Technology – Page 9 – Xojo Programming Blog

Guest Post: Using the Graphics Class to Create PDF Documents

Published May 23, 2019 by Christian Schmitz

Monkeybread Software started with the DynaPDF plugin for Xojo about twelve years ago. As DynaPDF is a C++ library, the wrapping plugin mimics the original C API and offers it for Xojo. Over the years a lot more convenient methods have been added to make the plugin more Xojo-like. For example, newer methods can process pictures directly, take colors as Xojo color values and allow drawing of styled text directly.

Since the early days there has been the feature request to use the graphics class in Xojo to draw to a PDF document. We recently came back to this old feature request and decided to try a new way to implement it and our new code seems to work just fine. With some help from Xojo engineers, we even got the alignment right.

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Guest Post: Adding Language Translation to Your Xojo Apps

Guest Post: Adding Language Translation to Your Xojo Apps

Published May 13, 2019 by Tim Dietrich

Recently, I was asked by a client if it would be possible to build language translation functionality into a Xojo-based middleware solution that I had developed for them. The Xojo app obtains product information (including product names, descriptions, and other marketing-related information) from suppliers via a SOAP call, and returns the data in a JSON-encoded response. They wanted to be able to translate the product information, which is provided in English, to other languages (such as French, German, etc). The client wanted something similar to Google Translate. However, they wanted the translation function to be built directly into the app and to be performed “on demand.”

I did some research and found that Amazon provides a service that does exactly what the client was asking for. The service, called Amazon Translate, is available as one of many services that are available through Amazon Web Services.

In this post, I’ll walk you through the process of getting signed up for Amazon Translate, and then share some code that you can use to add language translation to your own Xojo projects. We’ll use the MBS Xojo CURL Plugin, which makes calling the Amazon Translate API easy. But first, let’s learn a little about Amazon Translate.

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XDC 2019 Keynote Recap

Published May 1, 2019 by Alyssa Foley

Geoff just wrapped up the keynote here in sunny, windy Miami, Florida.

After a brief introduction welcoming attendees from 11 different countries, Geoff began the keynote by sharing some graphs showing how the Xojo community has been changing.

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Canvas: How to Create Custom UI Controls

Canvas: How to Create Custom UI Controls

Published April 15, 2019 by Javier Menendez

Xojo includes a good amount of UI controls available from the Library for Desktop, Web, iOS and Raspberry Pi targets. These are the pieces that allow you to layout the user interface of your apps: properties, methods and events that, when combined, define the specific behavior of the project at hand.

Sometimes, subclassing the available controls is the answer to add specific behaviors you need. But what happen when none of the controls offer what you need, whether visually or functionally? The answer is the Canvas class (for Desktop projects), WebCanvas class (for Web projects) and iOSCanvas class for iPhone and iPad devices. But how do you create your own UI controls from scratch? Read on to learn…

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Avoiding Common Programming Pitfalls

Avoiding Common Programming Pitfalls

Published February 25, 2019 by Paul Lefebvre

Code doesn’t care whether you are new to programming or an old pro, a citizen developer or the head of engineering, some missteps can catch any of us. Read on to learn some of the most common programming pitfalls and how to avoid them.

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Private Repositories are Now Free on GitHub

Published January 9, 2019 by Paul Lefebvre

GitHub just announced that private repositories are now free. GitHub has been a great source for Xojo open-source projects, so being able to also use it for private repositories is a nice bonus.

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Low-Code Doesn’t Mean No Control

Published December 20, 2018 by Geoff Perlman

There are low-code platforms that don’t provide ability to call directly into the operating system. Fortunately, Xojo does. Our vision for Xojo has always been to make the tool easy to learn and highly productive to develop applications, without sacrificing power when you need it.

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SQLite 3.25 Adds Window Functions and Improves ALTER TABLE

Published December 18, 2018 by Paul Lefebvre

Xojo 2018 Release 4 updated SQLite to 3.25. The SQLite 3.25 release had two significant changes: Window Functions and an improved ALTER TABLE command.

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Updating Code That Used The Graphics Property

Published December 6, 2018 by Paul Lefebvre

Prior to Xojo 2018r3 Window and Canvas both had a Graphics property that you could access and draw to. This was deprecated in 2011 because it had significant performance issues on all platforms. The preferred way to draw your graphics since 2011 has been to use the Window.Paint or Canvas.Paint event handlers and the supplied parameter g As Graphics.

Starting with Xojo 2018r3, this Graphics property was removed from Window and Canvas so if you had code that was still relying on it, that code will no longer compile. Here are some tips on how you can migrate your code to use the Paint event handlers and tell the Canvas to update with a call to Invalidate.

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Category: Technology