No one has the right to prevent the clarion from popularizing and perfecting itself over time

'twould seem so:

Vapo(u)rware is SOOO commonplace, Donn!

One of my favo(u)rite headlines from the 80s:

fableware

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Another SV web site relic, along with exciting announcements like Clarion running on the latest Pentium processors?

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I was also tempted to purchase clarion net, and I refrained due to the comments in the newsgroups. But, what would you get if you actually purchase it today ??

Absolutely! It is frustrating to see something that you know has a huge (literally, huge) untapped market, but the guy who holds the keys seems determined to keep it locked away. And nobody really seems to care!

The community also seems to justify the simple bugs not being fixed by saying “Nobody uses xyz feature anyway, because everybody buys the 3rd party templates from Peter, Paul and Mary”. Maybe if SV advertised that “Some features may not work properly and you’ll have to spend at least 2x the cost of a Clarion license to get something that matches the advertised feature set” I would accept it. But they don’t!

I’ve just had a look at this, and commend you for your efforts. It should be available from SV’s own website and they be paying you for it! The Getting Started and Learning Clarion manuals are indispensable for anyone new to Clarion. I would go as far as to say that this kind of stuff is more valuable to a “Community Edition” than proper Unicode support. Nobody is ever going to try a completely new programming language and programming paradigm without this kind of support material. There’s a reason products like P*Soft’s W**Dev sell by the truckload, and Clarion doesn’t. If they were the only two such products in the world, I can tell you which I would choose (hint, it’s not the one with pretty girls plastered all over the marketing material). Their product is truly an embarrassment of the highest order, but they act like they believe in it, they act like they actually want to sell it, and it sells.

So why was I censored for merely speaking my truth? If some people find it acceptable that SV is still selling a product that is not complete, never will be, and hasn’t been updated in years, then I personally think they are the ones who need to be censored! In any event, I’m glad that you saw something here that dissuaded you from purchasing the .NET version!

Sadly yes, they’ll still take your money for a product that will never exist in a usable form.

You’d get the “latest” version from 7 years ago, followed up by a large serving of regret!

Yes, but one gets to invest in the longest Core Subscription Program ever.
In addition, your cost per year drops annually as you wait for Gold.

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I realise it’s a joke, but it would have an element of truth if SV hadn’t completely abandoned it. To be fair, the direction the product was going was completely wrong, so it was always going to be pretty much useless anyway. The only decent thing to do would be to scrap it entirely (i.e. for SV to admit that they’ve scrapped it) and give everybody credit towards Clarion/32 CSP renewals.

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but, do they have a compiler from clarion to net il code at least ??
That could be useful.

The Clarion# compiler really converts Clarion# sources to equivalent C# sources.

If you’re thinking it could be useful to port Clarion code (i.e. existing Clarion apps) to .Net, you’re barking up the wrong tree. The literal translation from one language to another is the easy part. Even the free Clarion2Java someone put together does a thousand times better job at porting an application from Clarion than anything you could ever hope to do with the Clarion.Net package.

Why? We have been using PCSoft Wx since version 11. They have some problems, yes, but every year we have a new version with new features.

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I’m not sure that the “Add to Cart” button will actually result in a legitimate sale. Here is an email thread I had in October 2018. (Read it from the bottom up)

From: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, 23 October 2018 16:26
To: Donn Edwards
Subject: Re: Clarion information and .net

Hi Donn;

We are not presently shipping Clarion,net.

The getting started that I sent you is for the product that is being shipped.

Regards

Doreen

From: Donn Edwards

Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 4:34 AM

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: Clarion information and .net

Hi Doreen

Now I’m confused. The dot net product is for sale on your web site for $1,000

Core Subscription Program for Clarion.Net Professional Edition – SoftVelocity

The Getting Started manual you sent me is word for word the same as the standard Getting Started manual.

So what does this mean, exactly? “Clarion.Net Enterprise Edition Subscription for creating .Net applications for the Desktop using the Clarion language and File driver system”

If you are generating a .net EXE instead of a 32-bit .EXE why do you need a separate product?

Please help me overcome this confusion.

Best wishes

Donn

From: [email protected]
Sent: 22 October 2018 23:26
To: Donn Edwards
Subject: Re: Clarion information and .net

Hi Donn;

The Dot net product has not yet been released, and is not presently being shipped.

We do not have a demo version.

Here is our Getting Started manual, it may help.

Regards

Doreen

From: Donn Edwards

Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2018 11:23 AM

To: [email protected]

Subject: Clarion information and .net

Dear SoftVelocity

I have been looking at some of your training videos and your web site, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what the .net product does. Is there a demo application I can download or look at?

Do you have any product information PDFs ?

Thanks in advance

Donn

That is the only goal of P*Soft. Introduce 1001 new features every year to get the upgrade sale. Never mind the fact they also introduce 1001 new bugs (to features that were previously working ok). They tout all the supposed big name companies that use their product, but I suspect at best these companies may have purchased a copy once upon a time. It’s unthinkable that anybody would be using it for anything serious. It’s a (broken) toy, at best.

At least in SV’s defense, with their CSP model, it’s harder to accuse them of rushing out a few new features to get another pay day every 12 months. The downside of course is that there are very rarely any new features, though this is not the end of the world when the basic product is relatively stable and can be greatly extended with 3rd party offerings.

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Nothing about Clarion.Net is “legitimate” :smiley: If indeed they are no longer accepting money for it, I am glad to hear that. But it’s still plain stupid to leave it on the website. Talk about bad marketing. What greater way could there be to entice new customers to the world of Clarion, than to have the maker of Clarion advertise a product for sale that isn’t for sale! Just imagine if someone decided to take the plunge into the world of Clarion, thought .Net sounded like the way to go, and then was told “We are not presently shipping Clarion.Net”. Do you reckon the customer would try again with Clarion/32? :man_facepalming:

Edit: Thought I should mention too that the SV website takes payment immediately, so SV would have to issue a refund for anyone who attempted to purchase Clarion.Net (assuming it’s true that they won’t give you the 7 year old useless version). How stupid is that, honestly?

I don’t doubt any of those things, but that doesn’t change the facts regarding Clarion.Net. Don’t forget that the road to hell is paved with good intentions!

You say he is “open for” help, but for those of us who have been around the product for decades, know that what is said and what eventuates are often two very different things. And realistically there’s a limited amount we can do to “help”. For example, how can I possibly promote the product when there is no trial/community edition available, virtually no information on the website, products available for sale that aren’t actually available for sale, lack of security with a wishy washy make-it-up-as-you-go long term plan (WebBuilder (dead), PHP templates (dead), ASP templates (dead), H5 (dead?)), documentation no longer updated, and so on. With all due respect (and I want to see SV and Clarion succeed and grow as much as the next guy), unfortunately good intentions are not good enough!

I don’t think that’s even remotely an accurate statement. Overall support for the makers of Clarion is positive, and very few are even willing to call them out regarding the Clarion.Net scam. The vast majority in the Clarion Community ‘have their back’, so to speak. Even my criticism is not to put anyone down, but should rather be interpreted simply as a call to stop mucking around and get on with it!

And people have suggested countless times that moving to a 12-month subscription model would bring in more funds, and bring them in more regularly, but ‘he’ is not interested. As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

You must be joking. It was an ill-conceived product thrown together by some Russians who clearly didn’t understand what Clarion was about. Marketing of it wasn’t the problem. The product itself was the problem!

With what? SV has to take the first steps here. None of us are going to (or even can) do their job for them.

Angry about what? Angry about being swindled out of USD2,000 for a product that never came close to doing what was promised? Sure, I’m angry about that, and I believe I have every right to be. “Good intentions” don’t make up for the fact that, 10 years later, I still haven’t got what I paid for. But you clearly haven’t read (or at least understood) my “rant” if you think it’s about that. My “rant” as you put it is simply my opinion on the direction things are heading with Clarion, and my fervent desire to see things turn around before it becomes completely untenable. You’ve said yourself that “funds” are the issue for SV. Do you not think that funds are going to be an even bigger issue if they continue down the current path? The saying doesn’t go, “Good business practice is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”, does it?

I’d hope so! Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is tell someone the truth to their face!

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I think Anton gave up :wink: and switched to c++ :wink:

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