Russell B. Eggen
June 16, 2003 1:07 PM
comp.lang.clarion,TopSpeed.Topic.Third_Party

I don't use many 3rd party products for my personal use as I tend to be
rather rough on them <g>.  Client projects are a different story.

But since the original class browser by Gordon Smith many years ago (which
is very good) to the one that shipped with Clarion (with source), to the
internal browser and a few others, they all pretty much looked the same.

In order for me to use any product, I don't feel I am any different than
anyone else.  I have to know "what's in it for me?" and "how does this
improve my productivity?"  Class browsers are hard pressed to satisfy such
questions.

The one exception is Randy Roger's class browser.  The first thing that
strikes you is the clean and appealing interface.  So far, so good as a nice
interface invites me to hang around.

I installed this in my Clarion 6 folder.  I am happy to see that Randy
mostly follows the 3rd party install standards.  Only one negative here; no
shortcuts are created, thus I run from the Start/Run command.

I bring up the Clarion 6 install as that was my choice.  What I was not
expecting to find was that the browser can switch to Clarion 5.5 sources and
keep them isolated!  Now we are talking!  I also have Clarion 5EE and
Clarion 4 and the browser easily builds class trees for each version.  The
browser can see which versions I have installed on my machines.  Clarion
version does not matter here.

Now to the browser itself.  You can filter by class category, such as ABC,
Web, Handy Tools, my class for my upcoming book, etc.  Or you can see all
classes.  Up to you.  This is a nice feature as there can be many classes
installed in libsrc.  It can also find and identify non-ABC compliant
classes (and there are some 3rd party products in this category).  The
browser treats them all the same.

Once you pick a class, the source for what you have highlighted, appears in
a 3rd pane instantly with no flicker.  It can be a property or method,
protected or private (which you can turn on or off).

You can switch views at the touch of a button, say from the class hierarchy
to method calls to just interfaces and even data structures like QUEUEs,
GROUPs and enumerated structures (like ITEMIZE).

You may even edit anything you view.  And speaking of editing, you may
attach your favorite editor (mine is Textpad).

I found the help very nice and it is 32-bit help.  If you highlight an ABC
class, property or method and press F1, I found a pleasant surprise.  It
opens Clarion's Help for the highlighted code.  In my case it was Clarion 6
help and this is most welcome as it is already superior to the help in
previous Clarion versions.

So, what good is it?  Does it make you more productive? Let me answer each
question.

It is good for navigation complex class structures and see them in the
context of how they are used at runtime. Many Clarion developers have told
me in my education classes that they need to see what is being called.  This
is the typical reaction to those learning classes.  This browser eases the
learning curve.  So there is one excellent use for beginning and seasoned
OOPers alike.  Up to you how much detail you wish to see in this scenario.

This would be a nice study aide to Bruce Johnson's ABC book.  So it can
double as a nice study aide (for some strange reason, I am rather biased
here <g>).

But does it make you more productive?  In my case, I wish I had this when I
was writing the class for my book.  I could then see how my class relations
stand (or not <g>) with other classes.

Here is one major productivity booster.  Interfaces.  Many interfaces are
reference properties in ABC.  These appear as hyper links.  Just click on it
and you are instantly taken to the reference (including the source code).
And there are navigation buttons so you can go back.  A nice touch is the
hyperlink history so you can jump over previously visited hyperlinks.

This is how the browser treats all references, even when they are other
classes, groups or other structures.

I no longer have to use editors to do searches and figure out how things
related.  This browser shows you and with zero effort.  You will get spoiled
on that work reduction rather quickly.

For the price offered, this is far and above more than what you pay for.
This browser is now part of my permanent tool chest.  Do not leave home
without this one!

I am not surprised this earns the first ever Lazy Programmer's Society Seal
of Approval.

You have to get this product!
--
Russ Eggen
LPS President and Founder
www.radfusion.com