Workshop zum MBS FileMaker Plugin @ Denkform

For our German speaking clients we have a workshop day:

In Zusammenarbeit mit der DenkForm GmbH bieten wir eine Schulung zum MBS Plugin an. Am 3. November 2016 (auch 2. März 2017 und 7. Dezember 2017) können Sie in Hofheim am Taunus an einer eintägigen Schulung teilnehmen. Lernen Sie die über 4100 Funktionen einmal näher kennen und wie Sie sie effektiv einsetzen. Sammeln Sie Ideen und verbessern Sie ihre FileMaker Lösungen durch den Einsatz unseres Plugins.

Das Monkeybread Software Plugin für FileMaker stellt eine vielseitige Erweiterung der eigenen Datenbank dar. Der Kurs bietet nicht nur einen tiefgreifenden Überblick in die Benutzung und Entwicklung, sondern bietet auch die Chance das Plugin günstiger zu erstehen.
  • Einführung in das MBS Plugin
  • Überblick über die Funktionsbereiche
  • Neues im MBS Plugin dieses Jahr
  • Rundgang durch ausgewählte Beispiele
  • Gemeinsames Implementieren von Plugin Funktionen in eine Datenbank:
  • Upload/Download mit CURL auf einen HTTP/FTP Server
  • Ausfüllen eines Formulares auf einer Webseite
  • Bilder bearbeiten
  • PDF Verarbeitung
  • Druckerfunktionen
  • Adressbuch und Kontakte abfragen bei Mac OS X.
  • Fragen und Antworten
Die Teilnahme kostet 99 Euro inkl. MWSt. und Verpflegung.
Details und Anmeldung bei der Denkform.

Im Anschluss geht es noch zur Pizzeria zum FileMaker Stammtisch Rhein-Main.
An jedem ersten Donnerstag im Monat findet ab 19 Uhr der "FileMaker Stammtisch Rhein-Main" statt, zu dem jeder herzlichst eingeladen ist.

PS: Die Mindestteilnehmerzahl wurde erreicht und der Workshop findet am 3. November statt.

Videos from MBS Xojo Conference in Koblenz 2016

The videos from our last MBS Xojo Conference in Koblenz 2016 are now available to attendees.

Conference Videos

We provide audio tracks for all sessions and videos for a few sessions. In total 4h 45m video and 9h audio.
All the conference material is available for attendees of the Koblenz conference and will be available for those attending the Berlin conference in 2017. Register here.

If you can't attend and you like to watch videos and slides, please purchase a video only ticket for the same price as a conference ticket. You can later even upgrade to attend the conference in person.

Thoughts about FileMaker app

Today I gave some thought to the product idea "Remove "Pro" from the product name?". I think it may be worth for FileMaker Inc. to offer three different levels for the desktop product: App, Pro and Developer:
  • FileMaker
    • No editing features or create database. Just open database and use it.
    • Free to download on FileMaker website without registration, in Mac App Store and Microsoft App Store.
    • Requires connection license on server when used with server
    • Self containing app.
      No templates included. Plugins and dictionaries need to be in Library/Application Support folders.
    • Can use local database for free, so it can replace runtimes or start with local database to later connect to server.
      e.g. open last database opened or some default database placed in Library/Application Support folder.
    • More or less same as FileMaker Go, but for desktop.
    • Could have help entry and/or start/end splash screen to tell people to get FileMaker Developer to build own solution or FileMaker Server for multi user functionality.
    • Could be preinstalled by Apple on Macs in all stores and come with good start databases to demonstrate people what FileMaker can do.
    • Could be given away by people with their database to demonstrate software to potential clients.
  • FileMaker Pro
    • The existing FileMaker Pro marketed as the enhanced FileMaker application which offers editing and creating databases for the ordinary user.
    • Brings connection license for FileMaker Server with application (like now)
    • Can be licensed perpetual, annually or in volume like now.
  • FileMaker Developer
    • Same as current Pro Advanced, but makes clear in name that it is intended for the people building solutions.
      And I really expect anyone who writes scripts wants the debugger!
    • Include a free Server license for n connections and limited to n databases. N could be small, maybe just 2. Or maybe limit it to require to be on same machine as FileMaker Developer.
    • Can be licensed perpetual, annually or in volume like now.
Maybe the cloud strategy from FileMaker Inc. lets them do something like this in next years. Especially the idea that you could give away FileMaker app to millions of people to advertise FileMaker sounds like a great opportunity. Same with Apple Stores. If a member of staff there is asked for a business solution for Macs, they could point the business men to the Macs and launch FileMaker. The app could show the launcher with those 10 example databases (preinstalled in Library/Application Support). They can play with them and in the databases there should be explanation, which tells them that they can use those as a starting point and customize them. Even include some registration for people to be notified about nearby events or FBA members to assist in development.

What do you think about this? Please comment on vote on the ideas page.

Welcome Franziska!

Earlier today our baby arrived. Mother and our little girl are well and enjoy their time together.

Baby picture

Measure text length in FileMaker

Did you try the Font.CalculateTextWidth function in MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 6.5pr4?



As you can try the example, we can measure the width of a text. This allows conditional formatting in FileMaker. You can for example use a more narrow text font or smaller font size if the text doesn't fit in a field with normal font size. You can even use custom functions to automatically reduce font size or abbreviate text.

Results on Mac OS X and Windows are slightly different due the differences in the rendering code on both platforms. FileMaker may even use other functions to do the text wrapping. But our function should give a good estimate to decide whether something fits.

XojoTalk podcast

The XojoTalk podcast just got it's thirties episode. So go and listen to it!
  1. Shoving Phones In Their Pockets with Geoff Perlman
  2. That's A Lot Of Tens with Bob Keeney
  3. Developer of Long Standing with Eric Gibbon
  4. Grizzled Veterans with Travis Hill
  5. Where's My Column? with Marc Zeedar
  6. I have no idea what you're talking about with Kem Tekinay
  7. Snowgun with Kevin Cully
  8. Really Wicked with Hal Gumbert
  9. It's my dog with Norman Palardy
  10. Strap a Mac Pro to my wrist with Tim Dietrich
  11. The forum is my personal training ground with Tim Hare
  12. Shipping is a feature with Paul Levine
  13. Hockey Programmer with Mike Cotrone
  14. Software Maniacs with Ken Whitaker
  15. Type my password like an animal with Justin Elliott
  16. Magical Toolkit with Craig Boyd
  17. I Keep My Secrets to Myself with Bruno Frechette and Jonanthan Guillemette
  18. Not The Pi You Eat with Geoff Perlman
  19. Ghost Touches with Geoff Perlman
  20. Spoiler Alert with Bob Keeney and Marc Zeedar
  21. Enterprise Consulting with Arthur Couture and Tom Rupprecht
  22. I Like Things That Just Work with Tim Parnell
  23. Take a Walk with Michel Bujardet
  24. Figure out stuff on my own with Kimball Larsen
  25. Toughest thing is the substitutions with Jim Meyer
  26. Happened by Accident with Tom Catchesides
  27. Database Goddess with Carol Keeney
  28. Email is Not a Project Management Tool with Susan Fennema
  29. I Went to High School with the Apple File System Guy with Tim Dietrich
  30. We Like Our Customers with Geoff Perlman
Subscribe at iTunes or to RSS Feed

WebViewer crashes

If FileMaker or Xojo crashes when showing web content with an embedded PDF, you may see in the crash report lines like this:

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 libsystem_platform.dylib 0x00007fff89bf8fc9 _platform_memmove$VARIANT$Unknown + 41
1 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff8c887d85 __CGPixelAccessDataInitialize + 733
2 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff8c921d18 __CGPixelAccessAccessBitmapData + 489
3 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff8c8876ed __CGPixelAccessCreateImageFromRect + 222
4 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff8c8875e4 CGPixelAccessCreateImageFromRect + 204
5 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff8d7ed7bb -[NSBitmapImageRep initWithFocusedViewRect:] + 1480
6 com.adobe.Acrobat.framework 0x00000001349edf67 0x1349ea000 + 16231
7 com.adobe.Acrobat.framework 0x0000000134a7c375 RunAcrobat + 563935
8 com.adobe.Acrobat.framework 0x0000000134a7bed0 RunAcrobat + 562746

As you see in the crash report, the adobe frameworks crashed when drawing a view.

In that case you may have an old PDF plugin from Adobe installed. You could of course update the PDF Plugin.
Or you can check /Library/Internet Plug-Ins or ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins folders for plugins. Those folders should normally be empty except Default Browser.plugin file.

If you remove the PDF plugin from Adobe, the webviewer will use the default plugin from WebKit, which may not crash. Try it!

MBS Xojo / Real Studio Plugins, version 16.5pr4

New in this prerelease of the 16.5 plugins:
  • Fixed an issue with CURL wildcard mode not finding files sometimes.
  • Fixed a problem in barcode creation.
  • Fixed a possible crash in WindowsClipboardMBS.GetData.
  • Added NSApplicationMBS.showHelp.
  • Updated to DynaPDF 4.0.3.11
  • Changed JavaVMMBS Constructor to use existing JavaVM if initialized before.
  • Fixed bug with printing for DynaPDF. Please adapt newer example code.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 6.5pr4

New in this prerelease of the 6.5 MBS FileMaker Plugin: Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

Automated video editing with Xojo

For years we use Xojo from time to time to write little apps to do video editing. Especially automated batch editing in order to avoid human error or repetitive tasks. Years ago we did that with QuickTime functions in Xojo and we still remember the nice EditableMovie class there. Today the world changed and we switched to use our AVFoundation plugin instead. AVFoundation is Apple's latest framework for video editing and it provides similar functionality, but in a more modern fashion. The use of asynchronously processing on several CPUs is built in and you can easily benefit from those enhancements in Xojo.

The job description:
  • Build a video from segments of videos recorded by an automated camera. We get a new file each 10 minutes and have to join them.
  • Cut away some time on beginning of first and end of last file.
  • Crop the video to a rectangle. This cuts away all the ceiling, floor and walls we don't need.
  • Compress for AppleTV, so you can watch it anywhere.
The sample project will be included with next plugins, but here is the main work method: (more)

MBS Workshop @ Denkform

For our German speaking clients we have a workshop day:

In Zusammenarbeit mit der DenkForm GmbH bieten wir eine Schulung zum MBS Plugin an. Am 3. November 2016 (auch 2. März 2017 und 7. Dezember 2017) können Sie in Hofheim am Taunus an einer eintägigen Schulung teilnehmen. Lernen Sie die über 4100 Funktionen einmal näher kennen und wie Sie sie effektiv einsetzen. Sammeln Sie Ideen und verbessern Sie ihre FileMaker Lösungen durch den Einsatz unseres Plugins.

Das Monkeybread Software Plugin für FileMaker stellt eine vielseitige Erweiterung der eigenen Datenbank dar. Der Kurs bietet nicht nur einen tiefgreifenden Überblick in die Benutzung und Entwicklung, sondern bietet auch die Chance das Plugin günstiger zu erstehen.
  • Einführung in das MBS Plugin
  • Überblick über die Funktionsbereiche
  • Neues im MBS Plugin dieses Jahr
  • Rundgang durch ausgewählte Beispiele
  • Gemeinsames Implementieren von Plugin Funktionen in eine Datenbank:
  • Upload/Download mit CURL auf einen HTTP/FTP Server
  • Ausfüllen eines Formulares auf einer Webseite
  • Bilder bearbeiten
  • PDF Verarbeitung
  • Druckerfunktionen
  • Adressbuch und Kontakte abfragen bei Mac OS X.
  • Fragen und Antworten
Die Teilnahme kostet 99 Euro inkl. MWSt. und Verpflegung.
Details und Anmeldung bei der Denkform.

PS: Die Mindestteilnehmerzahl wurde erreicht und der Workshop findet am 3. November statt.

Call for Speakers for MBS Xojo Conference in Berlin 2017

For our MBS Xojo Conference in Europe, 3rd to 6th May 2017 in Berlin, Germany, we are looking for speakers.

If you like to present an interesting topic around Xojo, please contact me soon.
We already have a few on the way and will add them to the schedule as soon as we received topic description and registration from speakers.

The final schedule will probably be released somewhere in December. Until that you can show your commitment to the conference and get the early early bird price for the ticket for 40% off the regular price.

Interest for our conference so far is much higher than the last years and registration is already at a record level over six months in advantage. Be sure to mark the date in the calendar and move your work to leave a week free to join us and enjoy a few extra days in Berlin!

Like to speak, sponsor or register already? Just email me. Register here

Visiting MBS Office

We are always happy to have guests from all over the world. If you come close to mid western area of Germany (near Koblenz), be sure to send us a message. Maybe we have time to meet for a drink and some shop talk. Once again today we met with a client in Koblenz for dinner. But also when I am traveling for conferences or to clients, I try to organize local meetings with other developers and get in touch. For me it is important to see what you guys are doing with Xojo and FileMaker, what issues you see and what things are missing. Later I can fill those with a plugin function or provide you tips for using existing plugin functions.

As you may know I also offer consulting, training and custom plugin development. While you can of course hire me to come to your office for a visit, it may be better for you to leave office. Take a day off and get something done with me. Come for a visit and we develop a solution together.

In the last years we had people come to get a personal MBS Plugin workshop, a training day to get an overview on our plugin features. Another client came to develop a web app in Xojo or implement the usage of a web service in a FileMaker solution. Getting started together, than continue alone in following days. You can also come with a list of issues we should work on in your projects. Most likely I can show you solutions using plugin functions as others had similar problems before. Often it is easier to pay for an hour instead of spending a day yourself looking for a solution!

If time permits we can always add some sight seeing to castles, monastery or mid-age buildings, do some hiking or checkout a brewery or winery. See you someday!

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 6.5pr3

New in this prerelease of the 6.5 MBS FileMaker Plugin: Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

MBS Xojo / Real Studio Plugins, version 16.5pr3

New in this prerelease of the 16.5 plugins:
  • Fixed a regression on SQL prepared statement with error: "dictionary is nil".
  • Optimized NSViewMBS/NSWindowMBS getters, so they return the same view/window object if possible.
  • Added tabbing related functions/properties/constants to NSWindowMBS class.
  • Rewrote StyledText.RTFDataMBS to read/write RTF.
  • Updated SQLite to 3.15.0.
  • Added ConvertStyledText, WriteStyledText and WriteStyledTextEx functions to DynaPDFMBS.
  • Added drag & drop delegate methods to NSWindowDelegateMBS class.
  • Fixed an issue with QuartzCode plugin part where NSException handling plugin part was not correctly referenced.
  • Added MacFileOperationStatusMBS.Handle property.
  • Improved DNSServiceAddrInfoMBS for IPv6.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

How to fix the Sierra printing bug in FileMaker

Have you seen a dialog like this?

You may have noticed that after printing to PDF, the next print jobs will again print to PDF. The dialog may show "Save" on the button or "Print". The label doesn't matter as all printing goes now to PDF.
With the upcoming 6.5pr3 plugin you can fix this with our PrintDialog functions:

Set Variable [$r; Value: MBS( "PrintDialog.Install" ) ]
Set Variable [$r; Value: MBS( "PrintDialog.Enable" ) ]
Set Variable [$r; Value: MBS( "PrintDialog.SetResetDestination"; 1 ) ]

Somewhere in your initialization scripts you can call this sequence. It installs our code to observe the print dialog on Mac. You enable the feature and you set the option to reset the print destination each time the dialog shows. This clears the problem with printing to PDF in our tests. We have a couple more options like preselecting printer, paper tray or paper format.

New plugin will be available tomorrow or by email on request.

Goodbye Salzburg

After two weeks of conferences I am on my way back home.
This was an exhausting, but also entertaining and very interesting time. I met a lot of people, had shop talk all day and developed new stuff on the fly.



The Dallas FileMaker user group moved their meeting date for me and over 20 users attended. Next in Houston I met about 100 Xojo developers at the yearly Xojo developer conference including all the Xojo staff. This week in Salzburg at the FileMaker Conference I met around 200 FileMaker developers from German speaking countries.

As usual I spend only a little time in sessions. More important for me is the time in the lobby where people show me their projects, explain what issues they have and what functions they'd like to have. I can show what features my plugins have, what may help the client and how we can proceed. Some people even have projects for me I could do and some are interested in personal consulting or training services.

As you may have noticed, I am coding in-between and writing blog articles. For Xojo I hoped for a 64-bit debugger sooner as I worked the last weeks on a CloudKit plugin. Still I hope to get it done and debugged in the next weeks, so you guys can try it.

For FileMaker we got a couple of news:
As usually if you see a feature in the other plugins and you like me to transfer it, please tell me. For a lot of features it makes sense to offer them for both. The styled text feature for DynaPDF is right away built for both tools. We had the Java classes in Xojo for ten years already and now added this functionality for FileMaker as well.

I am looking forward to meet you at the next conferences:
and some more where I don't yet know the dates. Keep me informed if you organize a conference or hear about one. See you there!

DynaPDF and Styled Text, Xojo vs. FileMaker

Another idea I got on the FileMaker Conference here in Salzburg: Users may want to have a text field with styled text and transfer that text as good as possible into a PDF page via DynaPDF.

The Xojo framework provides a StyledText class where we can query text styles (italic, bold and underline), color, font and font size. Via the paragraph class, we get alignment information, too.

The FileMaker plugin SDK offers functions to query styled text. But I have to query style for each character and detect the runs myself (see feature request). It does provide some more styles, e.g. strikeout. But it does not provide alignment information (see feature request).

The plugin can now convert styled text as good as we can to format commands in DynaPDF. WriteFText/WriteFTextEx functions can process various commands and we can easily support different fonts, alignment, color, styles and even more features.

In FileMaker the example looks like this:

MBS FileMaker Plugin with Styled Text to PDF

As you see we have the input field on the top left, the translated commands for review on top right and the final PDF as preview below.

And in Xojo I made a text editor with live preview:

MBS Xojo Plugin with Styled Text to PDF

For the Create PDF button to write a PDF you only need the DynaPDF Starter version. But for live preview with rendering a page, we need a Pro license. whenever you change something in the left text area, we update a few milliseconds later the preview on the right side. The page size is set to match the canvas size, so you get an unscaled high DPI preview.
As you see we have alignment only in Xojo, but strikeout only in FileMaker.

PS: Available soon in plugin version 6.5pr3 or by email now.

Scrollbar Elasticity in FileMaker

screenshotAs you may have notices in FileMaker 14 a feature was added to support elastic scrolling on Mac OS X 10.7 and newer.

As FileMaker only has one main control used for both a list and a layout, the elastic scrolling is always there for you. But some users don't enjoy it in their layouts.

So just before the lunch today here at FileMaker Conference in Salzburg, I spend approximately 20 minutes on a new function to query and set the elasticity mode on the scrollbars in a layout:

MBS("Window.Scrollbar.SetScrollElasticity"; 0; "none")

You can set the scrollbars to auto, none and allowed. By default it is auto, so the system preferences define whether it is allowed or not. You can now switch it per layout and adjust it when switching to list mode or to layout mode.

PS: Coming soon in the next prerelease. If you like to try earlier, please email me.

FileMaker iOS App SDK 15.0.2

As you may know I offer an iOS SDK Extension for additional commands for the iOS SDK from FileMaker.

Sadly the 15.0.2 SDK has a little change. The updateProjectSettings utility used in the Xcode project overwrites the RequiredToLink.mm file each time. But in this file we put our initialization call for our static library. This breaks the extension.

To fix it, please rename the RequiredToLink.mm file in the project. For example name it "MyRequiredToLink.mm". After the change is made, the file is no longer overwritten and you can enjoy our extension.

And someday we hope to see plugin support in FileMaker iOS SDK and offer our plugin for iOS. I already have one compiled here...

An award for the MBS FileMaker Plugin

At the FileMaker Conference 2016 in Salzburg I received an award for the best development tool for FileMaker:

Klemens und Christian

Thanks for recognizing my ten year commitment to FileMaker for writing the MBS Plugin.
And thanks to all my customers who supported me with ideas and by using the plugin.
A few of the new ideas from the conference will be in the next prerelease.

Open script by contextual menu

One of the ideas I got on the German FileMaker conference:
Add a menu entry to the contextual menu to open the script from a perform script step:

screenshot context menu

So when you have a script step to perform a script, you can right click it, pick the open command and jump right to that script.
Coming in pr3 soon and already localized for all languages FileMaker supports.

PS: For FileMaker 14 and 15.

MBS FileMaker Plugin Workshop today

Today we have our workshop for our FileMaker Plugin here in Salzburg. We already met with people for dinner yesterday:



If you are in Salzburg right now and you like to join, please contact me soon.

MBS Xojo / Real Studio Plugins, version 16.5pr2

New in this prerelease of the 16.5 plugins:
  • Fixed events for IKImageBrowserViewControlMBS class.
  • Added CUPSMBS.PrintData function.
  • Fixed a possible issue with CalendarItems being released while script runs.
  • Added CustomNSViewMBS isFlipped event.
  • Added MimeEmailMBS.DecodeInline function.
  • Updated libXL library to version 3.7.0.
  • Updated SQLAPI++ 4.1.10.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 6.5pr2

New in this prerelease of the 6.5 plugins: Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

Library vs. Plugin

At the Xojo conference here in Houston Xojo Inc. announced a couple of upcoming features for Xojo. You can read details on the Xojo blog, Bob's blob or soon in Xojo Developer Magazine. One of the news in the creation of plugins in Xojo. Let's call those a library as you bundle Xojo code with resources into an archive. And as a few people asked me how that would affect me or whether I will support them, so here a few details:

First what is a Xojo Plugin currently?
Well, a xojo plugin currently is a zip archive with file extension .xojo_plugin. You can rename it to .zip and unpack it if you like to take a look inside youself. What you find are a couple of folders with various compiled libraries inside. Those libraries come per platform, so we have there DLLs for Windows, dylibs for Macs and shared objects for Linux. Current MBS Plugin have 8 different variants included.

To write such a plugin, you take a native compiler for your platform, write some C, C++, Objective-C or assembler code. You can include static libraries in your plugin and fully use all the features in the C compilers offer you. The libraries include the Xojo declarations and register them at runtime, so the IDE loads all plugins and queries them for the declarations.

What is a Xojo library?
Not sure how Xojo Inc. will call it exactly, but as far as I know it will be a new type of project. There you can include all stuff you currently have in projects like modules, classes and windows. Than you press build button and it will compile them all and write intermediate code into a new file. This should include resources like images and native libraries written in C/C++.
So you can add a library to a project and when compelling the Xojo IDE will include the library parts in the normal build process.

Convert Plugins?
Depending on how library projects will be designed, it may be possible for me to write a converter for my plugins. An application which can read my plugin definitions and generate the wrapper classes. Each method there would have a declare line to call the underlaying C function. I am not sure how well this would work and whether the overhead is worth it. Could be that it is easier and more convenient to just keep the plugins as they are and just provide newer stuff in the new format.

Uses for Libraries
We all have common code which we currently include in all projects. This common code can be moved into a library project and be prebuilt. This way the build process of our normal apps should be faster. Although when debugging the project, the debugger may not be able to step into our own library!

Next you want to bundle some code and sell it. Plugin vendors like me may be able to finally deliver iOS compatible plugins this way. At least precompiled is better protected than encrypted classes which have been breached before. Selling libraries could increase the number of vendors and help to get more third party controls into the Xojo store.

Possible Problems
There are a couple of problems coming which needs to be resolved:
  • First what happens if you add a library with a window to a console project?
    Probably this will cause errors and some libraries must have flags and #if set to work well.
  • How can libraries be compatible to several Xojo versions?
    The intermediate code from LLVM and the file format used by Xojo may not be forward or backwards compatible. Also calls to the framework may change, so newer library may miss a function in the Xojo runtime if used in an older version of the Xojo IDE.
  • How do we handle conflicts within the libraries?
    Class names may be declared in different ways. While I hope we can do libraries without putting them into namespaces, it would be nice if the library user could optionally add a namespace in order to resolve conflicts.
  • Would libraries include function names, so we see that in stack traces?
  • Can we debug into the library if we have the library source code?
    Maybe we may need a library format including source code for debugging, at least for home made libraries.

So let's see what gets released later in 2017 and maybe refined in upcoming releases in 2018.

FileMaker meeting in Dallas

We had a nice meeting yesterday with the FileMaker developers from Dallas area:



I presented about MBS Plugin and especially demonstrated features from our last release 6.4 and new features in the upcoming 6.5 version. We a couple of discussions about FileMaker Cloud and the Linux version of the MBS Plugin.

See you in Salzburg next week or in Phoenix next year!

MBS Xojo / Real Studio Plugins, version 16.5pr1

New in this prerelease of the 16.5 plugins:
  • Updated to DynaPDF 4.0.3.10
  • Added JavaObjectMBS.ClassName property.
  • When looking for Java installation on Windows, we now use unicode paths.
  • Fixed a problem with QuickTime plugin not loading on macOS Sierra.
  • Updated OpenSSL to 1.0.2j
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 6.5pr1

New in this prerelease of the 6.5 plugins:
  • Updated to DynaPDF 4.0.3.10
  • Added Java functions to load and execute java methods.
  • Added SendMail.AddAttachmentText and SendMail.AttachmentCount functions.
  • Added support for Menus on Windows to draw with
    • custom font
    • bold, italic, underline, strikeout style.
    • font size.
    • Font color and background color.
    • Disabled/Selected color if needed.
    • Diamond, Bullet and Mixed states.
  • Added MenuItem.GetStrikeOut, MenuItem.SetStrikeOut, MenuItem.GetBackColor, MenuItem.GetFontColor, MenuItem.SetBackColor and MenuItem.SetFontColor.
  • Fixed a memory leak in OCR.WriteToPDF function.
  • Changed registration warning dialogs to show old license key name and date, so you better know what license key to find and replace.
  • Fixed calendar functions to return plugin IDs for repeating calendar events (with same UUID), so we can distinguish them.
  • Added some updater functions to control the updater process on Mac.
  • Fixed a problem when Files.List with a file extension on Windows would return an error if no file is found. Now returns empty text.
  • Fixed a problem with plugin not loading due to broken preferences file.
  • Added Linux version of our plugin.
  • Added RichText.RTF function.
  • Updated OpenSSL to 1.0.2j
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

Xojo Feedback Success rate

The Xojo feedback system is a huge bug and feature wish tracker. It currently has over 45000 items inside. This is really a lot for a company of that size. Each day a dozen issues are reported and someone at Xojo Inc. has to review them. Initial review is often done by Robin, who will often ask for more information or directly assign your request to the engineer who may have interest in it. The bug report than has status Reviewed, often for years. What you don't see are the private entries for Xojo Inc. Engineers write ideas and discussions to the bug report. Is this issue related to others? How could it be done? How long would it take and how important is it?

Over the years I contributed 1117 cases there:

1117 Status Percent
1Open0,1 %
2scheduled0,2 %
3Completed & Fixed0,3 %
5Need Review0,4 %
21Implemented1,9 %
24resolved2,1 %
24Closed (Duplicate)2,1 %
28Closed (Already Exists)2,5 %
40Closed (by Design)3,6 %
56Closed (Won’t Implement)5,0 %
90Closed (Misc)8,1 %
97N/A8,7 %
108Closed (Not Reproducible)9,7 %
121verified10,8 %
220Fixed & Verified19,7 %
277Reviewed24,8 %

As you can see I have a lot of cases. Some even lost their status. This happens often if the type of the cases switched and the new status is not applicable for the new case type. Overall I have 268 (24%) of my cases being completed, fixed or resolved. I think this is an impressive rate, if you think that Xojo Inc. is a company with very limited resources.

So please participate. When Xojo Inc. looks for things to do for next release, they will look into the feedback app. What cases have a high voting? What cases are important to people or to engineers? What bugs are critical? There are thousands of cases with nice to have things and some get done, too. Other cases get a clearly no, which is often very difficult to decide. The 96 cases I have which got closed with "Won't implement" or "By Design" status, disappointed me of course. But other cases have been resolved or fixed the same day I reported them. My success rate of 24% makes me happy here and continues my hope that I can change Xojo to be more like I need it to be.

So please participate. Bugs can only be fixed if someone enters them in Feedback. Feature wishes will easier be seen if you assign your points to cases. And remember: Just because someone complains on the forum or mailing list about an issue will not change anything unless it is in feedback and everyone can check status there. So if you see a good feature request or a bug somewhere, please report it, so it's not lost.

PS: For my own plugins I do similar. We can discuss plugin wishes a lot. I usually will tell to send me an email to follow up. Because I often forget the wishes or bug reports soon. And if nobody sends me an email, it is probably not important.

Sending emails in FileMaker with MBS Plugin

Sending emails in FileMaker with MBS Plugin

 

FileMaker has a built in feature for sending email. While this is easy to use and convenient for a lot of users, some need more: So we have an email sending feature in our MBS Plugin with the following features:

 

  • Send emails with plain text or html
  • Several attachments from files, text or containers
  • As many TO, CC, BCC, Sender and ReplyTo addresses.
  • Subject, HTML and text properly encoded.
  • Any SMTP Server
  • Custom Port
  • Customize SSL options
  • Proxy options
  • Authentication options

So in order to send an email via MBS Plugin, you need a SMTP server and the credentials. For the server, we need a domain name or an IP, either IPv4 or IPv6. Than we need credentials, typical name and password. Next we need to have an idea about SSL. Your server should require SSL and you need to know if it's SSLv3, TLS 1.0 or best TLS 1.2. You can tell our plugin to use a specific TLS/SSL version and require SSL. Finally you can provide a SSL certificate chain for your server to actually check certificates from server.

 

To create the email, you use the SendMail functions like the following snippet. You pass HTML text, plain text, subject, from address and smtp details. For our functions we pass email and name separated. The plugin will encode the name properly, so non-ASCII characters survive. Same for subject, plain text and html text.

 

Set Variable [$EmailID; Value:MBS("SendMail.CreateEmail")]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.SetFrom"; $EmailID; EMail::FromEmail; EMail::FromName)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.SetHTMLText"; $EmailID; EMail::HTMLText)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.SetPlainText"; $EmailID; EMail::PlainText)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.SetSubject"; $EmailID; EMail::Subject)]

 

Add the SMTP settings here or later directly on the CURL functions:

 

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.SetSMTPServer"; $EmailID; EMail::SMTP Server)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.SetSMTPUsername"; $EmailID; EMail::SMTP Username)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.SetSMTPPassword"; $EmailID; EMail::SMTP Password)]

 

The next snippet adds addresses. We take them from a separate table and add them depending of the type. We support here TO, CC and BCC recipients. You can also add Sender and ReplyTo addresses. If you need you can also add other email headers like Company Name, Priority or read receipt request.

 

Go to Related Record [Show only related records; From table: “Recipient”; Using layout: “Recipient” (Recipient)]

Go to Record/Request/Page [First]

Loop

If [Recipient::Type = "To"]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.AddTO"; $EmailID; Recipient::Email; Recipient::Name)]

Else If [Recipient::Type = "CC"]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.AddCC"; $EmailID; Recipient::Email; Recipient::Name)]

Else If [Recipient::Type = "BCC"]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.AddBCC"; $EmailID; Recipient::Email; Recipient::Name)]

End If

Go to Record/Request/Page [Next; Exit after last]

End Loop

Go to Related Record [From table: “EMail”; Using layout: “EMail” (EMail)]

 

From another table we pick attachments. You can pass attachments as containers, files or plain text. This way you are flexible to add attachments as you need. For each attachment you can provide a file name and a mime type. If no mime type is specified, our plugin can guess it from the file extensions.

 

Go to Related Record [Show only related records; From table: “Attachment”; Using layout: “Attachment” (Attachment)]

Go to Record/Request/Page [First]

Loop

If [not IsEmpty(Attachment::Container)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.AddAttachmentContainer"; $EmailID; Attachment::Container; Attachment::Name; Attachment::Type)]

End If

If [not IsEmpty(Attachment::Path)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.AddAttachmentFile"; $EmailID; Attachment::Path; Attachment::Name; Attachment::Type)]

End If

If [not IsEmpty(Attachment::Text)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.AddAttachmentText"; $EmailID; Attachment::Path; Attachment::Name; Attachment::Type)]

End If

Go to Record/Request/Page [Next; Exit after last]

End Loop

Go to Related Record [From table: “EMail”; Using layout: “EMail” (EMail)]

 

If you like to review the email in source code, you can use the GetSource function and display the email in a text field:

 

Set Field [EMail::EmailSource; MBS( "String.ReplaceNewline"; MBS("SendMail.GetSource"; $EmailID); 1)]

 

To send we need a CURL transfer. So you create a new CURL session and pass the email sending settings. Next you can change some CURL settings like SSL settings or switch to a different port. So for this example we do not check SSL certificates, but prefer TLS v1.2. 

 

Set Variable [$curl; Value:MBS("CURL.New")]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.PrepareCURL"; $EmailID; $curl)]

#Maybe use alternative SMTP port?

//  Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.SetOptionPort"; $curl; 587)]

#This turns TLS on and requires connection to be encrypted

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.SetOptionUseSSL"; $curl; 3)]

#force TLS v1.2

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.SetOptionSSLVersion"; $curl; 6)]

#This disables certificate verification, so we accept any: 

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.SetOptionSSLVerifyHost"; $curl; 0)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.SetOptionSSLVerifyPeer"; $curl; 0)]

#Better with certificates if you have some:

//  Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS( "CURL.SetOptionCAInfo"; $curl; "/Library/FileMaker Server/certificates.pem")]

//  Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.SetOptionSSLVerifyHost"; $curl; 2)]

//  Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.SetOptionSSLVerifyPeer"; $curl; 1)]

 

The perform call will actually do the transfer. Our plugin can do transfer synchronously, in background threaded or asynchronously on main thread. This example uses synchronous transfer, so the script waits for the transfer to finish. But you can also run in background or asynchronously and later trigger a script to inform you about the result of the transfer.

 

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.Perform"; $curl)]

 

You can show debug log and input in fields if you like:

 

Set Field [EMail::DebugInput; MBS("CURL.GetInputAsText"; $curl)]

Set Field [EMail::DebugMessages; MBS("CURL.GetDebugAsText"; $curl)]

 

Finally you can do the cleanup:

 

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("CURL.Cleanup"; $curl)]

Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS("SendMail.Release"; $EmailID)]

 

If you have trouble with setting this up, please contact us. Our plugin works fine with a lot of smtp servers including google mail and outlook 365.


Better popup menus on Windows for FileMaker

The next MBS FileMaker Plugin will have new menu functions. See this screenshot:

screenshot



Now supporting background and text color, custom fonts, diamond and bullets marks.

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