Source code sharing of internal 4D components with 4D Partners

4D has initiated a new program to share the source code of internal 4D key components such as the 64-bit Quick Report, the date/time pickers, or even the 4D Write Pro user interface.

Sounds already interesting, but what exactly does it concretely mean for you? You always wanted to use the Time picker widget, but with a different look and feel. The 4D Write Pro user interface is great, but can’t fit exactly in your application, that is requiring a more ‘Microsoft Office like’ ribbon bar approach.

By providing you the source code, 4D allows you to take advantage of the work done by the 4D Engineering team, customize it and make it your own! This is actually opening great possibilities for the 4D developer community.

How to proceed? It’s as simple as:

  Downloading the 4D source code from the 4D forum repository

  Customizing the components and make it your own

  Integrating the new version into your application

  Deploying your application to your customers and users with your own version of the component

  Who is eligible to this program?

All 4D Partners starting with the Silver Program!

  Where to download the source code?

There is a unique location: the 4D Partners Worldwide forum.

  What are the available components as of today?

As of now, the source code of the following components has been published for 4D v16 R2:

 4D Write Pro Interface

4D Engineering has designed for you a pre-designed default interface for 4D Write Pro available inside the 4D product. Just drag and drop the widget from the object library to the form editor and it’s ready to use.

 4D Reports

4D Report is the internal component on which the 64-bit Quick Report dialog is based. For more details, the new dialog is presented in the 2 following posts: Quick Report Editor fully rewritten and easily create cross-tables reports.

4D Pop

4D Pop is a series of productivity components grouped into a toolbar that integrates with the 4D development environment. Filled with clever tools and immediately useful for developers, 4D Pop has many advantages. For instance, you can compose your 4D Pop palette with the tools you prefer, without overloading your screen.

SVG Area

This component brings a manipulable SVG area to your user interfaces. The SVG Area field allows you to create vector graphics, whether hand-drawn or programmatically generated, connected to data in the host application. It supports shapes, colors and standard 4D fill patterns, and can also contain bitmap images in the form of links. The area’s contents can be stored in a record or exported as an SVG file.

4D Progress

4D Progress is available in the form editor object library. It lets you open one or more progress bars in the same window.

4D SVG

4D includes an integrated rendering engine that can be used to display SVG files. The XML language used for manipulating SVG pictures is particularly rich and extensive. In order to make getting started easier, 4D provides the SVG component, which includes numerous commands that can be used to create and manipulate common graphic objects.

4D Widgets

4D Widgets are functionalities provided as components that can be accessed from the Form editor from the preconfigured object library. These widgets are compound objects with predefined characteristics. They provide access to standard functions and are very simple to implement.

Three widgets are available: DatePicker (date selector), TimePicker (time selector) and SearchPicker (search area with standard appearance).

The updated source code of all components already shared is published with each new R-release, so that you can benefit from our bug fixes and/or new features.

More components will have their source code published in the future, with coming R-releases. You just need to leave us some time to prepare them to make your life easy.