Clarion Resources and Products

This is an attempt to bring together the various useful Clarion resources, particularly those in Africa, since we have an Africa Clarion WhatsApp Group. Please contact me on WhatsApp if you want your Clarion-related website to be included in this list.

Clarion Accessories

• Capesoft has produced a number of indispensable accessories for Clarion, including FM3, NetTalk, StringTheory and others. Link: CapeSoft Accessories for Clarion
• ProperData has two accessories: Relational Browse, and Edit-on-the-spot. Link: ProperData
• ClarionShop is the marketplace for all the accessories mentioned here, plus many others from around the world. All prices are in US$. Link: ClarionShop

Built with Clarion

• CapeSoft develops Time & Attendance, Access Control, Job Costing, Panel Beating & Workshop Management, and Depreciation applications. Link: capesoft.com
• Crommix provides software and services to Pharmacies, Medical Centres, Clinics and businesses in Burkina Faso. Link: crommix.com
• Dr Smash Software provides packages focused on the Motor Industry and the requirements around Insurance and Manufacturer Approvals. With packages that range from Basic Quoting to Full Financial Business management, Dr Smash is your one stop shop for all your Motor Industry software requirements. Link: Dr Smash
• SofTrends Solutions supplies Payroll, FAS Accounting, POS Inventory, Property Manager, HR Manager, Fleet Manager, Tours Manager, VetMed Manager, Insurance Brokers Manager, Hotel-Club Manager, and Bulk SMS. Custom software is the cornerstone of our business, based in Kenya. Link: SofTrends Solutions
• Trident Software focuses on Managing and Rental Agent Software (townhouse complexes, homeowner associations, retirement homes, business parks etc.) Contact Ken Ward 083 235 5495 Link: Trident Software
• WatchManager is used in the security industry to handle numerous incoming burglar alarm messages, and assist the control centre operators to follow the correct instructions for dealing with different types of emergencies. Link: WatchManager
• WinFin develops accounting software for farmers and business in English and Afrikaans. Developed by Helgard Scholtz at ProperData. Link: WinFin

Worldwide Clarion Community: helping one another

• Clarion Live has been running support and information webinars for many years. They have also published some free utilities for the community to use. They also host the Clarion International Developers Conference every few years. Links: ClarionLive, CIDC 2019, CIDC 2020/2, CIDC 2023 (Sept 11-15 2023, Orlando, Florida).
• ClarionHub is the place to go to ask questions or share programming tips. Links: ClarionHub
• NetTalk Central is the place to go to ask questions or share programming tips relating to the NetTalk ecosystem. Link: NetTalk Central
• Clarion Mag archive has articles from 1999 to 2011. It's a gold mine of useful stuff. Link: clarionmag.jira.com
• Clarion Blog is the official announcement page for SoftVelocity. Link: Clarion Blog
• Principled Programming is a set of principles published by Daniel Read in 2001. Copy and paste this file in your main procedure to remind you of the principles. Article: developerdotstar.com
• Skype Chats are available for a number of topics. This list comes from the ClarionHub forum. Link: Skype Chat Groups listing

Worldwide Clarion Accessories

• SoftVelocity is the source for Clarion, plus several add-ons: In-Memory Driver, IP Driver, AnyScreen, Business Maths Library, Report Writer, etc. Link: store.softvelocity.com
• Noyantis Software is a leading provider of Clarion Wrapper Templates. Each of our wrapper templates enables Clarion developers to quickly add powerful enhancements to their applications in a matter of minutes. Link: noyantis.com
• LinderSoft is the home of SetupBuilder, a best-of-breed product for developers who want complete control over their software installations. Link: lindersoft.com
• ohnOsoft products include Classify.It!, Analyze.It! and Update.It! . Link: ohnosoft.com
• BoxSoft has created a number of Super Templates for use by Clarion developers. They have several vertical market products written in Clarion. Link: boxsoft.net
• IceTips has Templates, Tools and Utilities for Clarion Developers. Link: icetips.com
• CHT is short for Clarion Handy Tools, a wide variety of templates, classes, utilities, apps and projects. Link: cwhandy.ca
• Mitten Software: Clarion Tools, Templates and Programming. Link: Mitten Software
• Developer Team has numerous useful templates, plus a facility for sending WhatsApp messages. Link: developerteam.com.ar
• Templates Clarion has some useful templates and products from Clarioneros in Argentina. Link: templatesclarion.com
• Laro Group is also based in Argentina, and have developed numerous templates. clariontemplates.com
• Upper Park Solutions is best known for their Version Control systems, but they also provide other Clarion services. Link: upperparksolutions.com
• Ingasoft Plus aims to make your life easy, with templates and tools. Link: ingasoftplus.com
• KlariSoft develops for Clarion programmers, ranging from simple utility templates to class/template wrappers of various third-party software. Link: klarisoft.com
• Clarion ProSeries are serious tools for Clarion developers. Link: clarionproseries.com
• Sterling Data supplies free and paid Clarion templates, a Clarion blog with articles of interest to Clarion developers and also provides Clarion programming services to assist Clarion developers. Link: sterlingdata.com

Worldwide Open Source Resources

• GitHub topics listed on Github. Clarion.Studio has foked and collected 109 repositories as well. Links: github.com and Clarion.Studio
• Clarion Community Help is a wiki community project to keep the help for the Clarion up to date with additional notes and helpful pointers. Link: clarion.help
• Clarion Standards is a document from Mitten Software that identifies good coding practice. It's a ZIP download.
• Carl Barnes has posted a number of useful code, examples, tools, templates and utilities. Link: github.com. His "following list" has a lot of good stuff too.
• Mike Duglas has contributed 54 repositories. Many are free, some are commercial. Link: github.com
• Steve Parker collected a large number of useful tips, FAQs, articles and files. These have been archived on the IceTips website. Link for articles: icetips.com. Link for Downloads: icetips.com
• ClarionLife.net is a (Russian language) portal for Clarion developers. Google Translate will help. Link: ClarionLife.net
• The History of Clarion is the (very unofficial) History of JPI, Clarion and SoftVelocity, by Paul Attryde. Link: pisoft.ru
• Programming Objects in Clarion is an invaluable book by the late Russ Eggen. Link: github.com

My Clarion Lessons

• Installing Clarion 11 on Windows 10
• Introduction to Clarion 11
• Getting Started with Clarion in 2 parts
• Backing up your Clarion projects
• Learning Clarion in 7 parts
• Adding Extensions to Clarion
• How to keep your useful CapeSoft accessories up to date
• Introducing Clarion FileManager in 2 parts

These lists are a work in progress. Please send me any links you may have.

How to keep your useful CapeSoft accessories up to date

The accessories I use from from CapeSoft are updated regularly, as new features and fixes are released. I haven't signed up for the Ohnosoft Update.It! service yet, so I have my own (manual) update method. First you need to download my list files. Extract them to the "C:\Clarion11\accessory\Documents\Capesoft" folder.
First, let's use the full list. Delete the current CapesoftAccessories.htm file, and then make a copy of "CapesoftAccessoriesFull.txt". Rename the copy to "CapesoftAccessories.htm" and open it in your browser.

It's a tweaked copy of the CapeSoft Accessories page. The second column shows the version numbers of their products that you may have installed. The right-hand column shows the current version number of the product. Close this page.
Delete the CapesoftAccessories.htm file, and then make a copy of "CapesoftAccessoriesMine.txt". Rename the copy to "CapesoftAccessories.htm" and open it in your browser. This is the list of the accessories that I have bought, but it's easy enough to edit the HTML to add or remove products from the list.

Notice how some of my accessories are out of date. I have highlighted them in yellow for this article. Click on the "Downloads" link at the top of the page.

Click on the "Last Updated" column heading to get all the new stuff to display first. Then click on the "Download" button for each new version you need. When the downloads are done, use the "Show in Folder" option in your browser to go to your Downloads folder.
My downloads folder has a copy of my "SafeReader Passwords.txt" file, and a shortcut link to the folder I use to store all my CapeSoft installed files. Open the passwords file in notepad or your favourite text editor.

Extract each .saf file, and rename the installer to include its version number, as shown here. Once you have done all the files, put today's date in the bottom of the passwords file, and save it. This will move it to the top of the downloads folder if you keep it sorted by "Date Modified", like I do.
Copy the updated passwords file to the "CapeSoft" folder. Then delete the .saf files and move the installer files to the "CapeSoft" folder. Then click on the "CapeSoft" shortcut link to go there.
In my "CapeSoft" folder, I have a subfolder called "old". After I install each new accessory, I move the previous version of the accessory installer to the "old" file, just in case. The nice thing about these installers is they register the extension templates and stuff for you. I also have a shortcut to my "C:\Clarion11\accessory\Documents\Capesoft" folder. Click on it to return to this folder.

The installers have replaced your previous "CapesoftAccessories.htm" file with their own one. Rename it to "CapesoftAccessories.org.htm" and then copy "CapesoftAccessoriesMine.txt". Rename the copy to "CapesoftAccessories.htm" and open it. Voila! The version numbers should all match up, and all your useful CapeSoft accessories are up to date.

[ Clarion Resources and Products ]
[ How to keep your useful CapeSoft accessories up to date ]
[ Adding Extensions to Clarion ]
[ Learning Clarion (Part 1) ]
[ Backing up your Clarion projects ]
[ Getting Started with Clarion (Part 2) ]
[ Getting Started with Clarion (Part 1) ]
[ Introduction to Clarion 11 ]
[ Installing Clarion 11 on Windows 10 ]

[ Clarion Resources and Products ]

Update Tuesday 2 October 2023: New version of the text files, to open links in a new window, and listing additional CapeSoft products, such as xFiles 4, NetTalk 14, etc.

Adding Extensions to Clarion

Clarion includes some useful templates and extensions, and there are many others, both free and commercial, that you can add. Let's consider some of these. First, go to clarionlive.com, and from the "other" menu, select "Utilities" to download the ClarionLive Utility Pack. Next, visit CapeSoft.com and buy the CapeSoft ABC Defaults accessory. You will receive a decryption keyword for the download. You also need to download their free safe reader utility to decrypt the ABC Defaults download. Once you have the ABCDefaultsInstall.exe and ClarionLiveUtilities.exe files, close your Clarion IDE, and run the installers using all the default options.

Open the Clarion IDE and then open your project, e.g. LCLesson. Click on the "Global Extensions" tab.

Click on "Insert" and scroll down until you find the "cwVersion - Version Resource" template. Select it.

Fill in the fields as required, and go to the "Product Version" tab.

Again, fill in the fields as required, and go to the next tab.

These are my suggested options. Click "OK".

Click on the "Generate and Make Current Application" button. Assuming it compiled without incident, open the folder that contains the LCLesson.exe file and right-click to view the file properties.

As you can see, the file has professional version and product information, which was not present before.

ABC Defaults

Let's return to the Clarion IDE and search for another template to use. Click on "Insert" and type "defaults" to the search bar.

Select the "ActivateABCDefaults" template.

Click "OK" The documentation explains what this template does. Basically, it stops certain misbehaviour by your application when some error conditions arise.

Ultimate Debug

Before we use this template, please download DebugView++ and install it. It is an extremely useful debugging tool for Windows. There are others, so if you are happier with a different one, that's also OK.

Click "Insert" and search for "debug". Click on "UltimateDebugGlobal" and click "Select".

The default settings in the template are fine for now. You may want to tweak them later, but I haven't found a reason to do so yet. Click "OK".

Build the solution as normal, and wait for the app to run. Then fire up your debugger program (DebugView++)

The template has inserted debug trace information into your program. As you open and close screens, the debugging information will display in the debug window. This is helpful in figuring out what your program is doing. In the next lesson we will add in some of our own debugging code.

One More Thing ...

I discovered a bug in the Ultimate Version Resource template while writing this lesson. So how do we disable or remove a template or extension? First, close the application you are busy with, and return to the IDE Start Page. Next, go to the "Tools" menu and select "Edit Template Registry".

Wait for the list to load. Then click on the "Contract All Nodes" button.

Scroll down to find "Class UltimateVersion", select it and click the "Disable" button. Click on the green "Save and Exit" button. The "Ultimate Version Resource" is no longer shown when you try to insert an extension.

[ Clarion Resources and Products ]
[ How to keep your useful CapeSoft accessories up to date ]
[ Adding Extensions to Clarion ]
[ Learning Clarion (Part 1) ]
[ Backing up your Clarion projects ]
[ Getting Started with Clarion (Part 2) ]
[ Getting Started with Clarion (Part 1) ]
[ Introduction to Clarion 11 ]
[ Installing Clarion 11 on Windows 10 ]

[ Clarion Resources and Products ]