new features

[Brian K. White]

Sweet major new features in the latest x.x.04 update.

We would slurp them right up if it wasn't for the license manager.

Instead we truck along on 5.0.14 and continue writing new stuff outside 
of filepro.

Some of them just bring Windows up to parity with what unix has had for 
over 10 years, and I don't use FP on Windows, but it's still really cool 
regardless that Windows finally has USER. And environment variables in a 
printer destination? I'll have to try it but I would have assumed that 
worked on unix already too. Even though I don't use fp on windows, it's 
still good that code and techniques are more portable.

And for the love of all that's holy, finally you can set the file mode 
on create()!

But, coming this many years after create() itself, of course it's been 
worked around for so long it hardly matters any more. It's, great, it's 
sane, it's been needed forever, and I hate having to use system() just 
to pre-create files with necessary permissions, but by now it just 
doesn't matter any more. Breaking backwards compatibility and of course 
getting the license manager would hurt far more than create() with mode 
setting would help.

If I were a mythical new fp user, and was a dope and the license manager 
didn't make it a non-starter when the world is already full of high 
level languages and magical development frameworks that are all pure 
open source, then these, plus other post-5.0 features would make this 
latest version of fp almost a sane choice for development!

If I sound ungrateful. Well, I am.

-- 
bkw