
Services -> What was New in Superbase 2001

Superbase
2001 – the continuous innovations...

AbsolutePosition property now supported
for Graphic Reports
It is now possible to use the AbsolutePosition property with a
GraphicReport. There are some items to consider, however, since
a virtual form is created each time a graphic report is run, and
it is this form that is the ultimate recipient of this property.
If any page (band) of the report has this property set, then it
will apply for the entire report and for all pages. One thing that
it will not do, is to expand the area of the report, it will act
to move the contents of the resulting report page up and left, but
it will not then make more space available on the page at the bottom.
The routines that build the virtual form from the associated bands
have not been modified to support this.
Chaining the Me value to another procedure
It is now possible to pass the me value from one
procedure to another procedure (to create a type of daisy-chain
when intercepting event procedures). Using the syntax:
CALL CHAIN foo()
the Me value should be preserved.
Command Line Option -s
There is a new option for starting Superbase that allows the definition
of the window type for the Superbase window. It does not permit
any child type to be selected, since it is itself a parent, but
any of the other valid styles can be set. To do this, the appropriate
hexadecimal value must directly follow (without a space) the -s
parameter.
New sort orders
There is now a new DLL calledSBSORT30.DLL that allows specific
sort orders to be applied to a file. The new sort orders include
Arabic, ASCII, German, Greek, Hebrew, Polish, and SBOriginal (which
is the default). The choice of sort order is part of the file, so
it must be established at the time the file is created, it cannot
be added afterward. See the documentation of FileIndexOrders and
FileCreationIndexOrder. Files using this feature will not sort correctly
in older versions.
Program Editor Enhancements
There is a new menu item for jumping to a specific line number
in the editor. The editor now has its own status bar that also shows
the current line number. The process of evaluating the line when
a copy/paste operation was done has been changed so that it should
be less likely to incorrectly format the code.
Scientific Features added
The scientific features that were added include new objects:
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Matrix objects,
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Vector objects,
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FiniteElmtArray, and FiniteElmtAttribute objects,
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support for Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors.
New methods of the Superbase object including:
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Integrate(),
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Differentiate(),
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Summation(),
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ValueChange(),
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Maximum(),
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Minimum(),
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Product(),
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DistNormal(), and
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DistNormalInverse().
Also, new examples demonstrating the some of the uses of the scientific
functions have been included. This should not be confused with the
release of Superbase Scientific, which will include the same features
but also include a special handbook and a much larger array of examples
specifically about the scientific features.
SBP$ and SBP% are now set on each error occurrence
It is now possible to test the value of SBP$ and SBP% after any
error, so a global error logging mechanism can now show on exactly
which line and in which program file an error has occurred. This
feature has saved us hundreds of hours of work on internal projects
already during the debugging phase.
Tags() array property
There is now a new type of tag that is an array. This property
is not attached to every object, but to those objects where it would
make sense, such as dialogs and dialog controls, forms and form
controls, windows, menus, and iconbars. This is a volatile property
(it is not stored with forms) and is highly versatile. Each element
can be of a different scalar data type and you can have up to 2
Gig elements (might be tough on memory though).
TextHeight() and TextWidth()methods have new optional
parameters
The TextHeight() andTextWidth() methods of the Form object now
also include 2 additional parameters. One for bold and one for italic.
The revised syntax is shown below:
TextHeight(<stringexpression>[,fontstring [,bold [,italic]]])
TextWidth(<stringexpression>[,fontstring [,bold [,italic]]])
Where the bold and italicparameters can be either 0 or -1 (false
or true) and determine whether the string expression should be evaluated
for a normal, bold, italic, or bold and italic font.
Variable indirection now supported in many more
places
The special version of variable indirection used by the Superbase
query engine ($variable$) is now supported in a larger number of
places. This will allow programs to run efficiently without needing
to use EXECUTE to ensure filter optimization.
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SELECT WHERE
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CREATE FILE FROM
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REMOVE FROM FILE
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PRINT
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REQUEST 20,24,25
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LABELS
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MERGE
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IMPORT
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EXPORT
XML Import/Export converter
Superbase now includes an import/export converter for XML format.
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