
Nickenich, Germany - (March 9th, 2021) -- MonkeyBread Software today is pleased to announce
MBS FileMaker Plugin 11.1 for macOS, iOS, Linux and Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin currently available for FileMaker Pro. As the leading database management solution for Windows, macOS, iOS and the web, the FileMaker Pro Integrated Development Environment supports a plugin architecture that can easily extend the feature set of the application.
MBS FileMaker Plugin 11.1 has been updated and now includes over 6500 different functions, and the versatile plugin has gained more new functions:
We have new
IBAN functions to validate bank account numbers. You can format the IBANs for printing with spaces or get the in compact style. We can calculate the checksum and provide example IBANs for various countries. You can query a regular expression to find IBAN within some text with our
RegEx functions.
For macOS and iOS we have new functions for data detectors. That is the feature Apple provides for applications like Safari or Mail to identify data within the text. With our
RegEx.DataDetector function you can detect phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, postal addresses and dates in FileMaker.
If you use FileMaker on macOS you can enjoy new buttons for
calculation dialogs to evaluate expression and check for syntax errors. In custom functions editing dialog you can check your functions and define a test case using comments to run your custom functions with a specific set of parameters. Links to MBS functions in calculations can now also be links to Dash application.
For
DynaPDF we added
DynaPDF.Table.SetCellStyledText function to fill tables with styled text from FileMaker easily. The styled text conversion now includes super- and subscript styles. DynaPDF can be used with ZUGFeRD in newer version 2.1.1.
We added a couple of
utility functions: The
Archive.CompressContainer function to quickly archive a container. Use
Math.FormatNumber to format a number with desired decimal separator and number of decimals. With
Math.NormInv you can calculate the NormInv function like in Excel.
For
dictionary functions we added a new
Dictionary.AddDictionary function to add one dictionary to an existing one. Use
Dictionary.ToJSON to convert to JSON and the new
Dictionary.FromJSON function to convert back to a dictionary. In
List functions you can search lists with
List.Find and
QuickList.Find functions.
The FileMaker Pro on Windows we implemented
PKCS12.ShowDialog and
X509.ShowDialog functions to show certificate in standard dialogs. We implemented
WebView.StopLoading for Windows.
For iOS we improved the
QLPreviewPanel functions to allow editing of documents. You can show a PDF document or image and have the user annotate documents with the
built-in markup tools. Then you can save the modified PDF document back in the container. Use
iOSApp.InstallOpenURLHandler and related functions to catch URL requests to your custom FileMaker iOS SDK application.
Finally we updated CURL library to version 7.75.0, DukTape to 2.6, DynaPDF to 4.0.49.139, dyncall to 1.2, LCMS to 2.12, LibXL to 3.9.4, LibXML to 2.9.10, LibXSLT to 1.1.34, openssl to 1.1.1i, SQLAPI to 5.1.4b5, Xcode to 12.4 and the plugin SDK for version 19.2.
See
release notes for a complete list of changes.

Nickenich, Germany - (March 9th, 2021) -- MonkeyBread Software today is pleased to announce
MBS Xojo Plugins 21.1 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 2800 classes and 72,000 documented features, and the versatile plugins have gained more new functions:
For macOS and iOS we have new functions for data detectors. That is the feature Apple provides for applications like Safari or Mail to identify data within the text. With our
NSDataDetectorMBS class you can detect phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, postal addresses and dates in Xojo. On that way we implemented
NSRegularExpressionMBS class to do regular expressions using Apple's frameworks.
You may know our
BigNumberMBS class, a 320bit floating point number. For scientific math we were asked for a something bigger, so we created
BiggerNumberMBS class. The new class provides a 2560bit floating point number with a 512 bit exponent and a 2014 mantissa. This provides about 600 digits of precision. For both classes we added 30 new trigonometry functions.
To use high level APIs for macOS and iOS applications we got
NSNetServiceMBS and
NSNetServiceBrowserMBS classes. You can publish a service and find other services, e.g. have your iOS app find the companion macOS app.
Recently we found
DuckDB, an open source database engine similar to SQLite, but with column based data storage (instead of row based like SQLite). Depending on what you do with the database, this implementation may be much faster since it is optimized to quickly walk over values in a column. Check out
DuckDatabaseMBS class in Xojo to use both in-memory or file based databases.
We upgraded our
PDFKit classes to have over 200 additional methods and properties to work with annotations. We added
PDFAppearanceCharacteristicsMBS class to specify more options for appearance streams.
For Windows we got HTMLText or PlainText methods for
WebView2ControlMBS control. The
WindowsShellExecuteAsAdminMBS function may help to run an executable with admin privileges.
We improved the
DeclareCallBackMBS class to work on Windows and Linux for callbacks received in a thread. The plugin routes them to main thread and calls your delegate there. We improved
DirectShow plugin and added
DirectShowAMVideoControlMBS class. The
DirectShowCaptureGraphBuilderMBS class now got a FindPin function and GetStreamConfig can accept an GUID to identify the category for a pin.
For our
SQL Plugin, we implemented Edit/Update for
SQLDatabaseMBS class. We added ErrorMessage property for iOS. To embrace RowSet we added more methods related to it: SQLSelectAsRowSetMT and SQLSelectAsRowSet for
SQLConnectionMBS class and
BuildRowSetMBS global function.
To help debugging memory leaks we got a new
MemoryStatisticsMBS class and the Leak Finder example project. With
AllObjectsOfClassMBS function you can quickly find all objects of a class.
We upgraded
NSCollectionViewControlMBS control to work better and improved the example. Please try the control to get a grid control in your solution to show various container based controls.
For iOS we got a new
iOSPictureMBS module with helper functions specific for iOS. You can export an image or video to the camera roll and get an event when the export finshed from the plugin.
We added more properties to
JSONMBS class, added SetLogEventMask to
GMImageMBS class to enable logging in GraphicsMagick, a new ReadFromPkcs7 function for
X509MBS class and an extra version number line to CURL debug output. Use the
NormInvMBS function to calculate NormInv like in Excel. The new IncludeDataInDebugMessages property for
FMConnectionMBS class helps debugging your requests. And enjoy high resolution drag images on macOS with
InstallDragImageMBS function.
Finally we updated CURL library to version 7.75.0, DukTape to 2.6, DynaPDF to 4.0.49.139 including ZUGFeRD 2.1.1, dyncall to 1.2, LCMS to 2.12, LibXL to 3.9.4, LibXML to 2.9.10, LibXSLT to 1.1.34, openssl to 1.1.1i, Rockey4ND, SQLAPI to 5.1.4b5 and Xcode to version 12.4.
See
release notes for a complete list of changes.

9. März 2021 - Monkeybread Software veröffentlicht heute das
MBS FileMaker Plugin für FileMaker in Version 11.1, mit inzwischen über 6500 Funktionen eines der größten FileMaker Plugins überhaupt. Hier einige der Neuerungen:
Wir haben neue
IBAN Funktionen zur Validierung von Bankkontonummern. Sie können die IBAN für den Druck mit Leerzeichen formatieren oder sie in kompakter Form formatieren. Wir können die Prüfsumme berechnen und Beispiel-IBAN für verschiedene Länder bereitstellen. Mit unseren RegEx-Funktionen können Sie einen regulären Ausdruck abfragen, um IBAN innerhalb eines Textes zu finden.
Für macOS und iOS haben wir neue Funktionen für Datendetektoren. Das ist die Funktion, die Apple für Anwendungen wie Safari oder Mail bereitstellt, um Daten innerhalb des Textes zu identifizieren. Mit unserer Funktion
RegEx.DataDetector können Sie Telefonnummern, E-Mail-Adressen, URLs, Postadressen und Datumsangaben in FileMaker erkennen.
Wenn Sie FileMaker unter macOS verwenden, können Sie sich über neue Schaltflächen für
Berechnungsdialoge freuen, um Ausdrücke auszuwerten und auf Syntaxfehler zu prüfen. Im Bearbeitungsdialog für benutzerdefinierte Funktionen können Sie Ihre Funktionen überprüfen und mit Hilfe von Kommentaren einen Testfall definieren, um Ihre benutzerdefinierten Funktionen mit einem bestimmten Satz von Parametern auszuführen. Links zu MBS-Funktionen in Berechnungen können nun auch Links zu Dash-Applikationen sein.
Für DynaPDF wurde die Funktion
DynaPDF.Table.SetCellStyledText hinzugefügt, um Tabellen einfach mit formatiertem Text aus FileMaker zu füllen. Die Konvertierung von formatiertem Text beinhaltet nun auch hoch- und tiefgestellte Textstile. DynaPDF kann mit ZUGFeRD in der neueren Version 2.1.1 verwendet werden.
Es wurden einige Utility-Funktionen hinzugefügt: Die Funktion
Archive.CompressContainer archiviert einen Container. Mit
Math.FormatNumber können Sie eine Zahl mit dem gewünschten Dezimaltrennzeichen und der Anzahl der Nachkommastellen formatieren. Mit
Math.NormInv können Sie die NormInv-Funktion wie in Excel berechnen.
Bei den
Dictionary Funktionen haben wir eine neue Funktion
Dictionary.AddDictionary hinzugefügt, um ein Dictionary zu einem bestehenden hinzuzufügen. Mit
Dictionary.ToJSON können Sie nach JSON konvertieren und mit der neuen Funktion
Dictionary.FromJSON wieder zurück in ein Dictionary konvertieren. In den
List Funktionen können Sie Listen mit den Funktionen
List.Find und
QuickList.Find durchsuchen.
In FileMaker Pro unter Windows haben wir die Funktionen
PKCS12.ShowDialog und
X509.ShowDialog implementiert, um Zertifikate in Standarddialogen anzuzeigen. Wir haben
WebView.StopLoading für Windows implementiert.
Für iOS haben wir die
QLPreviewPanel Funktionen verbessert, um die Bearbeitung von Dokumenten zu ermöglichen. Sie können ein PDF-Dokument oder ein Bild anzeigen und den Benutzer mit den eingebauten
Auszeichnungswerkzeugen Dokumente annotieren lassen. Anschließend können Sie das geänderte PDF-Dokument wieder im Container speichern. Verwenden Sie
iOSApp.InstallOpenURLHandler und verwandte Funktionen, um URL-Anfragen an Ihre eigene FileMaker iOS SDK-Anwendung abzufangen.
Schließlich haben wir die CURL-Bibliothek auf Version 7.75.0, DukTape auf 2.6, DynaPDF auf 4.0.49.139, dyncall auf 1.2, LCMS auf 2.12, LibXL auf 3.9.4, LibXML auf 2.9.10, LibXSLT auf 1.1.34, openssl auf 1.1.1i, SQLAPI auf 5.1.4b5, Xcode auf 12.4 und das Plugin SDK auf Version 19.2 aktualisiert.
Alle Änderungen in den
Release Notes.
Have you tried our
NSCollectionViewControlMBS control in Xojo?
We got it new in 21.0 and improved it for 21.1 version, so please try it in the next days with the upcoming plugin version.
You can have a resizable grid of containers controls for macOS here. Great as it allows you to use it with a thousand items and containers are created on the fly when you scroll or resize the control. Since we use
ContainerControl in Xojo, you can put whatever control you like on them. The example uses an ImageWell with a Label.
The layout is controlled by the
NSCollectionViewLayoutMBS class. You can configure it with
NSCollectionViewFlowLayoutMBS, the items will nicely flow within the available area. That allows you to set the spacing between items, item size and section sizes.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions.

We see confusion about the different Cloud offerings. Some features are Cloud only or not available on one Cloud, but maybe another. Why?
Because it depends what Cloud you are talking about. Like who runs what FileMaker Server in what data center in what configuration and with what operation system.
If you see a little piece of information, you may not get the full picture. Let us show you few examples:
Do Plugins run in the Cloud?
Yes, of course they run on the FileMaker servers in the Cloud, just not in the current FileMaker Cloud offering from Claris Inc. itself. But other Cloud vendors do support plugins on the server side.
MBS FileMaker Plugin is available for server usage on macOS, Windows and Linux.
OData support is limited to Claris FileMaker Cloud?
No, for OData you need the Linux version of FileMaker Server, which can be used via both Claris FileMaker Cloud and other Cloud offerings using Linux. As long as your hosting company uses Linux for FileMaker Server, you can use OData. Learn more about
OData here. OData is great as it includes schema modifications, something you can't do otherwise by scripts.
Can we use Custom Web Publishing?
Yes, but the FileMaker Server in the Cloud must use FileMaker Server with Windows or macOS. The Linux version does not support Custom Web Publishing with PHP and XML. Thus you can't use those features in the Claris FileMaker Cloud, but go with a hosting company using macOS or Windows.
Can I buy a FileMaker team license with the Cloud server?
Yes, most vendors are happy to sell the license. Please note that for Claris FileMaker Cloud you have to buy the license with the server. Although it may be worth to call Claris Sales and ask if they would provide some discount when you trade in the existing license. Other vendors allow you to bring your own license, which helps to move an on-premise server to the cloud.
What Cloud offerings are available?
When you need to decide on a Cloud offering, please note that there are multiple things and FileMaker Cloud is not an unique name. We list the offering from Claris Inc. as Claris FileMaker Cloud here:
- Claris FileMaker Cloud, great for novice users, who have to just make a brand new solution available to a team.
- Many Claris Partners offer traditional FileMaker Server hosting with MacOS, Linux or Windows on dedicated servers. The Claris Partner search lists dozens of hosting companies.
- FMCloud.fm or similar provides FileMaker Server running via Docker on Linux servers. Using Docker is a bit more efficient than running separate VMs for each server with a full virtualized OS.
- You can rent your own server with a hosting company like AWS EC2, Microsoft Azure, Host Europe or whatever you prefer and install your own copy of FileMaker Server. That may go with macOS, Windows or Linux version FileMaker Server.
As you may see I pointed out
FMCloud.fm, because that is a service with a free trial and you don't need to call someone and ask for a hosting or price. You can click your server, get it running and have your solution running in less than an hour. The great thing on the Cloud is that it is automated, available right away without delays. A fascinating development!
If you know another Claris Partner offering similar service, please let us know. Please do not hesitate to contact us with your questions.

New in this prerelease of the 21.1 plugins:
- Fixed a problem with a crash in CURL with SFTP with empty password or username.
- Added BiggerNumberMBS to have 2560 bit floating point number for even bigger range and precision. 512 bit exponent and 2048 bit fraction.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

New in this prerelease of version 11.1 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:
- Fixed rounding error with Time.Sleep function.
- Fixed a problem with a crash in CURL functions with SFTP with empty password or username.
- Updated plugin SDK for version 19.2.
- Reduced number of exported symbols in Windows DLLs.
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

New in this prerelease of the 21.1 plugins:
- Added iOSPictureMBS module with methods and delegates to export video or image to camera roll.
- Deprecated SetLicenseKey function for DynaPDFMBS class. Please use SetLicenseKeyGlobal instead.
- Fixed an issue with OpenDialogMBS class not returning folderitems properly for alias files.
- Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.49.139.
- Enabled math functions for internal SQLite library for next SQLite version. (see InternalSQLiteLibraryMBS module)
- Added isObject, isArray, isNumber, and isBoolean to JSONMBS class.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

New in this prerelease of version 11.1 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.
You may have seen that we wrap
LibXL into a plugin for Xojo: The
MBS Xojo XL Plugin. We support all the built-in features from
LibXL like read/write Excel documents. That includes older XLS or newer XLSX format as well as templates. But we add a few of our own developments related to Xojo around that. Let us show you.
We have eight classes for you:
- XLBookMBS is the base class for a document.
- XLSheetMBS describes the individual sheets in an Excel document.
- XLFormatMBS defines the formatting of a cell, which may include a font definition.
- XLFontMBS defines a font specification. That may be as simple as bold or a color.
- XLFilterColumnMBS defines filter options for a column.
- XLAutoFilterMBS provides the properties for auto filter options.
- XLCopyOptionsMBS are used for our copy functions to define what to copy.
- XLRichStringMBS allows access in detail on styled text.
Styled Text
We don't just provide you functions to use rich text with
XLRichStringMBS class. We got further and allow you to convert the rich text in Excel into the styled text as Xojo uses it. StyledText function on the class will convert the content to
StyledText and return it, so you can directly assign it to a
TextArea control. With the AddStyledText method you can add text from a TextArea control into a new
XLRichStringMBS object.
For your convenience the
XLSheetMBS class has a method WriteStyledText, where you can directly pass StyledText from
TextArea control to assign styled text to a cell. Our ReadStyledText function will read a cell containing rich text and translate to StyledText object for Xojo.
(more)
For a few years we have worked on integrating the
LibXL library and making functionality available for FileMaker. Beside all the standard built-in features from
LibXL to read/write Excel files, we have some extra functionality developed ourselves:
Copy Cells
LibXL comes with a copy cell command, see
XL.Sheet.CopyCell. Beside that we added
XL.CopyRow to copy content of a row. Similarly
XL.CopyColumn copies a column. As you can pass different book reference numbers, you may even copy from one document to another one or copy from one sheet to another sheet within the same document.
The
XL.CopySheet function can copy the content of a sheet to another document, great if you like to extract one sheet from one document and copy it to a new document. Finally we made
XL.CopyContent to copy the content of all sheets into a new document. That helps to convert between XLS and XLSX, older and newer Excel formats in both directions.
TimeStamps
Since FileMaker uses timestamps, we have
XL.Date.DoubleToTimeStamp and
XL.Date.TimeStampToDouble functions to convert the numeric time values in Excel to/from timestamps in FileMaker.
The
XL.Sheet.CellWriteDate function writes a timestamp or date from FileMaker directly into a cell. You still need to pass a format parameter referencing the date format to show the value later.
(more)

The March/April (19.2) issue of
xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:
Deja Vu by Marc Zeedar
Are you getting tired of API and technology transitions? Does it seem like you're always having to redo perfectly good code because of an OS update?
Getting Started with DynaPDF by Stefanie Juchmes
If you need more PDF power than you can get with Xojo's built-in PDF classes, you should check out Monkeybread's DynaPDF plugin. Stefanie will show you how!
Shake It! by Markus Winter
You know how when you enter an incorrect password on the Mac the dialog will shake to show you it's wrong? Markus has figured out how to do that with pure Xojo.
Maps Part 9 -- Putting GPS Data on the Map by Markus Winter
This time Markus helps a reader by showing how to plot GPS coordinates on a map.
Application Instance by Christian Schmitz
Did you know you can tag an application download with a unique identifier? It's a little tricky, but Christian shows you exactly how to do it.
Plus: Creating a web service with Xojo, picture fills, scrolling pictures, and much more!

New in this prerelease of the 21.1 plugins:
- Added HTMLText or PlainText methods to WebView2ControlMBS class.
- Added IsNull function to JSONMBS class.
- Added IncludeDataInDebugMessages for FMConnectionMBS class.
- Improved DeclareCallBackMBS class to handle asynchronously dispatch on Windows and Linux.
- Added SetLogEventMask and IsLoggingEnabled shared methods to GMImageMBS class.
- Fixed an issue with LZ4MBS decompression failing.
- Fixed problem with DynaPDFMBS where an empty password was not passed as nil in OpenImportFile.
- Updated SQLAPI to version 5.1.4b5.
- Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.49.137.
- Added ResolutionUnit constants to JPEGExporterMBS class.
- Fixed issue for iOS where Transporter complains about __INFO_PLIST segment in plugin library.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

New in this prerelease of version 11.1 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

New in this prerelease of the 21.1 plugins:
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

New in this prerelease of version 11.1 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.
You may have seen Safari, Mail, Notes or other applications highlighting information in some text and they may offer to do something with the data, e.g. take a date and make a new event in your calendar or take an address and add it to your contacts.
Have you wondered how this works?
Apple provides data detectors in their frameworks to identify those data bits. We just added a new class
NSDataDetectorMBS to use those in Xojo. While you can do a lot with regular expressions yourself, these pre-built detectors are convenient to use as they are.
You tell what to look for, either Date, Address, Link, PhoneNumber or TransitInformation. You can combine those types and look for multiple things together. The plugin then uses Apple's framework and returns the result as
NSTextCheckingResultMBS objects for you to inspect. Let us show you the screenshot from our example project:
As you see we have a listbox with results. Each result has always the text found with the position and length to define the range in the original text. Then we provide the type of item found and type specific information. For a phone number this is simply an entry PhoneNumber with the number. If you need to format the phone number, check Using
libPhoneNumber for phone number formatting. For an address, you may see Name, JobTitle, Organization, Street, City, State, ZIP and Country listed. Date results come with date, time zone and duration while links comes with an URL. The items we find are highlighted in the TextArea control in color.
Please try those functions later in the next days with our next pre-release and let us know how they work for you.

New in this prerelease of the 21.1 plugins:
- Added NSNetServiceMBS and NSNetServiceBrowserMBS classes for macOS and iOS.
- Added runOnce method to NSRunLoopMBS class.
- Upgraded BigNumberMBS to a 1280 bit floating point number for even bigger range and precision. 256 bit exponent and 1024 bit fraction.
- Updated InstallDragImageMBS to support newer API and work in Xojo 2020 or newer.
- Changed SQL Plugin to ignore or add @ in parameter name if needed.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

New in this prerelease of version 11.1 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

We had for years the
MBS Xojo Network Kit to provide Bonjour services for Xojo iOS applications.
Since Xojo 2020r2 can use plugins on iOS, we deprecated the Kit and now provide a replacement via
NSNetServiceMBS and
NSNetServiceBrowserMBS classes.
The classes includes:
- asynchronously browses for domains to use
- asynchronously browses for services with given type
- asynchronously publishes services
- query/publish TXT Record data.
- Receive events for a service and in browser.
- Parses IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
- Encode and decode TXT record data.
Seems to work fine so far for console, web, desktop and iOS projects.
If you have needs for performing network tasks using Apple's frameworks, check
NSURLSessionMBS class. It allows upload and download via lots of options and latest TLS encryption.
Coming soon with next pre-release. Please do not hesitate to send us comments, questions or feedback.