Merry Christmas

Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année

Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo


Franziska, Sebastian, Michael, Monika & Christian Schmitz

Ten month til European MBS Xojo Conference 2019 in Cologne

Monkeybread Software is pleased to announce the European MBS Xojo Conference in metropolitan Cologne, Germany. We meet in the lovely Dorint Hotel in the center of Cologne. The hotel is in the city center and in walking distance to the main station. 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.

As date and location are set, we are now looking for interested speakers to join our conference. If you have an interesting topic, feel free to propose a session. We look for sessions to present applications made in Xojo, best practice, looking deeper on a Xojo features or presenting a product for Xojo developers.

The schedule:

Oct 23rd: Xojo Training in English
Oct 24th: Conference, first day with dinner event
Oct 25th: Conference, second day
Oct 26th: Xojo Training in German

Registration is open. The early bird offer available till 24th April is just 499 Euro plus VAT. For the first 20 people we offer tickets for just 399 Euro plus VAT. Attending the conference costs regularly 699 Euro plus VAT, including food and beverage in the Dorint Hotel as well as an accompanying social program.

Sessions are to be held in English. Our conference is conceived as a networking event for the Xojo community. 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.

More details on the conference website.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 18.6pr5

New in this prerelease of the 18.6 plugins:

• Fixed problem with text data type handling for variants in plugin functions, e.g. for SQLDatabaseMBS.UpdateRecord method.
• Removed more Carbon window functions: AreFloatingWindowsVisibleMBS, AsyncDragMBS, CanLiveResizeMBS, CollapseAllWindowsMBS, GetWindowBoundsMBS, HasFullZoomButtonMBS, HasHorizontalZoomButtonMBS, HasRoundBottomBarCornersMBS, HasSideTitlebarMBS, HasVerticalZoomButtonMBS, HideAllFloatingWindowsMBS, HideOnFullScreenMBS, HideOnSuspendMBS, InWindowMenuMBS, IsOpaqueForEventsMBS, MetalNoContentSeparatorMBS, SetContentBorderThicknessMBS, SetWindowBoundsMBS, SetWindowProxyIconMBS, ShowAllFloatingWindowsMBS, TexturedSquareCornersMBS and WindowDoesNotCycleMBS.
• Removed IntegerToTextHashMapIteratorMBS, IntegerToTextHashMapMBS, IntegerToTextOrderedMapIteratorMBS, IntegerToTextOrderedMapMBS, TextHashSetIteratorMBS, TextHashSetMBS, TextOrderedSetIteratorMBS, TextOrderedSetMBS, TextToTextHashMapIteratorMBS, TextToTextHashMapMBS, TextToTextOrderedMapIteratorMBS, TextToTextOrderedMapMBS, TextToVariantHashMapIteratorMBS, TextToVariantHashMapMBS, TextToVariantOrderedMapIteratorMBS and TextToVariantOrderedMapMBS classes.
• Changed Linux compile to include function names for stack traces.
• Added new mode to get CURLSFileInfoMBS objects for directory listing with MLSD option.
• Fixed year for CURLSFileInfoMBS being off by one sometimes.
• Improved DynaPDF Graphics examples for better image quality.
• Added ProgressChanged and TitleChanged events to WKWebViewControlMBS control.
• Added workaround for CURL IMAP change. UID URLs changed to MAILINDEX automatically.
• Changed a few SQL functions to copy options from connection to command, which before not all functions did.
• Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.25.68.

Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

SQLite Manager and Doctor updated

Not sure if you noticed, but the SQLiteManager app and the SQLiteDoctor app have been updated recently by SQLabs.

For editing SQLite database manually, SQLiteManager is my favorite tool. Supports also CubeSQL database server and encrypted databases. And SQLiteDoctor has been very useful for us once to rebuild a broken SQLite database. We than exported with SQLiteManager the newer records created since the last backup.



Both are updated for 64-bit with a couple of bug fixes and enhancements, including HiDPI support for Windows.

Arbed 1.8.11 updated for Xojo 2018r4

Thomas Tempelmann recently announced a new version of Arbed. As Xojo evolves over time and changes the file format, Arbed as to be updated to recognize any changes in the format. The new version knows about the most recent changes in Xojo 2018r4 for dark mode.

Every Xojo developer should have it in his tool chain and enjoy the features. It has many features and depending on your needs, you may decide which feature is worth the price. For myself i mostly use it to automatically convert my example projects to HTML files to include them in the documentation. In other cases Arbed helped to recover corrupted project files and to compare two versions of a project which have been modified independently without version tracking software. It is also useful to bundle a project with all required files if you need to send a project to a client.

Arbed is highly automatable and can be scripted. You can call it from command line in your shell scripts to do various actions in batch operations. If you need, you can use it to obfuscate strings (e.g. SQL queries) in your application or prepare it for localization. Anything automated which saves a few hours is worth the money.

Arbed is available on tempel.org for $29 or $89 USD.

European MBS Xojo Conference 2019 in Cologne

Monkeybread Software is pleased to announce the European MBS Xojo Conference in metropolitan Cologne, Germany. We meet in the lovely Dorint Hotel in the center of Cologne. The hotel is in the city center and in walking distance to the main station. 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.

As date and location are set, we are now looking for interested speakers to join our conference. If you have an interesting topic, feel free to propose a session. We look for sessions to present applications made in Xojo, best practice, looking deeper on a Xojo features or presenting a product for Xojo developers.

The schedule:

Oct 23rd: Xojo Training in English
Oct 24th: Conference, first day with dinner event
Oct 25th: Conference, second day
Oct 26th: Xojo Training in German

Registration is open. The early bird offer available till 24th April is just 499 Euro plus VAT. For the first 20 people we offer tickets for just 399 Euro plus VAT. Attending the conference costs regularly 699 Euro plus VAT, including food and beverage in the Dorint Hotel as well as an accompanying social program.

Sessions are to be held in English. Our conference is conceived as a networking event for the Xojo community. 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.

More details on the conference website.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 18.6pr4

New in this prerelease of the 18.6 plugins:

• Updated to SQLite version 3.26.0.
• Added VLCMediaPlayerMBS.CopyCGImage to return the CGImageMBS object for current image.
• Changed VLCMediaPlayerMBS.CopyPicture to always return picture.
• Changed VLCMediaPlayerMBS.VideoSetCallback to always prepare for CGImage creation on MacOS and CGContext is now optional.
• Updated VLCInstanceMBS to initialize properly.
• Added Equals, FindValueInArray and FindValueInObjectArray methods to JSONMBS class.
• Fixed problem with drawing OverlayMBS in 64-bit on MacOS 10.14 Mojave.
• Changed behavior for CURLSMBS class to only write data in debug log file, if DebugWithData property is set.
• Updated SQLAPI to version 4.2.4rc2.
• Fixed problem with text encoding with Oracle databases for SQL Plugin.
• Added new archive examples.

Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

MBS Xojo Conference Survey Results

We got 70 people to answer the survey and only 10 said they won't come. So we may have 60 people to join the conference, but of course we hope for more like the 80 we got in Berlin.

Half the people don't care for the exact date, but the most popular week is 24/25th October 2019, so we focus on that week.

We asked whether people like a smaller cheaper city like Koblenz or prefer a bigger city like Cologne. Cologne won with many more votes and a few people say they really prefer Cologne for it's own airport. So we look for a nice place in Köln:



Cologne has a 2000 year history, a big cathedral to visit and climb up the towers, a Roman Germanic museum about the history and a few other nice things like a famous zoo to visit.

Some people are interested in training, so we'll offer training days again in German and English and both beginner and advanced levels. Ulrich would do beginners and I would do advanced.

We'll have dinner together for Thursday and reserve space at the bar for our group to meet and greet. We'll probably find a brewery and order some buffet for you for dinner.

For speakers, we already have over 10 volunteers. Once conference is announced, we hope speakers will submit a topic with description text and length estimate to us.

Depending on which hotel we pick, we may decide to split group into two rooms and get more sessions included, like making beginner vs. advanced track or may something like database vs. mobile.

As with the years before, we look into offering a substantial early bird discount, some free tickets for young people and to bring over some Xojo staff from the USA/Canada.

LiteSync and Xojo

The company GENSIS SISTEMAS LTDA provides a variation of the SQLite library with a sync possibility. Developers can use their SQLite library litesync replacement to add a sync to their application. As a client asked whether it works in Xojo with MBS Xojo SQL Plugin and yes, it works.

For MacOS, you need the library files libbinn.1.dylib, libuv.1.dylib and liblitesync.0.dylib. Than you change the library and dependencies via Terminal like this:

install_name_tool -change libbinn.1.dylib @rpath/libbinn.1.dylib liblitesync.0.dylib
install_name_tool -change /usr/local/lib/libuv.1.dylib @rpath/libuv.1.dylib liblitesync.0.dylib
install_name_tool -id @rpath/liblitesync.0.dylib liblitesync.0.dylib
install_name_tool -id @rpath/libuv.1.dylib libuv.1.dylib
install_name_tool -id @rpath/libbinn.1.dylib libbinn.1.dylib

Next you can load them just like other SQLite library with our plugin classes SQLDatabaseMBS or SQLConnectionMBS. (more)

Three weeks till year's end

The year 2018 will end in less than three weeks. Do you need some more licenses?

• You can order licenses, which end in 2019 or later and have delivery plus payment done in 2018.
• And of course you can order updates for several years in advance for all your MBS products.
• As all licenses are per developer, you should check if you got a new developer in your team this year and adjust licenses to match team size.
• If you need a Xojo license (new or update), we can always check whether a bundle with Xojo offers an advantage for you.
• For FileMaker please check if you have enough license for the number of seats or servers you have in use.

Especially if you run on a budget and you want to spend some money in the old year, you can buy updates for several years in advance.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 18.6pr3

New in this prerelease of the 18.6 plugins:

• Added CURLSMBS.FormClear method.
• Updated CURL to version 7.63.0.
• Updated OpenSSL to version 1.1.1a.
• Fixed bug with edge case in SplitCommaSeparatedValuesMBS function.
• Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.25.67.
• Added ArchiveReadDiskMBS and ArchiveWriteDiskMBS classes to adding files to archives.
• Added more methods to ArchiveWriterMBS, ArchiveReaderMBS and ArchiverMBS classes.
• Updated libexpat to version 2.2.6.
• Updated libarchive to version 3.3.3.
• Fixed a problem with MySQL DLL loading.
• Removed DisableAquaPrefMenuMBS and EnableAquaPrefMenuMBS (Carbon 32-bit only).
• Removed AlternateTitleMBS and ExposeHiddenMBS, GrowBoxTransparentMBS, TransitionWindowMBS, UpdateDockWindowMBS, WindowMoveToActiveSpaceMBS, and WindowVisibleInAllSpacesMBS from window class. (Carbon 32-bit only).
• Removed GrowIconMBS class.
• Removed NavigationDialogMBS, NavigationDialogOptionsMBS, NavigationDialogResultMBS, NavigationTypeListMBS and NavigationTypeMBS classes.

Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

Xojo 2018 Release 4 Now Available

We just got notice about a new Xojo release:

Xojo 2018 Release 4 is now available for download!

It includes 110 changes and improvements, such as:

• The new URLConnection class (part of API 2.0) is an updated version of HTTPSocket and Xojo.Net.HTTPSocket used for web communications
• New constants AppSupportsDarkMode and AppSupportsHiDPI
• More Dark Mode improvements to both the IDE and framework
• iOS builds now use the 12.1. SDK for latest device support
• macOS builds now use the 10.14 SDK for latest Declare support
• SQLite updated to 3.25.3

The complete list of improvements in Xojo 2018 Release 4 can be found in the release notes.

We were curious whether Xojo Inc. would get back to four releases per year after just three releases last year. I consider this 4th release to be a bug fix release for the changes with dark mode from the previous release. Certainly welcome as more and more customers request Dark Mode support for MacOS 10.14 Mojave and we upgrade all projects to the newer versions. It looks like all the other nice projects in the pipeline are not yet ready, so maybe coming with 2019r1 in about three months. The Xojo conference may right in time for 2019r2 release, which may bring a few new things to be presented at the conference.

With the new URLConnection class, we got a the code from Xojo.Net.HTTPSocket in a new variation using string & memoryblock, so they better work without text & Xojo.Core.Memoryblock classes. If you have code still using HTTPSocket or HTTPSecureSocket, please move to newer classes to benefit from TLS and HTTP 1.1 implementation. If you need more options or a class working in different Xojo versions, maybe consider using CURLSMBS class from us. It can run synchronous, asynchronous and with background threading.

Enjoy the winter with long nights for coding and see you all in 2019 at a Xojo conference!

Upcoming changes for 2019

We are thinking about some changes for year 2019.

We may drop 32-bit support

DynaPDF just dropped the 32-bit Mac target by moving to Xcode 10, which simply doesn't support it any more. We still compile our plugin for 32-bit via Xcode 9, but that may not be forever. So eventually 32-bit will go away.

DynaPDF licensening

The DynaPDF licensing is set to change early 2019 a little bit. The license prices will change for DynaPDF 5. For existing customers, we suggest to order updates before the changes take effect. You can update with old pricing for up to 5 years now to secure the current pricing.

Another change is also coming. Currently you are not charged for skipped maintenance time, but that is set to change. Adding maintenance years will than start with the end of the existing maintenance period. If you bought a license in 2016 and didn't buy maintenance in 2017 and 2018, you may need to pay for two to three years in 2019 to get up to date. (more)

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 18.6pr2

New in this prerelease of the 18.6 plugins:

• Changed DynaPDFRasterizerMBS to pre-fill picture in white or black for the flags.
• Added RotateCoords parameter for DynaPDFMBS.RotateTemplate function.
• Added more methods to NSURLCacheMBS class.
• Added NSCachedURLResponseMBS class.
• Enabled SQLITE_ENABLE_API_ARMOR for SQLite to help reduce crashes with wrong API calls to SQLite.
• Fixed crash in SQL Plugin when using unnamed fields in SQLite recordsets.
• Fixed bug with binding empty values on encrypted CubeSQL connection.
• Removed QuickDraw related picture support.
• Removed Carbon ColorSync, View, Drag & Drop, Menu, Font, ATS and related classes (Carbon 32-bit only).
• Removed IconFamilyMBS class and related global methods.
• The MBS Plugin for Real Studio will be build on demand only.

Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

Fixing broken text encodings in Xojo

Sometimes you may see text like this:

Vielen Dank für ihr Verständnis.

That is a German text saved as UTF-8, than imported in another encoding. We need to cleanup that encoding and I got a nice function for this. We simply try to see if the text in another encoding is valid text and convert it back to UTF-8. Here is the function and it's test method: (more)

XDC 2019 Session List

The 2019 Xojo Developer Conference will take place 1st to 3rd May 2019 in Miami, Florida. The Marriott Biscayne Bay is located in the north side of Miami downtown and is a convenient location to reach most of Miami easily. Registration is possible and current rate is $899 for the ticket.



The session list has been published.
An impressive list with a lot of new speakers. Check your schedule and get a ticket soon, if you can find the time to come.

See also XDC 2019 Session List in Bob Keeney's blog.

Removing 32-bit Carbon GUI classes

As everyone now wants to use Xojo 2018 to get 64-bit, HiDPI and DarkMode on MacOS and the next version of MacOS will properly come without 32-bit support, it may be the time to remove some of the last QuickTime, QuickDraw and Carbon GUI classes.

You can still use Real Studio with current MBS Plugins 18.5, but in future, this would require to use Cocoa target at least.

We remove from MBS Xojo & Real Studiolink Plugins for next release: (more)

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 18.6pr1

New in this prerelease of the 18.6 plugins:

• Added option to render with alpha and output with alpha channel to Xojo pictures for DynaPDFRasterizerMBS class.
• Added DirectDraw support to DynaPDFRasterizerMBS class.
• Added more for internal SQLite3 library load for SQLAPI.
• Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.25.66.
• Fixed NSAttributedStringMBS methods to return NSTextContainerMBS if called on NSTextContainerMBS class.
• Added standard constructor to NSTextContainerMBS, NSMutableAttributedStringMBS and NSAttributedStringMBS.
• Added properties to DynaPDFRasterizerMBS to inspect state.
• Fixed memory leak with initializing NSMutableAttributedStringMBS class.
• Fixed memory leak in CGImageMetadataMBS class.
• Fixed problem with CURL where output would still be written even if OptionNoBody is set to true.
• Added ReadFileMBS and WriteFileMBS functions for folderItem class.
• Added links to blog articles from help.

Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

Birthday of our video page

Twelve years ago we started created tutorial videos and today our video page has birthday. Enjoy a video and learn about our plugins.

Over the years we collected more than 80 videos. We hope you enjoy them!

Watch Xojo Videos - FileMaker Videos

Youtube channels:

• MBS Xojo Plugins
• MBS Xojo Plugins (Deutsch)
• MBS FileMaker Plugin (English)
• MBS FileMaker Plugin (Deutsch)
• MBS FileMaker Plugin (Française)

We know we could make more videos. So what wishes do you have?
Please email us or post a comment here.