Our Blog   Our Claris FileMaker Blog   Our Xojo Blog   Archive     Follow us on Mastodon, Twitter, Xing, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Get started with HIDAPI classes in Xojo

If you have an USB device with HID protocol, you can easily use it from your Xojo application. Please check out the HIDAPIDeviceMBS class for macOS, Windows and Linux. With the recent 24.1 plugins, we upgraded the classes to work even better.

You may start with enumerating of available devices. This should find all the HID devices connected to your computer like various keyboards, mice, joysticks or whatever you connect. For Linux, you may need to use chmod with sudo to grant permissions to all applications to connect to the devices. On macOS and Windows, you may just freely connect to your device as long as no standard driver grabbed it.

Let's enumerate the devices and look for ours:

Dim DevicePath As String // find our device Const VendorID = 1234 Const ProductID = 2345 Dim d As HIDAPIDeviceInfoMBS = HIDAPIDeviceMBS.Enumerate While d <> Nil // go thru all enumerated devices System.DebugLog d.Path+", "+d.ManufacturerString+", "+d.ProductString+", "+d.InterfaceNumber.ToString If d.VendorID = VendorID and d.ProductID = ProductID Then // found it DevicePath = d.Path Exit End If d = d.NextDevice Wend
(more)

MonkeyBread Software Releases the MBS Xojo Plugins in version 24.1

Nickenich, Germany - (March 12th, 2024) -- Monkeybread Software today is pleased to announce MBS Xojo Plugins 24.1 for macOS, Linux and Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin collection currently available for Xojo. MBS Xojo Plugins have been updated and now includes over 3000 classes and 81,000 documented features, and the versatile plugins have gained more new functions:

In our SQL Plugin we have the SQLiteFunctionMBS class to define custom functions for use in SQLite with our plugin. Since we added a path property to InternalSQLiteLibraryMBS module, we can even load our plugin as extension for using custom functions in SQLiteDatabase class, too. Our unicode extension for SQLite got updated for Xojo 2022r4.

Beside our NSSpeechSynthesizer class for speech synthesization we added lower level AVSpeechSynthesizerMBS and related classes for macOS and iOS. If you like to check network availability on macOS and iOS, please check the new NWPathMonitorMBS class.

Our OverlayMBS class allows you to show custom windows and define the content with a picture including transparency and without the usual OS widgets. We rewrote the mouse handling to allow you to move them by background. You can decide to implement mouse events or have the control ignore mouse events altogether.

We rewrote our HIDAPI classes and added a new BusType property to the HIDAPIDeviceInfoMBS class. We added DeviceInfo and GetReportDescriptor functions to HIDAPIDeviceMBS class. We enabled logging for LibUSB on Linux to help finding issues.

To support touch events better on macOS, we upgraded our NSTouchMBS class with new properties. The CanvasGesturesMBS class got events to report touch events and NSEventMBS class can report the touches.

The parser in DynaPDF got upgraded to report current selection text and report all 4 coordinates for the text, useful for rotated text.

The linux libraries in our plugins are optimized for size and lost over 33 MB in total.

Our CURLEmailMBS class can send attachment only emails without text and we added methods in EKEventStoreMBS class to better ask for permissions for events. We added character count and string value to NSCharacterSetMBS class for debugging, the MidiThruConnectionMBS class got a find() function, the SCNViewMBS class can request a preferred rendering API or a low power device, the NSProcessInfoPowerStateDidChangeNotification can report a power state change in NSProcessInfoMBS class and we added willShowContextualMenu and didCloseContextualMenu events to 34 controls.

Finally we updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.84.246, HIDAPI to 0.14 and SQLite to version 3.45.1.

See release notes for a complete list of changes.


MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr6

New in this prerelease of the 24.1 plugins:
  • Reduced size of Win plugin a little bit by optimizing stub code for macOS/Linux.
  • Improved linking of linux libraries to do more stripping of unused code to save 33 MB in total.
  • Removed UniMotionMBS module.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


DynaPDF Licenses and ZUGFeRD invoices

If you plan to do ZUGFeRD or Fracture-X invoices in FileMaker or Xojo, you may sooner or later see our DynaPDF offering. Our MBS FileMaker Plugin and the MBS Xojo DynaPDF Plugin help reading and writing the XML data in the PDF document. We also have XML functions to help building or parsing the XML document. And DynaPDF can help to make a correct PDF/A document for the output and optionally sign it digitally with a certificate.

Read embedded XML

To read a PDF, you need DynaPDF Lite or higher. Once you opened a PDF document for import, you can check access embedded files.

With the Lite version you can import from multipel documents to merge them together. Or extract images or text from the document to analyze them.

(more)

Comparison in Xojo: is vs equals

In Xojo you have two ways to compare objects. You can use equals operators or the is operator. Let us show you when to use "is" instead of equals "=".

The "is" keyword will compare the internal reference value, the pointer to the memory used for the object. This avoids calling any compare operator and is usually faster. If there is no compare operator, the same compare code as for = runs.

If you use the equals sign (or <, <=, >, >= or <>), Xojo will decide whether to call the operator_compare method on the class, if it offers one. But even if the class has such an operator, a compare to a hard coded nil will just do the pointer comparison. Be aware that Xojo looks on the type of variable you use. If you use object for a variable type, the operator isn't called.

When the second object to compare is a variable (or property or function result), the code is different. It first compares whether the first object is nil. If it is not nil, you get a call of the Operator_Compare method if it exists. If it is nil, the second object is. If you ever write an Operator_Compare yourself, please be aware that the other object may be nil.

(more)

xDev Magazine 22.2 Issue

The March/April (22.2) issue of xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:

Vision of the Future? by Marc Zeedar
Apple's Vision Pro is finally here and Marc has thoughts. Lots and lots of thoughts!

Design Patterns Part 3 by Marc Zeedar
Our design pattern series continues with the Factory pattern, which helps you produce new objects.

Rasp Pi Electronic Fun Part 6 by Eugene Dakin
Eugene shows how to use your Raspberry Pi to control a motor.

Hybrid Android Apps by Tim Dietrich
Tim explores the line between fully-native apps and Web apps by introducing a hybrid model that uses Web technologies to make the app more cross-platform.

Opinion: DMA and Apple by Marc Zeedar
The European Union's new law to control big tech is going into effect this month and Apple's "compliance" is controversial.

Plus: Topics such as how to use the Static keyword in Xojo, finding the location of your device, AI, procrastination, and more!

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr5

New in this prerelease of the 24.1 plugins:
  • Fixed an edge case with Replace in JSONMBS where it didn't catch all spots.
  • Fixed problem with Substitute with too small output buffer.
  • Improved CURLEmailMBS class to allow the creation of attachment only emails.
  • Enabled logging for LibUSB on Linux.
  • Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.84.246.
  • Added SelText property for DynaPDFParserMBS class to query found text.
  • Added SelBBox2 method for DynaPDFParserMBS class to query all 4 points of current text box.
  • Changed StringValue in NSCharacterSetMBS class to property, so we see it in the debugger.
  • Added CharacterCount property for NSCharacterSetMBS class for debugging.
  • Improved NSTokenFieldControlMBS by to work better with our custom cell class.
  • Added SetPrintBacktraceAndAbortHandler method to SignalHandlerMBS class.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


MBS Xojo Conference Update

About two months left until we start our MBS Xojo Developer Conference in Andernach, Germany.

With a recent registration from Belgium, we got over 40 people from 13 countries:

🇩🇪, 🇳🇱, 🇬🇧, 🇺🇸, 🇫🇷, 🇨🇭, 🇪🇸, 🇨🇦, 🇵🇱, 🇦🇹, 🇩🇰, 🇸🇪 & 🇧🇪

Friday dinner

For the friday dinner, we will go to the Taverne Olympus, a greek restaurant in Andernach. Family Thomopoulos runs this place successfully since 1981 and looks forward to serve us greek specialties.

We meet 17:40 o'clock outside the hotel and walk over to the restaurant. We may need 15 minutes for about 950m. Basically to the Rhein gate, op the alley and then left the Hochstraße and then walk through the Koblenz gate and follow the Koblenz street to the restaurant on the left side.

If you can't join us for the restaurant, please let us know, so we don't waste a spot. From the restaurant, you can leave at any time to get your train. The station is 1.1km away through Am Stadtgraben and Bahnhof street.

We may be limited to 40 people there. But we assume a few of you leave friday after the last session.

(more)

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr4

New in this prerelease of the 24.1 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


Decouple two features for smaller application sizes

Let's say you make a library, a plugin or just your own set of classes. You use them in various applications, so you add them to your projects. But you don't use all parts always. If you can segment them and maybe help the Xojo compiler, it can strip out unused project items and produce smaller applications.

Use cases may be one project, which can be compiled to both the full version and a demo version. Or a Pro and a Lite version. Or a viewer vs. editor version of the application. Or simply you have a ton of utility classes, but don't need them for the current app. Then you would like to not include all the parts.

We use various of this techniques with MBS Plugin to reduce the size of your built applications. We actively avoid dependencies between plugins as much as possible.

Project Items

The Xojo compiler can strip out whole items in the project. A window that is never referenced in the current version, will be stripped. You can wrap the only reference for one part in a #if section and avoid referencing it in the smaller app version:

#if ProVersion
   Dim e as new EditorWindow
   e.show
#else
   MessageBox "Please buy Pro version."
#endif

You may define boolean constants in a module to do this. Toggle them either manually, via IDE scripting or build steps with scripts. This also helps with target constants to only include some items that are only for one platform:

#if targetWindows then
   WindowsModule.DoSomething
#elseif targetMacOS
   MacModule.DoSomething
#endif

The other module can be stripped. Same for images, classes, controls, windows and other project items.

(more)

MBS Xojo Conference Update

About two months left until we start our MBS Xojo Developer Conference in Andernach, Germany.

More attendees

We got a few more registrations so we can add Denmark, Sweden and Austria to the country list:

🇩🇪, 🇳🇱, 🇬🇧, 🇺🇸, 🇫🇷, 🇨🇭, 🇪🇸, 🇨🇦, 🇵🇱, 🇦🇹, 🇩🇰 & 🇸🇪

New Session

Jeremy will come and talk about handling exceptions. Of course you can ask him questions about mobile development as he has a very successful iOS app business using Xojo.

Managing exceptions like a pro
Detecting bugs and fixing them is very important as a developer.
Managing exceptions can take a lot of time to implement. This session will present Sentry.io using an open-source set of classes written in Xojo.
by Jérémie Leroy
(more)

iODBC update needed

Recently a few clients run into a problem with using ODBC databases:

IM004 [iODBC][Driver Manager]Driver's SQLAllocEnv() failed

The ODBC manager (called iODBC) can't load the ODBC driver for the database you like to connect to. By default on macOS we load "/usr/lib/libiodbc.2.dylib" as the ODBC manager, but this library seems to be outdated. (more)


MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr3

New in this prerelease of the 24.1 plugins:
  • Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.83.243.
  • Implemented better MovableByWindowBackground for OverlayMBS class on Windows to work with mouse events.
  • Fixed a bug in DateDifferenceMBS class related to an overflow in January.
  • Enabled allTouches in NSEventMBS class for macOS.
  • Added touchesBeganWithEvent, touchesCancelledWithEvent, touchesEndedWithEvent and touchesMovedWithEvent events to CanvasGesturesMBS class.
  • Fixed an issue in MBS Xojo SQL Plugin where an error message would be cut on the first character improperly encoded.
  • Improved MBS Xojo SQL Plugin to better return error messages if the ODBC driver provided them with ASCII instead of UTF16/32 encoding.
  • Added willShowContextualMenu and didCloseContextualMenu events to 34 controls.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr2

New in this prerelease of the 24.1 plugins:
  • Updated our headers for NetSNMP library.
  • Added AVSpeechSynthesizerMBS and related classes.
  • Changed SetLicenseKey in DynaPDFMBS class to raise exception if you call it in debug mode after calling SetLicenseKeyGlobal to suggest you to remove the SetLicenseKey call.
  • Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.83.242.
  • Changed Bounds, GPTS and LPTS in DynaPDFMeasureMBS to be double.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


Did you know that you can load extensions in SQLite?

For a few years now it is possible to load an extension both in MBS Xojo SQL Plugin using SQLite as well as into Xojo's built-in SQLiteDatabase. But now we have something new for you here:

You can register custom functions to use in the SQLite database and define them in Xojo.

(more)

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr1

New in this prerelease of the 24.1 plugins:
  • Added MovableByWindowBackground property for OverlayMBS class.
  • Added requestWriteOnlyAccessToEvents, requestFullAccessToReminders and requestFullAccessToEvents to EKEventStoreMBS class.
  • Updated dyncall library to version 1.4.
  • Added new kCallMode* constants for DeclareFunctionMBS class.
  • Changed MidiThruConnectionMBS class to be a subclass of MidiObjectMBS class.
  • Added Find method to MidiThruConnectionMBS class.
  • Changed kOptionLibrarySeparator in SQLConnectionMBS class to be a shared method to return ";" on Windows and ":" on macOS/Linux.
  • Improved Data Detector example to include a contextual menu routine for showing actions based on NSDataDetectorMBS class.
  • Fixed a problem with MacBase and CURL plugin loading on older macOS versions.
  • Implemented IgnoreMouseClicks for Windows in OverlayMBS class. Allows mouse clicks to fall through to window behind.
  • Fixed PortAudioStreamRecorderMBS to enforce sample format paFloat32 when using OpenStream() to prevent errors later.
  • Added SQLiteFunctionMBS class to add custom SQLite functions for SQLite database connections.
  • Added Path property to InternalSQLiteLibraryMBS module.
  • Added NWPathMonitorMBS class for macOS/iOS to monitor available network.
  • Added NSProcessInfoPowerStateDidChangeNotification for NSProcessInfoMBS class.
  • Added NWPathMBS, NWEndPointMBS and NWInterfaceMBS classes.
  • Updated SQLite to version 3.45.1.
  • Added new variant of FromDiff method in JSONMBS class with KeyToCopy parameter to copy primary keys.
Download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.

You can subscribe to our Xojo mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.


Andernach City Outlook

Our Xojo conference in Andernach comes closer week by week and we are very excited to host you all in our homeland.

On the last weekend I walked to the Krahnenberg outlook over Andernach. That is a hike you could do if you have an hour or two of spare time in Andernach. The shortest and steepest way is 1.3 km from the Einstein Hotel, but a longer 2.4 km way over road is available or a 2.0 km way along the Rhine and up through the forest.

(more)

Auto crop a signature picture

Recently we got a client with a special problem. A scanned paper with a signature has a lot of unused space around. The scan shows a bit of dust and dirt. People have greasy fingers, the flatbed scanner is not clean and the paper not perfect white. We have to clean it up and got a problem: The normal trim method in GMImageMBS class would remove some of the space, but a dust piece on the scan may prevent it from removing a bigger part.

We found a relative easy fix. We scale down the image to a much smaller size and all the dust points disappear. Now we can check for bounding box of the content and apply the found rectangle to the original picture.

(more)

Charts with more than one x or y axis

When you use our chart classes in the MBS Xojo ChartDirector Plugin, you have the chance to have more than one X axis and/or more than one Y axis. When doing this, there are a few things to think about and some little things

The second axes for X and Y are basically always there, but only shown when you start configuring them. For example you may start with setting a title for the second axis:

// Add a title to the secondary (right) y axis call c.yAxis2.setTitle("Throughtput (MBytes)")

Now you may also want to set some colors:

// Set the axis, label and title colors for the primary y axis to red (&hc00000) // to match the first data set c.yAxis.setColors(&hc00000, &hc00000, &hc00000)
(more)

Add Hover effect to your web controls

Recently a client asked how to give an image shown in a Xojo web app a hover effect. Basically a few WebImageView controls show various pictures and you need to pick one. When the mouse moves over the images, we like to highlight the image by making it darker or brighter.

We quickly thought how to do it:

  • in Xojo directly, there is no property and no MouseEnter/MouseExit events. But the server round trip would make this quite slow anyway.
  • in JavaScript would be faster and run in the browser. Like install mouse event handler and then swap out the image for a darker version.
  • in CSS is the best as the browser does it and we benefit from any graphics acceleration. And CSS doesn't need to swap the image and just darken it with an effect.
(more)

Older blog entries:

2024-01-25 Early bird offer ends for MBS Xojo Developer Conference
2024-01-24 News from the MBS Xojo Plugins Version 24.0
2024-01-22 Data Detectors as context menu
2024-01-18 MBS Xojo Developer Conference Update
2024-01-16 MonkeyBread Software Releases the MBS Xojo Plugins in version 24.0
2024-01-15 DynaPDF Parser for Xojo
2024-01-12 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.0pr8
2024-01-12 MBS Xojo Developer Conference Update
2024-01-10 NSSegmentedControl and NSPathControl
2024-01-08 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.0pr7
2024-01-07 Custom styles in Scintilla Control
2024-01-04 MBS Xojo Developer Conference Update
2024-01-02 xDev Magazine 22.1 Issue
2024-01-02 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.0pr6
2023-12-31 Google Admob Update
2023-12-28 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 23.6pr5
2023-12-27 Four months until MBS Xojo Developer Conference
2023-12-26 iCloud Sync Tips
2023-12-24 Merry Christmas
2023-12-21 MBS Xojo Plugins, version 23.6pr4

Archives

Mar 2024
Feb 2024
Jan 2024
Dec 2023
Nov 2023
Oct 2023
Sep 2023
Aug 2023
Jul 2023
Jun 2023
May 2023
Apr 2023
Mar 2023
Feb 2023
Jan 2023
Dec 2022
Nov 2022
Oct 2022
Sep 2022
Aug 2022
Jul 2022
Jun 2022
May 2022
Apr 2022
Mar 2022
Feb 2022
Jan 2022
Dec 2021
Nov 2021
Oct 2021
Sep 2021
Aug 2021
Jul 2021
Jun 2021
May 2021
Apr 2021
Mar 2021
Feb 2021
Jan 2021
Dec 2020
Nov 2020
Oct 2020
Sep 2020
Aug 2020
Jul 2020
Jun 2020
May 2020
Apr 2020
Mar 2020
Feb 2020
Jan 2020
Dec 2019
Nov 2019
Oct 2019
Sep 2019
Aug 2019
Jul 2019
Jun 2019
May 2019
Apr 2019
Mar 2019
Feb 2019
Jan 2019
Dec 2018
Nov 2018
Oct 2018
Sep 2018
Aug 2018
Jul 2018
Jun 2018
May 2018
Apr 2018
Mar 2018
Feb 2018
Jan 2018
Dec 2017
Nov 2017
Oct 2017
Sep 2017
Aug 2017
Jul 2017
Jun 2017
May 2017
Apr 2017
Mar 2017
Feb 2017
Jan 2017
Dec 2016
Nov 2016
Oct 2016
Sep 2016
Aug 2016
Jul 2016
Jun 2016
May 2016
Apr 2016
Mar 2016
Feb 2016
Jan 2016
Dec 2015
Nov 2015
Oct 2015
Sep 2015
Aug 2015
Jul 2015
Jun 2015
May 2015
Apr 2015
Mar 2015
Feb 2015
Jan 2015
Dec 2014
Nov 2014
Oct 2014
Sep 2014
Aug 2014
Jul 2014
Jun 2014
May 2014
Apr 2014
Mar 2014
Feb 2014
Jan 2014
Dec 2013
Nov 2013
Oct 2013
Sep 2013
Aug 2013
Jul 2013
Jun 2013
May 2013
Apr 2013
Mar 2013
Feb 2013
Jan 2013
Dec 2012
Nov 2012
Oct 2012
Sep 2012
Aug 2012
Jul 2012
Jun 2012
May 2012
Apr 2012
Mar 2012
Feb 2012
Jan 2012
Dec 2011
Nov 2011
Oct 2011
Sep 2011
Aug 2011
Jul 2011
Jun 2011
May 2011
Apr 2011
Mar 2011
Feb 2011
Jan 2011
Dec 2010
Nov 2010
Oct 2010
Sep 2010
Aug 2010
Jul 2010
Jun 2010
May 2010
Apr 2010
Mar 2010
Feb 2010
Jan 2010
Dec 2009
Nov 2009
Oct 2009
Sep 2009
Aug 2009
Jul 2009
Apr 2009
Mar 2009
Feb 2009
Dec 2008
Nov 2008
Oct 2008
Aug 2008
May 2008
Apr 2008
Mar 2008
Feb 2008
XML: RSS Feed XML: Atom Feed