Stefanie had the pleasure to give a presentation about JSON at the XDC in London.
If you want to learn how JSON and you can become best friends, please watch the video of the talk. The used examples with the single JSON functions in Xojo and the example of the weather station are available here: JSONFriendXojo.zip. Just put your own API key in the weather station example into the right property and get started. Have fun with it.
Recently we moved to require Windows 8 as minimum and drop Windows 7 support. Turns out a few customers still use Windows Server 2012 and the plugin won't load there.
For Windows 7 or Windows 2012, we need to turn off:
WindowsML functions
WindowsOCR functions
WinPDF functions
WindowsUserNotification functions.
In future, we may build a Windows 7 or Server 2012 variant of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin if needed, but we highly recommend you change your Windows versions in order to not require one.
We got a Windows 7 build of MBS Plugin 13.2 here:
MBSFMPlugin132-Windows7.zip
PS: For Xojo we don't have such a problem as you decide what plugin parts you reference and if you don't reference anything needing Windows 8, you can still use Windows 7.
Please watch the video from XDC 2023 about our MBS Plugins:
We provide an overview what is new in the plugins for the last two years. Let us know if you have questions about one of the features.
The coupon code XDCSale stays valid until mid of May 2023.
For years people
asked about getting the Windows controls updated in Xojo. We still use Win32 API with various improvements over the years. But basically the same controls as they shipped with Windows 95 over 25 years ago. The style got updated, dark mode added as well as higher resolution support. In the past years Microsoft developed various ways to make controls and with announcements and deprecations, it was unclear for a long time which of the many ways would succeed.
For the future, there may be a Xojo version, that uses XAML based controls to implement all the standard controls: Labels, text fields, buttons, etc. You would open your project in the new version, build it and enjoy a fresh new look.
But what is XAML? It is a XML based declarative language to define controls and their attributes. You will not see the internal XAML code for the standard controls once they use it. But Xojo will generate it automatically from the properties set for the controls.
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Check out the FMTraining.tv website. Richard Carlton and his team do a daily free live stream about FileMaker to watch.
A few days ago Christian Schmitz from Monkeybread Software joined a live episode to talk a bit about the MBS FileMaker Plugin. Watch it on YouTube.
We talk about MBS FileMaker Plugin and the PDF related functions: WinPDF functions for Windows in upcoming version 13.2, PDFKit functions for macOS and DynaPDF functions for cross platform PDF features.
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Currently we enjoy the Xojo Developer Conference, which happens this week in London, UK. Geoff Perlman, the CEO of Xojo Inc. has his keynote speech and I like to highlight a few details. Then William follows on XAML and Travis on Android later.
Windows UI Modernization will be a new XAML container control. The Extensible Application Markup Language is a way to describe controls in XML and host them in Xojo. Eventually the XAML controls will replace the regular controls, so the container is a way to try a few of them earlier. William showed some nicer Windows control and how to add them with the new container control. An interesting approach to allow developers to use a few of these controls in their applications and e.g. show a map control there.
The Android target is finally coming to all Xojo developers to try in 2023r2 as public beta. After a long time in development and Android being in testing for some time, it is finally good enough to ship to a wider audience. This is a 1.0 and thus a lot of things are missing. But it may be enough for you to write a little Android client application for e.g. a web service. Load some data via URL Connection, put in a local SQLite database and show via tables and various layouts.
The Xojo libraries project makes progress. The idea is to package compiled code and share it in your projects or provide to others. But no other details coming.
The DatabaseConnection class is coming to make connecting to a database easier, but no details given on how this happens, expect that you can easily direct release, development and beta versions to different servers.
On the afternoon, we'll look into Android support.
See also
XDC London Announcements & News
The new 2023 version of the FileMaker platform includes server support for Linux on ARM with Ubuntu 22.
A brief history: We built software for Raspberry Pi for years and even started preparing the 64-bit branch for it years ago. Since we saw the train going to ARM, we started in November 2021 to prepare our MBS Plugin for Linux on ARM. Starting early gave us time to walk over all our used libraries and build them for the new platform and make all the changes in our code as needed.
Since spring 2022 we regularly build the Linux for ARM plugin with our normal building process. Just making sure it links and no compiler error prevents this. We made a dummy app and a dummy FMWrapper.so for this, so we could even test the plugin loading and see whether it shows any errors.
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New in this prerelease of version 13.2 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
DropBox folder or ask for being added to the DropBox shared folder.
Check out the FMTraining.tv website. Richard Carlton and his team do a daily free live stream about FileMaker to watch.
A few days ago Christian Schmitz from Monkeybread Software joined a live episode to talk a bit about the MBS FileMaker Plugin. Watch it on YouTube.
Richard talks about document management and later we show how MBS Plugin can help to store documents in Amazon S3 service and our plugin can create previews for various image files.
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New in this prerelease of the 23.2 plugins:
- Enabled web socket support for curl for Windows.
- Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.73.213.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New in this prerelease of version 13.2 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
DropBox folder or ask for being added to the DropBox shared folder.
Just one week until the
Xojo Developer Conference starts in London.
Tuesday evening, we will come to the hotel and meet everyone at the bar. I know already, that everyone of the usual suspects will not be there, but I look forward to see a few old friends and clients. For me this is like an extended family meeting once a year.
We are probably all curious to see what Xojo Inc. prepared. Geoff will make this keynote and talk about what is new in Xojo. The big elephant in the room is of course the progress on the new Android target. We look forward to learn what goes into the first release and when it may come out for the public. Once the public release happens (later this year?), a lot of more Xojo developers have the chance to try it and so we hope the on-boarding is done well to avoid a lot of support questions. Next we look forward to learn what they do next in Android. The first version will miss a lot of things, so a plan on what comes for a second or third update would be great.
Where we come to the roadmap things, we'd love to get an update on each of them. You probably remember Geoff talking about managing expectations. So providing details about each roadmap item would be good. Like what is the status, what work has been done the last months and what things can get finished and ship this year? Or next year? Well, at least giving some context to each roadmap item would be nice, so we learn the concept behind. Details, limits, features and maybe a quick look on the current work in-progress. And yes, we are developers and know that development isn't linear and things may get delayed.
A status update on the company and the community would be nice to have. How is the company doing? How are sales? The community? Are there any new initiatives coming to improve something? How are reactions on newer things like ARM 64-bit support for Windows and Linux?
When the conference comes to a close, we can evaluate how it went. What about a 2024 conference? It could be a bit different, e.g. how about doing more training, or more social interaction, maybe not a fancy hotel in a big city? You know, a small hotel up in the mountains may provide a better place to have a conference, do some coding together, learn new techniques and get to know other developers better.
See you next week!
Did you know our MBS Xojo ChartDirector Plugin can do more than charts and provide rendering of meters and gauges?
Meters and Gauges (1)
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Since we add Windows PDF functions to our plugins, we like to compare what's different between them compared to DynaPDF.
For FileMaker, please check DynaPDF, WinPDF and PDFKit functions in MBS FileMaker Plugin.
For Xojo, please check DynaPDF classes in MBS Xojo DynaPDF Plugin, Windows PDF classes in MBS Xojo WinFrameworks Plugin and PDFKit classes in MBS Xojo MacControls Plugin.
Below you find the table of DynaPDF features and the checkboxes we got for PDFKit and Windows PDF:
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Here is a snippet we showed on the FMTraining live stream yesterday and it may be interesting for everyone here:
Set Variable [ $image ; Value: MBS( "GMImage.NewFromContainer"; $input) ]
If [ MBS("IsError") = 0 ]
# limit size to maximum 1000 pixels in width
Set Variable [ $scale ; Value: MBS("GMImage.Scale";$Image; "1000>") ]
# remove metadata
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "GMImage.SetProfile"; $image; "IPTC"; "" ) ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "GMImage.SetProfile"; $image; "EXIF"; "" ) ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "GMImage.SetProfile"; $image; "XMP"; "" ) ]
# save
Set Variable [ $NewImage ; Value: MBS("GMImage.WriteToJPEGContainer"; $Image) ]
If [ MBS("IsError") = 0 ]
Set Field [ Get Preview::Preview ; $NewImage ]
Set Field [ Get Preview::Made using ; "GraphicsMagick" ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("GMimage.Release";$Image) ]
Exit Script [ Text Result: ]
End If
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("GMimage.Release";$Image) ]
End If
As you see we load an image from a container field or a variable with a container value. Then we scale it to a maximum width of 1000 pixels. We remvoe metadata and then write out a JPEG image.
We could add a call to GMImage.SetDensity in order to change resolution metadata if needed.
For next plugin version we simplify the use of CURLSMultiMBS class. You can use it as before or skip making your own instance and just call the new sharedInstance method. This will create an instance if needed and returns you one. If you create an instance yourself, sharedInstance will return that one.
For CURLSMultiMBS to work, you need a timer which calls Perform regularly. We add an AutoPerform property to enable automatic mode, where the plugin runs a timer to call Perform regularly. The AutoPerform will be true on the automatic created instance from sharedInstance method.
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New in this prerelease of the 23.2 plugins:
- Updated Xcode to version 14.3.
- Changed default for OptionConnectionTimeout in CURLSMBS class to 10 seconds (unless you change it) to avoid long stalls in your application of 2 minutes when server is not reachable.
- Updated SQLAPI to version 5.2.4b3.
- Added new methods to CURLSMultiMBS to make asynchronous transfers easier.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New in this prerelease of version 13.2 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
- Updated Xcode to version 14.3.
- Changed minimum version of macOS to 10.13.
- Improved EmailParser.Attachment function to better handle PDF documents and return them as PDF container with preview.
- Adjusted plugin for the next version of FileMaker.
- Fixed a bug in MessageComposer functions on newer iOS versions.
- Changed container handler to only put in MAIN item for FileMaker 13 or newer.
- Changed default for CURL.SetOptionConnectionTimeout to 10 seconds (unless you change it) to avoid long stalls in your application of 2 minutes when server is not reachable.
- Updated SQLAPI to version 5.2.4b3.
- Added identifier value to the JSON returned by CNContact.JSON function.
- Added root name parameter to Dictionary.ToXML function.
- Changed Audit.Delete and Audit.Delete2 to record new fields found before deleting with Delete instead of Create.
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
DropBox folder or ask for being added to the DropBox shared folder.
Since Microsoft added some PDF functions to their frameworks in Windows 10, we can now implement a plugin for it. That got possible since we dropped Windows 7 and require newer functions for component management in Windows 8. For MBS Xojo Plugins 23.2, we add the new classes for you to try out:
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Since Microsoft added some PDF functions to their frameworks in Windows 10, we can now implement this to our MBS FileMaker Plugin. That got possible since we dropped Windows 7 and require newer functions for component management in Windows 8. For MBS FileMaker Plugin 13.2, we add the new functions for you to try out:
(more)
We got this sample code for a client combining an example for MS SQL Server with SQLDatabaseMBS class and some sample code for rendering a picture via DynaPDFMBS class from PDF data. Please note that we use ImportPDFPage to only import the page we like to render.
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Once again we have April and thus we celebrate the 23rd anniversary of our company this weekend.
Time flies and it wasn't long ago, where we had to cancel the 20th anniversary party. Looks like it may be time to start planning the 25th birthday!
Thanks everyone for supporting us over the years and see you at the next conference!
If you need a new license this week, you can use coupon code Birthday for a little discount.
If you have a wish for a new plugin function, feel free to
send us a message.
New in this prerelease of the 23.2 plugins:
- Added AudioChannels, AudioSamplesPerSecond, VideoFrameRate, and AudioBitsPerSample to MFPMediaItemMBS class.
- Added DataToBinary function to MongoClientMBS class.
- Added NowUTC and Time functions to MongoClientMBS class.
- Added PopOverWidth, PopOverHeight, and popover properties to PHPickerViewControllerMBS class.
- Added printing and preview to ScintillaControlMBS with new FormatRange method.
- Added ScintillaRangeToFormatMBS class.
- Added ShowKeyboardMBS and HideKeyboardMBS functions.
- Added support for WebP pictures to GraphicsMagick functions.
- Added WebPVersion function to GMImageMBS class.
- Added Windows PDF classes.
- Enabled lz4 and zstd for Archive functions.
- Enabled zstd for curl library.
- Fixed a bug in libTiff compilation for Windows 64-bit, which broke TiffPictureMBS reading of tiff.
- Fixed a memory leak in VNTargetedImageRequestMBS, VNSequenceRequestHandlerMBS and VNImageRequestHandlerMBS when passing in a Xojo picture.
- Fixed a problem in ScintillaControlMBS where TextChanged event would sometimes pass extra bytes in the text parameter.
- Fixed a problem which prevents JavaVMMBS to initialize on macOS and Linux with current JDK 19.
- Fixed bug in setStatusText method when passing empty text for ScintillaControlMBS control.
- Fixed code to automatically find libjvm.dylib on macOS to work with JDK 19.
- Fixed DefaultBackgroundColor property in WebView2ControlMBS control, so you can set it in Open event.
- Fixed HeightDPI and WidthDPI in WindowsDisplayMBS class to be zero if unknown instead of a big negative number.
- Fixed LostFocus event for NSTextFieldControlMBS control.
- Fixed LostFocus event in NSSearchFieldControlMBS control to not fire too early.
- Merged a few plugin parts to reduce number of dylibs.
- Moved WordFileMBS class to Tools plugin.
- Removed CallHASPMBS function and HASPHLMBS class. Please use HASPHLDMBS class.
- Removed EncryptMBS and OldAESMBS classes.
- Removed RockeyMBS, Rockey2MBS, MatrixDongleMBS and SecureDongleXMBS classes.
- Updated CanvasGesturesMBS to work with desktop controls.
- Updated curl to version 8.0.1.
- Updated LibArchive to version 3.6.2.
- Updated libwebp to version 1.3.0.
- Updated PHPickerConfigurationMBS class and related onces to work on macOS, too.
- Updated SQLAPI to version 5.2.4b2.
- Updated SQLite to version 3.41.2.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New in this prerelease of version 13.2 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
DropBox folder or ask for being added to the DropBox shared folder.
Did you sign up for
FileMaker Conference dotfmp.berlin 2023?
Just two months until the conference organized by
Egbert Friedrich takes place from 1st to 3rd June 2023 in Berlin, Germany.
As the conference is in English, this is your chance to meet people from around the world at a conference in Europe. And for a lot of people it's easier to get to Berlin than to cross the atlantic and deal with US immigration officers.
Who
dotfmp is an effort of various leading European FileMaker Developers. It is meant to bring all kinds of higher level developers together to share knowledge, educate and challenge each other.
When
dotfmp starts at the 30th May 2023 in the later afternoon with a relaxed "Beer and Sausages" in one of the most famous Berlin Beergarden. The session days itself last from 1st until 3rd June with various socializing events in the evenings. Additionally you may stay the Sunday 4th June to see more from Berlin and its surroundings.
What
dotfmp is a 3 Day-Unconference, Meetup, Hangout or Barcamp. It is an informal and self-organized effort to meet on a personal base.
Where
dotfmp takes place in one of the most famous spots in Berlin. The Schankhalle Pfefferberg is located in a vibrant area with a very short walking distance to all the famous restaurants.
Why
We feel there are far too few possibilities to talk to, learn from, and hangout with fellow developers in a relaxed and informal environment. And we'd like to share work and get feedback from people chewing on similar challenges.
If you like to join the conference and present something, please
register soon.
Did you sign up for FileMaker Conference dotfmp.berlin 2023?