April 25, 2005

This Week's Top News Blurbs

REAL Software Intros Spotlight Plugin for Mac OS X 10.4
REAL Software today announced the availability of a REALbasic plugin for Spotlight, the new desktop search technology built into Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger." The plugin provides Spotlight with the ability to rapidly search REALbasic source code from projects in REALbasic 3.0 and later. The Spotlight plugin for REALbasic requires no changes to an existing REALbasic installation. Mac OS X "Tiger" users can download the free REALbasic Spotlight plugin here.

Radical Breeze Takes Over Formation
Radical Breeze has announced that it has taken over the development and support of Formation, the Highly-rated information organizer originally developed by Mekanica Software. Formation is made with REALbasic from REAL Software, Inc. Existing Formation customers will receive registration codes for the new Radical Breeze version for free. Formation is a unified idea and personal information organizer. Keep a journal, jot down ideas, make a grocery list, track your DVD collection, manage passwords, design entire creative projects and much much more!

REALbasic Stuff

GraphPro v2.0 - Graphing Classes For REALbasic
GraphPro is a flicker-free graphing class for REALbasic. It is cross-platform, working on Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Windows, and now Linux. GraphPro costs $75 (which includes the source code). For a detailed list of features (far too many to list here) see the GraphPro website.

Listbox Extension Classes v0.2.1
Tom Benson has created an extended Listbox class with features to hide and show rows without having to delete and reload the data. All row data and cell data is preserved, including celltags, rowpictures and the position of the row in the list when it is hidden. The most apparent use of this class is filtering a list when searching for a particular row or rows. New to 0.2 and 0.2.1 are the ability to enable and disable individual rows and an open source class by Author Unknown which enables you to drag reorder columns in a listbox, complete with translucent drag image. If you are the author of this, please let Tom know.

Reusable Classes from RbApp v1.0
RbApp is a platform-neutral collection of reusable REALbasic classes to help programmers create industrial strength applications on Macintosh and Windows. RbEdit provides enhanced editing of large text files with Undo/Redo and Find/Replace commands. RbView provide a rich drawing framework based on REALbasic's graphic classes. RbPalette offers toolbars and palettes for any platform. Also included are RBCommand, RbStringList, RbXML, RbHelp, and RbLibrary. RbApp is $195 for a single developer with a free trial download. It comes with sample projects, a printed and PDF manual, royalty-free distribution rights for compiled applications and both Mac OS X and Windows installers.

ElfData Plugin v4.2
The ElfData plugin is a string processing library, which can make many string processing operations both simpler and faster, and even make things possible that before, weren't possible! The ElfData plugin is built for Unicode from the start, offering almost all of it's functionality for Unicode as well as bytes. There are many things you can't do in REALbasic that you can with ElfData, like verify that some text is valid UTF8, or check for BOMs automatically and more. Version 4.2 contains some minor speed improvements and bug fixes.

Introducting the ElfData Showcase
In response to question asking how fast the ElfData plugin really is, Theodore Smith (the author) has created a testbench application which compares ElfData functions against built-in functions and popular libraries made by other people. For example, there is a graph showing my XML parser running between 2-6x faster for a certain parameter range. Another graph with the ElfData string append is running between up to few hundred times faster, before reaching the end of the test. My dictionary was tested to be running at 16x faster than RB for a certain data-set.

The ZAZ Releases Multiple-Document Application Template v1.1
The ZAZ Studios released an open source multiple-document application template which includes a lot of the features a multi-doc app will need, including "Save All", "Revert to Saved", and "Open Recent" menu items, printing of documents with little input from the developer, preferences which are automatically loaded and saved, and require no conversion to/from REALbasic datatypes (including FolderItems and Colors), document Modification Tracking which requires little input from the developer. This template takes the pain out of designing a Multiple-Document Application. And it's completely cross-platform.

Made With REALbasic

The Fontz v4.2
The Fontz is a versatile font utility that allows you to browse installed and uninstalled fonts, see what they look like at different type sizes, styles and colors, and even group them in like categories using a "wysiwyg" group editor. For fast and easy browsing run either a manual or an automatic font slide show where you can change size, color, style, and even the display text while the slide show is still in progress. You can view or print out individual fonts, any of your font groups, all installed fonts, and even folders of uninstalled fonts. Version 4.2 is a free upgraded for registered users ($12 shareware).

Picture Patrol v1.5
Picture Patrol builds huge collections of free pictures overnight. It uses a simple interface to replace what once was a time-consuming task with essentially some settings and a few mouse clicks. Unlike ordinary newsreaders that require your constant intervention, Picture Patrol independently downloads articles from your favorite newsgroups, decodes pictures attached to them and saves these images into the directories you set, neatly grouped by date and newsgroup. Picture Patrol 1.5 runs under Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/2003, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.

Mask-R-Aid v2.1
Mask-R-Aid is a tool for creating application and document icon masks. An icon consists of an icon image and a mask that tells the system how to render the transparency of the icon. Normally the icon image is rendered with no transparency for most of the icon image (the interior pixels). Transparency comes into play when you want to do shadows or use a photo-realistic icon. Mask-R-Aid provides three different converter algorithms for creating a mask: Flat Mask, Edge Blend, and Grayscale Edge Blend. Mask-R-Aid supports Mac OS X 10.2 and later and is $15 to register.

April 16, 2005

Made With REALbasic

Radical Breeze Tax Day Specials
Radical Breeze is cutting the price of all of its products (including DiscBlaze Pro, their popular CD/DVD burning application) by half to celebrate Tax Day, the most popular and beloved holiday in the United States. The deal ends midnight (PST) on Saturday, April 16th. This means that between now and April 16, DiscBlaze Pro (normally $29.95) can be purchased for $19.97; the award winning file organization utility Macabinet (normally $14.95) for $7.47; or even the Radical Breeze 10 Pack (which contains all ten of our applications, over $140 worth) for $24.97.

AE Monitor v1.7.2
AE Monitor allows Mac OS X developers to capture, analyze, and recreate Apple Events. Users can examine the internal workings of each event and create source code to replicate the event from their applications. Many development environments are supported, including REALbasic, Perl, Tcl, and any environment that can use the AEBuild() command with an AEGizmo string. Additionally, AE Monitor can create native REALbasic code to send Apple Events. Version 1.7.2 is a bug fix release only; no new features have been added. AE Monitor requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later and a free 30-day demo is available.

REALbasic Stuff

REALbasic Database Examples Updated
Norman Palardy updated most of the database examples included with REALbasic to use the new v5.5 REAL Database. Many new users have asked why the examples didn't work right out of the box so we're happy that Norman has done this. The examples can be found here.

ICMPSocket Classes v1.0
Charlie Boisseau released the ICMPSocket classes v1.0. These classes provide a full x-platform ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) implementation written in pure REALbasic. Typically, ICMP is used for Ping and Traceroute implementations, although many other uses exist and should be achievable with these classes. Currently Mac OS X (Mach-O) and Win32 (NT/2000/XP) are supported, with a little work Linux should work too. Examples included for Ping, Ping Scan and Traceroute. The ICMPSocket classes are completely free and open for anyone who wants them.

App Bundler v1.0fc2
App Bundler from BitJuggler Software is an application designed to create OS X bundles (and optionally OS 9 packages) from an unbundled Carbon and/or Classic application. App Bundler was primarily designed for bundling REALbasic applications. However, it should work on any application that includes the appropriate data. App Bundler is freeware and open-source. Distribution and modification notes are available in the Read Me file included with the App Bundler distribution.

LongTask pre v1.0 Release 2
Mark Nutter has released a pre-release of the LongTask class. If you have a long, time-consuming task, and wish to avoid the Evils of DoEvents()TM, you can move your time-consuming code into the DoTask event of a subclass of LongTask. If your task takes more than about 1.2 seconds (programmer modifiable), then a progress dialog pops up informing the user of how much time is left. Release 2 fixes awhich fixes a timing bug that could occur if the LongTaskTimer tried to open up the progress dialog just as the LongTask thread was shutting everything down. There were also some additions and improvements.

April 9, 2005

REAL Software News

Free RB License for VB Users
REAL Software is offering REALbasic 5.5 licenses free to all Visual Basic 6 owners. "We welcome Visual Basic developers to the REALbasic community and encourage them to give us their feedback," stated Geoff Perlman, president and CEO. "We are committed to providing them excellent products and service and a home for many, many years to come." This offer good through April 15, has already attracked over 10,000 Visual Basic users to the REALbasic demo. Licenses are available here, on the REAL Software website.

REALbasic Stuff

New VB to RB Section on RBDocs
RBDocs, an open source volunteer REALbasic documentation site, has added a new section specifically for Visual Basic developers migrating to REALbasic. RBDocs extends a warm invitation to all VB Developers to share their knowledge and insight on the issues and differences encountered between RB and VB so as to help the community as a whole. The RBDocs Wiki is available here.

RB-PHP Utils v1.0
Jonathan Johnson has created a set of php files which help integrate REALbasic code examples onto a website using two php functions: FormatRBCode takes a string, and returns the XHTML source to a syntax highlighted version. It also automatically indents. It is best to be wrapped in <pre></pre>, and GenerateXMLSource which takes a URL to an XML file, and returns a plain-text source version. Although mostly compatible with RBScript, Windows are dealt with in a way that is not compatible. Classes, Interfaces, and Modules should all be compatible with RBScript. Also included are two WordPress 1.5 plugins to integrate this functionality directly into WordPress blogs.

Undo Toolkit v1.3
Undo Toolkit allows you to add unlimited undo and redo to your REALbasic project. The toolkit includes classes that track and record undoable actions, a Window subclass that automatically prompts the user to save changes, support for MacOS X features such as sheet windows and the Aqua "red dot" change flag, and one-to-one replacements for the built-in REALbasic controls. New in version 1.3: New StyledEditField subclass, UndoableEditField is now a subclass of StyledEditField, changes to UndoProvider, UndoGlobal, UndoStack, UndoableRadioButton, UndoableAction and more.

StyledEditField v1.0
StyledEditField is an EditField subclass which implements feature request 'sabrzvbe': A SelStyledText property, allowing you to read or write the EditField's current selection as a StyledText object. Version 1.0 is a proof-of-concept, and was part of an entry in the "REALbasic Olympics" competition; it works as advertised, but has room for further speed optimization.

App Bundler v1.0fc1
App Bundler from BitJuggler Software is an application designed to create OS X bundles (and optionally OS 9 packages) from an unbundled Carbon and/or Classic application. App Bundler was primarily designed for bundling REALbasic applications. However, it should work on any application that includes the appropriate data. App Bundler is freeware and open-source. Distribution and modification notes are available in the Read Me file included with the App Bundler distribution.

LongTask pre v1.0
Mark Nutter has released a pre-release of the LongTask class. If you have a long, time-consuming task, and wish to avoid the Evils of DoEvents()TM, you can move your time-consuming code into the DoTask event of a subclass of LongTask. If your task takes more than about 1.2 seconds (programmer modifiable), then a progress dialog pops up informing the user of how much time is left. Mark adds "The code is free--no royalties, fees or other compensation required, although comments, suggestions, and big-screen plasma TV's are welcome."

Open Source Listbox Extension Classes
Tom Benson has created an extended Listbox class with features to hide and show rows without having to delete and reload the data. All row data and cell data is preserved, including celltags, rowpictures and the position of the row in the list when it is hidden. The most apparent use of this class is filtering a list when searching for a particular row or rows.