Just started

Here you see Stephané Pinel showing the latest news on Real Studio:

The new IDE for Real Studio looks great!

Training done

The training is done and we enjoy the dinner in this nice restaurant where we went yesterday. Later we'll be at the bar, so if you just arrived, come over for a visit.
I hope to see you all tomorrow :-)

Getting together before the training

A few people joined us for dinner tonight. Nice chatting about Real Studio and the world.

And this restaurant is just awesome! Food from all over the world in a buffet with live cooking of italian pasta, chinese and indian food. We just scratched on the surface...

Receive Email drops

As you know we have a couple of Drag and Drop functions in our Filemaker plugin. Recently we added possibility to receive URL drops. That means you can drop an URL dragged from Safari or other application onto Filemaker. That is very useful if you want to make database with links.
Today I figured out that you can use a similar approach for receiving email drops from Apple Mail.
So with next Filemaker plugin you can accept emails for drag and drop. You can query details on the email like it's URL, the subject, ID, mailbox and account. This even works for multiple emails.

Arrived in London

As you see on the picture right, we travelled today to London. the picture shows a little part of Dover harbor with the white rocks of the coastline behind. We took the ferry and enjoyed a nice car ride to London. With stops in Canterbury, some supermarket and a drive through London at night. We passed tower bridge two times, looked at the Tower, saw Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and a lot of churches. We'll have to check them out in detail in the next days.

I hope to see a few of the other participants tomorrow evening in the bar. Or at breakfast already.

Local Real Studio Groups for Hamburg, Munich and Vienna

As you know I started a few local Real Studio groups. I got some more people asking for more locations, so I started groups today for Munich, Vienna and Hamburg.

Please join our groups if you like to join a meeting:

Rhein-Main, around Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Mainz.
Baden Wurttemberg, around Stuttgart and Pforzheim
Leipzig and east Germany
Hamburg and north of Germany
Vienna and Austria
Munich and southern Germany
Schweiz, between Zurich and Bern

And maybe we meet someday at one of the the meetings.

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 2.7pr1

New in this prerelease of the 2.7 plugins:
  • Added PDFKit.GetPDFPageFormattedText function.
  • Changed Webview and Window functions on Mac so they better check if a handle is no longer valid. We now track which windows are closed and invalid window references so they can't be used.
  • Changed plugin to use more Unicode APIs for better file name handling.
  • Added functions Files.AppPath, Files.Launch, Files.LaunchFile and Files.RevealFile.
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 12.2pr1

New in this prerelease of the 12.2 plugins:
  • Added NSGraphicsMBS.ConcatTransform and NSGraphicsMBS.SetTransform methods.
  • Improved HTMLViewerMBS.IEHTMLTextMBS to return complete html docuemnt.
  • Added HTMLViewer.HTMLTextMBS and WebViewMBS.HTMLText.
  • Added Seek Support to CURLMBS and CURLSMBS classes.
  • Added htmlviewer.IEReadyStateMBS so you know on Windows when a website is completely loaded.
  • Fixed picture handling to work again with reading pixels from 16 bit pictures. Still we recommend to use 32 bit pictures only as they are faster to process.
  • Removed dependency from CocoaBase to MacOSXCG.
Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

Using HTMLViewer as HTML editor

Here we use a htmlviewer with EditableMBS and IEEditableMBS set to true and also show HTML Source code of the page we are writing.
On Mac OS X:

On Windows:

This also works with Copy & Paste. We will include samples and updated plugins with our 12.2pr1 on monday.

PS: This would also be possible for Filemaker...

Custom NSWindows

You see this three windows?

Those are made in Real Studio from normal windows with a couple of plugin classes from us. Cocoa, not Carbon.
Those examples will be included in next plugin prerelease in a few days.

Recent security improvements

Recently we put some work into improving our plugins aside from adding features or fixing bugs.
  • We improved plugins to avoid false positive virus scanner alerts. Some virus used similar code for AES encryption, so we changed our a little to not match the signature for the virus.
  • We fixed a few things for future RS 2012r1 release. Thanks Real Software for testing with plugins and reporting problems to us, before thousands of users run into those problems.
  • We fixed problems which triggered Real Studio precompilation far more often than needed.
  • We sign our Mac plugins now with our Apple Developer certificate in order to make them more trustable. You can overwrite this signature if you like when signing your app for Mac App Store.
  • We also sign our Windows plugins with our Monkeybread Software certifiate now in order to make them more trustable, especially to all those Windows virus scanners which sometimes rate unsigned code being suspicious.
Not sure if other developers work on things like this, but for is this were some important changes

CocoaBase needs MacOSXCG

We have an extra dependency which will be fixed for next prerelease.
But for the time being, if you use the Cocoa plugin parts, please also install MacOSXCG part.

The errors you get look like this:

There is no class with this name:
File: MBS Real Studio CocoaBase Plugin.rbx
Location: NSFontMBS.fontWithDescriptor

or:

PropVal, NSFontMBS.Name (property value), Type mismatch error. Expected NSAffineTransformMBS, but got Variant, Name:NSFontMBS
PropVal, NSFontDescriptorMBS.Name (property value), Type mismatch error. Expected Variant, but got NSAffineTransformMBS, Name:NSFontDescriptorMBS

MonkeyBread Software releases MBS Real Studio plug-ins in version 12.1

NICKENICH, Germany (March 21st, 2012) -- Monkeybread Software releases version 12.1 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 1,600 classes featuring over 40,000 documented functions. Our plugins support all three platforms Mac OS X, Windows and Linux with all project types desktop, web and console.

Some of the highlights on the 12.1 update:

We added a new CanonEOSDigital plugin. Together with the Canon Digital EOS SDK you can access nearly all Canon digital cameras in order to shoot pictures and download them. Also you can delete pictures or get live video feed. This works both on Mac OS X and Windows.

For Windows we finally started with a DirectShow plugin. Using it you can record video from a webcam or digital video camera. For Mac we have QuickTime classes, but now we also have a Windows solution.

Also we did heavy work on the Windows Printing classes in our plugin. You can now query page formats, change printer settings and show various printer dialogs. Also we added some graphics class extensions to change paper format or orientation while printing.

On the Cocoa side we added a couple of new classes. We added the NSSegmentedControlMBS class so you can use more options on SegmentedControl in Real Studio or create instances for custom windows. Also we added more for font handling in Cocoa, Please also check the new examples on iCloud and Push Notifications.

For Windows we added WinNotificationMBS class. You can use it to send notification from one application to another application. Great for for a background application informing GUI application about work is done.

If you use the Web Edition to create web apps for a web server running on linux, you may want to check the LinuxSysInfoMBS class. It provides status details about your computer. For example you can use it to report back to you if memory is low and an admin may check what's going on.

Finally we updated DynaPDF to version 3.0.15.34 and libXL to version 3.2.3.

See release notes for a complete list of changes.

[ANN] MBS FileMaker Plugin 2.6 for OS X/Windows

Nickenich, Germany - MonkeyBread Software today is pleased to announce MBS FileMaker Plugin 2.6 for Mac OS X or Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin currently available for FileMaker Pro. As the leading database management solution for Windows, Mac, and the web, the FileMaker Pro Integrated Development Environment supports a plugin architecture that can easily extend the feature set of the application. MBS FileMaker Plugin 2.6 now includes 880 different functions, and the versatile plugin has gained new features, including SQL Database access:
  • SQL Connectivity (new in 2.6)
    • Connect to multiple SQL databases: Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, Informix, InterBase, SQLBase, MySQL, PostgreSQL and ODBC, SQLite.
    • Read values, changes values, add new records, call stored procedures.
    • Use prepared statements for increased security.
    • Use bulk row fetching for maximum speed.
  • Mac OS X Application Dock Tile: (new in 2.6)
    • Set Dock Tile badge text
  • FileDialogWatcher for Mac: (new in 2.6)
    • use normal Filemaker dialogs for saving files or opening files.
    • have the plugin give you last used path.
  • Notifications: (new in 2.6)
    • Send and receive notifications from other applications or part of your solution.
  • Clipboard functions: (new in 2.6)
    • Get/Set text on the clipboard. (new in 2.6)
(more)

Real Studio meeting in London

Isn't that cool: We just got our 32nd registration. :-)

More Information and Registration here

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 12.1fc

New in this prerelease of the 12.1 plugins:
  • Updated DynaPDF to version 3.0.15.34.
  • Changed NSViewMBS.Handle from Integer to Ptr.
Download: macsw.de/plugin

Updated 1500 Examples projects

This weekend we had a big task: Convert all 1500 Real Studio projects to current Real Studio versions. This is a big task. I can automate this to a certain level, but this different dialogs which can show up when you load a project or compile it. So we did:
  • Converted projects to Real Studio 2011r4.
  • Replaced pict files with png files.
  • Updated editfields to textarea/textfield.
  • Updated statictext to label.
  • Made sure all projects compile with Real Studio 2011r4.
I expect this to help people new to Real Studio, because now projects should open without deprecation warnings. You can download those examples here.
Also we verified that more than 5300 example code snippets in the help do compile.

New cool things for Filemaker

Not sure if you read about the latest additions to our Filemaker plugins, but here some details:
Notification
We added functions to send notifications from one process to another. Well, this works fine within a application, but also between different applications. This could be anything like a Filemaker solution, a Real Studio application or even one written in Xcode or Visual Studio. For example one app can notify other app that some data is ready and can be processed. Think about a media database where the server exports a file into special location. It sends notification to some other app which processes file. Later it gets back either OK or Error notification and can react.
You can send notifications and receive them by registering a script which is called when a notification is received.
Clipboard
Filemaker can read/write text to/from clipboard. We now have clipboard functions to do this within a calculation. Quite nice for some special cases like querying text when a field is created automatically.
FileDialogWatcher
We got some requests for file open/save dialog. Asking why people need them normally gives answer that they need the path to do batch processing. To solve this on Mac, we now added FileDialog functions. With our new function FileDialogWatcher.GetLastPath you can query the last path of any Filemaker save or open dialog. For example if you have to export 50 files, you can use normal export script step for first item. Than ask plugin for the path and export other 49 files without dialog.
Dock Tile Badge
You know the dock icon from Apple mail? It shows how many unread emails you have. You can do the same with your filemaker solution by using our AppDockTile functions.

Annoying Real Studio dialogs

Have you seen this stupid dialog?

Today I'm batch processing my examples to verify whether they compile. This is a long process and basically takes a whole day. It's half automated, but some things really annoy me. And that those dialogs popping up. Like the one above: It doesn't tell much about what is going away. Where can I see details?
Also I can't see a way to simply disable dialogs for batch processing. I really hate it to click away such a dialog. Especially if you need to click it away on every save operation. After this was introduced, it feels like nobody at Real Software thought about what consequences such a dialog has and verified that it's only displayed once and can be turned off. See the bug report about dialog being shown too often? It's open for more than 7 months this bug is just about a boolean property on the project class to mark that dialog has been shown. At most three or four lines of code!

See feedback: Case 16827 and Case 11909

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 12.1pr10

New in this prerelease of the 12.1 plugins:
  • Added some more exceptions for Java classes in case you use object with nil handles.
  • Fixed NSAppleScriptMBS.properties to include all property names and not miss the last one.
  • Changed Tiff plugin by moving some special function in own plugin parts. This saves a few 100 KB app size for most users.
  • Added more exceptions for BlowfishMBS class so you get exceptions on bad parameters instead of crashes.
  • Added more NSFontMBS methods.
  • Added NSFontDescriptorMBS class.
  • Added NSSegmentedControlMBS class.
  • Split MacOSXCF plugin into MacOSXCF and MacOSXCG. Due to some changes, they have no dependencies.
  • Changed Carbon Print Plugin, CGContextMBS.BeginTransparencyLayerWithRect method, QDPictMBS and CGPSConverterMBS classes to use dictionary/array/string instead CFDictionaryMBS, CFURLMBS, CFArrayMBS and CFStringMBS.
  • Changed DynaPDFMBS destructor to call FreePDF always to avoid memory leak if developer forgets to call it.
Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

Custom Scrollbars for Real Studio Cocoa Apps

Recently David Della Rocca asked me for adding a way to overwrite the draw methods of a NSScroller in Real Studio. Well, we had already a NSScrollerMBS class, but as with all classes, simply overwriting the methods in Real Studio doesn't overwrite them for Cocoa. So I had to create a new class: CustomNSScrollerMBS.

This class allows you to overwrite drawing and other things, so you can customize it. With a little work David created a nice example project which we'll include in our examples in the future.

It's also a nice example on how to use NSScrollViewMBS to make a view which can be scrolled with gestures and also supports bouncing on the edges in latest Mac OS X versions.

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 2.6pr7

New in this prerelease of the 2.6 plugins:
  • Added Notification.Listen and Notification.Send.
  • Added FileDialogWatcher.GetLastPath and FileDialogWatcher.Install functions.
  • Fixed CURL.SetOptionMailFrom function.
  • Added Clipboard.GetText and Clipboard.SetText.
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 2.6pr6

New in this prerelease of the 2.6 plugins:
  • Added CURL.FormAddKeyContainer, CURL.FormAddKeyContainerContentType, CURL.FormAddKeyFile, CURL.FormAddKeyFileContentType, CURL.FormAddKeyText and CURL.FormAddKeyTextContentType.
  • Added DragDrop.GetText and DragDrop.GetURL for URL and text dropping.
  • Added AppDockTile.getBadgeLabel, AppDockTile.getHeight, AppDockTile.getWidth and AppDockTile.setBadgeLabel.
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/

Some little news

  • got 30th registration for 30th March event in London!
  • We'll try to record this event. I can't promise whether it'll work or whether audio/video will be worth downloading later.
  • Already 64-bit clean for Mac: Lion, DirectShow, Main, Win, CocoaBase, SnowLeopard, DataTypes, QTKit, CheckCache, Leopard and XL plugin (plugins compile for 64 bit target).
  • Documentation updated for new items.
  • Mailing list archives updated.
  • Plugin recently jumped to have more than 40,000 documented features!

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 12.1pr7

New in this prerelease of the 12.1 plugins:
  • Added WindowsPrintDialogMBS class.
  • Prepared Windows htmlviewer extensions for compatibility to Real Studio 2012r1.
  • Added LinuxSysInfoMBS class.
  • Added WindowsPageSetupDialogMBS class.
  • Added AdvancedDocumentProperties, ConfigurePort and ConnectToPrinterDialog to WindowsPrinterMBS class.
  • Fixed bug with WindowsPrinterMBS.DocumentProperties.
  • Fixed Cocoa initialization for Carbon targets to only create NSAutoreleasePool when there is no existing one instead of always creating one.
  • Fixed a couple of bugs and crashes with CAPlayThroughMBS.
  • Added NSWindowMBS.standardWindowButton method.
  • Added DoubleToInt64MBS and Int64ToDoubleMBS functions.
  • Added ScreenIndex parameter to Movie.BeginFullScreenMBS function.
  • Changed JPEG memory handling. Instead of static memory buffer for string output, it now grows dynamically.
Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

Real Studio Training and Meeting Events in London, UK

Monkeybread Software is pleased to announce that on our two Real Studio days in London are receiving lots of interest. We have already 29 people for our event day on friday. Please sign up soon if you want to join us in the nice Antoinette Hotel in Wimbledon for a meeting day and/or a training day.

We have a Real Studio training day for Web Edition on 29th March 2012. We introduce you to the Web Edition and write several little projects to show you how it works. Later that day we will look into connecting to databases and optimize Web Apps for iPhone and iPad. Training is from 9am to 6pm and costs £199 plus VAT.

On 30th March 2012, we meet with Real Studio developers all over UK to talk about Real Studio. We have a few nice sessions prepared for you starting with the Keynote from Stephane Pinel from Real Software. Stephane will update you on what's new in Real Studio and coming this year. Also we have sessions about deploying applications, databases and our plugins. This event from 9am to 5pm and it is free to attend. We still have space available for an additional session. Maybe you like to present something?

If you like to join the events, please register with us. Already 29 people sign up for coming to this event and we also hope to see a lot of people for the dinner on the evenings.

Also we would be happy to meet you on the big Real World conference in Orlando with probably over 100 attendees. Your chance to meet all the people from he forums and mailing lists!

Adding Linux SysInfo class

We add in next plugin version a new class LinuxSysInfoMBS to query linux memory and processor statistics:

This is very useful for Web Applications to show memory details. Like in our infos web app. Especially if you add an admin page to your web app to know about server status.

Instructions for setting up a Jiffybox for Real Studio Web Apps

Some people asked me over the last weeks how to get a web application on a server without buying a root server or a managed server. The Jiffybox is a service from my internet hoster domainfactory for getting virtual private servers on demand. This is really cool as you pay per hour for it which makes in smallest version just 15€ per month. But best is that you can create a new one in a few seconds and start/stop them as you need. So if you have new client, you can setup one in a few minutes and get his web app running.

For my german users I wrote instructions on how to setup the jiffybox for use with web apps.

Also I moved today myown web apps to a new jiffybox with CGIs. I still have the old jiffy box on disk, so I can restart it if needed.

PS: This will also be a topic on my upcoming Real Studio trainings.

Apps for Income campaign

Real Software Provides 20,000 Free Development Licenses to the Unemployed Worldwide
.
Apps for Income campaign gives people the opportunity to easily create applications that can be significant income sources.

see realsoftware.com/appsforincome.

I think this is a great move by Real Software! Please tell everyone who is unemployed about it.

Real Studio Developer Magazine 10.3 published

The January/Feburary 2012 (10.3) issue of Real Studio Developer is now available!

Here's a quick preview of what's inside!

Interview: Meet Paul Lefebvre by Marc Zeedar
Paul has been writing for RSD forever, but who is this guy? Now that he works for Real Software, he's a bigwig we need to interview! Find out about his love for cats and what he plans to do in his new role as Developer Evangelist.

Adventures in the Dark by Anthony Mousel
Consulting is full of wonderful rewards and a few big risks. If you've been considering diving in, read this article on the do's and don'ts of consulting. Anthony covers Real Studio consulting from the first-timer's perspective and his experience will help make you a better consultant.

When Hashes Collide by JC Cruz
Hashes are a key computer science concept, a way of representing a larger piece of data with a smaller, unique key, but what happens when two bits of data end up with the same key? That's a collision and it's best avoided. JC walks you through a variety of solutions to this technical problem.

In our regular columns we've got articles on how to bring consulting clients to you, uploading files in a web app, local networking with AutoDiscovery, and much more. Enjoy!


Add a badge to the application icon

You see the filemaker icon here?
We added a badge on it using a new plugin function AppDockTile.setBadgeLabel. You can simply call this on your Mac Filemaker solutions to show some additional information to the user.
This function will be available in next 2.6 prerelease and work on Mac OS X 10.5 and newer.

You can do the same in Real Studio using our NSDockTileMBS class.

MBS Real Studio Plugins, version 12.1pr7

New in this prerelease of the 12.1 plugins:
  • Fixed bug in PictureMBS.CopyMask which also affected CopyPictureWithMask and DebugPicture.
Download: macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease

Synchronize Licenses

If you have licenses for several products from us and they all need updates on different dates of the year, you can get them synchronized. Simply contact us and ask us about this. We probably could make you a special update package to get all your licenses updated to 31st December 2012 for examples or some date in 2013.

Just yesterday we had again a case where ChartDirector, DynaPDF and Complete Real Studio plugins needed updates and we synchronized them to 1st May 2013. This way this client only have to order once a year and save some paper work.

Our order pages show only the most common cases, but anything special needs a special order.

Visiting Leipzig for Real Studio User meeting

We arrived early in Leipzig and had some nice time visiting the city and the famous zoo here. Leipzig is a bigger than expected city and quite huge with more than half a million people. In the Hotel Merseburger Hof, we got a room in the restaurant, but separated. We also have a screen for presentations and up to 20 seats.

In total I have 15 people on my list, but well, there is always a little natural loss. Actually 11 people showed up. Well, we had a welcome round first. Everyone talked about how he came to Real Studio and what he develops. Than we had dinner with excellent food. Next we talked about specific things like reporting, PDF, printing, serial connections, networking and other topics.

We'd like to make another meeting in June (after Real World) with a presentation of the new Real Studio IDE, if that is possible.

Recent Real Studio News

  • If your Real Studio license is valid for a normal release, it's also valid for following little bug fix releases.
  • 8 Days Left to Save $100 on Registration for Real World 2012, the Real Studio User's Conference.
  • Buy a new Real Studio license this month & get entered to win 1 of 2 Real Studio VTC Training disks.
  • The new 10.3 March/April issue of Real Studio Developer Magazine is out!
  • Apple started Developer ID program, so you can get certificate to sign your Mac app if you don't yet have joined the Mac Program. With the normal Mac Developer Program, you have the certificate already for signing apps inside and outside the Mac App Store.

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