ATUG Toolbook Tips - Toolbook Tips & Techniques Web Site Reviews

Toolbook Tips & Techniques

Tips on
Web Site Reviews - III

Simpkinson Toolbook Tutorial


http://ems.cea.wsu.edu/LabDocs/ToolBook/

This site hosts an entire tutorial in using Toolbook II Assistant. There are step by step screenshots for the following procedures:

    Day 1: Getting Started 
    Day 2: Images, ImageMaps, and Hyperlinking. 
    Day 3: Fields, RecordFields, and Hotwords. 
    Day 4: Question Widgets.

For example, selecting day 3 from the above list takes you to:

and then selecting ‘recordFields’ we eventually get to:

Remember that this site is for learning the non-scripting version of Toolbook viz. Toolbook Assistant.

Tim Dutcher's Power Tools site


http://www.raincity.com/Vision/

Various tools here, including an extension to Toolbook CMS (Course Management System) to allow > 500 users. Also available is the plug-in "PowerTools 1.5 for ToolBook" which lists viewers, pages, resources etc. and has a to-do list and bug tracker allowing you to add notes to any page. Great for team development. Sample books include:

A Microsoft Outlook-style user interface.
Lock objects into a fixed position at author level.
Determine word clicked in an activated field.
Dumps text of all fields to file.
Dumps Asymetrix Knowledge Base to text files.

Knowledge Arts


http://www.teleport.com/~rossh/

Two useful things here - DLL Maker and the tutorial information book: Using Asymetrix ToolBook.

DLL Maker is a small book written with ToolBook 4.0. To use DLL Maker, you key in the C template for the DLL function you want to use. DLL Maker uses the template to create an OpenScript subroutine that you can copy and paste into your toolbook. It allows you to use the DLL function without having to remember which C types correspond to which OpenScript types, declaring linkDLLs, and allocating and freeing Windows memory.

Also available is the aplication ‘Using Asymetrix ToolBook’ - a downloadable, comprehensive guide that explains basic and advanced techniques for using ToolBook. The full version of this guide is still under development.

Australian TUG & Toolbook Mag


http://www.atug.com/

This site contains an extensive online ToolbookTips & Tricks Magazine, plus offers an innovative offline reader for all the online Toolbook discussions (both the Internet and Compuserve) over the last 5 years - fully indexed - downloadable and on CD.

Servo Splash Loader Site


http://www.spiritone.com/~servo/loader.html

A simple utility which will display a splash-screen window as quickly as possible. Available for both 16- and 32-bit Windows. JPEG support. Freeware

Loader is a simple utility which will display a splash-screen-like window as quickly as possible, then, in the background, launch a second application based on a series of parameters in a configuration file. It's main purpose is to provide a very fast method of displaying a splash-screen or bitmap without interfering with the launching of the second application.

Why would you want it?
Toolbook startup time is notoriously slow - well at least in the sense that you don't see anything happening for quite a while after you start the program. You can try to display a splash screen - but even this will take time to show. The above tool solves this problem - I haven't tried it, but I intend to.

Sang Park's new database access DLL


http://members.aol.com/mpspark/

This is a new dll that uses the Borland BDE (16 bit) for paradox database access. Here are the features that the author claims makes this dll so powerful as compared to Asymetrix's paradox access DLL:

Specifically designed and optimized for Toolbook.
Tremendous improvement in multiple record search and retrieval
performance.
Simplified record and BLOB handling means reduction in program codes.
A single call can handle dBASE, Paradox, and SQL tables unless the call is specific only to a particular table type. This also means you can join dBASE and Paradox tables on the fly to produce a unique dataset. Not only that, you can write one set of code that will work not only on Paradox and dBASE in native modes, but also on any other ODBC compliant database. Even when you upsize the database most of the code works as is.
Table field mapping feature makes it easy to retrieve data.
Search by Range enables you to collect all the records that meet certain criteria instantly, in a single call.
Filtering makes it possible to search for records in multiple criteria without an index.
Wildcard string search can be done on both character (alpha) type fields and Memo BLOB type fields, and its performance is remarkable.
Tables can be linked, even across different table types, to make it easier to find records in another table.
Much wider range of data types are supported: Paradox supports: Alpha, Number(float), Money, Short(16bit int), Long (32bit int), BCD(64 bit int), Date, Time, Timestamp, Memo, Graphic, Binary. Logical(BOOL), Autoincrement, and Bytes. dBASE supports: Alpha, Number, Date, Memo, Binary, Logical, and Typed binary. You may use OLE, and formatted field types but you will have to provide hooks to it.
Supports all language drivers. For example, "ascii, international, Chinese, German, Spanish, Korean, Greek... "
Supports up to Paradox 5 and dBASE for Windows 5. As mentioned above, now dBASE users can use binary BLOBs (Graphics and sound...). Paradox 7 tables will be supported ONLY upon request.
Enables Paradox tables to run off CD.
You can use SQL along with other code level calls. This provides handy access to the local table's data using easy SQL statements like SUM, AVG, ORDER BY...

Now all we need is a 32 bit version of this for use in Toolbook 6!…

Widget Wizard


http://www.luna-park.net/icon/about.htm

This site is German in origin, and the tool is written for English users e.g. the tooltips & help files are in English. From the site:

"If you work with ToolBook you will have to use some widgets or objects over and over again in different projects. You can create these objects every time you need them but this will cost a lot of time. Or you can copy the objects from existing book files which is a lot of work. "

"So we designed the widget wizard tool. It provides you a database where you can save your widgets and objects. Then you can "import" the objects into any bookfile you want. You can sort your objects in the database, write comments and edit their scripts in the database. "

Figure 42 - the palette on the top left is where you select the item you want to inset into your Toolbook application. You can also press a palette button to add the currently selected Toolbook object into the list.

If you work with different versions of ToolBook you also can copy objects between different file versions without any converting of book-files. This is because the objects are stored as text descriptions inside in regular dbf (dbase) files!

Figure 43 - Notice the toolbook object types being stored in a regular dbf database.

Note that you you need to add a system book to your startup books, namely

ww_v080.sbk

which will then prompt you for the other system book, viz.

Iconeidb.sbk

and that there are some important settings stored in a file called ICON.INI in your windows system folder e.g.

[EIDB]
file=C:\MYDOCU~1\TBK5APPS\DBWIDG~1\ICONEIDB.SBK
[database]
file=C:\MYDOCU~1\TBK5APPS\DBWIDG~1\ANDY1.idb
[browser]
bringUp=true
[status]
bringUp=false
message=true

Zimmerman Free Stuff

http://come.to/geek

Here is a site that offers quite a few handy Toolbook coding examples, plus a good selection of links to other Toolbook sites. E.g.

Automatic backups/compacting of a TBK; 5+ (2K) 
Blackbox - TB performing genetic code; 6 (12K) 
Calling OpenScript from C/C++; 5 (88K) 
Communication between Win32 C++ and TB apps
Computing CRC32 of file/string with DLL; 6 (51K) 
DirectSound DLL for ToolBook BETA
Drawing on the desktop; 5/6 (23K) 
Frank Jularic's OpenScript editor Rainbow v0.20;
GDI examples 
Recording wave-audio with MCI; 5 (5K) 
Resizing a bitmap-viewer; 6 (289K) 
RTF in a Paradox memofield example; 5 (16K) 
Running TBK's inside Office documents (PDF)
Smooth scrolling example; 5/6 (17K) 
Stupid fun with viewers; 6 (9K) 
How to get fullname of a short filename

For example - here is a book that shows how to store rich text fields in a paradox database:

For example here is the code that write the contents of the rich text field to the paradox table:

to handle buttonClick
   system string alias;
   local long hBlob;
   request "Do you really want to update the table?"  with "Sure" or "No!";
   if(it<>"Sure")then
      break buttonClick;
   end
   -- update the current record's 
   -- Data-field with whatever is in the rtf-field
   -- never forget the +1 in this next line!!
   hBlob=openPXBlobWrite(alias,"Data", \
     charCount(richtext of field "rtfField")+1,0);
   send dbdo setPXMemoBlob(hBlob, \
     richtext of field "rtfField");
   send dbdo closePXBlob(hBlob,1);
   send dbdo updatePXRecord(alias);
end

END OF ATUG TOOLBOOK TIPS MAGAZINE

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