Introducing Tesseract 4 to Xojo

Years ago we added TesseractMBS class to MBS Xojo OCR Plugin in 2012. We decided to go with the Tesseract engine, which was available as C++ library with an open source license. We integrated Tesseract in version 3.02 and stayed with that version for a long time. Since each version requires compatible data files, we could not easily change the library without you guys changing data files.

That brings us to the version 4.11 of Tesseract. We had plans to use the new version and looked for a way to make the transition easy for our plugin users. But since the newer tesseract library exports a C interface, we can load it dynamically at runtime. We got the new TessEngineMBS class for you and there we have a LoadLibrary() function to load the leptonica and tesseract libraries. (more)

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 21.3pr5

New in this prerelease of the 21.3 plugins:
  • Fixed issue with flagged function names for iOS App Store submission.
  • Added BoundsBottom, BoundsLeft, BoundsRight, BoundsTop, Components, HasComponents, Version and XML to ZBarMBS class.
  • Added AWSPresignURL function to CURLSMBS class.
  • Cleaned up older code to remove pre macOS 10.7 support. We require 10.9 as minimum for years now.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from Dropbox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

Watch MBS Videos to learn about our plugins

Have you watched all those videos from us about our plugins?



Learn what's in MBS Plugins. Get licenses for ChartDirector and DynaPDF Starter with OmegaBundle 2021.

First OmegaBundle orders delivered

The first batch of OmegaBundle orders is in delivery.



We process orders in batches every few days. And when you order your copy of the bundle, be prepared to have nothing happening for a day after the order. Then the delivery starts and you may quickly get something like 20 emails with license information and welcome messages.
If you don't get emails for a few days, please check:

Did your bank let the order go through on the credit card?
Did you check your spam filter? Put vendors on white list maybe?
Did you make a typo in the email address?

Every year emails end up in spam folders or bounce with typos.
If one of the vendors knows you, we can fix typos or have an alternative email address and deliver. If you have trouble with the web shop, please contact Paradigma Software, Inc. They also can provide the invoice for bookkeeping.

A week after the order, check if you got all the licenses from the bundle you needed. Some requires to login somewhere to lookup the license key. But for MBS, you just get a couple of emails.

PS: For our DynaPDF licenses the Starter one is included in the bundle, but we offer discounted upgrades to Lite, Pro and Enterprise levels.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 21.3pr4

New in this prerelease of the 21.3 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from Dropbox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

Omegabundle for Xojo 2021 Developer Tools Limited Time Bundle Released

Get the top developer tools and third party components for the Xojo cross-platform development platform at a huge savings.

Omegabundle for Xojo 2021 is a collection of the most useful tool sets, add-ons, digital books and components for use with Xojo Inc's Xojo development environment. If purchased separately and not including any additional offers, the total cost would be over $3871. Omegabundle for Xojo 2021 costs $399.99.

Xojo is an award-winning, cross-platform development tool for the Desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux), Web, iOS (iPad/iPhone) and Raspberry Pi. With Xojo, you can create native applications by using drag-and-drop to build your user interface and then one straight-forward programming language to enable the functionality. Xojo is powerful and modern, yet easy to use and learn.

Included Products

  • Ohanaware App Wrapper (UPDATED). Prepare your application for the Mac App Store or Web Distribution (macOS only app)
  • Ohanaware App Kit (UPDATED). A huge collection of declares and objects that Ohanaware has created over the years to help us with crafting better macOS applications. Your next macOS app starts here!
  • ExeWrapper (NEW). Microsoft Authenticode Signing - right from Mac! ExeWrapper enables you to code sign Windows executables on a macOS machine. (macOS only app)
  • DMG Canvas (NEW). Drag, drop and design your disk image's appearance and to easily and quickly create a fully assembled disk image ready to ship. (macOS only app)
  • GrafittiSuite Desktop Edition (UPDATED). 55 (up from 53 from 2020!) incredible user interface controls for Xojo that add value and improve the professional appeal of your Xojo applications.
  • XDL Library (NEW).Get some of the best articles from xDev Library, a brand-new ebook, Xojo Database Collection(XDL-0019), that weighs in at over 400 pages
  • MBS Chart Director for Xojo (UPDATED). Professional, interactive, real-time charts in your Xojo applications on Mac, Windows and Linux. Desktop, Console and Web projects.
  • MBS DynaPDF Starter Edition for Xojo (UPDATED). Create PDF files with your applications on Mac, Windows and Linux. Desktop, Console and Web projects.
  • Paradigma Software Valentina Studio Pro 11 (UPDATED). Ultimate reports designer, database administration and forms creation tool that runs on all three operating systems - Windows, macOS, Linux. Select one OS version.
  • Paradigma Software ValentinaDB ADK 10 for Xojo (UPDATED). Embed the ultra-fast, object-relational Valentina database into your applications and deploy royalty free - Windows, macOS, Linux, including Raspberry PI! Also works with local SQLite files and as a client to Valentina Server.
  • Paradigma Software Valentina Reports ADK 10for Xojo (UPDATED). Generate visually rich reports as graphics, web pages or PDF from your Xojo applications on Windows, macOS, Linux including Raspberry PI! Also works with local SQLite files and as a client to Valentina Server.
  • Paradigma Software Valentina Server Unlimited (UPDATED). 4-in-1 Reports Server, Forms Server along with two database servers: one built on object-relational Valentina Database and the other on SQLite. Report and forms serving works with MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server and the included Valentina and SQLite servers
  • xDev Magazine (UPDATED). Get back issues and a year’s subscription to xDev Magazine,  the professional's magazine for developing with Xojo.
  • XDC Developer Conference Coupon (NEW). Save $100 off of the XDC Developer Conference 2022 in London! Coupon must be used before the end of 2021.
(more)

Using zbar library with Xojo

You may know that MBS Xojo Barcode Plugin has classes for barcode generation and recognition. The zxing classes based on the open source zxing library can recognize various types, but sadly not all QRCodes recently.

To solve this we add support for the zbar open source library with our new ZBarMBS class. Since the library is GPL, you have to include the library file with the application and load it at runtime. You may get a zbar library from the project website or from our Libs folder in download section. Our example project shows how to load the library at startup of application. On Linux you may just be able to install libzbar0 package and get libzbar installed.



When you like to scan a barcode, get a picture for the barcode. Make sure contrast is good and your barcodes are fully visible with a bit of border space around. Since scanning is done in black and white, you can preprocess the image to increase visibility with auto leveling, e.g. AutoLevelMBS function. You call Scan() function and pass the picture and you receive an array with barcodes found. You may get multiple result with different quality values, so you may pick the highest one. Sometimes a few lines or some text is recognized as a barcode. To increase reliability you may limit the list of barcodes types you like to have and thus ignore all others.

Supported types includes EAN-13/UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, Code 128, Code 39, Interleaved 2 of 5 and QR Code.

Our tests show that zbar can recognize a few barcodes, which didn't work with zxingQRCodeReaderMBS class. But since we also found EAN and UPC barcodes recognized in zxing (see zxingMultiFormatUPCEANReaderMBS or zxingMultiFormatOneDReaderMBS class), but not in zbar. Well, you may eventually use both to see what recognizes what. (more)

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 21.3pr3

New in this prerelease of the 21.3 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from Dropbox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

Follow up on good virtual conferences

Event planning strategies for virtual conferences, online events and hybrid meetings

After my blog post What is needed for a good virtual conference from last weekend, I got some feedback. Thanks for everyone replying. The setup listed in the blog post was heavily inspired from the dotfmp conference, but other conferences may have a different and less chaos in the setup.

After over a year of virtual conferences, online meetings and a lot of cancellations, people are eager to get back to normal live. While some enjoy the virtual conferences, others dislike them. When we talked about the user group, it looks like some groups like to stay virtual, but others want to go back to local meetings in-person. Other groups may mix virtual meetings for presentations and in-person restaurant meetings for the social gathers. Like one month virtual and other month in-person. Quite a few people want to travel again, so long term virtual only conferences may no longer happen. (more)

Xojo Android Summer Preview

Xojo Inc. continues their way to add Android to the their Xojo development tool. To given an update there is a video on YouTube to watch and a blog article:



After a few years of development the various branches come together. The UI classes (Mobile prefix) are getting ready, a lot of the framework parts are getting ready and the compiler also seems to work. This video shows the debugger with breakpoints and variables for the first time. And the classes for Android are the same as for iOS, except a few specifics. Currently there is a AndroidMobileTable vs the iOSMobileTable, but I hope that will get unified and we have one project for iOS and Android.

Sounds like most of the framework got ported already with a few classes still missing like Clipboard or introspection. Declares may work although we don't know how they work and whether they declare to Java libraries or to C libraries or both. We have not seen anything about plugins so far. Software needs to ship eventually, so at some point the team may decide which feature goes into first release, and what stays on the backlog. Plugin support including built-in plugins like XML, RegEx, XojoScript or Crypto may not make the first release. If that helps to ship it a few months earlier, it is fine for me.

There is no time frame indicating when Xojo with Android will ship. At the current rate, this may get finished in winter. We may see it shown off at XDC in London next year. Whether this will be release or availability of a beta depends on the progress made till then. If things go quick, the pre-release testers may see it earlier, maybe even as a Christmas surprise.

Someday a beta will be given to testers. If you like to be part of a tester group, make sure you are signed up for the Xojo forum, the testers section there and you can try the next version in development.

Check for Adobe Reader for IE11

If you use WebViewer in FileMaker or HTMLViewer in Xojo on Windows with IE11 engine and you show PDF documents, you need a PDF plugin for IE. To check whether you have Adobe PDF Reader browser support installed for IE11, please start Internet Explorer (not Edge!), then go to the menu (gear icon in the toolbar on the right) and to the Manage Add-ons dialog:



Select toolbars and extensions first on the left, then go down to pick all add-ons in the popup menu. Then on the right, you should see Adobe PDF Reader in the list. This should show 32-bit and 64-bit versions there. If one is missing, repair your Adobe Reader installation. Seems like one version of Adobe Reader shipped this year where the 64-bit part was missing. You may get current one where it is included again.

PS: See also Windows updates breaks PDF display in FileMaker

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 21.3pr2

New in this prerelease of the 21.3 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from Dropbox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

Atlanta Xojo Virtual Users Group LUNCH meeting

The Xojo group in Atlanta does another virtual meeting and since it is a lunch meeting, people from Europe have an easier time to join:

Hello Xojo fans,

We’re trying something new! We’ll be holding our monthly meeting tomorrow from 12noon to 1pm Eastern. Bring all of your Xojo and technology questions.

Meeting address: https://meet.jit.si/XojoATL
Password: Tacos
Time: 12noon to 1pm Eastern

Hope to see you there!

-Kevin

Atlanta EDT 12:00 = CEST 18:00 for me in Germany = 09:00 PDT for US West Coast

See you later there!

Tip of the day: StringValueX for database access

If you like to use databases in Xojo, you can use various plugins. There are built-in plugins for MySQL, SQLite, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle and ODBC. And as an alternative you have MBS Xojo SQL Plugin with support for over 15 clients: CubeSQL, Centura SQLBase, DB2, Firebird, Informix, InterBase, MariaDB, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, ODBC, Oracle Database Server, PostgreSQL, SQL Anywhere, SQLite, SQLCipher and Sybase.

Unless you use our plugin, which handles unicode well, you may run into the problem that StringValue doesn't return a string with encoding set. So we usually refer to code like the one below in a module to get a StringValueX to return string in a defined encoding:

(more)

What is needed for a good virtual conference


Let's collect what you may need to run a virtual conference. This blog post may be updated later to add more details, so please send us feedback. MBS has hosted over 10 conferences/events in the past, but since we may run a virtual one someday, let's think about what may be needed for a company to run such a virtual conference:


Attendees

  • Virtual conference, so no per person cost like food or chairs, so make it free to join.
  • Use existing logins for company's forum/community to avoid people register again. Preferable single sign-on for everything.
  • Email all your users, prospects and customers to let them know, early to mark dates in calendar and later to remind them.
  • Take signups before and while the conference runs.
  • Let attendees sign a checkbox or so for them being okay with recordings showing them if they ask a question or present in a session.
(more)

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 21.3pr1

New in this prerelease of the 21.3 plugins:
  • Added AddCrossOriginWhitelist, RemoveCrossOriginWhitelist and ClearCrossOriginWhitelist methods to ChromiumBrowserMBS class.
  • Added allowsImplicitAnimation property for NSAnimationContextMBS class.
  • Added DeleteNamedDestByIndex and DeleteNamedDest methods for DynaPDFMBS class.
  • Added ExcludeCSCount property, ExcludeCS and setExcludeCS methods to DynaPDFOptimizeParamsMBS class.
  • Added OptionCAInfoBlob and OptionProxyCAInfoBlob properties to CURLSMBS class.
  • Added OuterBorder property for DynaPDFBarcode2MBS class.
  • Added pasteboardWriterForItem event for NSCollectionViewControlMBS control.
  • Added registerCloudKitShare and registerCloudKitShareWithPreparationHandler to CKContainerMBS class.
  • Added setDraggingSourceOperationMask method to NSCollectionViewMBS class.
  • Added zbar library support with new ZBarMBS class.
  • Changed MapKitViewControlMBS control to not raise exception on Windows/Linux if not supported.
  • Fixed an issue with IDE crashing when you have a PDFViewControlMBS on a container in a window.
  • Fixed bug with RenderPagePicture function in DynaPDFMBS not picking right page size for rotated pages.
  • Fixed CKAcceptSharesOperationMBS constructor to proces the CKShareMetadataMBS objects.
  • Fixed underflowColor and overflowColor parameters for setColorScale and setColorGradient methods in CDColorAxisMBS class.
  • Fixed an issue with SetLocale in SQL Plugin, introduced in 21.2. Now using C locale for Windows.
  • Improved our StyledText.RTFDataMBS function to handle line breaks better.
  • Updated curl library to version 7.77.0.
  • Updated DynaPDF version 4.0.53.147.
  • Updated openssl library to version 1.1.1k.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from Dropbox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

MBS Xojo Plugin, June 2021 News

Let us show you what is new in MBS Plugins since last conference.

ThumbnailMBS Xojo Plugin, June 2021 News

(English)

27:58 minutes

Watch on Youtube

Subscribe to our podcast feed
(more)
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