This page is a supplement to Chapter 27 of the Panorama Handbook, Cross Platform Databases. That chapter describes the differences between the Mac and PC versions of 4.0. The material in that chapter continues to apply to Panorama 5.5. This page describes additional differences in Panorama 5.5 on these two platforms. In the near future this material will be incorporated into a new version of the Panorama Handbook.

Auto-Grow SuperObject

If you are using the Draw Grow Icon option, the Auto-Grow SuperObject must not be behind any other objects, but must be in front. This is not necessary on Mac OS, so you may need to change this when moving a database from the Mac to the PC.

PICT format images

Like the Mac version, Panorama 5.5 for the PC will display images in PICT format. However, some variations of the PICT format will not display on the PC, primarily PICT images that use QuickTime compression with TIFF or JPEG2000 codecs. If Panorama encounters one of these images it will display as a box with a X through it. The only solution is to re-encode the images with different or no compression. There are a number of tools that can do this — a good low cost tool is Graphic Converter from Lemkesoft.

No Flash Art support for displaying PDF documents

On the Mac, PDF support is built into the operating system, so Super Flash Art objects can display PDF files directly within a form. Windows does not include PDF support, so Super Flash Art objects will not display PDF files.

No Printer Control

On the Mac, Panorama 5.5 can explicitly control what printer will be used when printing a form. This can be done with the Default Printer wizard or in a procedure with the changeprinter statement. These functions do not work on the PC version of Panorama 5.5 (they may be implemented in a future version).

No automatic generation of PDF documents in a procedure

On the Mac the PrintPDF statement can automatically generate a PDF document from a form/report template. This statement does not work on the PC version (of course if you have Adobe Acrobat or another PDF authoring tool installed on your system you can manually create PDF files using the Print command).

No Excel wizard

The Mac version of Panorama 5.5 includes an Excel wizard that directly transfers data back and forth between Panorama and Microsoft Excel. This wizard uses AppleScript to transfer the data between the applications. Of course AppleScript is a Mac OS X only technology so this wizard does not work on the PC. You can still transfer data between Panorama and Excel (or other databases or spreadsheets) by importing/exporting via tab or comma delimited text files (“.csv” files).

No high resolution image printing

The Macintosh version of Panorama 5.5 will automatically print images using the highest resolution your printer will support. The Windows version of Panorama 5.5 always prints at 72 dpi no matter what the resolution of your printer is. (High resolution image printing may be implemented in a future version).

What operating system is being used?

If a formula or procedure needs to know what operating system is currently running it can use either the oswindows() or osx() functions. This allows the formula or procedure to make any custom adjustments that might be necessary for each operating system. Note: Page 1954 of the Panorama Handbook states that there is a windows() function, however, this is incorrect. The correct function name is oswindows().

OpenFileDialog Statement

This statement allows you to supply a list of filetypes that are displayed, for example ZEPD for Panorama databases or TEXT for text files. You can combine multiple types, for example ZEPDTEXT if you want to display both databases and text files.

Panorama 5.5 for the PC now has an extended feature that gives you more control over what files are displayed. This feature won't work on MacOS X so if you want your procedure to be cross platform you'll have to test to see what platform is being used and include code for both.

To enable this feature, pass a carriage return delimited array for the type list. Each line contains two sections separated by a tab, a title and a list of file extensions. If there are multiple extensions they must be separated by semicolons. For example, here is an alternate technique for displaying both Panorama databases and certain types of text files:

openfiledialog xdir,xfile,xtype,"Data Files"+tab()+"*.PAN;*.TXT;*.CSV"

If the array has multiple lines the user will be able to use a pop-up menu in the dialog to select what type of files they want to see. Here is a complete example:

local xdir,xfile,xtype,xtypes
if oswindows()
    xtypes="Database Files"+tab()+"*.PAN"+cr()+"Text Files"+tab()+"*.TXT;*.CSV"
else
    xtypes=ZEPDTEXT"
endif
openfiledialog xdir,xfile,xtype,xtypes

On a Mac, this dialog will display all Panorama databases and text files. But on a PC, it will display either databases OR text files. The user can flip back and forth using the pop-up menu.

Email Channel

To send e-mail on a PC you must select the SeeDLL channel (using the Channels wizard in the Preferences menu). Otherwise, sending e-mail is just like on the Mac using sendemail, sendoneemail, sendbuildemail, and sendarrayemail.

If you have Python installed, the Python Email channel may also work, but it has not been tested.

Dragging Files from Windows Explorer to Panorama

Panorama for the PC does not generally allow drag and drop from other applications to Panorama, or from Panorama to other applications. However, you can drag files from Windows Explorer onto Panorama windows that are set up to receive them. The .DropProcedure code must use either the dropfromfinder or dropimagesfromfinder statement to process the received files, getdragdata will not work.

On the Mac, when you drag a file over a section of a form that can receive the file that portion of the file will "highlight" with a blue ring. This highlighting does not happen on the PC, you simply have to know where to drag. Panorama doesn't have any knowledge that the drag is taking place until the mouse is released, so it is impossible to get Panorama to highlight the drop zone.

Off-Screen Windows

In Panorama 3 and earlier (before secret windows) a common trick was to open windows off the edge of the screen. This trick is really no longer necessary, and we recommend that you convert your code to use secret windows. However, in some cases, opening off screen windows will still work. In fact, the only known problem occurs if the window contains scroll bars. On windows, scroll bars will not appear correctly if the window is initially opened to too small a size (in my tests about 30 high by 60 wide appears to be the minimum). This makes it impossible to invisible open windows "under" the menu bar. It does appear, however, that you can open windows off the bottom right edge of the screen, for example at co-ordinates of 2000,2000. Just make sure that the initial size is above the miminum. (I only played with a simple window with one vertical and one horizontal scroll bar -- if your form is larger you may need to make the off-screen window larger.)

Although this works, opening windows off-screen has never been documented and is not officially supported. Basically it is a hack that takes advantage of the way the host OS handles windows. In other words, if this stops working at some future point, you are mostly on your own. In the long run the best approach is to use secret windows.

Update: Panorama 5.5 for the PC has been changed so that if you try to open a window "under the menu bar" Panorama will instead open the window at 3000 , 3000 with dimensions of 100 , 100. This should allow old code to work without modification. (This will happen if either the top or bottom of the opened window is less than 12 pixels from the top of the screen.) We still recommend that you avoid this practice and use secret windows instead.

No Crash Recorder Wizard

The Mac version of the Crash Recorder wizard relies on platform specific UNIX and MacOS technology, and does not work on the PC version.

Enterprise Server must be hosted on Mac OS X

With the introduction of Panorama 5.5 for the PC, multi-user Panorama databases can be shared between users working with Mac’s, PC’s, or both at the same time. However, at this time the actual Panorama Enterprise server software only runs on OS X. For most applications an affordable Mac Mini is more than enough horsepower.