Current Notes 56

Software

fp Plugin 1.3 – Floating Point plugin update

RSReport 2008.2.1 – Minor update to this interesting reporting alternative

Ben’s Listbox Extras 1.3 – Update to this ListBox subclass

Report Writer – The first version of an open-source report writer for REALbasic is available to check out

Information

Escaping Quotes – You can embed quotes into your strings

Post-Build Scripts – How to run an IDE script after building your app

ALTER TABLE workaround for SQLite – An easy way to workaround some limitations

Strings can be Nil – I had no idea

Valentina Blog – Currently discussing new features of the Valentina 4.1 beta

Community

MySQL Plugin – An update from REAL regarding the status of the MySQL plugin

How I Came to REALbasic – By REAL Software engineering Norman Palardy

RB Pain Points: Solution #2 – A lesson about (lack of) early app localization that we should all pay attention to

REAL Studio Announced

[Updated 3/19/2008 to reflect REAL's change to the Pro package]

The cat is out of the bag: REAL Software has announced REAL Studio, a new edition of REALbasic.

You can find out more from the REAL Studio FAQ.

So what’s the difference?

REAL Studio has a much higher price: $1500. It also the following:

• a cross-platform license to run REALbasic on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux
• a cross-platform license to REAL Server
• Priority technical support
• 12 months of updates (instead of 6) for new purchasers

Hand-in-hand with this announcement is a new lower price for REALbasic Professional. It drops from $500 to $300. But you also lose a few features for your $200. The Professional edition no longer includes the following as they are now exclusively REAL Studio features:

• IDE scripting
• Code Profiling

Whether that will matter to you will depend on how you use REALbasic. It certainly seems like a fair tradeoff for the price decrease. But if you rely heavily on those features, you’re either going to have to learn to live without them or be prepared to switch to REAL Studio.

The good news is that at least for the short term, this won’t affect current users. REAL is offering a free upgrade to REAL Studio for all current REALbasic Professional users. This means you’ll get to keep your current features and take advantage of the new stuff for the duration of your subscription (which you can currently extend for up to 2 years before April 14th).

Plenty of others will offer their opinions on whether this is good or bad for REALbasic and its community. I will just offer this:

REAL has made a decision that changes things for most REALbasic developers (and they did get feedback on it before the official announcement and made changes after the announcement based on feedback). I’m sure the NUG and forums will be awash with opinions one way or the other. Since people generally hate change, I suspect most comments will be critical of this. It’s difficult to accept losing features you once had.

However, I’m certain REAL feels that this change is in the best interests of REALbasic, REAL Software and the community. I would just like to encourage people, even if they vehemently disagree with this change, to provide constructive criticism and not just whine and complain.

Personally, I am in favor of this change.

Current Notes 55

Software

DateControl 3.7 – Adds improved Vista support

TreeView 4.2 – Several fixes and new features to this slick control from Einhugur

RbApp 2.2.1 – Minor bug fixes to this control suite

Information

REALbasic Shells Are Not Unix Shells – An important difference to note

Community

ARBP 1-Year Anniversary Event: Meet the Board Chat – Meet the board, asking questions and maybe win something!

REALbasic vs C# Performance – An attempt to compare the creation of large files using RB and C#

Exceptions were a mistake – Why they aren’t as useful as you might think

Cocoa Update – Straight from the horse’s mouth (CEO Geoff Perlman)

What’s Good for Apple is Good for REALbasic – Geoff also tells us why more Macs means more demand for REALbasic

Current Notes 54

Software

REALbasic 2009 Release 1 – Release Notes here. So far, I’ve migrated 4 projects without any trouble.

SQLite Migrator 1.1.0 – Migrate from just about any database to SQLite

fp Plugin – Adds two multi-precision number types to REALbasic

Pill Button Control 1.5 – A “spotlight”-style button

SourceList Control 1.5 – Lots of updates to this slick control that mimics the iTunes SourceList

Action Bar Control 1.5 – A button bar that work great with SourceList Control

Bundle Support 1.0 – A uniform way to deal with external resources during development

Listbox Snapshot 1.0 – Store and restore ListBox contents, preserving all styles and data

Information

REALbasic Developer Magazine March/April 09 – My column this month is about the new Valentina Report Designer

UTF-8 Validation for REALbasic – Validate UTF-8 as defined by RFC 3629

Community

On-Target Reports Icon Contest – If you have any icon design skills at all, please submit an entry!

REALbasic’s New TrueWindow Feature – Newly added to REALbasic 2009 Release 1

My Thoughts on REALbasic 2009 Release 1 – Thoughts from REAL Software Engineer, William Yu

REALbasic 2009r1 Released! – Thoughts from Thom McGrath

Current Notes 53

Software

GraffitiSuite Update – Several changes to this UI component suite

Formatted Text Control 1.4 – I daresay it’s the most powerful text editing control available for REALbasic

Community

ARBP Chat now open – Visit the 24/7 ARBP chat room to talk with fellow RB developers.

COM Support – A great discussion on why REALbasic ought to have better COM support

Utter Silence and COM – More on the COM discussion

Three Kinds of Cross-Platform – And REALbasic is #3

More Mucking with Open Event Sequences – Mysteries unravelled. Or not.