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.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr4

• Added Identifier property to NSCellMBS, NSMenuItemMBS, NSMenuMBS and NSViewControllerMBS classes.
• Added DeviceInfo and GetReportDescriptor functions to HIDAPIDeviceMBS class.
• Added BusType property and constants to HIDAPIDeviceInfoMBS class.
• Updated HIDAPI to version 0.14.
• Fixed mouseEvent shared method in NSEventMBS to return NSEventMBS.
• Added identify, resting, deviceSize and normalizedPosition properties to NSTouchMBS class.
• Updated our Unicode extension for SQLite in InternalSQLiteLibraryMBS class to work in Xojo 2024r1 on Windows.
• Fixed isSelectedForSegment method for NSSegmentedControlMBS to return correct value.
• Added PreferLowPowerDevice and PreferredRenderingAPI properties in SCNViewMBS class.

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.

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

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

• 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.

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

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr2

• 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.

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.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 24.1pr1

• 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.

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.