Weekend news

• Leicester event went very well. 17 people showed up. Including 3 people from Belgique. 8 with Enterprise and 9 with Pro license.
• You may have seen our chat feature on the website. Now you have also a chat on realsoftware.com. To see it, change the language to english on the realsoftware website.
• Don't forget, this Sunday, July 31st is the last day to save 20% of all Real Studio upgrades. Use coupon code UPSALE.

Great time in Leicester

I returned from Birmingham, UK last night.

I travelled on Wednesday to the UK. Steve picked me up on the airport and brought me to the hotel in Leicester. We spend the evening in the hotel with a nice dinner and some nice discussions about Real Studio and related topics with all the other .

On Thursday, we met in the Orange Rooms for the Real Studio Event. In total 17 people showed up including three from Belgique and me from Germany. Eric started with a welcome and gave an overview about Real Studio related developer resources. Next Steve talked about reusable controls and external modules. After the coffee break I had my time to give an overview about our plugins. After we finished the lunch, Eric presented about cross platform considerations. In the following time slot we had an open Q&A. Very good idea indeed. People can simply ask the group and someone can answer. And of course all the others can learn something new. We had a coffee break while Eric setup the video chat to Geoff. For a connection between California and UK, it was working very well. Geoff presented Real Studio and what's new in the latest release. Also he talked about a few things they wan't to do in the next months.
On Friday, I did some sight seeing with Eric in Birmingham before I flighted back.

Thanks to Eric and Steve for all the work they put into this event. Thanks for the Orange Rooms people for the room. And thanks to Geoff for the video chat and thanks to everyone for attending.

MBS Real Studio plug-ins in version 11.2

NICKENICH, Germany (July 26th, 2011) -- Monkeybread Software releases version 11.2 of the MBS plug-in for Real Studio.

The MBS plug-in comprises a collection of several plug-in parts which extend the Real Studio development environment with 1,400 classes featuring over 35,000 documented functions. Our plugins support all three platforms Mac OS X, Windows and Linux with all project types desktop, web and console.

New in this release are several classes for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion features. This includes classes for StoreKit, the Apple framework for in-app-purchases from the Mac App store. Also you can receive push notifications and use the new pop-over windows. New functions on the window class help you supporting full screen mode and animations for your application. For more check, our recent blog posting.

This plugins have new classes to query information about USB devices and get events when new devices are connected. With the MediaKeyMBS class, you can listen for some special keys on a Mac like play key. CURL can now use preemptive threading for even better performance for up- and downloads. Also we updated DynaPDF plugin to have even better raster options.

This update is recommended for all Real Studio developers. Especially if you target Mac OS X 10.7, create Web Applications or use the Cocoa target.

Two free seats for Leicester (UK) Real Studio Event on Thursday

This week is the Real Studio meeting in Leicester (UK). I was told that two people cancelled, so it's your chance to get a seat.

The REAL Studio UK User Group event in Leicester, UK will be on 28th July. Around 20 developers from the UK, Germany, Belgium and Holland will be gathering.

Presentations will be made by Christian Schmitz of Monkeybread, Steve Cholerton of Arten Science, and Eric Gibbon of MacTasks. There will also be a video chat with Geoff Perlman of REAL Software to get the latest REAL Studio news, and plenty of time for Q&A and for developers to network.

This will be the first of many events organized in the UK. To be informed of future UK events, please send an email to eric@mactasks.com and your name will be added to the email list.

Lion features for Real Studio

Animate opening of windows
Use code like this your cocoa Real Studio application to control the animation for showing the window:

  Sub Open()
    dim w as new NSWindowMBS(self)
    w.animationBehavior = NSWindowMBS.NSWindowAnimationBehaviorDocumentWindow
  End Sub

Please note that this will not work for Windows opened in App.Open event. From NewDocument event or from menu command it works just fine.

Support Fullscreen Mode
You can mark windows as being a primary window for fullscreen mode. Use the window.FullScreenPrimaryMBS property. Check with the IsFullScreenMBS function whether fullscreen mode is active. If you need, call ToggleFullScreenMBS method. Although those methods work in Carbon applications, it's highly recommended to use Cocoa target.
To get events and more control about the animation, implement the NSWindowDelegateMBS class.

In-app sales
Please check our StoreKit classes here. Add it to your application and start selling soon on the Mac App Store.

iCloud
File based iCloud storage classes are still in work. See here what is ready today. For key value storage you can use the NSUbiquitousKeyValueStoreMBS class. That's perfect to store bookmarks, high scores or preferences.
Also classes related to versions are in work.

Pop overs
For the new pop overs in Lion, check the NSPopoverMBS class. If you like to have them in older Mac OS X versions, check MAAttachedWindowMBS class.

Push Notifications
Check the NSApplicationMBS class for the register methods and NSApplicationDelegateMBS for the required events.

Restart on Login and Restorable State
In NSWindowDelegateMBS and NSApplicationDelegateMBS you have methods to store and restore your current state. This way you should be able to make sure your application looks identical after a restart. Also NSApplicationMBS has methods like enableRelaunchOnLogin to have your app being restarted after a computer restart.

Addressbook
Our classes for the Mac OS X address book have now all the properties and labels you need to query the instant message and social website nick names. Also the person view allows you to show a person like the address book application. And this can be editable.

Others
Also enjoy new features in QTKit classes, CoreWLAN classes, PDFKit classes and CoreLocation classes.

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 11.2pr12

New in this prerelease of the 11.2 plugins:

• Added applicationDidDecodeRestorableState and applicationWillEncodeRestorableState events to NSApplicationDelegateMBS class.
• Cocoa Intel plugins now linked for Mac OS X 10.5. Carbon plugin still for Mac OS X 10.4.
• Plugins now compiled without Cocoa PPC plugins as you can't built that anyway.
• Fixed memory leak in NSApplicationMBS.applicationIconImage.
• Changed MediaKeysMBS class to have more control for keys.
• Fixed bug in QTKitMovie constructors.
• Added QTKitExportSessionMBS, QTKitExportOptionsMBS and QTKitMetadataItemMBS.
• Fixed StackOverflowExceptions in StoreKit classes.

Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

Tip of the days: Special links for iPhone, iPod and iPad

If you develop web applications, check this article from Apple:
Apple URL Scheme Reference
Having special links to make a call, open maps or itunes apps on an iOS device can be very handy, both in Real Studio Web Edition and Filemaker Instant Web Publishing.

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 11.2pr11

New in this prerelease of the 11.2 plugins:

• Added CLRegionMBS class and other CoreLocation items for Mac OS X 10.7.
• Fixed a bug with DynaPDF raster functions when targeting pictures.
• Improved StoreKit Classes.
• Added NSWindowDelegateMBS class.
• Added NSCoderMBS class.
• Fixed FSEventsMBS Available function.
• Split Cocoa plugin and added a CocoaExtras plugin. There we'll keep non Apple Cocoa related stuff for the future.
• Changed ABAddressBookMBS constructor to use own addressbook instance instead of shared one on Mac OS X 10.5 or newer.
• Lion: Added FullScreenAuxiliaryMBS, FullScreenPrimaryMBS, IsFullScreenMBS and ToggleFullScreenMBS to window class.
• Added MAAttachedWindowMBS class.
• Fixed MediaKeysMBS stopWatchingMediaKeys.
• Added some more NSAttributedStringMBS class methods.
• Added NSAppleEventDescriptorMBS and NSAppleScriptMBS classes.
• Added NSViewControllerMBS class (will be needed for pop-over windows).

Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

Lion...

If you like to see a few of the new things we added for lion, you can take a look on the documentation. Those items will be documented and tested in the next days.

We are working on an update to the StoreKit classes to get them up and running. Testers welcome.

And finally we recommend to update to latest plugins if you plan to support Mac OS X 10.7. There is so much we fixed over the last weeks to get compatible: for example CGImage handling, screenshot functions and MDQuery class.

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 11.2pr9

New in this prerelease of the 11.2 plugins:

• Split Cocoa plugin and added a CocoaExtras plugin. There we'll keep non Apple Cocoa related stuff for the future.
• Changed ABAddressBookMBS constructor to use own addressbook instance instead of shared one on Mac OS X 10.5 or newer.
• Lion: Added FullScreenAuxiliaryMBS, FullScreenPrimaryMBS, IsFullScreenMBS and ToggleFullScreenMBS to window class.
• Added MAAttachedWindowMBS class.
• Fixed MediaKeysMBS stopWatchingMediaKeys.
• Added some more NSAttributedStringMBS class methods.
• Added NSAppleEventDescriptorMBS and NSAppleScriptMBS classes.
• Added NSViewControllerMBS class (will be needed for pop-over windows).

Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

Lion arrived

We'll upload new plugins later, but here is already a list of features we worked on in our plugins:

• Push notifications, see NSApplicationMBS and NSApplicationDelegateMBS.
• In-app purchases, see SK* classes.
• iCloud key value store, see NSUbiquitousKeyValueStoreMBS class.
• New ABPersonViewMBS class.
• Fullscreen window commands on window and NSWindowMBS classes.
• Core Location Region functions. See CLRegionMBS class.
• New QTKit classes like QTExportOptionsMBS, QTExportSessionMBS, QTMetadataItemMBS.
• New PDFKit methods.
• Versions and iCloud documents functions are not yet ready.

Recent News

• We have been busy for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 release. I expect to have more than 1000 features to be added to our plugins with Lion.
• Tonight is the monthly meeting of the Atlanta Real Studio user group.
• Los Angeles area Real Studio user group. You can sign up on the google group: solar-ug.
  Please sign up and attend the inaugural meeting, tentatively set for lunch to mid afternoon, Tuesday, July 26, 2011. Geoff Perlman will help us kick off our new user group. Suggest some topics you'd like him to cover.
• There is a sale with 20% on all upgrades to Pro and Enterprise licenses on Real Studio: visit store with coupon code UPSALE
• The Real Studio event in Leicester will be next week. While it's basically sold out, you could still contact Eric for a place on the waiting list. Just for case a seat becomes available. See rsdevs.org.uk
• On August, 6th 2011 is the meeting of the Seattle Real Studio user group.
• For an overview of user groups, check the Real Software website.

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 11.2pr9

New in this prerelease of the 11.2 plugins:

• Added CFArrayMBS Constructor to take string array.
• Improved NSProcessInfoMBS, NSApplicationMBS and NSApplicationDelegateMBS classes and made in Mac OS X 10.7 ready.
• Cocoa plugins now use memoryblocks for NSData objects.
• Changed GetColorFromDrag methods in NSColorPanelMBS class to be shared methods.
• Added DMMessageMBS.message function.
• NSDockTileMBS and QTKitTrackMBS classes have now a private constructor.
• Changed MenuIsVertical and MenuThickness methods to be shared methods in NSStatusItemMBS class.
• Added more CLSamplerMBS methods.
• Added QuartzFilterManagerMBS filtersInDomains and a few related constants.
• Updater several plugin parts to use Real Studio arrays instead of own array classes: CalendarStore, DiscRecording and TCMPortMapping.
• Removed array classes: QTKitFormatDescriptionArrayMBS, QTKitTrackArrayMBS, QTKitCaptureDeviceArrayMBS, DRDeviceArrayMBS, DRFSObjectArrayMBS, NSSpeechStringArrayMBS, CalStringArrayMBS, CalIntegerArrayMBS, CalNthWeekDayArrayMBS, CalAlarmArrayMBS, CalAttendeeArrayMBS, CalEventArrayMBS, CalTaskArrayMBS, CalCalendarArrayMBS, TCMPortMappingArrayMBS, WebArchiveArrayMBS, WebHistoryDateArrayMBS, WebResourceArrayMBS, WebFrameArrayMBS and WebHistoryItemArrayMBS.
• Updated DynaPDF to version 3.0.7.14.
• Added MediaKeysMBS class to catch special keys on the Mac keyboard like Play, Forward and Rewind.
• Added NSCursorMBS operationNotAllowedCursor.
• Fixed a few bugs with CGPDF* classes.
• Updated QTKit Plugin for Mac OS X 10.7. Also added a few more methods and events. Also cleaned up old stuff.
• Fixed a bug with XMPFilesMBS on Linux where it raised always some unneeded exception.
• Add fullscreen functions to window class for Mac OS X 10.7.
• Updated PDFKit plugin part for Mac OS X 10.7.

Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

Tip of the day: PDF with Images

You can add transparent pictures to a PDF using our MBS Real Studio DynaPDF Plugin. The InsertPicture function can be called with a picture and a mask picture. This way you can get transparent pictures easily into a PDF.
You insert a picture like this:

call d.InsertPicture(p, m, x, y, w, h)

Where p is the picture, m is the mask picture and the 4 other parameters are the rectangle where to place the picture.
Of course you also can use transparent picture files (GIF, PNG, TIFF) with InsertImage function. Or if you have picture in memory buffer, use InsertImageFromBuffer. For selecting the right picture in a multi picture tiff file, use InsertImageEx.

PS: You only need the DynaPDF Starter Edition for this.

Gestures on Mac OS X

If you want to support gestures in your Mac OS X application with Real Studio, please take time to check our plugins. For Carbon applications, we have Gesture events in both CarbonWindowsEventsMBS and CarbonApplicationEventsMBS classes. So either for a window or the whole application, you can receive gesture events.

For Cocoa you'd place a CustomNSViewMBS, QTKitCustomMovieViewMBS, QTKitCustomCaptureViewMBS or CustomPDFViewMBS on the window. Gesture events inside this view will be caught by the gesture events there. Also NSEventMBS class has some properties for this gestures so you can query rotation angle or magnification factor.

Cocoa SearchField with menu

with latest 11.2 prerelease plugins, you can add a menu to a NSSearchField.
Example project is included and documentation is here: NSSearchFieldMBS

Dialogs with Filemaker

Over the years, we got a few window related functions and with 2.4 plugins recently we got some more commands. But first take a look on this screenshots showing our layout before and after running plugin functions:




We can hide scrollbars and the toolbar button. Also we can disable close, minimize and maximize buttons on the window title bar. And we disable resizing the window.
I'm not yet sure how to remove the little box on bottom left on Windows. But if you use accounts with privileges set correctly, the user can't go to layout or search mode.
Can you imaging where this is going? I think we can make dialogs in Filemaker with normal layouts.

See Window.SetShowsToolbarButton, Window.SetResizable and other window functions.

Beware of the price!

Normally, when I stop at one of the big burger fast food chains, I go to the desk, tell what I want and simply pay whatever the cashier asks for. But today, I just stopped for a big coke. The cashier asked for 2.59 €. Oh? What happened to the 1.99 € price we had for years? Okay, I check the price list on the wall and the big surprise is this: 500ml coke is 2.59 €. A 250ml coke is 1.10 €. You see? It's actually cheaper to buy two small ones, than one big one!

By the way, same can happen for menus: Sometimes it's cheaper to order the menu (burger, drink and fries) than burger and drink alone. Crazy if you pay for not getting fries.

And next time in supermarket, check also the prices. The big family pack is often more expensive than a few of the smaller packages combined. See also: Article in telegraph.co.uk.

You saw that, too?

Review about our MBS Filemaker Plugin

We got a review about our Filemaker plugin. In German as it's on a German Filemaker website: gofilemaker.de

Thanks to Jens Liebelt for writing it.

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 11.2pr8

New in this prerelease of the 11.2 plugins:

• Added new methods and constants for RegExMBS class.
• Added QLPreviewViewMBS class.
• Added methods and constants to NSSearchFieldMBS for having search menu.
• Fixed a crash with SpotLightTextContentMBS function.
• Improved NSApplicationDelegateMBS class to use forward invocation.
• Removed StringMemoryBlockMBS class and NewStringMemoryBlockMBS function.
• Removed BitwiseXORStringBytesDirectMBS, ClearStringContentMBS, StringToMemoryBlockByReferenceMBS, GetObjectMemoryAddressMBS, GetStringMemoryAddressMBS, GetObjectClassNameMBS, GetObjectLockCountMBS and GetStringLockCountMBS.
• Removed older Bevelbutton, RadioButton and Checkbox extensions.
• Removed our Collection class extension. Please use dictionary class instead to get similar results.
• Renamed RegExMBS.UTF8supported to RegExMBS.ConfigUTF8.
• Updated PCRE Library to version 8.12.

Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 2.4pr9

New in this prerelease of the 2.4 plugins:

• Added Window.HideScrollbars and Window.ShowScrollbars function.
• ProgressDialog will resize upper text field and dialog to fit text.
• Added ProgressDialog.SetPositionCentered and ProgressDialog.SetPosition.
• Added String.ReplaceNewline function.

Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

Map of blog visitors

Since we started counting on 24th May 2010, we had over 12,000 different visitors on this blog so far:

This does not count people using twitter or RSS feeds to read this. Thank you all for reading our blog.

SeaRUG July meeting this Saturday

Come join the Seattle Real Studio User Group this Saturday morning from 10:00 am to noon as we convene for our July meeting. We'll be meeting at the Shoreline Branch of the King County Library, at 345 NE 175th in Shoreline. It's just a couple of blocks east of I-5, off the 175th St. exit.

This meeting will feature a presentation by Basil Bourque on using an event bus to coordinate events in your applications.

for more details, visit searug.info

REAL Studio UK User Group Leicester Event SOLD OUT

Just a few days announced and already sold out. It was planned as a small event with maybe 15 attendees. They upgraded to 20, but that number is now reached. So the REAL Studio UK User Group event in Leicester, UK on 28th July is now SOLD OUT. 20 developers from the UK, Germany, Belgium and Holland will be gathering.

Presentations will be made by Christian Schmitz of Monkeybread, Steve Cholerton of Arten Science, and Eric Gibbon of MacTasks. There will also be a video chat with Geoff Perlman of REAL Software to get the latest REAL Studio news, and plenty of time for Q&A and for developers to network.

This will be the first of many events organized in the UK. To be informed of future UK events, please send an email to eric@mactasks.com and your name will be added to the email list.

Real Studio Developer Magazine 9.5 published

The July/August 2011 (9.5) issue of REAL Studio Developer is now available!

Here's a quick preview of what's inside this issue:

* Interview: Meet Glen Buecker * By Marc Zeedar
Glen Buecker, web developer for the Oklahoma University School of Music, used Real Studio Web Edition to optimize the school's complicated application process.

* Optimizing Parsing Code * By Brendan Murphy
The developer of the FTC (Formatted Text Control), a full-featured word processor control for Real Studio, reveals one of his secrets for making parsing code lightning quick.

* Adventures in Optimizing * By Marc Zeedar
Optimizing is pointless if you're speeding up the wrong code. Marc reveals how not to optimize by showing how he (eventually) made a program faster.

* The Way of the Thread * By JC Cruz
With today's multi-core machines, no user expects to be waiting while your program completes a task. Learn how to use threads efficiently so your application can do more than one thing at a time.

In our regular columns we've got articles on two-way dictionaries, object-relational mapping, how to be a Real Studio Superhero, what's new with RS2011r2, and much more. Enjoy!

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 11.2pr7

New in this prerelease of the 11.2 plugins:

• Added CGPDFDocumentMBS.Constructor taking a handle integer.
• Removed QuartzFilterArrayMBS class as we now use Real Studio arrays.
• Added documentAttributes and documentRef to PDFDocumentMBS class.
• Changed dataRepresentation and write methods in PDFDocumentMBS class to take a QuartzFilterMBS object.
• Added WindowsDeviceMBS.GetDevices function which takes class GUID to query only specific devices.
• Added didLoadPreviewItem and willLoadPreviewItem events to QLPreviewPanelMBS class.
• Added DynaPDFRasterizerMBS.RenderPageMT for better threading.
• Added more CURL error constants which are new to newer CURL libraries.
• Rewrote IORegistry plugin part. IORegistryMBS is now a module and removed IORegistryDataMBS class.
• Added MacUSBDeviceMBS.Properties.
• Fixed a memory leak with MacUSBDeviceMBS class.

Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

MBS SQLite Extension in version 1.1

NICKENICH, Germany (July 5th, 2011) -- Monkeybread Software releases version 1.1 of the MBS SQLite Extension.

The MBS SQLite Extension is four things in one:

• A plug-in for Cube SQL 4.0 from SQLabs or newer.
• A plug-in for Studio Stable Database Server 2.0 or newer.
• A plug-in for the REAL Server from REALsoftware
• An extension for SQLite which you can use in all SQLite based database engines including the REALSQLDatabase class in Real Studio or SQLiteManager application (from SQLabs).

New in Version 1.1:

• Added Cube SQL Examples
• Fixed a 64 bit bug with registration.
• Compiled for Mac with 32 and 64 bit. (Linux and Windows 64 bit depends on demand.)
• Added Cube SQL Plugin for Cube SQL Server 4.0.
• Added UUIDFormattedMBS, UUIDHexMBS and UUIDRawMBS.
• Added CosHMBS, ACosMBS, CosMBS, TanHMBS, ATan2MBS, ATanMBS, TanMBS, SinHMBS, ASinMBS, SinMBS functions.
• Remove Accents functions now convert ß to s.

Our SQLite Extension gives you over 50 new functions for SQLite:

• Additional mathematical functions like Round or Pow.
• Functions to save blob values in files outside the database.
• Functions to calculate checksums on blob values on the server.
• String functions like SoundEx or accents removing for your text searches.
• Regular Expressions in queries.
• UUID generation

Our SQLite Extension supports Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
Example projects for Real Studio are included for REALSQLDatabase, REALSQLServerDatabase and CubeSQLDatabase classes.

You can test the plugin for free up to 10 minutes per launch in a demo mode.
Licenses are available for 99 Euro per developer with one year of free updates.
If you have feature requests for additional functions, please send us an email.

For more information visit our website:
monkeybreadsoftware.de/SQLiteExtension/

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 2.4pr8

New in this prerelease of the 2.4 plugins:

• Added String.ReadTextFile.
• Renamed WriteTextFile to String.WriteTextFile
• Added Window.Resizable and Window.SetResizable.
• Added Window.ShowsToolbarButton and Window.SetShowsToolbarButton to hide toolbar button on Mac OS X.
• Moving error handling so we return LastError to Filemaker instead of error message. So check lasterror of all plugin calls.
• Added Path.NativePathToFilemakerPath and Path.FilemakerPathToNativePath.
• Added Trace function.
• Added ShowURL function.
• Renamed DragDrop.GetNativePath to DragDrop.GetPath.
• Added DragDrop.ReleaseAll function.
• Added new string functions: String.EncodeToHTML, String.DecodeFromHTML, String.EncodeToHex and String.DecodeFromHex.
• ProgressDialog Cancel button now works with escape key.
• You can hide image and cancel button on progress dialog and other controls resize to match.
• Added SetShowButton and GetShowButton commands to ProgressDialog.

Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/