Powerbuilder 6.5 Demo 1

[blond]

I have a friend with application written with PB6.5 (the DLL file report 6.5.1.620).
I have a problem to print with a new printer (printing in 2 sheets on the short side)
The software company as closed several years ago.
How i recovery a demo of these software?
A directory report "source software", can someone helpme?

 

[miguelleeuwe]

I don't understand completely what you mean.

You need PB 6.5? or you have an application written in 6.5 and you don't have the source (pbL) files, but do have pbD files with an exe?

if you need to decompile pb 6.5 pbD files, that can be done using pbKiller. I think I have a copy somewhere and that it can still be downloaded.

got to go out now, come back to me in a few hours time please.
(I don't have pb 6.5, but can try if someone has it)

regards,
Miguel L.

 

[miguelleeuwe]

for obtaining powerbuilder 6.5 I've found this (but you need a Usenet account and don't know if it'll be really there):

http://www.usenetquest.com/w5c/files.php?q=Powerbuilder 6.5

I'll try later ... or maybe someone else got a copy.
(try also do the same question on "powerobject yahoo", there's more activity there)

regards,
Miguel L.

 

[miguelleeuwe]

Did you solve the problem?

regards,
Miguel

regards,
Miguel L.

 

[blond]

NO , but your help is appreciated.
Link on usenet is a FAKE, i need pb 6.5 and the folder
"source" contain "pbl" files.
You know how pb build a print?

 

[miguelleeuwe]

Ok so if you have PBL files, then you don't need a decompiler, you simply need pb 6.5.
(Sorry that the link is a fake, as suspected.)
Personally I've only got version 5, and 10. I used to have 6.5 also, but now I only found some patches.

If you don't have PB 6.5, then I don't know if it would be possible for you to migrate the application to a higher version.
- The only 'demo version' you can obtain from sybase is version 12.5.

http://www.sybase.com

It'll work for about 30 or maybe 60 days.
- if you hurry, this one is still working (version 10, and it's not a demo):

http://bittorrent.am/download-torre...Powerbuilder 10.5 Enterprise (activated).html

Migration from 6.5 to any higher version should be 'painless', but you must be aware that PB started to be Unicode instead of ANSI. That means that lots of api calls will have the keyword 'Ansi' added in it's declaration.

>> how to build a print?
Not sure if I know what you mean with "build", but normally to "do" a print, what you would use is a datawindow or report object and after retrieving it's data you'd simply do a:
1) dw_my_datawindow.Print()
Sometimes that is not enough for whatever needs you have and you could print using a "printjob".
1) PrintOpen()
2) Print()
3) PrintClose()

There are lots of examples on the web and in powerbuilder help file. It's quit easy to print in powerbuilder.
I've checked my friends but really ... nobody has 6.5 sorry!

regards,
Miguel L.

 

[miguelleeuwe]

No need to say that if you want to be 'legal' you'd have to download the demo-version of pb 12.5

If you have any problem doing the migration, just ask.

regards,
Miguel L.

 

[miguelleeuwe]

and last but surely not least ...

Make a BACKUP of your pbl files before you do any migration: it might be usefull and enable you do re-do a migration if something goes wrong, especially when migrating to version 10. (for migration to 12.5 probably almost everything will work fine).
Another reason is that when migrating to version 10, there'll be a "checkbox" saying: "automatically convert dbcs string manipulation functions"
What this does is better explained right under this text, but mainly it replaces some string manipulation functions like 'Pos()', 'Mid()', etc. with PosA, MidA, etc. The thing is that I'm not sure if it will be necessary to do so, so if you have some copies of your source code, simply try a migration leaving the checkbox unmarked, try if all of your string manipulations work well and if not the case ... do a new migration but then having the checkbox marked. I have seen situations where it was necessary and others where not and am not sure if it has to do with differences in the versions 10.0 and 10.5. I seem to remember there's a difference.
Maybe that question (whether to mark it or not) could be answered by someone else and if not ... just try)

copied from Sybase:
------------------
11.1 Unicode changes (IM)

PowerBuilder 10 is Unicode enabled. The source code in PowerBuilder 10 PBLs is encoded in UTF-16LE. UTF-16LE is a Unicode encoding scheme that serializes a UTF-16 code unit sequence as a byte sequence in little-endian format, in which multiple-byte numerical values are stored with the least significant byte first. PBLs developed in earlier versions of PowerBuilder contain source code in ANSI or DBCS format. When you migrate applications to PowerBuilder 10, each PBL is first migrated to the new version of PowerBuilder, as in previous releases. Then PowerBuilder converts the source code from ANSI or DBCS to Unicode, performs a full build, and saves the source code back to the same file.
As a result of this change, some new functions have been added and there are changes in the syntax of file-related functions and external function calls. For more information about these changes, see the Unicode support section in the New Features topic in online Help and the section on Unicode in Application Techniques.
11.2 Automatic changes made when you migrate

When you migrate an application from a previous release, the source code is converted to Unicode and the following changes to your source code are made automatically:
The clause ALIAS FOR functionname ;ansi is appended to external function declarations that return a string, char, or structure datatype or have a string, char, or structure value as an argument. This indicates that the arguments and/or return values should be treated as ANSI. If an ALIAS FOR clause is already present, only ;ansi is added. If ;ansi is not appended to the function name, strings are treated as Unicode.
The FromAnsi, FromUnicode, ToAnsi, and ToUnicode functions will be removed from a future version of PowerBuilder. The migration tool replaces them with the appropriate syntax of the Blob or String function.
No changes are made to the code if the PBL has already been migrated to PowerBuilder 10.
In a DBCS environment, you can check the "Automatically convert DBCS string manipulation functions" check box on the Migrate Application dialog box to modify your code to comply with changes required for Unicode support. Do not check this box in an SBCS environment. If you check this box, the W suffix is removed from PowerScript string-manipulation functions such as LenW and RightTrimW, and an A suffix is added to the following PowerScript functions: Fill , Left, Len, Mid, Pos, Replace, and Right. The changes to string-manipulation functions described in the documentation also apply to DataWindow expression functions. However, the migration process does not modify DataWindow expression functions automatically.

regards,
Miguel L.

 

[miguelleeuwe]

(for the 10 torrent download, click on the "description of the torrent" on the left of the 'red magnet' on the page)

regards,
Miguel L.

 

[Topwiz]

Why would you need to change the app to use a new printer? It should just print to whatever your current printer. Please be clear about your problem.

So you want to modify an application written in PB6.5 by a company that went out of business? Do you even know how to program in PowerBuilder?