On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Kevin Cully
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Point taken. We're just in the exploritory phase of this project trying
> to understand 'what is possible'.
>
> Evidently this client has 100's of reports, and dozens of screens.
> Probably poorly written by today's standards but at one point I'm sure
> it was the bee's-knees.
We support a large vertical-niche application nearly as old as dBASE
II which was ported through Fox DOS. There's Tom Rettig code in there,
Malcom Rubel code and lots of other curiosities. This has all sorts of
rusty and dusty old corners which were left unmodified ("if it works,
don't mess with it") although I think we've finally removed all the
old "SELECT A" and "SELECT B" commands.
At one point, a number of reports were used, un-migrated IIRC, in VFP.
If you don't migrate the DOS reports, you can do a REPORT FORM <name>
ASCII TO FILE.TXT and/or do some wicked text-to-other format tricks.
(ex. HTML is a good choice, with a <PRE> tag and header and footer out
of boilerplate or text-merged.) We do a trick like this to generate
HTML attachments sent to fax via email.
There's lots of possibilities. I'd suggest leaving it in DOS is not a
great one. You can run it in DOS, either in a XPMODE VM or a DOS-only
VM or with 3rd-party DOS emulators, but that's confining the app to a
legacy box. Better to port it to a modern runtime. As benefits, you
get faster performance and more reliable DBF handling, before you've
even changed the code. Then you can consider modifying the code as is,
or writing a sibling app in your favorite framework.
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com
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