Build 257

[Tom]

Hi, Roger.

Im very unhappy to say that, but build 257 is five steps forward and six steps back somehow. Lots of stuff that used to work perfect i.e. in build 254, now is broken, and I'm still working through all my application screens in order to find these errors/problems. Some of them seem to be related to bitmaps/icons coming from all kind of sources, but other issues are not that easy to point out.

What I can point exactly: It seems not to be a good idea to migrate code changes somebody else created for his very own eXpress++. To say it a little more precisely: I'm quite sure Jack is an excellent programmer, but he is not the inventor of eXpress++, so he may not have the complete overview to what the library does in all situations. For example: There are some fixes in there related to a PDR causing column hilite colors to fail. This fix ignores the parameters handed to a colorblock-slot, so browse columns with colorblock-codeblocks may fail now. In my very humble opinion, it is not the task of eXpress++ to provide fixes for Xbase++ problems. Besides, a hotfix for that problem is available from Alaska since more than half a year. Programmers may visit the site of Alaska periodically an look for hotfix rollups.

However, if I walk through your code, I find more and more changes with the "J.D." comment. This lets my hair turn grey. eXpress++ is very complex, and code changes created by someone may fit his needs, they even may be very helpful for others (like the ZEBRA stuff - I'm really afraid to use this!), but someone working on your code should know almost everything about it. I'm afraid, Jack does not. Sorry, Jack, I don't want to offend you, but eXpress++ is a very important part of my application, and I can't accept a growing risk of using it caused by your work.

Roger, this is from you: "Making good software is like making babies. It takes nine month, and it doesn't get any better if you put more men on it." This is a simple truth. If code ideas are migrated from someone elses code, they should be a) useful for all others and b) fit to the system. I believe, some of those changes to not fulfill those aspects.

[skiman]

Making good software is like making babies. It takes nine month, and it doesn't get any better if you put more men on it.

That's one to remember.

[rdonnay]

Tom -

I agree with you and I am dedicated to making the latest build work for everyone.
It means that I have to put off all of my customer projects and dedicate all of my time to build 258.
This will be a maintenance build only and will be released when the complaints stop.

Roger

[rdonnay]

To be fair to Jack, I must admit that some of the regression was caused by my new MERGECHILDREN feature of DCTABPAGE, however the color and presentation issues of the browse are owned by Jack. He has been very good at dealing with the issues as they have arrived, because I told him that he now owns this.

I believe that I worked through all of these issues, the last being pointed out by Brian Wolfsohn.

I am also responsible for the problems associated with icons and am trying to figure out what's going on here.

Sample programs really help me and they have not been forthcoming.

[unixkd]

Hi Tom

Thanks a lot for your comment. I equally want to appreciate the contribution of D.J to express++. I my opinion, we should encourage more members to be actively involved in the development and contribution to express++ like DJ. You have said it correctly, Express++ is a very very complex system, that is why it is so powerful and that is why many lifessssssssssssssssss depend squally on it too. By so doing, when Roger dies in about 97+x years time where x is a positive integer, this community would be the envy of the rest in the whole world as an everlasting community.

Joseph