Ready for next version?

HMG Unicode versions 3.1.x related

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PeteWG
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by PeteWG »

trmpluym wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:24 pm .... When the code has to be public 'directly' the coder is violating the GPL license right after modifying the first character :D
Ok, that's a pun, isn't it. ;)

Theo, you probably want to help project viability (and your investment on it). That's fair and reasonable.
What I don't understand is why you ask to exclude, from receiving new releases (enhancements, bug-fixes etc),
those users who can't or don't like to make donations?
Such a discrimination, before anything else (and besides being anti-social behavior, as well as,
a license infringement), is not smart . In fact, at the end of the day, it will damage the project.
Think you "why"?

PS1: I repeat, donations are (and must always be) highly encouraged, since they can greatly help
open source projects. That's one (and good) thing. Restricting distribution to donators only, is an other (and bad) thing.
PS2: Any GPL-ed open source software, as you may know, is based on some fundamental principles;
one of them is free distribution to the public. "Free distribution" is part of an agreement,
it's not an act of charity made once a year or so. Anyway, that's my opinion, I hope it may (or may not) be useful.

regards,
Pete
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vagblad
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by vagblad »

Personally coming from other programming languages such as delphi,c++ and c# and had never actually programmed in Clipper apart from some stuff we did back in school i am worried. A few years ago we started a huge project with Nikos, of migrating all of his older clipper programs to harbour/windows whilst adding new features as well. As i've said in the past HMG and MiniGui are both excellent tools of doing the above work. Migrating old Clipper DOS software to Windows. But personally being used working with "newer" languages/environments i find both of them lacking in a lot of areas.

First of all no IDE. I don't use any of the 2 IDEs at the moment as well but not because i don't want to but because they simply are not up to the point of doing the work. I cannot understand some fellow community members who say that they don't need an IDE. A modern IDE saves you hundreds of working hours, making you more efficient and productive.

Second problem in my opinion is the lack of documentation. Yes there is "some" documentation but a lot of the libraries are fully undocumented(with the exception of BosTaurus.Thank you Dr. Claudio!). We are talking about an open-source project in which you cannot add anything unless you start reading all the prg files line by line to understand what is going on. When i want to add something to use in our projects i usually have to go to harbour's github, check out Victor's code then come back and check HMG's or Mini's source to finally add what i need. Of course the problem begins from Harbour's lacking documentation. I haven't seen any of the new added features anywhere except from github and inside the prg files.

Unless i am mistaken, no github or something similar set up for both HMG and Mini. Which means there isn't an easy way to contribute to the projects. I have to give props to Grigory for this though because he has been adding user's submittions or good ideas from the yahoo group.

To conclude both of the projects are really good, do their work exceptionally. They are far from complete. I mean we can never say a programming language is "complete" right? It's a continuous race for updates and fixes. I know it's a hard pill to swallow but both of them are lacking compared to modern environments. Like the DBF database format is lacking compared to modern solutions like MySql.

I am so grateful towards to the "giants" who made these projects available to us. I had so much help from this forum and from the yahoo group.It is untrue.But i am worried.I am worried about the longevity of the projects and their life expectancy.What happens if in the next version of Windows something breaks?What happens when our libraries stop being updated and new hardware/software comes out? Do we scrap all of our projects and work and we start migrating "once more" to another language? Or do we just use c++ and windows api in our "harbour" programs? Isn't it better to move to c++/c# then where most of those api functions are intergraded already in the environment?
I agree with the notion of giving donations to the people who support those projects.Do not be mistaken.These are open-source projects but there aren't a lot of people actually contributing compared to other mass scale open source projects.We cannot compare these to open source projects like Firefox for example.

Maybe a lot of people don't use HMG and MiniGUI as professional tools but more like as a hobby to migrate their old DOS programs to Windows. A lot of us though use them professionally. Don't we care about it? Giving a financial motive to the people involved should be a thing. I am not saying lock features behind a paywall. Not at all.I am just saying that there should be a motivation for the people who develop the two projects. Take Rathi for example. He has been paying for this forum(hosting and all) for years.He is very active and one of the core members of the community with a lot of contributions. He has been away for some time now(i hope you are doing fine Rathi) for whatever personal reasons he might have. What happens if he doesnt come back and the forum shuts down? Same thing that happened with Mr. Roberto Lopez and Dr. Soto. They both stopped contributing for work/time/other personal reasons. Those were big loses.

So in summary, yes to donations(monthly/yearly), no to locking content behind a paywall, more "open" projects, DOCUMENTATION PLEASE!
I am sorry for the long post.Just my personal opinions on the state of the projects and on their future.
Vagelis Prodromidis
Email: vagblad@gmail.com, Skype: vagblad
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quartz565
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by quartz565 »

I never said that donations should be compulsory. Of course not.
I can imagine that more or less all of us know what is the meaning of open-source code with projects where hundreds or even thousands experienced programmers contribute, where even there are donations or not the project will keep going because even if someone stops contributing there are lots of more new people to take his place.
Our project is a “unique” case: Unfortunately there were not a lot of people contributing and when they couldn’t keep doing what they’ve been generously doing, because they have their own jobs, there weren’t a lot to take their place. To be exact there were two of them: Rathi and Grigory.
And “before we start crying over spilt milk” I merely stated the obvious above: What and how much are WE eager to do in order this huge project doesn’t die. I’ve only stated my suggestion which may be wrong, I would love though to listen to other suggestions as well.
I don’t think we should delve into a fruitless debate about what is open source code and what’s not. Because this doesn’t give a solution to our problem at this current moment. If we center the conversation about the GPL I think we are missing the point. That was not my original point, the technicalities of the GPL licence.
Ancient Greeks had a saying : “Sin Athena kai hera kinei” which loosely translates into “Don’t expect everything from God, you have to act and he will aid you”
Best Regards,
Nikos.

os: Windows Server 2019 - 64
EduardoLuis
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by EduardoLuis »

Ancient Greeks had a saying : “Sin Athena kai hera kinei” which loosely translates into “Don’t expect everything from God, you have to act and he will aid you” (Quartz mention)
+100
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mol
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by mol »

As Vagblad wrote, IDE can save hundred of hourof work.
Maybe we should ceate a team and start to work to buld new Ide? Maybe there is an open-source project which can be adapted to hmg?
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gfilatov
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by gfilatov »

mol wrote: Tue Mar 12, 2019 6:23 pm Maybe there is an open-source project which can be adapted to hmg?
Please take a look for HMGS-IDE sources at
https://sourceforge.net/p/hmgs-minigui/ ... /HMGS-IDE/

But it is a very old version of IDE :?
Kind Regards,
Grigory Filatov

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Albert Einstein
PeteWG
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by PeteWG »

EduardoLuis wrote: Tue Mar 12, 2019 6:16 pm Ancient Greeks had a saying : “Sin Athena kai hera kinei” which loosely translates into “Don’t expect everything from God, you have to act and he will aid you” (Quartz mention) +100
Didn't knew goddess Athena had helped Roberto Lopez in creating HMG!
I've been for years greatly impressed by his programming skills but now,
this fascinating allusion has put things in their real base, divine base actually! :)

Seriously though, what really would give a significant boost would be two things:
- unify the two projects,
- creation of IDE as suggested by Mol (including a serious Report Designer)
- and... web support!
Okay, that's three things and none of them easy (if possible at all).

However, as Grigory said, a good starting point could be HMGS-IDE.


PS: As I understand it, a strict translation of the saying “Sin Athena kai heira kinei” is:
"Besides praying to Athena, give a hand to get the job done".
(that Athena will be touched by the prayer and will come to help, is a kind desire not a sure fact).

regards,
Pete
PeteWG
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by PeteWG »

gfilatov wrote: Tue Mar 12, 2019 6:31 pm
mol wrote: Tue Mar 12, 2019 6:23 pm Maybe there is an open-source project which can be adapted to hmg?
Please take a look for HMGS-IDE sources at
https://sourceforge.net/p/hmgs-minigui/ ... /HMGS-IDE/

But it is a very old version of IDE :?
and if only we could enrich it with a good source-code editing component,
like Scintilla for example, it would be a great improvement.

regards,
Pete
ROBROS
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by ROBROS »

vagblad wrote:
Maybe a lot of people don't use HMG and MiniGUI as professional tools but more like as a hobby to migrate their old DOS programs to Windows. A lot of us though use them professionally. Don't we care about it? Giving a financial motive to the people involved should be a thing. I am not saying lock features behind a paywall. Not at all.I am just saying that there should be a motivation for the people who develop the two projects. Take Rathi for example. He has been paying for this forum(hosting and all) for years.He is very active and one of the core members of the community with a lot of contributions. He has been away for some time now(i hope you are doing fine Rathi) for whatever personal reasons he might have. What happens if he doesnt come back and the forum shuts down? Same thing that happened with Mr. Roberto Lopez and Dr. Soto. They both stopped contributing for work/time/other personal reasons. Those were big loses.

Hi friends,
now I am retired. I never was a professional coder, but I could help my company with the knowledge about relational dbfs. In DOS times I coded some useful apps in dBase, interpreted prgs were sufficient. And then 32 bit world (win 7) stopped my programming efforts. But I made data (open office) fit for being handled with non GUI xbase++. And then in 2017 the day of my retiring (01.10.2018 -- "DDMMYYYY") was coming closer. My intention was to leave a menu driven (GUI) app to my mates. xbase++ gui was not my choice, so I chose HMG. And with the help of many of you I was successful with HMG. I hope HMG will go on, If there is any interest in my app I could share my bumpy code with you. HMG is very powerful. Thank you so much. Robert
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Rathinagiri
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Re: Ready for next version?

Post by Rathinagiri »

Dear HMG Friends,

Hope all of you are fine. I am fine.

I am reading many interesting suggestions given by members. Let us decide what we can do.

For your kind information, I am not a technical person. I am not an expert in C. I am interested in learning new things though. Thanks to Roberto, Dr. Soto and others who are experts in C, our HMG started its root and grown to this level.

At present, in my office and many of my clients offices,100s of people are using HMG based software applications for years together, some being no requirement to be updated even!

Let us now talk about future of HMG. Future of HMG depends on the support for WinAPI in the future versions of Windows be it is PC or tablet or mobile.

People are talking wildly about Angular, Unity, Web applications, mobile applications, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Analytics, Business Intelligence and what not!?

I invite every one to participate in this discussion.
East or West HMG is the Best.
South or North HMG is worth.
...the possibilities are endless.
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