BlackBox Component Builder 1.7

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Stable version 1.7 (Center, dated 13-September-2016):

Latest (unstable) builds:

Migration from 1.6 to 1.7

BlackBox 1.7 contains in its root directory a detailed change list (Changes list ) documenting all changes from 1.6 to 1.7. Most changes don't affect existing code but all existing code must be recompiled.

Migration problems detected by the compiler

IN to VAR

With 1.7 it is forbidden to use a variable declared as IN parameter as the receiver of a method call that expects a VAR receiver. You should change the IN parameter to VAR or the VAR receiver to IN in such a case.

Read-only variables

With 1.7 it is forbidden to call the methods of a read-only variable if the receiver is declared to be VAR. So you should export such a variable by * or use IN for the receiver.

WinNet.hostent definition

With 1.7 the WinNet.hostent definition was fixed, so you need to replace:

inaddr := hostentry.h_addr_list^[0]^[0]

to

inaddr := SYSTEM.VAL(WinNet.in_addr, hostentry.h_addr_list^[0]^)

Migration problems NOT detected by the compiler

Underlined white space

Underlined spaces and tabs are now shown according to the defined format, i.e. they are underlined. So we recommend you to check your documentation files and/or program generated text files to prevent unexpected underlines.

Options for improvements after Migration

UTF8

UTF-8 conversion is supported "out of the box" from module Strings. So if you are using UTF-8 conversions embedded in your own code or from some third-party modules, you can switch to the new Strings procedures.

External calls

1.7 supports calling URLs (e.g. web pages, E-mails), so now you can be sure that the user can call your link from documentation even if external CPC subsystems such as Info or i21Sys are not installed.

Use the Dialog.OpenExternal procedure to call a URL.

Config & Converters

The new Converter.next* export allows uninstalling and ordering converters "on the fly" from any module not just from the Config module used at BlackBox startup.

Useful tools for migration

For recompiling your sources you can use the commands DevCompiler.MakeList and DevCompiler.CompileSubs, which have been introduced in release 1.7. MakeList creates a file list for a set of subsystems that can be compiled with Dev->Compile Module List. CompileSubs compiles a set of subsystems directly. The special symbol + stands for all subsystems that are not part of the standard BlackBox distribution.