Post by Harriet BazleyOn 15 Apr 2022 as I do recall,
Powerbase v.10.42 (11-04-2022) is now available for download from my
website www.boulsworth.co.uk and is, thanks to a lengthy exchange with
Martin Avison, a thoroughly cleaned up version which is expected to
perform well on all recent versions of RISC OS including those with
the latest version of the Wimp.
I'm curious as to what on earth the problem could have been, since so
far as I'm aware the database front-end is a basic WIMP icon-based
display that one wouldn't expect to have redraw issues....
Derek Haslam has replied via me & made some remarks re this....
"No, I don't understand it and it puzzled Martin too. You're quite
right about the database record window having nothing but icons and
should only need user-redraw for the grid when in design mode. The
problem occurred with Wimp 5.79, which I think you and others such as
Harriet Bazley have, but *not* with Wimp 5.76 which I have on my
ARMbook with RO 5.27. Nor did it happen on my WinPC/Virtual Acorn
system with Wimp 5.61. I'd be interested to know if the same problem
has surfaced with any other software.
I tried issuing a Wimp_OpenWindow command, even though it oughn't to
have been necessary. That didn't work either unless a Wimp_CloseWindow
was issued first. Very strange indeed! The eventual solution was to
use Wimp_ForceRedraw.
The other problem which you originally communicated to Martin
(corruption of a report window with multiple occurrences of the same
field) was an interesting one. Martin pinned it down to the routine to
remove white space and created a single-record database which
illustrated the problem clearly. It would only occur if the "Total"
line was longer than the maximum *configured* length (not the maximum
*actual* length) of the first field. An unusual situation. I
implmented a workaround which prevented the corruption but wasn't
satisfied because it could truncate the footer under certain
circumstances. Then I tracked down the bit of the program which
excludes certain types of line (especially header lines) from the
white space removal. I found that a footer line was *not* so excluded.
Added that to the list and all was well.
Powerbase is a large program and I converted to to RISC OS (from a BBC
micro version) around 1991 so I sometimes find myself puzzled
regarding how things work!
v.10.42 is the newest version. I did a silly thing when I uploaded it
to the website, failing to remove my "reg" file and a Config file
which refers to my HD pathname. A warning from another user led me to
rectify that PDQ.
Regards,
Derek"
--
Chris Newman