Nickenich, Germany - (May 17th, 2022) -- MonkeyBread Software today is pleased to announce
MBS FileMaker Plugin 12.2 for Claris FileMaker for macOS, iOS, Linux and Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin currently available for Claris FileMaker produce line. As the leading database management solution for Windows, macOS, iOS and the web, the Claris FileMaker Pro Integrated Development Environment supports a plugin architecture that can easily extend the feature set of the application.
MBS FileMaker Plugin 12.2 has been updated and now includes over 6700 different functions, and the versatile plugin has gained more new functions:
You may know we have on macOS an option in preferences dialog to turn on links in calculations. When you enter a MBS function call, we change the function name a link to our documentation. With this version we make Get() function calls in FileMaker a link to the documentation, so you can directly lookup what the return values are.
Have you tried custom functions in JavaScript? Beside our cross platform solution, we can do the same using
WebKit's JavaScript engine to do the same. Check
JavaScript.CF function to call custom functions on macOS and iOS. Use
JavaScript.SetPropertyJSON and
JavaScript.GetPropertyJSON to transfer JSON data directly and call functions with
JavaScript.CallFunction.
The
WordFile functions can be used to replace place holders (tags) in a Word document. You can query a list of all tags for this using the
WordFile.Tags function.
The DynaPDF library has been updated and tested to work with ZUGFeRD 2.2 / Factur-X 1.0.06. The
DynaPDF.ReplacePattern function can now handle different font styles for fallback fonts. To put PDF on the clipboard, check the new
Clipboard.SetPDF function.
On MacOS you can now use context menu on the script list in Script Workspace to sort scripts by name. Our plugin extends FileMaker's context menu to add the commands. If clicked, we swap script positions as needed, so FileMaker gets the new order.
To better track errors returned by a plugin, you can call
ClearErrors early in a script. Later you can use
HadErrors function to check if you got an error in the script. That may be easier than calling
IsError after each function call.
For iOS you can now use
DialogModifications functions. This allows you to change error messages shown by FileMaker and customize the text.
The
Clipboard.DetectFileMakerDataType function can now detect menus and menu sets,
JSON.Import has a new RootTableName parameter,
Finally we updated CURL library to version 7.83.1, DukTape to version 2.7, DynaPDF to 4.0.66.181, openssl to 1.1.1n, SQLite to 3.38.5, and Xcode to 13.3.1.
See
release notes for a complete list of changes.
Nickenich, Germany - (May 17th, 2022) -- MonkeyBread Software today is pleased to announce
MBS Xojo Plugins 22.2 for macOS, Linux and Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin collection currently available for Xojo.
MBS Xojo Plugins have been updated and now includes over 3000 classes and 79,000 documented features, and the versatile plugins have gained more new functions:
Our
RegEx plugin now contains new
PCRE2 based classes to do regular expressions. With full unicode support, just-in-time compiler and a lot of options, this provides much better performance for search and replace in Xojo.
For our
SQL Plugin, we got new functions for SQLite to dump databases to string and file. We can query the internal connection handle for SQLite and use it for the dump. For
SQLDatabaseMBS and
SQLConnectionMBS we got options to decide about quoting of table and field names. You can now use DateTime for binding values to timestamp fields.
The
WebView2ControlMBS control can now do Copy, Cut, Paste, SelectAll, ClearSelection and Print operations directly.
The
Windows User Notifications classes got a rewrite and with that a few new properties and methods. We work on new Bluetooth classes for Windows and a few of them are included here.
For those interested in using ZStandard compression, we got a
ZStdMBS class. The
WordFileMBS class got a new Tags function to list all available tags.
On MacOS you can now render pictures of
NSViewMBS class to get a screenshot, even if it is not visible directly. We added more properties for
SUAppcastItemMBS class for Sparkle users.
The DynaPDF library has been updated and tested to work with ZUGFeRD 2.2 / Factur-X 1.0.06. We improved the character spacing for graphics class when used with PageGraphics in
DynaPDFMBS class.
Finally we updated CURL library to version 7.83.1, DukTape to version 2.7, DynaPDF to 4.0.66.181, pcre2 to 10.40, openssl to 1.1.1n, SQLite to 3.38.5, and Xcode to 13.3.1.
See
release notes for a complete list of changes.
17. Mai 2022 - Monkeybread Software veröffentlicht heute das
MBS FileMaker Plugin für Claris FileMaker in Version 12.2, mit inzwischen über 6700 Funktionen eines der größten FileMaker Plugins überhaupt. Hier einige der Neuerungen:
Sie wissen vielleicht, dass wir unter macOS eine Option in den Einstellungen haben, um Links in Berechnungen zu aktivieren. Wenn Sie einen MBS-Funktionsaufruf eingeben, ändern wir den Funktionsnamen zu einem Link zu unserer Dokumentation. Mit dieser Version machen wir Get()-Funktionsaufrufe in FileMaker zu einem Link zur Dokumentation, so dass Sie direkt nachschlagen können, was die Rückgabewerte sind.
Haben Sie eigene Funktionen in JavaScript ausprobiert? Neben unserer plattformübergreifenden Lösung können wir auch die
JavaScript-Engine von WebKit verwenden, um das Gleiche zu tun. Probieren Sie die Funktion
JavaScript.CF, um benutzerdefinierte Funktionen unter macOS und iOS aufzurufen. Verwenden Sie
JavaScript.SetPropertyJSON und
JavaScript.GetPropertyJSON, um JSON-Daten direkt zu übertragen und rufen Sie Funktionen mit
JavaScript.CallFunction auf.
Die
WordFile-Funktionen können verwendet werden, um Platzhalter (Tags) in einem Word-Dokument zu ersetzen. Dazu können Sie mit der Funktion
WordFile.Tags eine Liste aller Tags abfragen.
Die DynaPDF Bibliothek wurde aktualisiert und getestet und unterstützen ZUGFeRD 2.2 / Factur-X 1.0.06. Die Funktion
DynaPDF.ReplacePattern kann nun mit verschiedenen Schriftarten für Fallback-Fonts umgehen. Um PDF in die Zwischenablage zu legen, gibt es die neue Funktion
Clipboard.SetPDF.
Unter MacOS können Sie jetzt das Kontextmenü der Scriptliste im Scriptarbeitsbereich verwenden, um Scripts nach Namen zu sortieren. Unser Plugin erweitert das Kontextmenü von FileMaker um diese Befehle. Wenn es angeklickt wird, tauschen wir die Scriptpositionen nach Bedarf aus, damit FileMaker die neuen Reihenfolge erhält.
Um Fehler, die von einem Plugin zurückgegeben werden, besser zu verfolgen, können Sie
ClearErrors am Anfang eines Scriptes aufrufen. Später können Sie die Funktion
HadErrors verwenden, um zu prüfen, ob ein Fehler im Script aufgetreten ist. Das kann einfacher sein als der Aufruf von
IsError nach jedem Funktionsaufruf.
Für iOS können Sie jetzt
DialogModifications-Funktionen verwenden. Damit können Sie die von FileMaker angezeigten Fehlermeldungen ändern und den Text anpassen.
Die Funktion
Clipboard.DetectFileMakerDataType kann nun Menüs und Menüsets erkennen,
JSON.Import hat einen neuen Parameter RootTableName,
Schließlich haben wir die CURL-Bibliothek auf Version 7.83.1, DukTape auf Version 2.7, DynaPDF auf 4.0.66.181, openssl auf 1.1.1n, SQLite auf 3.38.5 und Xcode auf 13.3.1 aktualisiert.
Alle Änderungen in den
Release Notes.
New in this prerelease of version 12.2 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
DropBox folder or ask for being added to the DropBox shared folder.
New in this prerelease of the 22.2 plugins:
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
Since the last Xojo conference in London had to be postponed and then cancelled, we are happy to see that there will be a conference in Nashville later this year:
Xojo Developer Retreat 2022, 19th and 20th September 2022.
Since a few people are still cautious to travel (although restrictions got lifted a lot), the event will be a bit smaller with only 2¼ days and less planned attendees.
Please reserve the days from 18th to 21st September in your calendar. You may want to use the weekend to come to Nashville earlier to enjoy the city and then join the get-together on Sunday evening. Two days of conference follows with a special developer adventure on the second day. Yes, instead of lots of sessions in a ballroom, Dana organized something different this time. I bet you'll enjoy it! Be sure sure to stay the night on Tuesday, so you can enjoy the dinner and travel home a day later.
You can either stay in the conference hotel ($269 USD/night) or maybe better get a cheaper hotel outside and drive daily to downtown for the conference. Or maybe you like to share a room when traveling with your colleague?
Since the conference hotel allows you to cancel, it may be good to reserve a room and later rebook it or cancel, when you find a lower rate.
Students, please contact Dana to get a discount. And if you have an interesting topic to present on, please also don't hesitate to contact Xojo.
Sign-up until 15th May, so you can benefit from the lower $499 USD rate for the conference.
We are happy to announce that we take over two plugins from
Froodware:
After many years of developing our Contacts and Calendar plugin for FileMaker and MacOS we have reached an agreement with MonkeyBread Software (MBS) to take over our plugin business. For a small developer like we are, it became too much a challenge to keep up with Apple’s ever changing software policies, and we can now solemnly focus on developing great Filemaker solutions.
We are very happy that we reached an agreement with MBS, a company that has been well known for their smart utilities like the much used and award winning ‘MBS FileMaker plugin’ which contains a ton of functions that can be used within Claris FileMaker Pro. Exchanging data between Apple’s Contacts and Calendar is also part of this plugin.
We have given them all plugin code and they are looking into to two options:
- offer existing users a special crossgrade offer to their MBS FileMaker plugin.
- continue with development of our Contacts and Calendar plugin, or integrate the functionality into their MBS FileMaker plugin.
Existing users
Nothing changes for existing users: the plugin will keep on working, you can still de-authorise and reauthorise it or download it from our website.
We only stop selling plugins or developing new versions.
All registered users have received an email with addiotonal information about what this means for them.
If you are a registered user and did not receive this email, then please send an email to daniel-at-froodware.com.
Because we want to make this transition as smooth as possible, we will keep our serial number registration server running, and will keep on answering support mails that deal with authorisation issues.
More info about MBS: https://www.monkeybreadsoftware.com/FileMaker/
Below information and download of the latest and in our case last versions of the plugin.
We look forward to welcome the existing users of those plugins and transition them to our MBS Plugin.
New in this prerelease of the 22.2 plugins:
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New in this prerelease of version 12.2 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
DropBox folder or ask for being added to the DropBox shared folder.
Just 15 years ago we added the
ChartDirector Plugin to our
MBS Xojo Plugin collection.
Thanks to Mr. Jason J. Campbell for asking me to add a charts plugin and thanks to Peter Kwan from Advanced Software Engineering Limited for his support over the years and the excellent co-operation.
PS: ChartDirector is also the engine used by FileMaker Pro internally for the chart generation as you can see on the included DLLs.
The May/June (20.3) issue of
xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:
XDC Anywhere 2022 by Marc Zeedar
In April Xojo held their first virtual conference. What happened? Did you miss it? It's not too late as everything is up on YouTube for you to watch at your convenience.
Xojo 2022 Release 1 by Marc Zeedar
The latest Xojo update has some major new features. Marc gives an overview and shows how to create some cool new Code Assistant scripts.
Easy Money Entry by Tom Baumgartner
Tom wanted to write his own accounting app and learned that creating a proper currency field is harder than it seems.
Making a Fontbook by Marc Zeedar
When Xojo added support for using uninstalled fonts, Marc thought it would be a great way to make PDFs of his font collections. Unfortunately, the process was a lot more complicated. In the end, he had to learn how to parse font files to get the project to work.
Plus: Debugging basics, JSON, using Continuity Camera, subqueries, and more!
As you may know we have the option to make MBS functions clickable in the calculation dialogs in FileMaker. You type a function and we directly link it to the documentation page to check the details of the function. Especially for beginners it is a great help to have the links easily accessible.
For next plugin version we add the same for Get() functions in FileMaker (and Hole in German as well as Obtenir in French). Our plugin has a list of the function names with their links, so we can add the link annotation to the formula text. Here is a collage of the dialogs for several languages:
We recognize the localized and the English name. Yes, sometimes we like to type the English name and FileMaker then auto translates it to whatever language it is when closing the dialog. The tooltip shows you the URL, if you hover the mouse cursor over it. The link is based on the current localization of FileMaker.
If you like to get the links, you need to turn them on in the preferences dialog or call the
SyntaxColoring.SetFormulasWithLinks function passing 1.
Please try the feature in the next pre-release. As usual this is macOS only.
Thanks to Alexis Gehrt for the suggestion.
For our new PCRE2CodeMBS class, we add a new Matches method. It returns an iterator, so you can use it with a for-each loop in Xojo:
Sub test()
Dim rx As New PCRE2CompilerMBS
rx.CaseLess = True
rx.DotAll = False
rx.Ungreedy = False
rx.NewLine = rx.kNewLineAnyCRLF
rx.Multiline = True
rx.Pattern = kMarkerPattern
Dim code As PCRE2CodeMBS = rx.Compile
If UseJIT Then
code.JITCompile(code.kJITComplete)
End If
for each MatchData as PCRE2MatchDataMBS in code.Matches(TestString, 0)
foundCount = foundCount + 1
next
End Sub
(more)
We had a previous blog post about
Custom Functions in JavaScript using the built-in JavaScript engine within our MBS Plugin. Bow we got a second way to do the same using the JavaScript engine coming with WebKit on macOS and iOS:
JavaScriptMac
Custom Functions in JavaScript
Since
MBS FileMaker Plugin comes with a built-in JavaScript engine, which works without web viewer and even on a server side script, we can use it to define custom functions, which we can call anywhere in FileMaker using either JS or JavaScript functions:
This example database included with 12.2pr5 shows how to do it using JavaScriptMac functions. It sets up the whole thing in the start script. With
JavaScript.New we make a new JavaScript environment with the special name "js". Instead of getting a handle number from the plugin, we define the identifier ourselves. This way we can refer to this JavaScript environment everywhere. It's global for all files and all solutions opened in FileMaker and can be initialized in FileMaker Pro, Server (Scripting + Web Direct) as well as FileMaker iOS SDK based applications.
(more)
New in this prerelease of the 22.2 plugins:
- Updated RemoveAccentsMBS function to recognize more characters like ½.
- Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.66.181.
- Updated DukTape library for JavaScriptEngineMBS class to version 2.7.
- Small fixes for PCRE2 classes and performance upgrades.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New in this prerelease of version 12.2 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
DropBox folder or ask for being added to the DropBox shared folder.
Did you sign up for
FileMaker Conference dotfmp.berlin 2022?
This conference is organized by
Egbert Friedrich and takes place from 2nd to 4th June 2022 in Berlin, Germany.
After two years of waiting, this may be the first English speaking in-person conference for FileMaker developers.
Already over 70 developers are signed up from 18 countries:
🇧🇪, 🇬🇧, 🇩🇰, 🇱🇻, 🇨🇭, 🇨🇦, 🇺🇸, 🇦🇹, 🇸🇪, 🇩🇪, 🇬🇷, 🇮🇹, 🇳🇱, 🇳🇴, 🇪🇸, 🇬🇧, 🇪🇬 and 🇫🇷.
A few tickets are still available, so if you like to come to Germany in June, please sign up soon.
Who
dotfmp is an effort of various leading European FileMaker Developers. It is meant to bring all kinds of higher level developers together to share knowledge, educate and challenge each other.
When
dotfmp starts at the 1 June 2022 in the later afternoon with a relaxed "Beer and Sausages" as a kind of "Pre-opening" in one of the most famous Berlin Beergardens, the „Pratergarten“. That way people pop by whenever they've arrived without being in a hurry.
The session days itself last from 2 until 4 June from 9:00 till 18:00 with various socialising events in the evenings.
What
dotfmp is a 3 Day-Unconference, Meetup, Hangout or Barcamp. It is an informal and self-organized effort to meet on a personal base. Still no idea what this mean? Then have a look here!
Where
dotfmp saw some of the most famous places and like time passes by we're heading to new shores in 2022. The Schankhalle Pfefferberg s located in a vibrant area with a short walking distance to all the famous restaurants. Please have a look at the map below or at Event details for more informations.
Why
We feel there are far too few possibilities to talk to, learn from, and hangout with fellow developers in a relaxed and informal environment. And we‘d like to share work and get feedback from people chewing on similar challenges.
Please sign up if you are interested on
dotfmp.berlin and check the
FAQ for more details.
As you may know we have Regular Expression classes for many years in our Xojo plugins. See
RegExMBS class for the old interface using the older PCRE library. Those classes will stay available for the future, but we mark them as deprecated. The library is no longer in development and only gets security related fixes.
For PCRE2 we made new
plugins classes:
The
PCRE2CompilerMBS parses a pattern and creates the
PCRE2CodeMBS object with the compiled version of that pattern. Unless configured otherwise this includes running the Just-In-Time compiler to convert your pattern to a little native piece of program code.
Once you have the code, you can create a
PCRE2MatchDataMBS object to hold the results of a search. You can now loop over text to find all positions where your pattern matches. The data object is reused. We have convenience functions to perform the search and return you a new data object or an array with match data objects for all the found positions.
The
PCRE2MatchContextMBS class can be used to configure limits in matching like the amount of memory allowed to be used. All error handling is translated to exceptions with the
PCRE2ExceptionMBS class. Please check results of functions since not finding something doesn't cause an exception, but returns a negative number for the number of matched captures.
If you like you can check the various flags to configure the search. This may include multi line, case sensitively, whole word and other useful flags. The library is unicode aware, so you can find unicode characters. If you like, you can also check the compiled pattern for what parameters it contains and enumerate all the callouts. Compiled patterns can be stored serialized for later reuse. This further reduces the CPU time to prepare them for reuse.
Finally we have a Substitute() function to replace a found pattern with a replacement pattern. This new pattern can then reference captured values from the search pattern. If you set the SubstituteGlobal flag, we perform a ReplaceAll for a whole text.
Our new RegEx plugin is already compiled for all 15 platforms: macOS 32 and 64-bit Intel, macOS Apple Silicon, iOS for Device and Simulator, Windows 32 and 64-bit for Intel and 64-bit ARM, Linux in 32/64 for Intel and ARM. But as you know 64-bit ARM is not currently included in the downloads for Windows and Linux since Xojo is not yet ready for that.
Please try the new plugin part with 22.2pr4 and play with the classes. Please don't hesitate to contact us with your questions or bug reports, so we can fix any issue before the final version ships later this month.
We have a few pending things to do.
OCR
We added support for Tesseract 4 last year. Later this summer (blog article for
Xojo and
FileMaker), we will also check Tesseract 5.1 to make sure it works correct and provide you newer libraries. Of course you could try it yourself and we would expect it to work already.
Once version 5 is official supported by MBS Plugins, we will remove the version 3 code from our plugin. Please adjust your projects later this year.
Pricing
For the last two years, we thought about how to change our pricing. It has been the same for over 10 years. But we see issues, where we like to make adjustments. Our plugins grew a lot over 10 years and in that time the currency values changed quite a lot. And there are cases where were our plugin could be more affordable to be used in more situations. The new pricing is not final and will come later this year.
All customers have the chance to order licenses and updates in advantage for the old pricing. Just use the web shop as needed. We can provide you an update link. For special requests with bundles or multi year discounts, we can generate a custom invoice.
Swift
New frameworks from Apple are now Swift only. We get requests for newer technologies to be supported in the plugin where we need Swift. Our plugin may in future support that, but it may raise the required macOS version for the Intel version and we may need to provide two versions, one for older and one for newer macOS versions.
Barcode Detection
We deprecate the
zxing classes for Xojo and will remove them eventually. For FileMaker, that's the
Barcode.Detect function. Please move to newer
zbar class (or
Barcode.Scan function). The old zxing code is heavily outdated and doesn't recognize as good as before.
To make the transition easier, we may do a new implementation of
Barcode.Detect to use zbar internally, but you'd still need to put the zbar dll somewhere.
In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Verein
FM Konferenz bieten wir eine Schulung zum MBS Plugin an. Am 21. Juni 2022 können Sie in Hamburg, Deutschland an einer eintägigen Schulung teilnehmen. Lernen Sie die über 6700 Funktionen einmal näher kennen und wie Sie sie effektiv einsetzen. Sammeln Sie Ideen und verbessern Sie ihre FileMaker Lösungen durch den Einsatz unseres Plugins.
Das Monkeybread Software Plugin für FileMaker stellt eine vielseitige Erweiterung der eigenen Datenbank dar. Der Kurs bietet nicht nur einen tiefgreifenden Überblick in die Benutzung und Entwicklung, sondern bietet auch die Chance das Plugin günstiger zu erstehen.
- Einführung in das MBS Plugin
- Überblick über die Funktionsbereiche
- Neues im MBS Plugin dieses Jahr und in der dann aktuellen Version
- Rundgang durch ausgewählte Beispiele
- Gemeinsames Implementieren von Plugin Funktionen in eine Datenbank.
- Upload/Download mit CURL auf einen HTTP/FTP Server
- WebHooks einbinden
- Bilder bearbeiten
- PDF Verarbeitung
- Druckerfunktionen
- Barcodes und Zahlungsscheine
- Einbinden von Webservices with JSON/XML für REST/SOAP.
- Senden und Empfangen von Emails.
- Fragen und Antworten
Die Teilnahme kostet 199 Euro inkl. Verpflegung und MWSt.. Trainer ist der Plugin Entwickler und Monkeybread Software Geschäftsführer Christian Schmitz persönlich. Beginn gegen 9 Uhr und Ende gegen 17 Uhr.
Anmeldung bei Monkeybread Software.
Schulung findet statt. Mindestteilnehmerzahl erreicht!
Am Abend vorher treffen wir uns zum gemütlichen Beisammensein im Restaurant vom
Konferenzhotel. Im Anschluss an die Schulung können Sie gleich rüber zum Apero gehen und die anderen Teilnehmer kennen lernen.
Bei Fragen und Themenwünschen melden Sie sich bitte direkt bei uns.
