Party time

Today we celebrate the 25 years of Monkeybread Software



We look forward to meet a lot of clients, friends and family. See you later today!

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.2pr6

New in this prerelease of the 25.2 plugins:

• Added string variation for CountValueMBS for arrays to count how often a given value is in the array.
• Fixed formatting with links not being able to disabled, broken in earlier pr.
• Fixed a problem with linux and endless loop with BeginLayer function in DynaPDFParseInterfaceMBS class.
• Added PopFirst and PopLast in AtomicQueueMBS class.
• Fixed a few memory leaks in AtomicQueueMBS class.
• Added Operator_Compare method to AtomicQueueMBS class.
• Fixed some memory leaks in AUPlayerMBS 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.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 15.2pr6

New in this prerelease of version 15.2 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:

• Changed tracing to log time with start script if Trace.SetWithTimes function.
• Fixed a problem with linux and endless loop with BeginLayer function in DynaPDF.
• Fixed a bug in Path.LastPathComponent function where the last character got cut off.
• Fixed a bug in DynaPDF.PageStatistics function, so it works on the last page of the document.
• Added JSON.ToCSV function.

Download at monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

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

Xojo Conference planning

Time goes by quickly. It's already a year since the last Xojo conference hosted by Monkeybread Software. Since Xojo Inc. didn't put up their own conference and I didn't see someone else organize one and several people asked me about when the next conference is, I started thinking about making one. This would be my 14th.

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MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.2pr5

New in this prerelease of the 25.2 plugins:

• Added WindowsDecompressorMBS and WindowsCompressorMBS classes.
• Added constructor to CFBinaryDataMBS class to take ptr and size.
• Added Data property to get ptr for CFBinaryDataMBS object.
• Added compressedDataUsingAlgorithm and decompressedDataUsingAlgorithm methods to CFBinaryDataMBS class for LZ4, LZFSE, LZMA and ZLib.
• Added base64EncodedData and base64DecodedData methods to CFBinaryDataMBS class.
• Fixed exception in NSKeyValueObserverMBS class if no event is defined.
• Fixed a memory leak in observedValueForKeyPathChanged event in NSKeyValueObserverMBS class.
• Added AtomicIntegerMBS class.
• Added AtomicQueueMBS class.
• Added AtomicFlagMBS class.
• Added FilterSwissQRCode method to BarcodeGeneratorMBS class.
• Added more events and methods for WinSparkleMBS class.
• Improved operators for right side add, sub, mul and div for BigNumberMBS 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.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 15.2pr5

New in this prerelease of version 15.2 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:

• Fixed XL.CopyCellValue, XL.CopyColumn and XL.CopyRow to work if second document has more sheets.
• Added shortcuts to calculation dialog to pick return type just like field types.
• Changed shortcut to show ruler in calculation dialog to using command-option-R.
• Changed shortcut to show invisibles in calculation dialog to using command-option-I.
• Added Audit.SetUUIDFields and Audit.GetUUIDFields function.
• Updated plugin SDK.
• Improved auto complete to work better with XL functions.

Download at monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

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

Priority Support

We got asked by clients for support contracts or options. In general we offer support to all our clients at a best effort level. You know, as time permits. Usually that tends to be within minutes or hours when someone is in the office. But sometimes when traveling, vacation, holidays or similar, there is a delay. And some more complex support requests may take days until we get an answer.

Our clients in general appreciate our responsiveness. We get praises about having a very complete documentation and functions working as advertised or documented.

Since we got asked, we will introduce a priority support level. If you get priority support for a fee, we make sure your support requests are flagged as important and answered quicker. Usually this may not make a difference, except when time for support is tight and we have to pick who to answer first.

Our priority support comes in two variants. General MBS Plugin support and separated DynaPDF support. And if you order priority support for DynaPDF, we include the priority support from DynaForms with 24h reaction time and 7 days fix time.

Beside standard or priority support, there is also paid support available. Some clients prefer to pay by the hour to get their problems resolved or a helping hand implementing a plugin feature.

We'll see how well this is received and appreciated.
Let us know if you have a question.

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.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 15.2pr4

New in this prerelease of version 15.2 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:

• Improved Container.GetBase64 to work better if you don't specify a name or index.
• Changed Container.GetHex to have name or index parameter optional.
• Added DynaPDF.SetBidiMode and DynaPDF.GetBidiMode functions.
• Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.99.284.
• Fixed link detection to work again in calculations.
• Updated CURL library to version 8.13.0.
• Added CURL.SetOptionTCPKeepCount and CURL.SetOptionUploadFlags functions.
• Fixed an issue with ListDialog.AddSQL function where filename parameter was ignored if no other parameters followed.
• Moved FM.Variable* functions into Variable.*. The old names stay valid.
• Added Variable.ValueCount function.
• Added Variable.AppendValue and Variable.PopValue functions.
• Added Variable.AppendJSON and Variable.PopJSON functions.
• Added Audit.GetAuditLogTableName and Audit.SetAuditLogTableName functions.

Download at monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

You can subscribe to our FileMaker 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.

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MBS Xojo Plugins, version 25.2pr3

New in this prerelease of the 25.2 plugins:

• Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.99.283.
• Rewrote parts of CalculateTOTPMBS, broken with Xcode upgrade.
• Fixed BOF of RecordSet when used with our SQLDatabaseMBS class to report BOF = true on the first row of the result set.
• Added kifmBigTIFF and kif2IncrementalUpd constants to DynaPDFMBS class.
• Updated SQLAPI to version 5.3.6.
• Added VNGeneratePersonInstanceMaskRequestMBS, VNGenerateForegroundInstanceMaskRequestMBS and VNInstanceMaskObservationMBS classes.

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 FileMaker Plugin, version 15.2pr3

New in this prerelease of version 15.2 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:

• Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.99.283.
• Fixed Archive.Compress to better compress folder itself if file list is empty.
• Rewrote parts of TOTP.Calculate function, broken with Xcode upgrade.
• Updated SQLAPI to version 5.3.6.
• Added ListDialog.SetOtherButtonNeedsSelection and ListDialog.GetOtherButtonNeedsSelection functions.
• Added ListDialog.SetSwapButtons and ListDialog.GetSwapButtons functions.
• Upgraded NSAttributedString handling to better work with postscript font names. This affects Clipboard.SetStyledText, Clipboard.GetStyledText and other functions on macOS using styled text.
• Added Folders.UbiquityContainer function.
• Fixed an error in XL.Sheet.SetProtectEx function parsing the protection flags.

Download at monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

You can subscribe to our FileMaker 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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Connect to DuckDB in FileMaker

Today we like to connect to a DuckDB database from FileMaker using the SQL functions in MBS FileMaker Plugin. For that we need the client libraries for DuckDB, but where to get them?

macOS with homebrew

For macOS you can use homebrew to install the duckdb package. Then you get the duckdb library installed.

You find the library on an Apple Silicon Mac:

/opt/homebrew/Cellar/duckdb/1.2.1/lib/libduckdb.dylib

For an Intel Mac, you find it in the /usr/local folder in a sunfolder.

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Connect to Postgres in FileMaker

Today we like to connect to Postgres Database server from FileMaker using the SQL functions in MBS FileMaker Plugin. For that we need the client libraries for Postgres, but where to get them?

macOS

For macOS you can download the Postgres App to get a local test server for Postgres on your Mac. You can directly point to the libpq.5.dylib within the application.

We adjusted the install names to make them work into the Frameworks folder of your application. The libpq library needs crypto and ssl libraries, so these must be in the same folder. We got the libraries here for you: PostgreSQL Libraries. You can store these for example in the Extensions folder next to our plugin.

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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:

• added the support of tables (xlsx)
• added the updating conditional formattings in Sheet::insertCol(), Sheet::insertRow(), Sheet::removeCol() and Sheet::removeRow() methods
• changed the sorting behavior from case-senstitive to case-insensitive in the same way as in Excel
• improved the sorting performance
• fixed the vulnerability CVE-2023-45853 in MiniZip

• Sheet::addTable()
• Sheet::getTableByName()
• Sheet::getTableByIndex()
• Sheet::applyFilter2()
  
  
• Table::name()
• Table::setName()
• Table::ref()
• Table::setRef()
• Table::autoFilter()
• Table::style()
• Table::setStyle()
• Table::showRowStripes()
• Table::setShowRowStripes()
• Table::showColumnStripes()
• Table::setShowColumnStripes()
• Table::showFirstColumn()
• Table::setShowFirstColumn()
• Table::showLastColumn()
• Table::setShowLastColumn()
• Table::columnSize()
• Table::columnName()
• Table::setColumnName()

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 FileMaker Plugin, version 15.2pr2

New in this prerelease of version 15.2 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:

• Fixed a bug in Process.GetCurrentDirectory function.
• Improved functions like Container.ReadFile to return empty result if file size is zero.
• Updated to Xcode 16.3 with the newer clang and stdc++ library.
• Enabled MBS Auto complete for more specify file dialogs, so we can auto complete variable for file paths.
• Updated LibXL to version 4.6.
• Added XL.Sheet.AddTable to add a table to a sheet.
• Added XL.Sheet.SetBorder to set border fo sheet.
• Improved ListDialog.SetOtherButtonEvaluate and ListDialog.SetOtherButtonLabel to allow three other buttons.
• Added ListDialog.SetCancelButtonValue, ListDialog.SetOtherButtonValue and ListDialog.SetSelectButtonValue to set what value is returned by ListDialog.ShowDialog function.
• Added ListDialog.GetCancelButtonValue, ListDialog.GetOtherButtonValue and ListDialog.GetSelectButtonValue functions.
• Fixed a bug in DuckDB client for SQL functions.

Download at monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

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

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!