If you need our plugins for a bigger organization, it may be difficult to order each license or consulting service on it's own. For some organizations it can take a year between someone needing a license an the delivery of a license key! The bigger the organization the longer orders may take due to bureaucracy.
So instead of going through specifications, offer, purchase order, invoice and license delivery, we can offer alternatives.
First, you can order license with updates for several years included. This way you don't need to come back every year for a license update.
Second, we can setup a software maintenance contract. This gives you a subscription for the plugins you need. We would send license keys and invoice for initial purchase or when old keys expire. If you need help with using a plugin, your support requests gets priority and of course billed. On the month end, we send an invoice for development time. The contract defines rates and availability.
If you are interested, please contact us.
I just packed a few hundred pens in my bags for the conferences in
Houston and
Salzburg.
If you want one, be sure to visit the conference and look for me.
As you see over the years we got different designs for the pens. Xojo used to be named Real Studio and REALbasic. We even fixed the typo in FileMaker and capitalized the M. Next time we make pens, I will probably change again and use the
.com domain.
Did you get one of my pens the last year?
If you have a different design, please let me know.
Here are three examples from our own Xojo made applications on what you can do with the
Listbox.CellTextPaint event:
The first one takes the text from the cell and reduces text size until the text fits or we are down to 8 point font size. This is useful if you for example display a postal address in a 40 pixel
height row Listbox. As we don't know how long an address is, we scale it down. So a 2 line one shows in a bigger font than a 4 line one.
The font is set by the listbox properties including any italic, bold or underline flag.
EventHandler Function CellTextPaint(g As Graphics, row As Integer, column As Integer, x as Integer, y as Integer) As Boolean
dim s as string = me.Cell(row, column)
g.TextSize = 13
dim h as integer = g.StringHeight(s, g.Width)
while h > g.height and g.textsize > 8
g.textsize = g.textsize - 1
h = g.StringHeight(s, g.Width-4)
wend
g.DrawString s, 2, g.textsize, g.Width-2
Return true
End EventHandler
(more)
Recently I visited developers in Switzerland and we discussed visiting conferences. Some developers love to go to conferences and others are skeptical whether the cost is worth it. So lets think about reasons why you should go:
1. Get out of your office
Some developers have not much contacts to other developers. They code in their offices or at home. Some have no colleagues to talk with or don't participate in the forums.
So please use the conference as a chance to get out of office and meet others. A little bit travel may make a difference to your normal work week. Meet other people who may have the same problems and give you conceptions to solve them. Get a different point of view on your development workflow.
2. Add extra days
When you decide to visit a conference, please add a few extra days. No need to rush to save a few bucks. Stay at least a day before and after the conference to relax a bit, join any before/after activity with other attendees and enjoy a bit of sight seeing.
Especially when I fly internationally I often need a day to do the work left on the desk while I was in the airplane.
Often it can be much cheaper to fly to another city, enjoy a few more days there and drive to the conference city.
As far as I see my ticket price to Dallas is about half of the cost to flight to Austin. And Frankfurt Dallas would be a direct flight. With the savings on airfare, I can easily pay a few extra hotel nights. And even the accounting will not complain if I show them the cost for short stay (expensive) vs. longer stay (cheaper).
(Last year's Xojo conference was in Austin. But for next year's FileMaker DevCon in Phoenix, I may get a flight to Los Angeles or Denver.)
3. Learn something
At the conference, go and visit a few sessions. The title often doesn't tell whether this will be interesting or not. Don't go to topics where you know most already as that could be a waste of time. If some sessions are recorded, go into the others who aren't. You can watch recordings later. Try to pick sessions with new topics you are not familiar with or at least some which have a different view on something you know. This way you have more things to learn about.
Be sure to visit the keynotes to learn what is new and coming soon. You depend on our development tools and if something is going to change soon, you should know it first hand. And later on the conference ask all the questions you may have.
4. Get contacts
Simple rule: Try to talk to everyone a few minutes. Ask what they do, what they think about the news at the keynote and how they enjoy the conference. It is always good to have contacts to people which may at some day help you. For example in a forum, or as contractor or employee. For self employed developers, it may be good to present yourself and maybe someone will hire you in future.
5. Talk to engineers
Talk to the developers writing your tool. Know who does what in the company, so you can email them directly with problems to get a quick answer.
Tell the engineers what you need, what you like, what you don't like. Telling them what concerns you have could lead to a change in some things. If you have concerns about licensing, platform support, upcoming features or problems they may not be aware of, please tell them.
Also fill bug reports and send them the IDs, so they can keep an eye on the cases and follow up with you.
6. Show problems to experts
If you have a problem, bring an example project to the conference. Show it some engineers and ask for help. Maybe they can run Xojo/FileMaker in debugger itself and see what line in the C code causes the exception you see. The conference visit may be paid if a big problem is solved for you at the conference!
At least you may find a workaround with the engineer and get a fix with the next version.
7. Lobby
Stay at the conference. Don't go shopping in-between. You are here to learn and get contacts. So use the time between sessions or if no interesting session is running to talk to people. Especially use the time to have some private time with a tool vendor in the exhibition area or an engineer. You easily pay $100 per hour at the conference for your trip, so don't waste it.
I highly recommend everyone to visit a conference if they can. If the conference is in a holiday destination, maybe bring family and enjoy a few extra days. If the company pays for your flight, your hotel room and a rental car, it should be no big problem to buy an additional flight ticket and just take your wife to a holiday with low cost for yourself.
See you at the next conferences:
Today I once again got a winmail.dat from a Windows Outlook user. None of my unarchiver tool can read that. I dropped it on a text editor and saw it has an uncompressed PDF inside. So I quickly wrote this little Xojo app to extract it:
// pick the winmail file
dim f as FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Desktop.Child("winmail.dat")
// read it to memory
dim b as BinaryStream = BinaryStream.Open(f)
dim s as string = b.Read(b.Length)
// as I know it has a PDF, we look for typical header/footer
dim p1 as integer = instrb(s, "%PDF-1")
if p1 > 0 then
dim p2 as integer = instrb(s, "%%EOF")
if p2 > 0 then
p2 = p2 + 5
// extract PDF portion
dim PDFData as string = midb(s, p1, p2-p1)
// write to file
dim o as FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Desktop.Child("winmail.pdf")
b = BinaryStream.Create(o, true)
b.Write PDFData
end if
end if
That is why I love Xojo so much. I just fire up the IDE, type 10 lines and a little problem is solved. Others may write a shell script, a php script or whatever to do the same. But I know Xojo well and so I prefer writing it in Xojo.
NICKENICH, Germany (September 27th, 2016) -- Monkeybread Software releases version 16.4 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 2,300 classes featuring over 59,000 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 16.4 update:
With our new plugin version we add a
class to use the camera of a Raspberry Pi for capturing images. You can enumerate devices, connect to one, select various options, capture pictures or get a preview image. If you have a similar camera on a desktop linux, you can of course use the same class there.
This release improves a lot of linux classes. The
DirectorySizeMBS class now fully supports linux to quickly check the size of a directory. The
module for extended attributes now works on Linux as well as the
SystemInformationMBS.MACAddressMBS function.
If you need to securly create password hashes, we recommend checking the new
Argon2MBS class. Argon2 is a price winning key derivation function which you can now use to generate encryption keys.
For our
SQL Plugin, the internal SQLite library now allows you to run the same commands as the
SQLite shell tool. Use this to benefit from various import and export functions there. For
SQLValueMBS class, we added new properties to easier read/write blob values. You can now stream them from/to folderitem or streams. You can set a BLOB from memoryblock directly without converting to a string, from a variant as well as all parameters in a SQLCommandMBS from a dictionary. Our
SQLite3MBS can now load extensions directly. For
prepared statements, the BindType function is now optional.
On Windows we can now read/write/delete file streams. So beside some data your files can have additional metadata which your app can use, e.g. to store backup state. Our
LargeBinaryStreamMBS class can now handles long file paths better. And our windows list class can now enumerate child windows.
We added a new WebKit 2 control for Mac. This allows you to have one HTMLViewer replacement which dynamically switches between WebKit 1 (32-bit) and WebKit 2 (64-bit) depending of the host application.
With the new
MBS.Has*Plugin constants, you can write conditional code which uses plugin functions only if the plugin is installed. This helps for bigger source code libraries.
We got new CRC, more
GraphicsMagick and a new
SplitMBS function. Our
MemoryStorageMBS class helps to break 32-bit memory limits. We improved several Cocoa related classes including
NSLayoutManagerMBS,
NSURLRequestMBS and
NSFontManagerMBS
Finally we updated LCMS 2 to version 2.8, OpenSSL to 1.0.2i, SQLite to 3.14.2 and
DynaPDF to 4.0.3.9. The
UniKey plugin now uses 6.5 SDK and supports 32 and 64bit targets on Mac, Windows and Linux including ARM.
See
release notes for a complete list of changes.
Just talked today about how to know the calling function name. Solution can be to ask this by getting call stack. So here a code snippet:
Function CallingFunction() As string
// Query name of calling function of a function
#Pragma BreakOnExceptions false
try
// raise a dummy exception
dim r as new NilObjectException
raise r
catch x as NilObjectException
// get stack
dim stack() as string = x.Stack
// pick function name and return
dim name as string = stack(2)
Return name
end try
End Function
The name is encoded name including parameter hints for the compiler.
New in this prerelease of the 16.4 plugins:
- Added orderFrontStylesPanel and orderFrontFontPanel for NSFontManagerMBS class.
- Updated OpenSSL to 1.0.2i
- Upgraded Unikey plugin to use latest 6.5 SDK and supports 64-bit and Linux ARM.
- Added IOPowerSourcesMBS.ExternalPowerAdapterDetails function.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
The last Xojo release brought us an optimization switch. We can now decide whether we want default, moderate or aggressive optimization. I just finished an article for
Xojo Developer Magazine about some good optimization things happening. But there is still room for improvement.
For my article I have three nice cases to show you what is generated for default, moderate and aggressive, so you learn what the optimizer does. I see optimizations going on for loops, common subexpression and recalculating expressions.
But looking for optimization cases with math functions, the code generator could be better. As it does not use the standard functions for e.g. sqrt, but calls Xojo's runtime functions, the compiler can't optimize them away. (
Feedback case 45298). And for multiple calls to object methods, the code generator could provide hints to compiler that self is not going to change while a method runs, so a lot of nil object checks could be optimized away. (
Feedback case 45299)
We'll see what Xojo Inc. will reveal on future development at
XDC. Be sure to join the conference and visit the
sessions about the compiler to learn how it works.
Splitting and joining string arrays is a common operation in Xojo projects. Beside the built-in Join and Split functions, we do have a couple of alternatives, optimized in their way.
First we have Split:
SplitMBS(value as String, delimiter as String = " ") as String()
This takes the string and if it is unicode convert it to UTF-8 and split it. If delimiter is nil, splits into an array of letters.
If encoding is different, we split it and keep the original encoding.
For joining, we have 5 alternatives:
JoinStringMBS(strings() as string) as string
JoinStringMBS(values() as variant) as string
JoinDataMBS(values() as variant) as string
JoinDataMBS(strings() as string) as string
JoinDataMBS(blocks() as memoryblock) as string
So we can join Strings as well as MemoryBlocks. As convenience we can also join arrays of variant with them mixed. JoinDataMBS joins data, so all the bytes are just added up ignoring any encoding. JoinStringMBS converts first all to UTF-8 and returns the text back as UTF-8.
Please try them. SplitMBS is in 16.4pr8.
New in this prerelease of the 16.4 plugins:
- Changed AliasInfoMBS properties to be read only.
- Changed SplitMBS to be encoding aware for 8bit encodings. So you now split a Windows ANSI string and get back Windows ANSI strings.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
This evening we had an excellent dinner together with FileMaker and Xojo developers in Zurich:
Second meeting with 12 people in total (and 8 the day before).
Interesting what people do and what they can show. The
LehrerOffice application, made in Xojo, has an impressive feature set with custom reporting, self written controls including a grid and impressive user interface.
Sett you at the next conference in
Houston,
Salzburg,
Berlin or
Phoenix.
When you select a class in your project in the list of project items, you see in the middle of the Xojo window nothing. There is no editor open, but this space could be used. At our meeting yesterday we discussed the idea to have there some information visible:
The first idea (
Feedback case 43673) would simply fill the space with a note. That would be a note you normally add to the class. But if you assign it a special name, e.g. "About", it will be shown as default content there. If no such note exists, we still would get the no editor panel.
With that default note, we can have a convenient place to put documentation for your classes and everyone new to the class can easily find it.
The second idea (
Feedback case 45236) is a bit more. There we ask for showing the public interface of a class. This would make the use easy as it is a kind of documentation. We see what methods and properties are there and all the private stuff and the code is hidden.
Especially for encrypted classes, where you can't look inside without password.
If you like this ideas, please add your comments and let's discuss that in Houston at
XDC with Xojo engineers.
This evening we had an excellent dinner together with FileMaker and Xojo developers in Zurich:
We had a lovely talk about plugins, Xojo and FileMaker and about the things people do with the tools. Amazing how many here use both tools to build solutions!
Talking about conferences, I hope to see you guys again in
Houston,
Salzburg,
Berlin and
Phoenix.
PS: Tomorrow the second round, maybe with double the number of people.
When you get your emails for the license keys, you find the key inside in clear text. Also we provide a function call to register with clear text and one with a bit of encoding. So you can just add those to your app.open event and be happy:
// in a Register method called from App.Open
// Complete Set: User Tester, MBS Complete, 201704, 5234524524352435
dim s as string = decodeBase64("S1JiU24523451liVG9oVUpybUQ=", encodings.UTF8)
dim p as string = decodeBase64("TUJTI24352345sZXRl", encodings.UTF8)
dim n as string = decodeBase64("V245435230ZXI=", encodings.UTF8)
dim e as integer = 201704
dim t as string = decodeBase64("cWJWY3254325245xSWYxYk4=", encodings.UTF8)
if not registerMBSPlugin(n, p, e, s+t) then
MsgBox "MBS Plugin serial not valid?"
end if
// DynaPDF: "31452345-4523452345-23452345"
dim key as string = DecodeBase64("IjMxNDUyMzQ1LTQ1MjM0NTIzNDUtMjM0NTIzNDUi", encodings.UTF8)
DynaPDFMBS.setLicenseKeyGlobal key
// ChartDirector: User Tester, 201704, 34234234, -202995723
dim serial1 as integer = 342342
dim serial2 as integer = -2029957
dim year as integer = 2017
dim month as integer = 4
dim x100 as integer = 100
dim name as string = DecodeBase64("VXNlciBUZXN0ZXI=", encodings.UTF8) // User Tester
CDBaseChartMBS.setLicenseCode name, year*x100+month, serial1*x100+11, serial2*x100+23
// SQL Plugin: User Tester, 201704, 523452345, -203134534
dim serial1 as integer = 5234523
dim serial2 as integer = -2031345
dim year as integer = 2017
dim month as integer = 4
dim x100 as integer = 100
dim name as string = DecodeBase64("VXNlciBUZXN0ZXI=", encodings.UTF8) // User Tester
SQLGlobalsMBS.setLicenseCode name, year*x100+month, serial1*x100+02, serial2*x100+-40
// LibXL with platform depending keys
#if TargetMacOS then
XLBookMBS.SetKeyGlobal "Test User", "mac-239487652908567926"
#elseif TargetLinux then
XLBookMBS.SetKeyGlobal "Test User", "linux-563547357345735475"
#elseif TargetWindows then
XLBookMBS.SetKeyGlobal "Test User", "windows-375473457345735473"
#endif
Of course the standard encoding is very easy to break and when a key is leaked on the usual sites on the Internet, we have to block it. So please hide the keys a bit and help to make sure your key isn't going to be blocked.
For LibXL you get keys per platform. You may not need all variants, but for those you use, please include the key like above.
New in this prerelease of the 16.4 plugins:
- Added SplitMBS function.
- Added InternalSQLiteLibraryMBS.Shell function.
- Updated SQLite to 3.14.2.
- Fixed ScreenShotDisplayMBS to return nil instead of black picture on Windows when copying screenshot fails.
- Added NSLayoutManagerMBS.usesFontLeading property.
- Added more GraphicsMagick functions.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
With next plugin version we allow you to run shell commands with SQLite3 within the plugin. This way you can easily script import/export things and use all the commands the SQLite3 command line tool offers.
dim arguments() as string
dim f as FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Desktop.Child("test.sqlite")
dim o as FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Desktop.Child("out.csv")
arguments.Append "sqlite3" // path to app
arguments.Append f.NativePath
arguments.Append "-csv"
arguments.Append "-header"
arguments.Append "-cmd"
arguments.Append ".output "+o.NativePath
arguments.Append "-cmd"
arguments.Append "select * from Documentation;"
dim n as integer = InternalSQLiteLibraryMBS.Shell(arguments)
Break
As our plugin supports encryption (SEE), JSON extension and full text indexing (FTS5), you can benefit from those, too. I think a few things can easily be automated in Xojo using this new interface. Please make sure you have the same database not open in your Xojo app the same time to avoid cache issues when writing to database.
Xojo 2016 Release 3 is now available for download at
xojo.com/download. This release adds 90 improvements and 11 new features, including optimization settings to produce faster apps.
Xojo 2016 Release 3 features include:
- Added Moderate and Aggressive compilation for 64-bit and ARM builds
- SQLiteDatabase upgraded to v3.14.1 and now supports FTS5 for full-text searching
- Additions to refactoring features of the IDE and Code Editor
- Save Code Editor color schemes to easily share and re-use
- ICU library included with Linux builds for improved compatibility
- Easily convert Pictures in projects to Image Sets
The complete list of updates is available in the
release notes.
Reddit AMA - Join us in the
Xojo sub-Reddit today for an "Ask Me Anything" with Geoff Perlman at 1 PM CT. Bring your questions about the release, Xojo, running a software business, XDC, and everything else!
PS: Please make sure you have MBS Plugin in version 16.3 or newer to avoid trouble.
Let's celebrate
Programmer's Day with a 48-hour Xojo sale! Get any new Xojo license, upgrade or renewal for 20% off when you complete your order by 11:59PM on Tuesday, September 13th! Simply use discount code PROGDAY16 when you check out!
New Licenses
New Xojo licenses are available in the
store for each platform you wish to target, and we offer Xojo Pro (best value), which is a single license for all platforms, plus many additional benefits.
Upgrade to Xojo Pro
Already have a Xojo license but need more functionality? Save 20% on an upgrade to Xojo Pro, check out your specialized Xojo Pro upgrade price
here!
Renewals
Keeping your license current ensures you will have the best Xojo has to offer!
Renew for one or two years and save 20%!
Conference
The Xojo Developer Conference is just one month away and there is still time to
register! Join us in Houston October 5-7th for the biggest Xojo event of the year, with 30+ sessions, 26 speakers, 2 great evening events and more!
Learn more.
Programmer's Day offer valid through September 13th at 11:59PM CST. Offer only applies when you use the coupon code PROGDAY16 to checkout.
Just one month left for the
2016 Xojo Developer Conference. I hope you have signed up and got a hotel room before it's booked out.
So far a lot of Xojo developers registered and 50% of the attendees are international, with people coming all the way from the UK, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia! Also they have a lot of first time attendees - we are really looking forward to meeting all of the new people!
Be sure to join dinner before/after conference with other attendees.
XDC will take place in Houston, TX October 5-7, 2016. It features sessions on best practices, special interests and other technical topics, with content for every level of Xojo developer. Educational sessions will cover topics like Xojo iOS, Raspberry Pi, database design, user interface design, debugging techniques, writing secure apps, and much more! Want to know what XDC is like? Watch our highlights
video!
Register now!
XDC will take place at the lovely boutique Hotel Derek in the Galleria area of Houston. It's right in the middle of two airports, giving you plenty of options (and time) to find a great flight! We have negotiated a hotel room rate of $164 a night. Rooms can be reserved
here.
If you have any questions about XDC, feel free to email Dana Brown.
New in this prerelease of the 16.4 plugins:
- Updated to DynaPDF 4.0.3.9
- Added Has*Plugin constants to MBS module.
- Changed NSProcessInfoMBS.NSActivityLatencyCritical to be a shared function to work around feedback case #31877.
- Added Linux support for SystemInformationMBS.MACAddressMBS.
- Fixed picture handling to accept HiDPI images for reading, so you can add a picture again to a page with DynaPDF directly.
- Updated CanonEOSDigital plugin to load 3.x SDK and 2.x SDK. Please tell plugin if it's 2.x or 3.x as 3.x uses 64-bit integers.
- Changed email functions to raise exception if you pass email address, subject or message ID including newline character.
- Added more checks to methods in ServiceManagementModuleMBS module. To raise exceptions with wrong parameters.
- Fixed a bug with StyledText.RTFDataMBS function handling font sizes.
- Added Argon2MBS class.
- Fixed crashes with CURLSEMailMBS when having low memory. Now raises OutOfMemoryException.
- Improved LargeBinaryStreamMBS to better handle long paths on Windows.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
On the weekend I had an idea: Let's define in the plugin constants, so you can check with conditional compiling if a given plugin part is available. See this example where we can check if our linux plugin is available:
#if MBS.BuildNumber < 19123 then
// older plugins
MsgBox "Older Plugin. so status unknown."
#elseif MBS.HasLinuxPlugin then
// newer plugins and MBS Linux Plugin installed
MsgBox "Linux Plugin is installed."
#else
// MBS Linux Plugin is not installed.
MsgBox "Linux Plugin is not installed."
#endif
The plugin on startup checks where it's on disk and what plugin files are in the same folder. Than the plugin provides the constants as part of our MBS module. If the plugin files are not found, we don't provide constants.
Of course this is just a solution for our plugins. It would eb nice if Xojo someday defines an #ifdef command or a defined() function. See feedback cases
986 and
9018.
Once again I come to Switzerland in the Zurich area.
If you like, you can join me for a dinner with other developers. Please vote for a date here:
I will be there and would appreciate some companion for the evening. Some shop talk about development, plugins, conferences and other cool topics.
Update: I will do both days and everyone is welcome. See you there!
The September/October 2016 (14.5) issue of xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:
- Cooking with Xojo (Part 1) by Mark Strickland
Wouldn't you love to type Xojo code to cook your steak? Well, Mark doesn't go that far, but he's planning a project to build his own Xojo-controlled cooker! - No Shortcuts for Shortcuts by Marc Zeedar
Letting your users set their own keyboard shortcuts for your app is the ultimate power user feature. But how do you do it? - Making Better Examples 2 by Markus Winter
Those who teach programming should always be working to be better—more clear, more helpful. Markus has more examples that could be improved. - Gestures and Tabs by Sam Rowlands
Trackpad gestures on the Mac are powerful. Sam shows how you can use them in your own apps, and how to use MacOS Sierra's new Tabbed Windows. - Tracking Health Disorders, Part 3 by J.C. Cruz
Jose continues his health tracking project, this time adding the complexity of tracking and recording a patient's vitals.
Plus: Hadoop, REST Classes, Xojo's latest iOS features, converting dictionaries to JSON, ReText, and much more.
