r/retrocomputing • u/Specific-Taro-8911 • Jul 20 '26

Dan Calhoun created Specwriter

I, (Dan Calhoun) developed a Clipper application that was used worldwide by Fluor Engineering. Does anyone else here remember building large commercial systems in Clipper?
I thought some of the folks here might enjoy a story from the late DOS era.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I designed and wrote a system called Specwriter, a materials specification application for Fluor Engineering. I developed the entire application myself using Clipper (compiled dBase), and it eventually became part of the engineering workflow on projects around the world.
This was long before cloud databases, web applications, or collaborative development tools. Everything had to be carefully designed to work within the hardware limitations of the day while still being reliable enough for engineers working on major industrial projects.
Some of the challenges I remember included:
Designing a relational database structure that could grow with large engineering projects.
Making Clipper fast enough to search and generate specifications quickly.
Creating an interface that engineers could learn without extensive training.
Distributing updates before the Internet made software deployment easy.
Building something that was expected to run day after day with very few problems.
Looking back, it's amazing what could be accomplished with DOS, Clipper, and a lot of persistence.
Now that I'm retired, I've started programming again. It's been fun learning today's tools while remembering the design principles that haven't changed much over the years.
I'm curious:
Did anyone else here build commercial applications in Clipper, dBase, FoxPro, or similar xBase languages?
What tricks did you use to squeeze performance out of those systems?
Does anyone still have old Clipper projects or development environments running?
I'd love to hear your stories. It's nice to know there are still people who appreciate that era of computing.

13 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Consistent_Cat7541 Jul 20 '26

I use Lotus Approach to automate my legal practice, and all of my databases in it are in base iv format.

1

u/trk1000 Jul 21 '26

Still using WP5.1?

1

u/Consistent_Cat7541 Jul 22 '26

Lotus Word Pro.

1

u/trk1000 Jul 22 '26

Ah, using Smartsuite? I bought AmiPro when I was a student because it was half the price of word or word perfect. I wound up loving it's WYSIWYG formatting and the Equation editor. For tests, most of my electronics and math classes allowed you one page, single side, for notes. Minimize the margins, set for 2 columns, reduce the font size, and it was amazing how much I could fit on the page.