4D View Pro: SVG conversion
Do you need to print a 4D form with an embedded 4D View Pro document, or maybe displaying part of the document in a 4D View Pro document? With the VP Convert to picture command, you can create an SVG from a part of the 4D View Pro document and handle it like a picture. We’ll show how in this blog post.
Project databases: beautify your forms with style sheets
Classic 4D binary structures let you define style sheets to specify the font, font size, and text style to use in your forms for both the macOS and Windows platforms. Project databases let you go even further by letting you define the properties of a 4-state button or specify the color and border of all line objects or even set the header height of all of an application’s list boxes! Inspired by the grammar and syntax of CSS, 4D adapted it to meet the specific needs of the forms in 4D project databases. Thanks to style sheets, you can configure all of the properties to create truly visually appealing forms. This blog post shows you how!
4D Write Pro: Style sheets are here
For 4D Write Pro, 4D v18 brings good news: the arrival of style sheets! We’re thrilled to announce that you can now manage your own style sheets for paragraphs or characters.
Manage relations with ease in 4D for iOS
In a previous version of 4D for iOS, we introduced Many to One relations. 4D v18 completes the list of relations available in 4D for iOS by allowing you to easily build the most complete apps with the most engaging user experience you can get on a mobile phone!
Project databases: Managing Users and Groups
Project databases, available in beta in the latest 4D v 17 R-Releases, are now available for production in 4D v18! Among the many changes in 4D v18 is the way user and groups are managed … it’s become much easier, especially deployment. This post will briefly highlight everything you need to know about these changes.
4D View Pro: Manage Printing and PDF export
With the VP PRINT and VP EXPORT DOCUMENT commands, you can now print a document or create a PDF version of it. However, in order to create an appealing document for your customer, you not only need to print a document, but also add headers, footers, define the zoom, define the paper orientation, and so on. With 4D v18, it’s all possible thanks to the VP SET PRINT INFO command that allows you to define these attributes and more in your document!
Frightening season. Delightful release 🎃
What is your disguise costume for this Halloween? Are you a witch? Have you turned yourself into a vampire? A hungry zombie looking for brains? Or perhaps Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is your thing?
Multiple 4D data sources, interested?
We’ve got an exciting new feature to announce in 4D v18 and the title may have already given you a hint!
This feature opens new possibilities for client/server work. Rather than being limited to the current database and requiring a permanent network connection, an application in 4D v18 can get data from another, remote 4D database that’s exposed on a 4D server!
A lot of options become available thanks to this feature. For example, you could organize your applications to work offline and only synchronize local data when remote data is reachable. Or you could consider publishing your data on multiple servers and switching from one to the other as necessary. Another option could be splitting your data model across different databases (e.g. local data, international data). What about having your data distributed in different places yet still accessible through a single 4D client code (project methods and form objects)? All of these scenarios are now possible and this blog post tells you how!
Deployment made easy with 4D v18
4D v18 introduces a new architecture for files and folders to keep your deployed macOS package and Windows application folders intact. In a nutshell, the logs folder and all user-based settings, including 4D backup settings, are now stored next to the data file. In fact, the settings exist twice; one next to the structure to use as default settings for new data files, and one beside the data file, storing user changes.
As a result, the folder containing the structure can be read-only, since nothing is modified inside (*). Deployment becomes easier because the structure folder can simply be replaced, nothing within it needs to be copied beforehand.
(*) only in project databases. In binary databases the user & password tables are stored in the structure, so the folder must not be read-only.
Project databases: Architecture
Project databases, the headliner of the 4D v18 release, allow distributed teams to work collaboratively by storing an application’s code in a source control system, in text files containing everything from the database structure to the user interface, including forms, menus, user settings, or any required resources. And since a project database is made of text-based files, you’ll have several folders and files, stored within a single parent database folder. In this blog post, we’ll go through the architecture of a project database to give you a better understanding of this new type of database.
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