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 Road to IPv6

Enhance IPv6-related user interface

Besides the fact that it has a larger address space, IPv6 also has many other advantages over IPv4: built-in features like support of multicast transmission, increased security with IPSec (providing confidentiality, authentication and data integrity) and the ability to display, in the 4D client connection dialog box, all the 4D Server available even if they are published on a non standard port (different than 19813).

4D introduced IPv6 support with 4D v14, however some dialogs were not perfectly arranged for the IPv6 use cases. 4D v16 R4 provides some UI improvements for a better user experience for people using IPv6 network configurations.

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4D initiates a new variable type: Collection

4D v16 R4 introduces a new type of variable called Collection. What are these variables intended for? Like Objects or BLOBs, collections can be used to hold almost any kind of variable types like texts, numerics, booleans, objects and even other collections. The good thing is that, all these variables types previously mentioned can be mixed inside the same collection, where arrays must always contain the same type of elements!

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4D introduces SDI mode for applications on Windows!

Hot news! 4D applications on Windows are entering a new world thanks to 4D Windows 64-bit. Do you remember the grey-background main window which contains all other application windows? This main window is technically called MDI (which stands for Multiple Document Interface) and now there’s a way to get rid of it and move to SDI (Single Document Interface) where application windows are all independent…

Interested? Just activate the SDI mode with a single checkbox and it’s done…without a line of code!

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Add an hyperlink to your company logo in 4D Write Pro

A less well known usage of 4D Write Pro product is the production of HTML emails. In fact you can create a 4D Write Pro document including 4D expressions, text and images, then modify the document, paragraph or text properties and send it by email. In this context, a very common need is to add a link to a picture, e.g. your company logo.

4D Write Pro has been enhanced with 4D v16 R4 so that hyperlinks can now been added to text and/or pictures. Setting a link to your company logo or company name is now as easy as styling some text to bold.

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4D Write Pro supports tables!

Your wish has finally come true, you can now insert and fill tables by programming in your 4D Write Pro documents. We are not talking about bar tabs mimicking tables here, this is all about “real” tables! Tables where the text will automatically wrap to fit into the column size you defined, that will not “break” when your data changes. 

This feature is the first major improvement exceeding the old 4D Write set of functionalities. You will now be able to generate invoices containing tables, fully by programming and style them exactly as you want with a few line of codes! Another scenario is that you can now provide your users with a button in your application UI that will insert a table with a predefined number of lines and rows, a predefined size for each column then you can let the user edit and style the content by itself.

Product New tabs with macOS Sierra

Merge your windows into tabs on macOS Sierra

Thanks to macOS Sierra, applications now have to opportunity to use tabbed windows instead of multiple windows. From 4D v16 R3, 4D Developer Edition 64-bit can take advantage of this Apple’s new feature for the design environment.

The type of windows that can be tabbed are Methods and Form Editors windows. Other windows as explorer or tools for instance remain separate.

As in every application based on tab windows:

  • each tab can be moved to a new window by dragging the tab out of the tab bar.
  • each tab can be moved to another existing window.
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Listbox : more programming possibilities!

Want to do generic programming using listboxes? So this feature is for you!

With 4D v16 R2, 20+ new listbox properties can be dynamically manipulated by code so 4D Developers now have the full control over the listbox form object! Among a long list: multi-style, wordwrap, single-click edit, truncation mode, column min & max width and much more. The properties apply to the entire list box, its columns, or both.

No more property available only in Design Mode through the Property List: every single property can now be set and get using 2 commands: LISTBOX SET PROPERTY and LISTBOX Get property.

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4D Write Pro – Horizontal Ruler

With 4D v16 R2 you can display a graphical horizontal ruler at the top of the 4D Write Pro area ! Thanks to this horizontal ruler, the text can be easily formatted.

Prior to the existence of this graphic ruler, tabulations could only be managed by programming or using the 4D Write Pro interface widget. From now (4D v16 R2 and above), when the ruler is displayed (this is optional) the final user will have the opportunity to manage margins and tabulations easily and graphically.