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MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.2pr4

New in this prerelease of the 25.2 plugins:
  • Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.99.284.
  • Fixed ReadFileMBS function, broken in 25.2pr1.
  • Fixed Compression plugin, which missed a linux part for LZW in pr3. And we changed our package tool to check plugin archives to prevent this in future.
  • Changed OptionFollowLocation property in CURLSMBS class to be integer instead of boolean since you can now use flags there to specify the behavior.
  • Updated CURL library to version 8.13.0.
  • Added OptionTCPKeepCount and OptionUploadFlags properties for CURLSMBS class and related constants.
  • Added CountValueMBS for arrays to count how often a given value is in the array.
  • Removed BackgroundThreadMBS class.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


25 Years Monkeybread Software Party

This year in early April our company turned 25 years old. We plan to have a party here in Germany near our office with around 100 guests.

Today we emailed everyone who is on the guest list. If you do not receive an email today or lost your invitation, please contact us.

So far it looks like our party will be the biggest Xojo developer conference this year. For FileMaker, it will be the second biggest gathering of FileMaker developers behind the German FileMaker Konferenz.

We look forward to meet you guys and celebrate!

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Bidirectional Mode and Complex Text Rendering in DynaPDF

Rendering text in a PDF might seem straightforward—until you try working with languages like Arabic or Hebrew. These languages require more than just placing characters from left to right. Without proper handling, the result can be unreadable or even misleading.

Let’s look at how DynaPDF handles this challenge using Bidirectional (Bidi) Mode and Complex Text Rendering.

(more)

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.2pr3

New in this prerelease of the 25.2 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


Improving a Web Form: Fighting Back Against Bots

Over time, we’ve built a few web forms—some simple, some more complex. Unfortunately, bots love web forms. They fill them out with spam, test vulnerabilities, or just cause general headaches. If you’ve ever maintained a form in production, you know exactly what I mean.

To cut down on junk submissions, we’ve implemented a few strategies that have worked well for us. These aren’t foolproof, but they definitely raise the bar and help filter out a lot of automated noise.

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LibXL 4.6.0 has been released

We are glad to inform you that the new LibXL version 4.6.0 is available now.

What's new in the version 4.6.0:

New methods:

The LibXL library can be used with MBS Plugins in Xojo and FileMaker. Updated plugins will be available soon. As usual we add the new functions soon. If you need help or want to try the new version early, let me know.


MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.2pr2

New in this prerelease of the 25.2 plugins:
  • Updated to Xcode 16.3 with the newer clang and stdc++ library.
  • Updated LibXL to version 4.6.
  • Added XLTableMBS class.
  • Added AddTable, ApplyFilter, SetBorder, TableByIndex and TableByName methods to XLSheetMBS class.
  • Fixed a bug in DuckDB client for our SQL Plugin.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


25 Years of Monkeybread Software

This month we celebrate 25 years of Monkeybread Software.

In April 2000 I started my self employment with filling the business registration form. Originally I coded shareware applications, but since I got consulting clients in 2000 and needed to write invoices, I had to start a company and register as a business.

In 2001 we needed more and more plugins in REALbasic for the various projects. We got a lot of plugins from Einhugur back then and Björn is still making Xojo plugins as of today! Since we needed more, I went into learning C++ and started my own plugin collection. Thanks to Thomas Tempelmann and others for some help to get started. Over the years we (co-)hosted 13 European Xojo conferences to bring together the developer community.

Later in 2006 we started the adventure into making a plugin for FileMaker. A couple of people asked over the years to port over some functions from my Xojo plugins to FileMaker and eventually Todd Geist persuaded me into making one. It took a few years to grow, but the popularity really toke off when I went to the FileMaker Konferenz 2012 in Salzburg and the FileMaker DevCon in 2013 in San Diego. Once people saw the plugin, they loved it and our business grew.

The Monkeybread Software name came from Matt Ronge, my former US business partner. We separated a few years later and he's now busy as the Cofounder and CEO of Astropad.

There will be a big party here near the office and we invited hundreds of clients, friends and family. If you like to join and you miss an invitation, you can contact us and ask whether your invitation got lost.

If you need a new license for MBS Plugins, we have a special offer for April: Use coupon code Birthday for a 20% discount.

See you at the party or the next conference!


MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.2pr1

New in this prerelease of the 25.2 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


Xojo 2025r1

A few days ago Xojo Inc. released their first 2025 version of Xojo.
Download, Release Notes and Announcement.

We switched to using MacBooks with Apple Silicon years ago and actually run VMs there with Linux. But these VMs use the ARM version of Ubuntu, not the Intel one. While there are ways to use Rosetta for translation inside the VM, it never worked well. With Xojo 2025r1 you can install the Linux version of Xojo into a VM running Linux in the ARM version. That is great to use the debugger there and test things on Linux.

With Xojo you can now directly build and upload to the App Store for iOS and Mac applications. As they do code signing for you, the new log file helps to find the reason for any issues with code signatures. Since you need to add property list values for the application, Xojo got an editor for that. Here you can declare a lot of things like the permissions your application needs.

I dislike the changed shortcut for building. You need to go to preferences and assign Command-B to be build again. Or change your muscle memory to also press the shift key.

For macOS there is the option to get the AppKit Window menu. If you do cross platform development, you ned to make your own. But there is a feature request to get it for Windows and Linux, too. Issue 78776

Windows 10 was released in 2015. Already 10 years and time to let Windows 7 and 8 go. The new Xojo version requires you to have Windows 10 at least. The advantage is that they started to use the unicode DLLs coming with Windows 10 instead of bringing their own. This saves a lot of disk space for your applications. But this change actually makes Windows 10 1703 the minimum, not the original Windows 10 from 2015!

Check out the new JSONOptions class to specify how JSON gets formatted.

For MBS Xojo Plugins, just make sure you have a recent version and everything should work fine. Enjoy the update!

Meet us at Claris Engage

You can find Stefanie and Christian at the Claris Engage conference in Austin.
Just walk around and talk to us in the breaks. If you need a longer meeting, we could sit together for a chat while a session runs.

If you need a license, please use coupon code FileMakerConference in our web shop to place an order. Let us know if you need something special so we can assist the order. The code is valid until at least 5th April, so you have time next week to place an order.

Ideas? Questions? Please don’t hesitate to write us an email, send a feedback or to find us on the conference.

News from the MBS Xojo Plugins in Version 25.1

In this article I want to introduce you the new functionalities from the MBS Xojo Plugins in version 25.1.

ECKey

When it comes to encryption, you can now use the CurveNameToID method in the ECKeyMBS class to find out the ID of a curve. If you want to sign data, we have also added new methods for this. You can sign data with Sign. It can look like this, for example:

const NID_secp192k1 = 711
Var key as ECKeyMBS = ECKeyMBS.KeyByCurveName(NID_secp192k1)
Var text as string = "Hello World"
Var data as string = SHA512MBS.Hash(text)
Var sig as string = key.Sign(data)

if key.Verify(data, sig) then
  MsgBox "Signature ok"
end if

We highly recommend to use a hash like SHA-512 to preprocess the data. The whole thing can then be verified with Verify. If you want to sign with SHA256, you can sign directly with the ES256Sign method and verify with ES256Verify. You can pass the data as a string or memory block. Both are possible.

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Upcoming Mailserver Migration

Our mail provider notified us, that they plan to switch to different mail servers within the next month.

Sadly this may cause an interruption in the mail services whenever this happens.
And to prepare for a migration, we cleaned up and deleted a couple of email accounts.

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 next day on a different way like by messaging service, website form or a different email.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Xojo March Sale

Xojo Inc. announced a sale for the next few days:

Buy New, Renew or Upgrade
renew new and upgrade licenses for sale 20% ‍
Choose the license that is right for your project, upgrade or renew anytime! Take 20% off Xojo Desktop, Mobile and Web licenses, 25% off Xojo Pro and Pro Plus. Xojo Lite starts at $99. All licenses covered by Xojo's 90 day refund guarantee.

20% off Xojo Extras
Xojo's community is filled with a wide variety of third party developers. Using third party software is a great way to expand Xojo's functionality and save yourself some time. All Extras are 20% off and subject to Xojo's 90 day refund guarantee.

The Fine Print
Xojo Cloud is not included in the sale.
Xojo Lite is not included in the sale.
No coupon required for store discount.
If your license auto-renews during the sale, the discount will be automatically applied.
Sale ends March 21, 2025 12 AM CT US.
Not valid in conjunction with other promotions, discounts.


If you waited to get a Xojo license or to renew your license or to upgrade to Xojo Pro, this is your chance.

As usual, if your Xojo license is up for renewal later this year, you can update now and enjoy a discount. If your Xojo license expired already, just get a new one. With the discount it is cheaper than a regular update.

The add-ons are included in the sale. If you like to get one of the MBS articles there, you can use the sale price at Xojo Store or we match the price if you buy directly from us. Please contact us if you need a MBS Plugin license.

MonkeyBread Software Releases the MBS Xojo Plugins in version 25.1

Nickenich, Germany - (March 11th, 2025) -- Monkeybread Software today is pleased to announce MBS Xojo Plugins 25.1 for macOS, Linux and Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin collection currently available for Xojo. MBS Xojo Plugins have been updated and now includes over 3000 classes and 82,000 documented features, and the versatile plugins have gained more new functions:

We have our Bonjour classes for macOS, iOS and Windows to find computers on the local network by publishing and browsing for services. For Linux we use Avahi library and there we added new AvahiAddressResolverMBS, AvahiEntryGroupMBS, AvahiHostNameResolverMBS and AvahiRecordBrowserMBS classes to publish and find services. You may have a linux service running on a Raspberry Pi, which can then by a desktop application on macOS, Windows or Linux or an iOS application.

For Windows we have a set of classes to query diagnostic information about application and system memory, disk and CPU usage. The WindowsPowerManagerMBS class allows you to query battery status and get events for updates. Use the WindowsSharePanelMBS class to share files to contacts using the Windows share sheet. The WindowsAVIWriteMBS class helps to write AVI files from pictures.

The AVPlayerViewControllerMBS class for iOS is great to play fullscreen video. With the AVPlayerViewControllerControlMBS control we have a way to use it for videos playing on a screen.

You can use PHPickerMBS to show a window for the user to pick photos from his library without your application requiring permissions to do so. With the PHPickerControlMBS control, you can embed this picker in your own window. For PHPhotoLibraryMBS we added methods to ask for permissions with level, so you can ask for add-only access instead of asking for full access.

If you have multiple Python installations, you can use AddSysPath method to point to the directory where to find libraries.

On macOS and iOS you can use Genmojis with the NSAdaptiveImageGlyphMBS class. We can render images using NSAdaptiveImageGlyphImageMBS class. You can use supportsAdaptiveImageGlyph property on NSTextViewMBS or WKWebViewConfigurationMBS classes to enable Genmojis support.

When you send emails using CURLEmailMBS class, you can decide to use 8bit encoding instead of quoted printable. The ECKeyMBS class got ES256 sign and verify functions. For arrays we have a ReverseMBS function in addition to more variants for CopyMBS and AddMBS array methods. The CURL feature for MQTT can keep the connection alive.

Updated avahi library, CURL to 8.12.1, DynaPDF to 4.0.98.278, jsoncons to 1.3.0, lcms to 2.17, OpenSSL to 3.3.3, png to 1.6.47 and SQLite to version 3.49.1.

See release notes for a complete list of changes. New functions in documentation.


Xojo Meeting in Austin

We am coming to Austin in late March and we organize a casual get-together with Xojo developers.

Something like a meet-up for lunch in a restaurant to talk about Xojo.



If you are interested, please let us know in the Xojo forum.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.1pr7

New in this prerelease of the 25.1 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


xDev Magazine 23.2

The March/April (23.2) issue of xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:

Making Mancala by Marc Zeedar
Marc grew up in Africa playing Mancala, an ancient board game where you "sow" seeds into holes. He found some 50-year-old BASIC code and thought it would be easy to convert to Xojo. It turned out to be rather challenging!

Controlling a Raspberry Pi Pico WH by Eugene Dakin
Xojo cannot run on the Raspberry Pi Pico WH directly, so Eugene shows how to use MicroPython on the Pico WH to run tasks from a connected Raspberry Pi via UART.

Making PDFs Faster by Marc Zeedar
Back in xDev 11.1 Marc wrote an app for converting Markdown/HTML files to PDF using wkhtmltopdf. In those days Xojo could only do one thing at a time, so converting a batch of files was slow. Now that preemptive threads are here, we can speed up the process!

Finding Clients by Tim Dietrich
In this issue's "The Business of Xojo" series, Tim shows how to find consulting clients and gives tips on how to market your business.

Plus: An interview with Geoff Perlman, using GameInput classes, custom sorting routines, building Xojo Tennis game, and more!

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.1pr6

New in this prerelease of the 25.1 plugins:
  • Updated OpenSSL to version 3.3.3.
  • Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.98.278.
  • Added kRoundHighlightAP constant to DynaPDFMBS class.
  • Updated jsoncons library to version 1.2.0.
  • Updated png library to version 1.6.47.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.1pr5

New in this prerelease of the 25.1 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


Older blog entries:

2025-02-23 For each loops in detail
2025-02-22 Xojo Developer Magazine Year Books
2025-02-22 Connect to CubeSQL in Xojo
2025-02-21 XDevMag: VCard QR Code
2025-02-20 XDevMag: An Overview of Overlays
2025-02-20 Loop variants in Xojo
2025-02-19 XDevMag: Text Recognition
2025-02-19 Connect to Postgres in Xojo
2025-02-18 XDevMag: Phidgets
2025-02-17 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.1pr4
2025-02-17 XDevMag: Find Yourself
2025-02-16 XDevMag: Parse your Mails in Xojo
2025-02-14 Benefits of XSLT 2.0 and 3.0 Compared to XSLT 1.0
2025-02-14 The SortMBS module
2025-02-12 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.1pr3
2025-02-10 Advertise your Linux app on the network
2025-02-06 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.1pr2
2025-02-04 Differences between old and new Excel file format
2025-02-01 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.1pr1
2025-01-28 The failure of Digital River's MyCommerce platform, Update

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