------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNN NNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNN MNNNNN NNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNNNN NNNNNN MNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNN NNNNNN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Boston Computer News Network February, 1994 A Service of the Boston Computer Society, USA Vol.2 No.12 Sponsored by the Xbase Language Group Clipper Version ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Call for Participation: UDF Showcase. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Les Squires bcnn@world.std.com [73020,3435] ReplySubj: BCNN@UDF@Showcase. Deadline: March 15, 1994 Clever coder, are you? You have a 1 to 20 line Clipper function that makes you smile every time you use it? And you use it VERY often? You'd love to publish it and get your deserved recognition, but you know it takes a lot more than a single burst of cleverness to make a whole book! Email your price and joy to BCNN 73020,3435! Choose your best UDF. Make sure it's well documented. Format it to resemble a BCNN paragraph. Take a look at recent contributions by Philip K Scott [75460,2010] on Detached Locals or Adam Winter's hiding DBFS [71022,703], or the ADDMONTH() function by Mike Meinz [76047,46]. Model yourself after Brian Leffler 75076,131] or Yau-Man Chan (ymchan@uclink.berkeley.edu) below. We will organize the 3,500+ submissions and include all of them in a special report. Some of the best we'll sprinkle throughout future issues of BCNN. Who says we don't publish enough Clipper code! Note. Your act of emailing a function indicates your legal right to the code and grants to us the right to include it our report. You retain all rights. You will receive credit in the form of a ReplyTo:. You may include an address and/or company address. 2. *NEW SERVICE* Announcement of Local User Group News World-Wide. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Les Squires bcnn@world.std.com [73020,3435] We're ready for you to sign up to receive monthly announcements of local meetings. Choose one user group from the list below. Presidents of these groups have agreed to email announcements of events in your city. Paragraph 0 will automatically display your user group's announcement, each month your group furnishes an announcement. We start in March. Participation is free of charge to local user groups, available on request by the user group president. How to Sign Up. Email one UGID (103537, 103888, 101658, etc.). For example, including '103537-Yes' in the SUBJECT: or the body of your email keeps you informed that 'Successware's own Jeff Jochum will be paying us a visit to talk about RDD's in Hartford, Connecticut, USA' as announced in last month's BCNN. George Smith is happy. Jeff is happy. And knowing the quality of Jeff's presentations, you're happy that you had clear details of the meeting. Select only one. UGID Participating Group Name/President/IDs Location ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 103863 Clipper Club Hamburg Hamburg/Germany Max Bressel 100112,3401 fido:2:240/5300 +49-40-7661290 103864 Clipper Developers' Association of Toronto Toronto, Canada John Ball [72060,3716] 100051 Clipper Expert Group Johannesburg, South Africa Russel Stromin [70334,2353] +27 11 442 4550 103537 Connecticut CA-Clipper Users Group Manchester, CT, USA George L. Smith [71155,2543] (203) 645-8962 103888 Detroit Area Clipper Users Group (D.A.C.U.G.) Detroit, MI USA Leo Benchich [70451,3613] 101658 Houston Clipper User Group Houston, TX USA David Vukovic [71520,1310] 100483 Mobile Software User Group Mobile, AL USA George Rae [71760,3562] 205-342-8360 102689 North Carolina Clipper User Group Research Triangle Park,NC USA Dr. Charles M. Beattie, II 919-315-3858 76376,1161 100494 San Francisco Bay Area Clipper Dev. Assn. San Francisco, CA USA Yau-Man Chan ymchan@uclink.berkeley.edu 510-229-3277 70731,3523 102691 SFDDG CA-Clipper/CA-VO SIG Miami, FL USA Willy Esteban 72740,1440 W:305-599-9609 F:305-599-9610 101612 Washington Area Clipper Users Group Washington DC Area USA Gerald E. Nelson 76467,3030 703-471-7919 3. User Group Meeting: Windows in 60 Minutes ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Les Squires, Program Chair CIS:73020,3435 or >INTERNET:LSquires@world.std.com Meeting: March 15, 1994, 6:30 p.m. Place: 128 Entrepreneurs Center, 200 Fifth Avenue, Waltham, MA USA. The January meeting was rescheduled to March due to the weather. In March we will pass out a 500 record DBF. Any developer who wants to participate is invited to MAKE SOMETHING WINDOWS. Any software (dbFAST, Microsoft Access, Paradox, Fox, Gupta SQL Windows, Visual Basic, even Visual Objects for Clipper). See earlier issues of BCNN for more details. Yair Alan Griver [71541,3150] submitted the first entry via CompuServe. He writes, 'Here's a ZIP containing the files for the app. I've also included the modified BCS DBF files... It's a Windows app. Took an hour. Haven't tested it under DOS, but it should be pretty close to working there automatically... Editor's Note. << Automatically... 4. February 94 User Group Meeting: Clipper Tool Exploration ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Darren J Forcier >INTERNET:djf@world.std.com Meeting: February 15, 1994 Place: 128 Entrepreneurs Center, 200 Fifth Avenue, Waltham, MA USA. While we all wait for VO, there are definitely many programming solutions available to us as Clipper developers. In February, Darren Forcier assists us in exploring the various Windows programming options we have available. The goal here is not to select the "best" product, but rather to survey the tools available and determine which ones can help you learn Windows programming _NOW_: 1) Clip4Win 1.2 - Skelton Software/Grumpfish's Clipper->Windows library, 2) Dolce Vita (With Craig Yellick's La Strada programming guide), and 3) >From DOS - A cool library for integrating Windows services into DOS apps. Darren will compare and contrast these tools on the following: o The Windows Learning Curve o The Windows API, and how it is accessed via each tool o Product Architecture and features o Porting existing Clipper code concerns and issues o Event Driven Programming under Windows o Portability to VO issues o External Tools needed (linkers, resource editors, debuggers) Sample programs will be provided to give everyone an idea of what they are getting into with each product. Time permitting, Darren will also discuss some of the other tools available from CA such as CA-DBFAST 2.0 and CA-REALIZER 2.0, which are also some viable Windows programming options. This meeting should be fun and extremely informative. Now is the time to embrace Windows, as Windows will definitely play a major role in all of our future programming. Bring an open mind and lots of questions! Email your questions by February 13th to bcnn@world.std.com. 5. FUNCTION AddMonth II ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Yau-Man Chan ymchan@uclink.berkeley.edu 70731,3523 ADDMONTH by Mike Meinz still does not work correctly. If you add 12 month to 2/29/92 it will fail. If you add 1 month to 1/31/94 it will fail. Also, it is highly susceptible to SET DATE format. It only work in the American date format. The follow is my ADDMONTH function that will work for any day format and any year and any month, leap years included. function addmonth(dCurDate,n) local i,dTempDate,dNewDate for i=1 to n dTempDate:=dCurDate-day(dCurDate)+32 dNewDate :=dCurDate+day(dTempDate-day(dTempDate)) do while month(dNewDate)-month(dCurDate)>1 dNewDate -- enddo dCurDate:=dNewDate next return (dNewDate) This algorithm make use of the fact that the DATE arithmetic ENGINE in Clipper (and other Xbase system) know the length of month and leap year rules. The DO WHILE loop is invoke only to correct for add month when the date is the 31st and the resulting month has only 28,29 or 30 days. 6. FUNCTION AddMonth III ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Brian Leffler <75076.131@CompuServe.COM> The AddMonth() function in last month's BCNN newsletter does not work correctly when the day number does not exist in the month of the resulting date. For example, adding 1 month to January 31, 1994. The result is February 31, 1994. Since this is an invalid date, The Clipper CTOD() function returns an empty date. Below I have corrected the function to handle this situation. You should note that if you call the function repeatedly, the day number may be set back one or two days and you should handle this accordingly. (By saving the day number and putting it back to what it should be on the appropriate months.) FUNCTION AddMonth ================= Purpose: Calculate a new date by adding a number of months to a date. Input: Date Number of Months to Add Output: New Date Warning: nIncrement must be >= Zero FUNCTION AddMonth(dDate,nIncrement) LOCAL nMonth LOCAL nLimit := 12-(nMonth:=MONTH(dDate))+1 LOCAL nYearAdd := MAX(0,INT((nIncrement+11)/12)-1) LOCAL nMonthAdd := ((nIncrement-1)%12)+1 LOCAL nDay := DAY(dDate) LOCAL RetDate := CTOD( ; STR((((nMonth+nMonthAdd-1)%12)+1),2) + "/"+ ; STR(nDay,2) + "/"+ ; STR((YEAR(dDate)+nYearAdd+ ; IIF(nMonthAdd>=nLimit,1,0)),4)) DO WHILE EMPTY(RetDate) nDay-- RetDate := CTOD( ; STR((((nMonth+nMonthAdd-1)%12)+1),2) + "/"+ ; STR(nDay,2) + "/"+ ; STR((YEAR(dDate)+nYearAdd+ ; IIF(nMonthAdd>=nLimit,1,0)),4)) ENDDO RETURN (RetDate) 7. XBase Advanced Multi-user Techniques ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Special Joint meeting of BCS Clipper, FoxPro, dBase IV, & Arago SIG's. ReplyTo: Arnold Bilanski [71533,1031] Speakers: Tina Newton & Larry Nussbaum Date: Tuesday, Feb. 15, 1994 Time: 1:00PM - 3:00PM Location: Networks Expo, Hynes Convention Center, Boston 8. MIX - A Graphics Add-on for Clipper Text Programs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Rafael Clemente [73020,3435] Nena Casas 38 08017 Barcelona Spain Phone/Fax: 343 203-5594 Download: CIS->MIX.ZIP in CA-Clipper/General Files library. Let me call your attention towards MIX. In short, MIX teams with any TEXT-MODE Clipper program to provide: 1) direct control from within your program of any desktop scanner (Epson, HP ScanJet, or compatible) and 2) storage and display of any scanned image. MIX is NOT a developer's library. It requires no modification to either code, .EXE or data files and requires no recompiling or linking. In fact, it works equally well with programs written in C, Basic, Pascal, etc. o Images are displayed up to 1024 x 760 x 256 color in regular 1 Mb VGAs. In standard 256 K VGA resolution is 320 x 200 x 256. o There is an automatic dynamic link between your application and MIX, so that MIX always knows which image to display. o Picture display can switch from full to partial screen and vice- versa. In partial screen, the image is overlaid to your original text screen, its size being user-definable. o MIX supports multiple zoom levels, panning and scrolling. In the capture mode it provides prescan function, as rubberband area selection, brightness control and an special pure B&W capture mode suitable for documents. o MIX requires 75 Kb but it can be fully loaded in Upper Memory, if available. Epson scanners work with no further memory needs; HP ScanJet IIc requires about 1 Mb EMS because its complex color reduction process. MIX.ZIP on CompuServe is a near full functional program. The demo prescans and displays images but the full scan is inhibited. If you have no scanner, a set of three small pictures is included. Feel free to download it and let me know your comments. On a personal note. In our company we have been developing graphic applications for third parties since 8 years ago, but this is our first attempt to market directly one of our products. We would appreciate if you could give us any advice towards finding some distributor interested in marketing it in the US and other countries. 9. Feb 94 CLIPPER->( Disk of the Month ) Contents * $$ * ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Dan Comeau [70451,2312] DanlWare Systems Corp. 208-82 Armstrong Crt. Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3M 4M6, CANADA CompuServe [70451,2312] InterNet 70451.2312@compuserve.com Voice & Fax 902/443-2207 9KDEMO.EXE 9k Version Control System - Demo ALERT.ZIP Modified Alert() source code BCNN9401.ZIP Boston Computer News Network Clipper Newsletter for Jan/94 CHISEL.ZIP Chiseled Border Box Code with Shadow. Source. CLIPBT.EXE ClipButtons Library. Radiobuttons, check boxes, etc. COMMLI.ZIP Communication library for clipper 5.2c. Shareware. DBEDIT.ZIP DB_Edit(). Conventional Edit Screen within Tbrowse. DBFMGR.ZIP DBF File Manager & Reindex Utility. Source. DDP1993.ZIP 1993 CA Directory of Applications and Solution DEBIN.EXE Debin v1.1 utility. List OBJs containing debug info. DOSCMD.ZIP DOSCmdLine() retrieves DOS command line. Source. DTOOLS.ZIP cFind text search util. ClipVars makes PRG code from DBF. EVALTI.ZIP TimeEval() time event-driven code block evaluation EXOBLX.ZIP Exospace API module for Blinker 3.0 ISNET.ZIP FN_IsNet() Fix for NETTO.LIB. Source. NSXDEM.ZIP SIx Driver (SIXNSX) v1.5 Demo Program SNAKE.ZIP Snake, the "Novell" Screen Saver. Source. SX3DEM.ZIP Something eXtra Library v3.0 working demo version SX3DPA.ZIP Patch for Something eXtra Library v3.0 demo 10. FoxPro Windows versus Clipper ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Erik J. Thomas <73124.2160@CompuServe.COM> >>Editor's Note. We run occasional notes like the one that follows to >>keep the Clipper developer community up to date on what is happening to >>other members of the community. This message is in no way an attempt >>to win over anybody to Fox. But when developers talk to developers you >>should be aware that we receive 5-10 of these message each month. >>Erik's is one of the more articulate. I have been a Clipper developer since Summer 87 and made the jump to 5.01 (I even own 5.2!) and learned to use tBrowse, code-blocks, etc. However, my customers all want Windows. I got tired of waiting for an integrated Windows version of Clipper and bought FoxPro for Windows in May of last year. As of this writing, all new jobs I quote (and program) are using FoxPro Windows, and several of my old Clipper programs have been ported to the new environment. Although I have stayed up on the VO vaporware story for some time, I have decided to dump Clipper as my primary development tool. This decision was hard to make, partly because of all the time I had spent learning the nuances of the new Classes, etc. It's also too bad, because the guys at Nantucket really did a wonderful job of designing each version of Clipper. It's just unfortunate that Nantucket/CA dropped the ball by ignoring Windows too long. I suppose if VO doesn't cost an arm and a leg when it comes out (yeah right!), I will evaluate it against the very real advantage of a rapid development platform like FPW. Since adopting FPW, my development time per application has (conservatively) been cut by 40%!!! That translates into dollars my friends. And to top it off, I don't have to develop huge libraries of User Interface (and other) code to deal with the trivialities of how a browse looks, a menu works, or spend a lot of time designing screens, reports, and queries. I don't have to buy third party products like UI2 (anyone want to buy my old version?) and write gobs of template code to do what comes in the shrink-wrapped box from Microsoft for $199! Microsoft really knows what software ought to cost--there is indeed a lesson in there for the many overpriced Clipper 3rd party tool developers. I was sorry to see all my hard-earned libraries of functions and templates go (partially) to waste, but you know what they say in business--its better to cut your losses and stay competitive than to blindly hang on to a tool that is no longer adequate just because you paid so much for it in time and money. I think developers today have to face the choice--do I want to make a living with my programming skills, or do I want to do this as a hobby or part-time job? I call this decision "going pro" and it will make a big difference in how you view development tools. In my opinion, the developer who can deliver what the customer needs (and wants) the fastest, with the least amount of effort and time, wins. This is the decade of the integrated development environment. The simple advantage of a small .EXE file is no longer a high priority like it was when our customers had dual-floppy systems or 10MB hard disks (am I showing my age?). I don't see any problem with the 2MB DLL I have to distribute with my FPW system, nor has any of my customers. With bargain basement 486s and 200+ MB disk drives available on every corner for a song, VO and native-code compilers are going to have to have a lot more going for them than small executables to turn my head. I saw a demonstration of VO at the Windows conference in the Bay Area last fall, and I noticed it does have a lot more going for it than just small executables. I will wait and see where this one goes, but the development environment will have to be on a par with the FPW before I will consider jumping back. One of the concepts of Clipper 5.x, and a reason I was a loyal Clipper fan up until last summer, was the open architecture which lets third- party products fill the void in development environments and add-on tools. As a concept I think it was revolutionary, and quite valuable in its time. Now, an open architecture by itself is not enough. Microsoft has done such a superb job of getting the mind-share of the corporate user that it has created economic pressures sufficient to force all the development vendors to provide Windows development tools- -or perish. Sure, there are corporate users that have so much invested in Clipper that there will be plenty of work for the Clipper/DOS programmer for years to come. In that same vein, I have heard that there is still more Cobol code in use in corporate America than any other language, but Cobol doesn't interest me--it is a dying language. I was a Cobol programmer over a decade ago, and don't ever want to go back. Who knows? the DOS (Clipper) programmer of tomorrow may have lots of work, but who wants to maintain someone else's programs for a living? Not me. In conclusion, with a Windows development tool like FPW, you can spend 90% of your time designing a system that solves the core business problem instead of wasting your valuable time programming trivialities. It's time to think big, think high-level, think efficiency, or get stomped by the competition! 11. Mini-Devcon: Every TBROWSE Knows How to Export Itself to Windows. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Les Squires, Program Chair CIS:73020,3435 or >INTERNET:LSquires@world.std.com Priority: 500 responses (minimum) are required to activate report. Last month you were invited to receive a BCNN write up of a technique for using Clipper for data manipulation of large databases and using TBROWSE to export data sets to Windows products such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and Access for report writing. Sorry, but the sign-up was too small. Perhaps we'll try an eMiniDevcon someday on another subject. 12. A Must-Have for High Speed Modems: 16550 UART and You ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Chris Pels [73777,3562] Like many of you, I continue to upgrade my modem to reduce the time it takes to send files and messages. I have always recovered the cost of a faster modem by decreasing my phone charges. When I moved my Clipper development to Windows a while back I got in the habit of doing everything from within Windows. As you may have noticed, communications within Windows is at least an order of magnitude slower than from DOS. Several months ago a forum I monitor on CompuServe had a thread about 16550 UART chips on serial communications boards. The 16550 UART serves to buffer data through the serial port much like a disk cache. The result is dramatically improved communications throughput, especially in Windows. I have experienced increased throughput of about 40% in Windows! The best news is I bought the Boca I/0AT55 from PC Connection with 2 serial (16550) ports and a bi-directional parallel port for $50. If you do any amount of modem work this is an item you should not be without. 13. Quick Tbrowse ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: John Raleigh [75170,1151] MoreInfo: Zachary Software, Inc. 106 Access Road Norwood, MA 02062 800-876-3645, 617-551-0860, 76340,1123 I received a flier from Zachary touting a new product by Don Allred called Quick TBrowse (QT). You should have seen the outrageous claims . I'm gullible...so I bought it for $100. It is limited to automation of TBrowse development but that's plenty! It also does up picklists but just as a special case of tBrowse, also very useful. As I see it, there are two great reasons to try this program: 1. To learn TBrowse thoroughly from the "outside in". They ask you to fill in a bunch of information, then dish you up a working TBrowse ready to compile-link-execute THEN you can see how they made it happen. 2. To cobble up ready to use TBrowses that you can implant or call from your own code. All the generated source is "pretty" and "intelligible" so you can further customize it if needed. Quick TBrowse is a code generator for programmers like me who have been bad-mouthing code generators for years. I received my copy during development of an engineering quotation system that was begging for some TBrowse solutions. I made my deadline and the code that QT generated looks almost like I wrote it. This is so much better than generators I've seen before, that I am now more interested in Zachary, perhaps I'll even look at their main code generator. Ira Emus did a lot of work on the product and gets proper credit in the help file. 14. *NEW SERVICE * VOICEMAIL: Your Own 800 Number Voice Mail. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Traci Walker, Account Executive, 800-568-5553, F:615-291-7555 A-Plus Communications Center 830 Fesslers Parkway, Suite 103, Nashville, TN 37210 ReplyTo: Les Squires bcnn@world.std.com [73020,3435] Could you use an 800 service? Would you like your customers to use a toll-free number to leave messages for you? VoiceMail answers in your own voice, date and time stamps messages, and can send and transfer messages to other subscribers. BCNN has successfully negotiated an affinity group price structure for its readership for VoiceMail phone services (good only in the USA). $4.95 per box and $0.21 per minute for the first 100 BCNN subscribers. $3.95/$0.20 for 101-499 subscribers. The price drops FOR EVERYBODY to $2.50/$.019 if we enroll over 500 persons. Activation fees are $9.95 per box for the first 500. $5.00 per box over 500. Tell Traci Walker that 'Les from the BCNN' referred you to A-Plus VoiceMail. Editor's Note. This offer is an experiment. Please feel free to express your opinion about this type of activity. 15. Corporate Mailbox - Be The Master of Your Own Domain ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: David J. Byer dbyer@ircs.com Ipswich River Computer Studio File Under: anyone@bigshot.com Check out my return Internet address. Impressive, eh? You might think that Ipswich River Computer Studio is up there with ibm.com or even mtv.com, but you'd be wrong. DBYER@IRCS.COM is my own Corporate Mailbox registered through my Internet service provider Software Tool & Die's The World (check out your own service provider). After registering, the World recognizes dbyer@ircs.com as an alias for dbyer@world.std.com. I can receive mail to either address. The whole experience was inexpensive and painless. Additionally, a Corporate Mail Box can point at one or more World mail boxes. For example, support@ircs.com might also expand to dbyer@world.std.com. I have used the ubiquitous "staff" in this way. The domain name (e.g. ircs.com, or xxx.org, or yyy.edu) must be unique over the whole Internet. Try out your desired name yourself by querying the Network Information Center host database in Chantilly, VA with the command: world% nicname ircs.com If this returns "No match for IRCS.COM" (or whatever name you tried) then it's probably available. To establish my Corporate Mail Box, I filled out a short form and returned it to Software Tool & Die with a $25 registration fee. The Corporate Mail Box application was then sent to the Network Information Center (NIC) where its processing can take from 2-4 weeks. There is an additional fee of $75 per year for maintenance. Corporate Mail Box provides only an inbound mail address service. The "From" address of outbound mail messages remains in the form "dbyer@world.std.com". If any of you have comments, I'm too busy being the master of my own domain to respond, but you can send your comments to staff@ircs.com and they'll take care of you. . 16. College of Informatics of Novosibirsk State University ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ReplyTo: Kathy Kelly BCNN@world.std.com (for contributions) ReplyTo: sychov@vki.nsk.su (Sychov N.A.) Dr. Mishenko A.M. Summer School Head Contributions to the computer program at Novosibirsk State University in Russia are being closed February 15th. We have collected $700. check is being cut on February 15th Last Chance! Make your check made out to 'BCS Xbase Group' to Kathleen Kelly, Novosibirsk Scholarship, P. O. Box 126, Center Harbor, New Hampshire 03226-0126 USA. 17. BCNN Statement of Ownership, Copyright, and Responsibility. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The BCNN Newsletter is sponsored by the xBASE User Group of the Boston Computer Society. BCNN is dedicated to keeping professional database developers (both consultants and corporate employees) informed about educational events, meetings, job openings, world events, notable articles, technical tips, new and 'must have' products, etc. As an electronic network BCNN is also a hub where developers can address world class issues to fellow developers around the world. Recipients agree to respond via Email to periodic polls of their directions, opinions, and needs. For those who do not have User Groups in their areas, BCNN is a vehicle where individuals can volunteer and contribute to something larger than themselves. Over 5,400 persons world-wide participate with CA-Clipper and Microsoft Access. The newsletter is distributed monthly by electronic mail via CompuServe, Internet, FidoNet, and other electronic gateways. It is free of charge to individual developers. Modest fees are charged to corporations for job placement and third-party announcements. Opinions expressed are solely expressed by the Xbase Language Group of the Boston Computer Society, even in cases where 'Xbase Language Group' is abbreviated to 'BCS'. All materials are copyrighted by the BCS, unless otherwise indicated, and free for any user group to redistribute on their own BBS on the condition that a by-line referencing the BCNN is included. Les Squires, Director Xbase User Group c/o Word Jenny, Incorporated P. O. Box 126 29 Brick Kiln Road, Kilnwood Center Harbor, New Hampshire 03226-0126 USA 603-253-6109 //-Primary Phone & Messages 24 hours 603-253-7214 //-Messages Only 24 hours 603-253-9864 //-Fax 24 hours a day INTERENT:bcnn@World.Std.Com //-First choice for Email. CIS:73020,3435 //-Second choice for Email. Boston Computer Society, Inc. One Kendall Square Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA 617-252-0600 //-General Number 617-621-0881 //-Ext.432 up-to-date meeting information. Add Subscribers: @BCNN@ClipperYes to bcnn@World.Std.Com. Delete Subscribers: @BCNN@ClipperNo to bcnn@World.Std.Com. Back Issues: CompuServe CLIPPER Forum, LIBS 1 and 17. FTP samba.iss.uw.edu.pl (CD pub/clipper/bcnn) (c) 1994 Boston Computer Society, Inc.