A common use of DynaPDF is to write reports. Or you may need to output the content of a Listbox to a PDF. For these cases our DynaPDFTableMBS class helps. It automatically calculates how much space the text in the cell needs and determines the row height. And if the table doesn't fit on one page, it can continue on another page. If you have header rows, they get repeated on each page.
Let us start with an example. First we need to know what Listbox (or DesktopListbox) we like to output. Then we start a new DynaPDF environment using DynaPDFMBS class, which you can be subclasses to catch events like Error or PageBreak.
When we create a new PDF, we can pass nil for an in-memory PDF. In that case call GetBuffer after calling the CloseFile method to grab the finished PDF. Otherwise you can pass a folderitem, so DynaPDF can create the PDF there.
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Apple will ship macOS 26 later this fall. Usually they show the iPhone the second Tuesday in September with shipments the next Friday. I would expect that by that date the 26 series of operation systems are released. There is a small possibility like in some of the previous years, that macOS 26 is not coming in September, but in October when they may do a Mac related event. So either mid September or October, our clients will jump and install the brand new version. For a business, I would wait for the .2 or .3 release in the new year before putting it on production machines.
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Eight months until our MBS Xojo conference in Andernach.
We sent newsletters to everyone this week. First registrations are coming in and we have already the first attendees from six countries: 🇩🇪, 🇳🇱, 🇵🇱, 🇬🇧, 🇨🇭 and 🇺🇸.
Over the summer, we are looking for interesting presentations, so if you like to become a speaker or maybe a sponsor, please contact us.
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Do you remember when Xojo introduced 64-bit integers?
This was back in version 2006r4, almost 20 years ago. Until then Xojo only had 32-bit integers.
A couple years ago I saw a
feature request to add 128 bit integers to Xojo. One of the things I did then was to add
LargeNumberMBS class to our plugin. That is a dynamic integer, which provides large integer numbers from 64 to 4128 bits depending on how many digits the number needs. That is using a library in C++, which has a couple of optimizations, so it works quite well.
This year I learned, that the Int128 support in C++ got better. LLVM for macOS has an __int128 type built-in. That is also in GCC for Linux on 64-bit platforms. And even Microsoft includes such a type in their runtime libraries. Great, we can finally provide two new classes:
Int128MBS and
UInt128MBS.
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Our mail provider notified us, that they plan to switch to different mail servers tomorrow.
Sadly this may cause an interruption in the mail services whenever this happens.
If done properly, no email should get lost.
If you send an email to use and it bounces, please try again later. If we don't react to an email, maybe contact us the next day on a different way like by messaging service, website form or a different email.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
New in this prerelease of the 25.4 plugins:
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New functionality in documentation.
You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.
The first batches of OmegaBundle orders are 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.
This is a time limited offer, which ends 22nd September 2025.
New in this prerelease of the 25.4 plugins:
- Improved NSSearchFieldControlMBS control to make the willShowContextualMenu event work.
- Added insertText method for NSResponderMBS class.
- Fixed a bug in SystemInformationMBS.ProcessorCount function.
- Improved GetProperty method in WMIObjectMBS class.
- Added WMIObjectMBS GetPropertyBooleanArray, GetPropertyUInt64Array, GetPropertyInt64Array, GetPropertyUInt32Array, GetPropertyInt32Array, GetPropertyUInt8Array, GetPropertyInt8Array, GetPropertyUInt16Array, GetPropertyInt16Array, GetPropertyDoubleArray and GetPropertySingleArray methods to WMIObjectMBS class.
- Added COPY and MOVE verbs for SetupAWS function in CURLSMBS class.
- Improved Text in WordFileMBS class to skip a couple of node types.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New functionality in documentation.
You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.
Today we look into drawing a picture into a PDF document. If you develop in Xojo, you may first look into PDFDocument class. There you can use DrawPicture and pass a picture to draw. This stores the image inside the PDF and shows it on a page.
There are different things to consider when placing an image:
- Does the image come from picture or from file or data in memory?
- What resolution does the image has and what resolution should it have in the PDF document?
- Does the image gets compressed into the PDF?
- What colorspace has the image and in what colorspace should it be stored in the PDF?
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If you like to create PDF documents in Xojo, you may just try the built-in PDFDocument class. But then you may run into a couple of issues when you need to print unicode characters. The PDFDocument class only does ANSI encoding.
Your document may need to print some characters in different charsets like Japanese, Chinese, Korean or just eastern Europe characters. This could be a report with customer names, where you can't be sure they only use ASCII characters.
Luckily you can currently get DynaPDF Starter with OmegaBundle or buy it directly from Monkeybread Software. DynaPDF can load fonts from the system and get fully unicode support.
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The last week we had a bit of trouble with email delivery. Some clients did not receive their invoice or license keys.
When we send emails to clients, we run into different situations:
- Email delivers normally.
- Email bounces back with a typo in the email address
- Email bounces back with server not accepting our emails
- Email bounces back with mailbox full message
- Email is detected as spam and moved to spam folder
- Email is detected as spam and discarded
Now when you miss your license, what do you do?
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New in this prerelease of the 25.4 plugins:
- Added StoreKit2MBS module for StoreKit 2 framework from Apple.
- Deprecated Secure Transport in CURL. Will be removed later this year.
- Fixed problem with LibArchive on Windows not doing all encryptions, broken in 25.2.
- Added FaviconURI property to WebView2ControlMBS control.
- Added GetFavicon method and FaviconCompleted event to WebView2ControlMBS control.
- Added FaviconChanged event to WebView2ControlMBS control.
- Added beginAppearanceTransition and endAppearanceTransition to UIViewControllerMBS class.
- Improved using Python on threads.
- Added RecursionLimit property to PythonMBS class.
- Added ASF support for CovertArt method for TagLibFileRefMBS class.
- Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.102.294.
- Changed Serialnumber parameter to Int64 for SignCertificateSigning and GenerateRootCertificate methods in PKeyMBS class.
- Added SkipDeletedText property to WordFileMBS class.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New functionality in documentation.
You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.