The September/October (16.5) issue of xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:
**Reports Revisited** by Ulrich Bogun and Martin Trippensee
Xojo's built-in reporting gets flack for not being full-featured, but it's more powerful than you think. Ulrich and Martin have figured out a way to hack it for better reports!
**An Excel Database** by Paul Budd
Should you use Excel as a database? Probably not. But you can, and there are times (like when you aren't in control of the decisions), that it's useful to be able to use SQL to query a spreadsheet.
**Give Yourself to the Dark Side, Part V** by Sam Rowlands
Sam's article a few issues ago on "Dark Mode" sliders was derailed by Apple's changes with MacOS Mojave, so he's back to revise his methods.
**Refactoring a Controller Module, Part 2** by JC Cruz
Jose continues his explanation on how to refactor a controller module to support other models without breaking existing code.
*PLUS*: Progressbars, connecting to databases, Xojo 2018r2, hierarchies in a data mart, HavIBeenPwned, and more!
We got the live barcode reading working with the AVRecorder functions in MBS FileMaker Plugin. We now have the option to automatically feed the recorded images to the CoreImage detector to find QRCodes:
This works nice and can optionally triggers a script for a new barcode. So you should be able to have your users hold a QRCode in front of the iPhone or Mac camera and get the barcodes coming in. The advantage is that we do the processing and detection on a preemptive thread, so it runs in background and doesn't block FileMaker from doing other things.
As you may know we have the AVFoundation classes to capture video from camera including functions for live getting a picture. You can pass that picture to CIDetectorMBS class to detect faces, QRCodes, texts or rectangles. Now we got a new option to have the detection running on a preemptive thread to keep the Xojo app more responsive:
We get live image in background thread, pass it to detector and get you the captureOutputDidOutputSampleBuffer event with detected features as parameter. This way you can do live detection with high performance.
If you need more, you can always get current frame on Mac & Windows and pass yourself to TesseractMBS class or zxingMultiFormatReaderMBS class yourself to detect text or barcodes.
Added more convenience functions for Contacts classes: allContacts, AllFetchKeys, unifiedContactsMatchingPredicate, unifiedContactWithIdentifier, unifiedMeContact for CNContactStoreMBS class and new CNContactFetchRequestMBS constructor.
Changed plugins to load LDAP framework dynamically instead of linking to it directly.
Improved variable checking to recognize Insert Text, Insert time, Insert date, Insert current user and Insert Calculated Result and look for variables there in 11 languages.
Fixed a problem on Windows with Drag & Drop functions not accepting drag if you didn't set cursor.
The MBS Xojo Plugins provide various functions for HTMLViewer to use JavaScript in Xojo applications. Here a few details on the various ways to run JavaScript in the HTMLViewer in Xojo.
A lot of FileMaker developers love to interact with WebViewer. There are a couple of ways to move data in/out or call back to FileMaker. For a few things our plugin can help a lot. Here an overview:
Load webpage into WebViewer:
Use FileMaker's Set Webviewer Script Step to pass in URL with content.
This is limited to a few thousand characters and URL may get logged.
Write local HTML file and call Set Webviewer Script step with an URL pointing to the file. Path.FilePathToFileURL may help here.
Use WebView.LoadHTML in MBS Plugins to load HTML from text in variable or field.
Use WebView.LoadURL to load URL.
Pass for Mac and iOS the cache policy and the timeout value.
Calling JavaScript:
You can use MBS Plugin WebView.RunJavaScript which will pass the javascript to run. For Mac and iOS, this function returns the result, while on Windows, we can't get the result.
Use WebView.RunJavaScriptReturnTitle which is designed to return the title of the document. In JavaScript you can put result in document.title and we pass it back. This may not work well with line breaks.
Pass data to JavaScript:
Pass as parameter with JavaScript call above directly.
Use a hidden textarea form field to fill with WebView.SetFormTextAreaValue. This allows to easily pass text in any length.
Please take a look on the following progress indicators:
The example project for this applies CoreImage filters to the standard control to change it's colors.
Coming with next MBS Xojo Plugin prerelease. Or email us, if you like to try today.
For our plugins I updated libxml2 to a newer version. And while doing that, I saw there is also libxslt available, which can be used together with libxml2 to support XSLT.
So I built LibXLST for all platforms (2x Mac, 4x iOS, 3x Linux and 2x Windows!) for me. Once the libraries can be linked to the plugin, I started make a new function for the MBS FileMaker Plugin: XML.ApplyStylesheet.
It allows you to apply a style sheet to an XML document and transform the XML to something new. Fore example you transform from one XML to other. This includes transforming XML to just text or html text. We'll certainly include a few examples with next plugins.
If you have ideas for more functions, please let me know.
By the way XSLT 2.0 is a common wish, but the problem is that there aren't many libraries for C/C++ doing that. And for example the Saxon library is quite expensive for redistribution.
Xojo has such a function built-in: XMLDocument.Transform, so no need currently for a plugin there.
Nur noch acht Wochen bis zur FileMaker Konferenz 2018 in Malbun (Liechtenstein) und zur MBS FileMaker Plugin Schulung Mittwochs vorher.
Vom 17. bis 20. Oktober diesen Jahres findet die neunte deutschsprachige FileMaker Konferenz in Malbun, Liechtenstein statt. FileMaker Anwender und Entwickler können ihre Teilnahme ab sofort buchen.
Die Veranstalter vom Verein FM Konferenz erwarten auch 2018 rund 180 Entwickler, Anwender, IT-Fachleute und Entscheidungsträger aus Wirtschaft, Bildung und Verwaltung. Rund um über 25 Fachvorträge und Workshops wird es viel Zeit zum Vernetzen in den gemeinsamen Pausen und beim Abendprogramm geben.
Für den Deutschsprachigen Raum ist diese Konferenz das Treffen des Jahres. Hier finden Sie vom Anfänger bis zum Profi Kontakte zu anderen Entwicklern und vor allem den Kontakt zu den FileMaker Mitarbeitern. Lernen Sie was es neues gibt, lernen Sie wie man Probleme löst und erzählen Sie den FileMaker Mitarbeitern was Sie sich für die Zukunft bei FileMaker wünschen!
On my next visit to Nuremberg, I may be able to join the local meeting:
Wer hat Interesse an einem FileMaker Entwicklertreffen am 19. September 2018 in Nürnberg?
Einfach gemütlich zusammen sitzen und über FileMaker plaudern.
Gerne zeige ich auch neue Pluginfunktionen oder helfe bei Problemen mit euren Projekten. Einfach Computer mitbringen und was zeigen.
Lesterius runs two launch events for FileMaker 17 in September:
7th September 2018 in Almere, Netherlands
11th September 2018 in Gent, Belgium
After a welcome drink, they will present the details of the new version with live demonstration. Your chance to ask questions and meet other FileMaker developers from your region.
If you need to ever split files with MBS FileMaker Plugin, you can do it using the BinaryFile functions like the following script shows. It opens a file for reading and copies 10 MByte chunks to new files.
Set Variable [ $InputPath ; Value: "/Users/cs/Desktop/tets.mp4" ]
Over the years I enjoyed to clone disks on my Macs. It's always good to make copies of everything with Carbon Copy Cloner or similar applications. You have a backup disk handy to boot your Mac in case of an emergency. External SSDs with USB-C or Thunderbolt interfaces got cheaper. Time Machine and an online backup are also useful, but serve a different thing. Usually before you move your stuff to a new Mac, you may want to make a copy to one of your external disks.
There are two problems with restoring from a clone to a new Mac. First, you have sometimes a MacOS version mismatch. The 10.13.6 coming with a new MacBook Pro is not the same as the one coming for an older MacOS 10.13.6. Probably some newer drivers are missing.
Second, there are Secure Tokens. If you format a Mac disk and clone from a backup, you don't get your secure tokens for the admin users. So you can't enable things like File Vault. Your user is not trusted by the OS itself. You have to go through the normal OS installer to install a fresh copy of MacOS and the installer will grant a secure token to the first user you create, later all new admin users you create get one, too. The migration assistant also grants the secure token automatically, so you get it. But if you just clone, there is no way get one.
And now a speed tip for migration assistant. You want a fast connection to clone. The fastest you can get on a Mac is usually Thunderbolt 3 with 20 Gigabits. So connect both Macs with a new Thunderbolt cable. If one Mac is older, maybe Thunderbolt 2, maybe with adapter for 10 Gigabit. If not Thunderbolt, use a good Ethernet cable, so you get gigabit connection. The worst may be to have an older Wifi network and doing migration with a 50 MBs connection.
Good luck with migration!
Keep a backup of the old state for some time in case something missed to copy to the new Mac.
Wer hat Interesse an einem MBS FileMaker Entwicklertreffen im September in München?
Da ich wegen der MBS Xojo Konferenz in der Stadt bin, wäre es doch schön auch die FileMaker Leute zu treffen.
Einfach gemütlich zusammen sitzen in einem Restaurant oder Biergarten und über FileMaker reden. Gerne zeige ich auch neue Pluginfunktionen oder helfe bei Problemen mit FileMaker Datenbanken. Einfach Computer mitbringen und was zeigen.
Termin wäre 3., 4. oder 8. September 2018, abends gegen 18 bis 22 Uhr, so dass ihr früher oder später kommen könnt.
Bei Interesse bitte Email schicken oder in der Umfrage eintragen.
Added Webview.AllCookies function to return all website cookies as JSON.
Marked Events, Addressbook, Contacts and Calendar functions to not work on server as looks impossible now to get the permissions for privacy to make them work for FileMaker Server on MacOS.
As you see the main difference between both modes is whether the text content view resizes with the the textarea control. Normally it does, but to disable line wrap, we disable that and allow it to size to a huge size horizontally.
We got a new MacBook Pro to test here with Core i9 CPU. This is really a mobile powerhouse and you can easily get all 12 cores busy with some real work. It looks like the MacBook Pro can do that load for half an hour easily. Yes, it may get warm above the keyboard, but it stays cold for the lower parts.
While battery may be advertised as running for 10 hours with normal usage like web surfing, well at the full work load, e.g. while compiling large project with Xcode, it may only run 70 minutes till the battery is empty. And that is to be expected as the 83.6 watt-hour battery can only deliver the 50 to 60 watts needs for the CPU for just over an hour.
GeekBench shows 4058 for Single-Core Score and 13845 for Multi-Core Score on the older MacBook Pro (15 inch, 2016) with Core i7 @2.9 GHz.
The new MacBook Pro 15 inch with Core i9 @2.9 GHz shows 5430 Single-Core Score and 23700 Multi-Core Score.
To compare, the 2 year newer model is 33% faster single-core and 70% faster multi-core.
We do not see any speed problems with the CPU and look forward to let this machine increase our productivity with more RAM and CPU power on the go than we ever had before.
As you may know MacOS and iOS provide the QLPreview functions to provide previews of files. For MacOS, the QuickLookUI frameworks offers the QLPreviewPanel class and for iOS we have QLPreviewController class. Both allow us to load some files and show the as preview.
We add QLPreviewPanel functions for iOS with next plugin release. The reason is that we want to add the feature to show a preview of a 3D object there. As Apple adds new functions for Augmented Reality, you get new 3D objects to place in scenes. And if you have those objects in your FileMaker container fields, you can now preview them right in your FileMaker iOS solution.
QuickLook Preview can show:
iWork documents
Microsoft Office documents (Office ‘97 and newer)
Rich Text Format (RTF) documents
PDF files
Images
Text files
Comma-separated value (csv) files
3D models in USDZ format (with both standalone and AR views for viewing the model) for iOS 12 or newer.
Our new QLPreviewPanel.AddContainer function allows you to pass a container directly into the panel. If it is saved external, we can pass through pass directly. Otherwise, we write a temporary file, which is deleted later when panel is cleared or app quits.
We have the AVCaptureVideoDataOutputMBS Class in MBS Xojo AVFoundation Plugin. This class allows you to get live data from the camera as CMSampleBufferMBS objects. Now this was a bit slow as we did all the processing on the main thread. But for doing something useful in 30fps, you need time on the main thread for your Xojo app and we need to move as much work as possible of the heavy work away from the main thread.
So for next pre-release we cache properties in CVImageBufferMBS class. If you query NSImageMBS, JPEGData or CIImageMBS there, we will create them for you and remember the values, so in case you call the methods again, we have the values directly available and don't recreate them.
As conversion of the camera data (e.g. in YUV format) to RGB may be expensive, we want to do the conversion on the preemptive threads. So we added PrepareCIImage, PrepareJPEGData and PrepareNSImage properties to AVCaptureVideoDataOutputMBS class. If you set them, we will do the part of the work you requested on the preemptive thread and than pre-fill CMSampleBufferMBS and CVImageBufferMBS with the data, so query calls on the properties will be very quick.
This does not reduce the CPU time needed for the whole app, but moves more work to other threads, so you have more time on the main thread for your application doing something with the video.
At the FileMaker Developer Conference 2018 in Grapevine Texas, I got awarded with the FileMaker Excellence Award for Innovation for my MBS Plugin:
Thanks everyone for the good wishes. The last 12 years have been an incredible journey and we look forward to the next years to add even more features for FileMaker. We hope you enjoy our plugins!
Today at the Deploying Your Apps to Vertical and Horizontal Markets session at FileMaker DevCon 2018, I had the chance to be on the stage for a panel and talk briefly about the machine learning functions in MBS Plugin for iOS and MacOS:
If you like to try them, please watch this video and play with the examples. If you are interested in machine learning creating models in FileMaker, get blockchain functions or use augmented reality functions from Apple for iOS and MacOS to be used in FileMaker, please contact us.
As you may know Apple has two APIs for the address book. The older Addressbook API was introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 long ago. With MacOS 10.11 Apple introduced a second API called Contacts. Applications can use both. Sadly the don't both do the same features! This is similar to the calendar and reminder APIs where we have Calendar and Events functions.
Here is a comparison between Addressbook and Contacts APIs:
Addressbook
Contacts
Minimum MacOS
10.4
10.11
Mac 32-bit
Yes
No
Mac 64-bit
Yes
Yes
iOS
Yes
Yes
Code Signature required
No
Yes, with entitlements
Multiple Accounts
No
Yes
Modification Dates
Yes
No
Trigger
Yes
Yes
Trigger Details
Yes
No
Search by Modification Date
Yes
No
vCard Import/Export
Single
Multiple
Set Me
Yes
No
Linked People
Yes
No
Set Primary Items
Yes
No
Format Address
Yes
Yes
JSON API
No, but could be added
Yes
Query Authorization Status
No
Yes
As you see, we need to code sign the FileMaker application to add the required entitlements for the new Contacts API. But once Contacts API works, we can use it to work with multiple accounts. Like if you use iCloud and Exchange, you can create a contact explicit in the one account you need.
For the foreseeable future, we will offer both APIs and you can choose. For synchronization we will want to use Addressbook as it provides modification dates for records.
New Contacts function will appear soon in next 8.4 prerelease.
Omegabundle for Xojo 2018 Developer Tools Bundle Announced; Save 89% on Top Tools
Due to request of some buyers who missed first deadline, we extend the offer for another two weeks.
You can buy it several times, e.g. one for each of your developers. Or buy multiple copies to get more than one OS for Valentina Server.
Enjoy the video and please visit our booth for your questions, or send an email.
Don't forget to get the flyer with the discount code for the 20% conference offer.
This year, we have no live session to talk about the plugin.
A new release of Xojo is now available for download. With over 160 changes and improvements, this release focuses on optimizations and fixes, particularly for Windows and iOS.
Xojo 2018 Release 2 includes:
Continued Windows optimizations
iOS Improvements, such as:
iOSTable supports pull-to-refresh
iOSTable better supports varying row heights with iOSCustomTableCellviOSView supports large titles on iOS 11+
iOSHTMLViewer now uses WKWebView for better compatibility
Added SpecialFolder.Resources and GetResource methods
SQLiteDatabase updated to 3.23.1
HTMLViewer uses WebKit2 on Linux (if available) and latest Chromium Embedded Framework 3 on Windows (when WebKit is selected)
The complete list of improvements can be found in the release notes in the product download.
Due to the changes in the graphics class and the WebKit upgrade for Windows, please use latest MBS Plugins 18.3 or better 18.4 prerelease.
Please come and visit me in the booth #20 at FileMaker DevCon:
As usual you can come by, read the posters, ask me questions and talk with me about existing and future features.
We got flyers with our DevCon 2018 coupon code for the discount on licenses.
We all look forward to presentations about Android, the new Web Framework other news in the Xojo keynote.
Register here. Attending the conference costs regularly 699 Euro plus VAT, including food and beverage in the Maritim Hotel as well as an accompanying social program.
Sessions are to be held in English. Our conference is conceived as a networking event for the Xojo community. The conference is an ideal opportunity for sharing your thoughts and your own development experience with fellow users and developers. If you like to hold a presentation, please contact us as soon as possible.
PS: OmegaBundle includes a transferable coupon to save 100 Euro on the registration fee.
We arrived a few days ago in Texas and visited the local FileMaker and Xojo user group meetings, drove around to check out some historic parts here and already got out badge for the conference.
If you join DevCon, please visit our booth. If you don't come to conference, but still like to get an appointment, you can of course email or text us. At the booth, we got some pens, gummy bears and flyers for you. Including our DevCon 2018 coupon code for the discount on licenses.
The September/October (16.5) issue of xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:
New in this prerelease of the 18.4 plugins:
New in this prerelease of version 8.4 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:
The 
Nur noch acht Wochen bis zur 
Over the years I enjoyed to clone disks on my Macs. It's always good to make copies of everything with 
We got a new MacBook Pro to test here with Core i9 CPU. This is really a mobile powerhouse and you can easily get all 12 cores busy with some real work. It looks like the MacBook Pro can do that load for half an hour easily. Yes, it may get warm above the keyboard, but it stays cold for the lower parts.
As you may know MacOS and iOS provide the QLPreview functions to provide previews of files. For MacOS, the QuickLookUI frameworks offers the 
A new release of Xojo is now available for 
Just one month till the start of our 
