Author: Roland Lannuzel

Roland Lannuzel

• Product Owner & 4D Expert •

After studying electronics, Roland went into industrial IT as a developer and consultant, building solutions for customers with a variety of databases and technologies. In the late 80’s he fell in love with 4D and has used it in writing business applications that include accounting, billing and email systems.

Eventually joining the company in 1997, Roland’s valuable contributions include designing specifications, testing tools, demos as well as training and speaking to the 4D community at many conferences. He continues to actively shape the future of 4D by defining new features and database development tools.

Product
Roland Lannuzel

4D Write Pro – Find and Replace

Automatically translated from English

For many years now, 4D Write Pro has made it possible to create simple or complex documents, either via programming using templates or by simply creating new documents from scratch. Starting with 4D v19, both developers and end users will be happy to use the new find (and replace) capabilities of 4D Write Pro. Using not just the interface… but also the code!

Let’s delve into the details!

Read more

Product
Roland Lannuzel

4D Write Pro: Easily locate all the breaks

Automatically translated from English

4D Write Pro documents support five types of breaks:

  • line breaks
  • paragraph breaks
  • page breaks
  • section breaks
  • column breaks

 

Sometimes, you need to locate a certain type of break to replace it with another, or simply delete all its occurrences in the document. To make this possible, we developed a new function: WP Get breaks.

Read more

Product
Roland Lannuzel

List Boxes: Time Columns and Footer Calculation!

Automatically translated from English

List boxes are great, powerful tools to display data in the interface. They can display fields from records, items from arrays, and since recently, entity selections and collections. 

While the new list boxes using collections or entity selections are more powerful in many ways, they did not allow time display and automatic calculations in their footers, unlike list boxes displaying arrays or records.

From now on all types of list boxes can display hours in their columns, but also have the possibility to display calculations on their footers.

Read more

Product
Roland Lannuzel

Use collections and lists within forms objects

Automatically translated from English

Collections are increasingly used in 4D programming. Starting with 4D v19, you can use them to define the content of some interface objects, including through the Form function. This is very useful for generic interface management.

We’ve also added improvements to how lists are used. Let’s see this in detail!

Read more

Product
Roland Lannuzel

4D Language – String comparison improvements

Automatically translated from English

The 4D language offers 20+ commands to handle strings. And with 4D v18 R6, 4D introduces a new command: Compare strings. And yet another command has been improved: Position. Both of these commands allow you to use options for more accurate results. Let’s learn more!

Read more

Product
Roland Lannuzel

List boxes: Manage clicks in edited cells

Automatically translated from English

As a developer, you’re used to handling events inside form objects. The most common is the on clicked form event which can be used in most objects, including list boxes. In this particular object, clicks can be managed either at the list box level itself or within the column methods.

And starting with 4D v18 R6, the on clicked form event is triggered whether a cell is being edited or not, giving you increased control and improving the interface.

Read more

Tips
Roland Lannuzel

4D Write Pro – Full text indexation

Automatically translated from English

“I want to find all of the documents that talk about tango! I need them quickly! Can I do that?”

Ok, but first breathe!

Keyword searches within 4D Write Pro documents simply require adding a new indexing attribute within each document. This isn’t done by default because this type of search is not often necessary so it wouldn’t make sense to systematically increase the size of the documents. However, when it’s needed, this type of index is very easy to build.

Read more

Product
Roland Lannuzel

4D Write Pro: Decimal point or comma for number alignment?

Automatically translated from English

Numbers … big, small, very big, very small …  No matter their size, it’s always better if they’re easy to read. In most countries and languages, separator characters are usually used to separate thousands (or tens of thousands) and there is always a character to distinguish the decimal part from the rest of the number. When it’s time to align these numbers correctly in documents, “decimal tabulators” are used (which are based on the decimal separator character of the numbers).

But what if the documents contain numbers from different countries and the numbers aren’t formatted in the right way? Let’s take a closer look at this!

Read more

Product
Roland Lannuzel

Type ahead made easy

Automatically translated from English

If you’re interested in the user interface, you may have already used the On before keystroke and On after keystroke events. You’ll certainly be happy to know that the handling of these events has been greatly enhanced with 4D v18 R5. In addition, a new command has been created to determine if there is ongoing input when the On before keystroke event is generated. Let’s find out more!

Read more