@DaveS
Can I ask what pushed you to make this announcement ?
Effective immediately, any and all apps, programs, tools and add-ons that I have produced in the past with and or for Xojo are no longer available.
Since we probably cannot discuss the whys and wherefores of this on Xojo’s forum without it getting censored I’m asking here
When I came back to Xojo of course I had the forum in my head since I knew I was going to need help. DaveS’s name/handle was one of the ones that popped into my head when I thought about the formuns and people who had helped me in the past and who I thought were loyal Xojo’s users.
I too would like to know the why of this post if it’s not something he rather keep to himself.
Simple… as was stated in that post. I am not updating my Xojo past 2019r1.1
therefore I couldn’t use API2.0 even if I wanted to (which I don’t). Things like gPDF (which I get asked about a lot still) probably would still work (don’t know about warnings and such), but I can’t support it if someone has API2 related questions… So in the interest of not pissing off a paying customer, I am just not accepting their money in the first place… as hard as that is to do.
Am I still going to use Xojo? sure… but for those things that I can’t do (or learn from) by doing them in Swift (both for Desktop or iOS).
But I won’t be creating any add-ons that will be released to the community anymore.
I will however still answer what ever I can, both here and on the Xojo Forum
Fair enough
Didn’t realize you were getting a pile of questions about those issues. But it makes sense.
This is one of the effects we told Geoff might occur during betas- developers with products either dropping support for old versions or not updating.
I dont think he believed us.
The market place isnt large enough for most developers to say “Hey we’re updating to JUST support the new version API 2 stuff and so you folks on old versions too damned bad”
Its why christian works so bloody hard to make his plugins usable back to really ancient versions. Everyone is his target market not just whatever tiny portion of users are on the most recent version.
Sorry to hear its come to this for you Dave
But I understand the decision
I am actually surprised this garnered so many responses is such a short period of time. The main reason, was gPDF… I haven’t touched that code since like 2016, so I thought I’d post that to stave off the people that are still asking about it.
And to be honest… I used to be on the Xojo forum almost all day… now I touch it once/twice a day… And haven’t written a lick of Xojo code in a few months, but have written 1000s of lines of SWIFT
I get it
EDIT : guess we’ll see if my explanation helps at all.
I’ve had almost exactly that question already.
And the only way I have found to deal with it is to add new “properties” to mimic the api 2 ones but then anyone using the OLD code see’s this and wonders if they should update and use these “new” properties.
It just confuses things more.
its messy at best.
Sorry to hear that @DaveS. Glad you’re still planning on using Xojo at least a little bit and, of course, you’re free to help out users here with Swift. I know your classes have had good feedback and I’ve certainly enjoyed perusing the code.
Seeing how others approach and solves problems is always instructive
In coming up with the DiffEngine I posted I read 5 or 6 in JavaScript, Java, C, C++ and Python
I finally settled on the one I did to port because of the license
It was unencumbered by GPL/LGPL etc so it wont out
Plus it was pretty easy to actually port once I looked up a few bits in C# to verify the port
EDIT : I find the ongoing “debate” on Xojo’s forums kind of amusing, puzzling and disappointing all at the same time
I’m in the same boat as @DaveS with my products. I’m using Xojo as much (if not more) with my new job (and loving it, btw) but they have no need for my products (as much as some of it might be useful) so I just don’t see a need for me to upgrade them. Like, Dave, I’m getting questions regarding API 2 all the time. FTC, ARGen, and Shorts mostly.
Of the three, ARGen is the easiest since there’s a pretty distinct classic/API 2 difference. Shorts will be difficult because we mirrored the Graphics properties for many of the internal properties so updating that for both would be really hard. FTC is currently impossible since Xojo has told they have no immediate plans (i.e. not on the roadmap) to make it API 2.0 compliant. Their response was ‘since it’s open source’ you can do it yourself.
Hi @bkeeney, great to hear from you.
The throwaway comment about its “open source” - are you talking about the TextCanvas plugin? If so, that’s pretty arrogant of Xojo. Whilst it may be open source, most Xojo programmerS are not C++ plugin authors…
Yes, the plugin is ‘open source’ and I could have Christian update it for API 2. I just don’t care to spend the money to do so. Plus it would probably generate a months worth of work (or more) to get FTC API 2 ready.
“Arrogant” is an appropriate word, I think. You have to remember the only reason there is a TextInputCanvas plugin, in the first place, is because I pitched a fit when Cocoa came out and it couldn’t handle text handling properly. Geoff was not going to make anything public until I was able to convince him otherwise. I mean I suppose he was planning on releasing it all along but my gut belief is that he was not.
And since it’s been released they’ve done shit with it. There’s no documentation and the only thing outside of Xojo that uses it is FTC and I had to spend several hours with Joe Ranieri to understand what the hell it was doing. And even then it seems…fragile.
They said that about the text input canvas ???
feedback://showreport?report_id=53851
feedback://showreport?report_id=51115
Unbelievable.
The lack of documentation does sometimes astonish me. I once considered writing a plugin for Xojo but there’s basically no information about how to do it!
Its why I wrote the plugin starter I did way back when but it never made its way into the docs
Plugins are one of the most arcane bits
Database plugins make regular plugins look like there is an entire Smithsonian library written about them 
Plugins written in Xojo are actually the one thing I’m most looking forwards to after API finally makes it way to iOS.
Most of what I write are modules for Xojo devs (or myself) so writing a plugin for Xojo appeals to me. Given that interops for iOS doesn’t appear to have progressed at all since XDC 2019, I’m not hopeful we’ll see plugins written in Xojo for a while.
I tend to agree
And I suspect there’s a bit of “over sell” in terms of calling them “plugins”
Right up to today your choices for writing Xojo code to share with others was
Both had issues
“Plugins in Xojo” is another way to distribute Xojo code - quite possibly in some byte code or IR form so you wont have to give away sources of any kind. At least when its been discussed that’s how they have been discussed.
So its not like there will be some new “plugin” api or that it will be easier to interface this code with the OS etc
Its a different packaging format from everything I have seen & heard
wow… the crap that is appearing on the Xojo forum in response to what should have been a simple “product no longer availabe post” [For what its worth]… I just decided to put it on ignore… Perhaps my feelings are farther one way or another that many others, but hey that is MY perogative… [vent mode off]
I’m surprised that thread has not been locked yet.
-Karen
I’ve been surprised by some of the replies as well
HA !
probably doest violate any guidelines or rules