NICKENICH, Germany (January 28th, 2016) -- Monkeybread Software releases version 16.0 of the MBS plug-in for Xojo and Real Studio.
The MBS plug-in comprises a collection of several plug-in parts which extend the Xojo (Real Studio) development environment with 2,200 classes featuring over 57,000 documented functions. Our plugins support all three platforms Mac OS X, Windows and Linux with all project types desktop, web and console including 64-bit and ARM targets.
Some of the highlights on the 16.0 update:
For
AVFoundation we got a couple of new classes related to
working with movies. You can work with tracks and modify them similar to the deprecated
QuickTime functions. Merge videos, cut parts of tracks, add new tracks and save the resulting movie as self containing movie or reference movie.
For people interested in USB HID devices we have a
new set of classes to use them cross platform. For your Mac, Windows and Linux applications, you can now easily find devices and read/write data.
Windows applications have different ways for drag & drop of files. We now added a
third way which allows use to get attachments when people drag & drop them from an email in Microsoft Outlook.
For
XL plugin to read and write Excel files without Microsoft Excel, we got an update to latest version. Now you can even use those classes on 64-bit and ARM Linux platforms.
If you like to use zip archives with our plugin, we got two new convenience functions. The
ExtractFiles function write the content of a zip archive to a given folder in the file system. Our
CompressFiles function on the other side takes a folder and list of files and adds them to a zip archive. If you need more control, you can still use all the individual functions.
In order to write more encoding safe applications, we now have
CheckUTF8MBS to replace DefineEncoding for UTF-8. The plugin replaces invalid byte values and makes sure the text is valid UTF-8. For better crash reports, you can now use
SetThreadNameMBS method to name the thread and easier identify them in each report.
For better encryption, we added new padding property for
CipherMBS class. The RSA sign/verify data functions can now take algorithm parameter to produces signatures using various secure hashes.
We got a new multithreaded SQL Database connection method, so your app is not blocked while connecting. You can now easily create a PDF directly from a
NSAttributedStringMBS, good to make a PDF from rtf or word files. We updated the CoreImage classes with new filters, e.g. for
QRCodes.
Finally we updated SQLAPI++ to version 4.1.7,
DynaPDF to version 3.0.48.143, OpenSSL to version 1.0.2e, libXL to version 3.6.5 and SQLite to 3.10.2. This is the first plugin version without PPC code for older REALbasic versions. Now OS X 10.5 is required for deployment of Carbon applications with Real Studio.
See
release notes for a complete list of changes.
Interested in DynaPDF Lite?
For January we have a special offer:
DynaPDF Lite for $469 instead of $669 USD. (save $200)
You can use the DynaPDF License from us for the Xojo, Real Studio and FileMaker plugin.
The license is valid for C/C++, Delphi, PHP and Visual Basic.
Interested? Please contact us.
(VAT may apply. Euro price is 429 €)
New in this prerelease of the 16.0 plugins:
- Improved XL Plugin to work on Linux ARM and 64-bit targets.
- Improved DelayMBS precision. (broken in earlier pr)
- Updated libXL to version 3.6.5.
- Fixed a problem in MimeEmailMBS to not mark some inline text segments as attachments.
- Improved WinDataObjectMBS.GetFileName function.
- Updated SQLite to version 3.10.2.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease . Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
We have a speaker who offered several topics for a presentation:
- Creating reports with XojoScript and MBS XL Plugin
- Database independant programming: using interface
- Screen designer: how to create an application specific IDE
- Creating and communicating with a web service using JSON
- Integrating SIX payment systems saferpay credit card terminal with a web app
- Creating PDF file with XojoScript and MBS DynaPDF Plugin
Please vote for them in this
doodle survey.
Once we know your preferences, we can pick a topic.
Speakers are still welcome as we still have free sessions.
DynaPDF has it's own documentation, which you can find included with our plugin: dynapdf_help.pdf.
In order to read it in a browser and for search engines to soon index it, I put the manual online as a webpage version:
monkeybreadsoftware.de/dynapdf/
Maybe it helps people. From time to time I can update it with current PDF file.
New in this prerelease of the 16.0 plugins:
- Added alogrithm options for OpenSSLMBS.SignData and OpenSSLMBS.VerifyData.
- Added MacAliasMBS CreateAliasFromPath function.
- Changed MacAliasMBS Create and CreateMinimal to work for non existing files.
- Added Linux Support for Folderitem.VolumeFreeSizeMBS and folderitem.VolumeSizeMBS functions.
- Added CheckUTF8MBS function. Like DefineEncoding UTF8, but with replacing bad characters.
- Added UnZipMBS.ExtractFiles and ZipMBS.CompressFiles.
- Fixed an alignment problem with DynaPDF.ReplacePattern.
- Changed WordFileMBS class to work in console apps.
- Updated SQLite to version 3.10.1.
- Added AppReceiptVerificatorMBS.FailReason property.
- Fixed GM16ColorMBS.Constructor for colors to take the right.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease . Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
Monkeybread Software is pleased to announce the 5th MBS Xojo Conference in beautiful Koblenz, Germany. Once again we meet in the lovely Contel hotel on the banks of the river Moselle. Beside our two conference days we have accompanying social programme with our dinner event and optional two training days. For the evenings we have casual get-together in the hotel bar or beer garden.
We like to offer
young developers the possibility to meet the Xojo community, get in touch with other developers and maybe find first clients or an employer.
For the 2016 conference we decided to do something special. We provide
three conference tickets free of charge to three young developers so they have the chance to join our conference. Please apply until 19th February 2016 to get one of the tickets.
Requirements:
- You speak english and you can follow the conference.
- You are 25 years old or younger.
- You have done your first Xojo projects and know Xojo a little bit.
- You are sure you can cover your cost of travel, food and hotel room.
- You have the required passport or Visa to travel to Koblenz.
We are happy to have Xojo engineers join our conference. Norman Palardy from Canada and Stéphane Pinel from France will be there to talk about Xojo. Jens Boschulte, our PDF specialist and creator of the DynaPDF library will be available for questions. And of course we have a few other well known Xojo developers coming.
The schedule:
May 17th: Xojo Training in English
May 18th: Xojo Training in German
May 19th: Conference, first day with dinner event
May 20th: Conference, second day
Registration is open. Attending the conference costs regularly 299 Euro plus VAT, including food and beverage in the Contel Hotel on the banks of the river Moselle as well as an accompanying social programme. The early bird offer available till 19th February is just 199 Euro plus VAT.
Sessions are to be held in English. Our conference is conceived as a networking event. The conference is an ideal opportunity for sharing your thoughts and your own development experience with fellow users and developers. If you like to hold a presentation, please contact us as soon as possible. Speaker receive discounted tickets.
Registration and more Information
on our website.
Training days in German and English.
For any questions, please contact me directly.
DynaPDF 3 is already 5 years old and a lot of changed since then. Version 3 had the render feature as the big new function, but that involved to more. For example we got a print feature on Windows to directly send PDFs to a printer. Or the render features to write a multi page tiff file for a PDF.
For February DynaForms scheduled the release of Version 4 of the DynaPDF library. The big new features for Version 4 are a much improved PDF/A converter which supports version 1b, 2b and 3b of the PDF/A standard.
With DynaPDF Lite you can create PDF/A files and run the conformance check. This check is required to know which ICC color space to include as an output intent and whether the PDF conforms to the PDF/A standard.
Now if you have DynaPDF Pro plus the PDF/A extension, you can use the conformance check function to actually change the PDF and make it being conform. The current version of DynaPDF does those changes for PDF/A 1b. The converter for PDF/A 2b and 3b is currently in beta stage and will be ready soon.
Maybe more interesting on the PDF/A converter is the function to optimize and repair PDFs before archiving them. We can put in broken PDFs and they are rebuild completely. This fixes wrong items and removes duplicate parts, so the resulting PDFs are often smaller. Another optimization which runs optionally is to convert colors from various color spaces like Separation, DeviceN, and N-Channel color spaces to device color space. If you are interested in smaller images, DynaPDF can optionally scale down images in the PDF. e.g. reduce DPI of images and compress them as JPEG so they need less space. Finally DynaPDF can optionally delete invisible paths to further reduce file size.
More coming soon in our plugins.
PS: The Optimize feature can also be used to fix corrupted PDFs created in FileMaker 14. See
community thread.
If you like to use an Microsoft Access database cross platform on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, your options are quite limited. But some clients have a need to read data from Access database and process it in their own application.
Now we found the
ucanaccess project on source forge, an open source Java JDBC Driver implementation to read/write Microsoft Access database. That is a great piece of software in our case. This library uses the
Jackcess library for the file IO. And there is an extension called
Jackcess Encrypt to handle encrypted Access databases.
We do have a few MBS Plugins here and one is our
Java plugin. For that plugin we have classes to use JDBC database connections in Xojo directly. Putting pieces together we can load the ucanaccess JDBC driver in Xojo and connect to the encrypted Microsoft Access database from client. We are happy and the application can query/write data from time to time to keep old and new system in sync.
Now if you like to see how it works, well you need all the jar (java archive) files with the required classes in a folder. This way the application can find the jar files and pass to the virtual machine on creation. Once the VM is initialized, we can create a database object, do a query and show the results:
dim appFolder as FolderItem = GetFolderItem("")
// find all jar files in a java folder
Dim count As Integer = appFolder.Parent.Child("java").Count
dim libjs() as string
For i As Integer = 1 to count
Dim f As FolderItem = appFolder.Parent.Child("java").item(i)
If f <> Nil and f.name.Right(4) = ".jar" Then
libjs.append f.NativePath+";"
End If
Next
// init virtual machine
dim librery as string = Join(libjs, "")
dim vm as new JavaVMMBS(librery)
if vm.Handle = 0 then
MsgBox "Failed to initialized JavaVM."
else
// new database connection using specific database driver class
dim d as new JavaDatabaseMBS(vm,"net.ucanaccess.jdbc.UcanaccessDriver")
// the file
Dim DbFile as FolderItem = appFolder.Parent.Child("Database.accdb")
// connect
dim j as JavaConnectionMBS = d.getConnection("jdbc:ucanaccess://"+DbFile.NativePath, "", "")
// run a query
dim r as JavaResultSetMBS = j.MySelectSQL("Select * From test")
while r.NextRecord
MsgBox r.getString("FirstName") +" "+ r.getString("LastName")
wend
end if
// any problem?
Exception e as JavaExceptionMBS
MsgBox e.message+" errorcode: "+str(e.ErrorNumber)
We got a new function which may be helpful for you: CheckUTF8MBS
It works like DefineEncoding with encodings.UTF8, but it makes sure that all the bytes are valid UTF-8. You can just drop in our function and pass the placeholder you need to replace invalid bytes. Like in this example which uses a random string:
// some random bytes
dim t as string = RandomBytesStringMBS(20, false)
// and some text
t = t + " äöü 😀"
// checked
dim s as string = CheckUTF8MBS(t, "😂")
MsgBox s
If you like to try, please email me, so I can send you a new MBS Util Plugin copy.
2016 Xojo Developer Conference Offers 30+ Sessions, Meet the Experts, Networking and More; Call for Speakers Opens
AUSTIN, Texas USA (January 15, 2016) -- Xojo, Inc., makers of Xojo, a cross-platform development tool for the desktop, web, iOS, and Raspberry Pi, is hosting the 2016 Xojo Developer Conference (XDC) in Houston, Texas October 5 - 7, 2016 at Hotel Derek. XDC includes over 30 technical sessions presented by the company's development staff and leading users from around the globe. In addition, XDC will include a keynote address from Founder and CEO Geoff Perlman, numerous opportunities for attendees to interface with the Xojo engineers themselves, networking events with other Xojo users from the international community, and a new and exciting gaming code battle.
XDC is the best place for Xojo developers to perfect their programming skills, learn from the experts and meet other Xojo developers from all over the world. The conference features sessions on best practices, special interests and other technical issues, with content for every level of Xojo developer - from newcomers and students to advanced sessions for Xojo experts and professionals. With the addition of Raspberry Pi support in Fall of 2015, Xojo engineers will cover sessions at XDC on Raspberry Pi development and best practices.
Conference pricing:
Early Registration Price, Ending March 21, 2016: $799
Advanced Registration Price, March 22, 2016 to August 22, 2016: $899
Late Registration Price, August 23, 2016 to Conference: $999
Register now!
Hotel Derek is offering XDC attendees a special hotel room rate of $164/night during the conference. For more information, including the registration link and the agenda, please visit:
xojo.com/xdc.
To learn what XDC is like, view the
2015 XDC Highlights video
Call for Speakers
Xojo is looking for talented and passionate speakers to present at XDC 2016! In addition to the fame, becoming an XDC speaker gets you a 50% discount on conference registration! If you are interested in presenting, we encourage you to submit a proposal with your session topic(s) and brief description(s) (3-5 sentences), along with your full name and contact info, to the XDC Conference Coordinator at dana@xojo.com. If you are interested in presenting, but not sure of a topic, please reach out to us and we can help you develop your session. The deadline to submit proposals is Friday, February 26, 2016.
About Xojo, Inc.
Xojo, Inc. was founded with the idea that software development should be accessible to anyone. With traditional tools, creating software applications can be a very complicated process, but using Xojo anyone can learn to create high quality, native apps for the desktop, web, mobile and Raspberry Pi. With users all over the world, Xojo apps can be found in every conceivable category - from commercial software applications to use in governments, universities, businesses, and the Fortune 500. For more information visit
xojo.com.
Just got notice that Xojo Inc. is looking for speakers for
XDC 2016 in Houston:
Looking for speakers for XDC 2016!
Xojo is looking for talented and passionate speakers to present at XDC 2016! In addition to the fame, becoming an XDC speaker gets you a 50% discount on conference registration! If you are interested in presenting, we encourage you to submit a proposal with your session topic(s) and brief description(s) (3-5 sentences), along with your full name and contact info, to the XDC Conference Coordinator at dana@xojo.com. If you are interested in presenting, but not sure of a topic, please reach out to us and we can help you develop your session. The deadline to submit proposals is Friday, February 26, 2016.
Speaking at such a great Xojo conference is of course a big honor and you save some money for your ticket.
If you like to speak in Europe at a smaller conference, you can of course submit a session for our
MBS Xojo Conference, too. I would expect only around 10 people to visit both conferences, so you could even do a presentation first in Europe and later an updated one in USA.
New in this prerelease of the 16.0 plugins:
- Updated DynaPDF to version 3.0.47.141.
- Added more functions to NSAttributedStringMBS, NSFileWrapperMBS and NSMutableAttributedStringMBS classes.
- Added ChromiumWebPluginInfoMBS class.
- Added RegExMBS.Match functions to easily match against text, array of text and array of variant.
- Added JSONMBS.Clone.
- Changed CIVectorMBS.vectorWithCGAffineTransform, CIVectorMBS.vectorWithCGPoint and CIVectorMBS.vectorWithCGRect to work on OS X before 10.9.
- Updated SQLite to version 3.10.0.
- Added DynaPDFMBS.GetDocumentColorSpaces and DynaPDFMBS.GetPageColorSpaces easier get color spaces for current PDF or a page.
- Added more convenience parameters to DynaPDFColorSpaceMBS class.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease . Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
Monkeybread Software is pleased to announce the 5th MBS Xojo Conference in beautiful Koblenz, Germany. Once again we meet in the lovely Contel hotel on the banks of the river Moselle. Beside our two conference days we have accompanying social programme with our dinner event and optional two training days. For the evenings we have casual get-together in the hotel bar or beer garden.
We are happy to have Xojo engineers join our conference. Norman Palardy from Canada and Stéphane Pinel from France will be there to talk about Xojo. Jens Boschulte, our PDF specialist and creator of the DynaPDF library will be available for questions. And of course we have a few other well known Xojo developers coming.
The schedule:
May 17th: Xojo Training in English
May 18th: Xojo Training in German
May 19th: Conference, first day with dinner event
May 20th: Conference, second day
Registration is open. Attending the conference costs regularly 299 Euro plus VAT, including food and beverage in the Contel Hotel on the banks of the river Moselle as well as an accompanying social programme.
The early bird offer available till 19th February is just 199 Euro, till 19th March 249 Euro plus VAT.
Sessions are to be held in English. Our conference is conceived as a networking event. The conference is an ideal opportunity for sharing your thoughts and your own development experience with fellow users and developers. If you like to hold a presentation, please contact us as soon as possible. Speaker receive discounted tickets.
Registration and more Information.
Training days in German and English.
For any questions, please contact me directly.
We do have some dates to share with you:
- 11th March 2016, Xojo Meeting in Chicago, USA
- 16th March 2016, Xojo Meeting in Cleveland, USA
- 17th May 2015, Xojo Training in English
- 18th May 2016, Xojo Training in German
- 19th/20th May 2016, MBS Xojo Conference in Koblenz, Germany
For the training, we decided that english training is first, so our international guests have a day to visit the city in-between. And the following weekend is excellent for some sight seeing. Maybe we can even rent a bus and do something cool on saturday.
As our German attendees normally just come for a few days, we put the German training on Wednesday.
The January/February 2016 (14.1) issue of xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:
*
London 2015 * by Richard Duke
There was another Xojo conference and you weren't there. That's because it was in the UK and travel is expensive. But don't worry, we've got all the details for you here!
*
The MBS SQL Plugin * by Christian Schmitz
Did you know there are advantages to using the MBS SQL Plugin? Christian explains why and how you should use his plugin.
*
The Magic of Barcodes * by Mark StricklandIt
sounds like a fantastic tale, but it works. Mark explains his system of using an iPhone app to scan barcodes for his Xojo Web App for inventory management.
*
A Multicore Processing Primer, Part 2 * by Markus Winter
In this installment of his primer on multitasking, Markus explains about Linux.
*
Medication Alerts, Part Two * by JC Cruz
JC's epic health journal app series concludes, this time covering presenting medical alerts to the user.
Plus articles on dates and the new framework, ergonomics, JSON, Role Party Model, Michel Bujardet, Getting the mouse cursor location in Xojo Web, transparent listboxes, and much more.
Interested in DynaPDF Lite?
For January we have a special offer:
DynaPDF Lite for $469 instead of $669 USD. (save $200)
You can use the DynaPDF License from us for the Xojo, Real Studio and FileMaker plugin.
The license is valid for C/C++, Delphi, PHP and Visual Basic.
Interested? Please contact us.
(VAT may apply. Euro price is 429 €)
Today we had the question how to encrypt text in Xojo or PHP and get same results. As both PHP and MBS Plugin can use OpenSSL library to encrypt, we can use the same parameters for both.
In thise case we use AES 256bit with CBC encryption. This requires a key length of 32 bytes exactly, so we use SHA 256 to get from the key a 32 byte key from whatever we have a plain text key. Be aware that different text encoding can produce different keys. So best make sure the key is UTF-8 before hashing. For the initialization vector, we also use a hashed text and pick first 16 bytes. The number of bytes for IV is variable as different encryptions may use different IV lengths.
(more)
New in this prerelease of the 16.0 plugins:
- Fixed bug in Registration code for Windows 64-bit.
- Fixed a bug with Progress properties in CURLSMBS
- Changed JSONMBS.SuffixObject to return the reference to new JSON node.
- Added AVFoundation classes for movies: AVFragmentedMovieMBS, AVFragmentedMovieTrackMBS, AVMediaDataStorageMBS, AVMovieMBS, AVMovieTrackMBS, AVMutableMovieMBS and AVMutableMovieTrackMBS classes.
- Disabled PPC code for Real Studio plugins. Moved minimum OS version for OS X for MachO target to 10.5.
- Fixed CIDetectorMBS constructor.
- Added HIDAPI classes to use HID devices cross platform.
- Fixed OpenDialogMBS.File property for Cocoa.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease . Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
Already 2015 is finished and we a looking forward to a great new year!
This is year 16 for our
Xojo plugins and year 10 for our
FileMaker plugin. Yes ten, even as we will deliver version 6. We synchronized version numbers to the year number long ago.
What was new in 2015?
- LDAP Functions
- CURL with multiple asynchronous transfers
- Markdown functions in plugin and via Javascript.
- Running JavaScript without webviewer.
- Excellent email sending functions for multiple attachments, right text encoding, properly encrypted connection and inline graphics.
- Elliptic curve cryptography
- and much more
In total 700 new functions for
FileMaker and 300 new classes for
Xojo with over 5500 new features in total. Year end we have 3500 functions in our
FileMaker plugin and over 57000 documented things in our
Xojo plugins. Over the years little babies get grown up.
Wishes for 2016?
We have quite a long list of wishes from people, but maybe you have a few new ideas?
Already on the list are new functions for
Xojo to talk directly to HID USB devices on Mac, Windows and Linux. For OS X we may get some AVFoundation movie classes for easier editing of video files.
A big thing to do could be rewriting scanner support for OS X and Windows in our FileMaker plugin. TWAIN is getting dated and drivers are harder to find for 64-bit.
Conferences 2016
We are looking forward to meet you. For
Xojo there is of course the
XDC 2016 in Houston, Texas. We have meetings planned for
Cleveland and Chicago and probably a few more to be named. We are still considering doing our
own European conference, but need to fix a date and location.
For
FileMaker, we plan to meet you at Las Vegas conference as well as the
PauseOnError in Cleveland. In October we probably have once again a few conferences in Europe for FileMaker in
Salzburg and other cities.
