBF" and ".PRG" files. All the others must be emulated or rebuilt (possibly reports work as well, I don't remember)... At any rate, I DO expect a lot more. FoxBase is compatible with ALL the file types, and it has a REAL MAC INTERFACE. As far as FoxBase goes, it is so much faster than Clipper in database operations that its speed should be good for anything you are doing. The tokenized code can be distributed with a runtime (one-time charge of $300), and it is at least eight times faster than anything else on the Mac. It compares quite favorably to all of the interpreted PC environments I am familiar with. It also supports a wide variety of extensions, such as arrays, multiple relations out of a file, UDFs, and LOTS more. The Clipper extensions probably map onto its extensions without much trouble. It also has the best user interface of all the Mac databases. I don't beleive that you need compiled code (at least for speed or security). The data-access stuff is so fast that it will likely offset any loss in code execution time. (I can tell for sure if I know what type of application is being written.) I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice. It would. But you probably don't need it. I do some very compute-intensive stuff on a Mac Plus and I am totally satisfied with the speed. After all, if you want to calculate PI or animate graphics, you aren't going to be doing it in a database language. If you _really_ want to though, use external code. Summary: No compilers. Nothing 100% Clipper compatible. FoxBase will probably be good. McMax is a dead product until the upgrade, at least. ---- Alexis Rosen {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\ Writing from {harpo,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!alexis The Big Electric Cat {portal,well,sun}!hoptoad/ Public UNIX if mail fails: ...cmcl2!cucard!cunixc!abr1 Best path: uunet!dasys1!alexis