REAL Software released REAL Studio 2010 Release 2 last week. Like most of the recent releases, this was more of a preparatory step toward getting REAL Studio to compile Cocoa applications. If you were waiting for Cocoa support, this release isn't it (again). However, there are some nice changes and additions that make this a good release. Not that this release doesn't have a few issues, but all-in-all, it's not a bad release.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes in 2010 Release 2 was that REAL Software did their homework and implemented a number of longstanding requests from Windows users. The first is that the DLL's for your Windows executable can be in one of three locations. No longer are DLL's required to be in the "My App Libs" directory. Now they can be in a generic "Libs" directory and even in the same directory as the executable. These changes are welcome for those developers that have a suite of applications that use the same DLL's as it will reduce deployment size.
The second major item for Windows users is that many controls that caused a great deal of flicker on Windows (while fine on Mac OS X and Linux) have been reworked so that they cause less flicker. If you use the StaticText, Line, Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle Oval, or tab panel controls in Windows you know what a pain they are to use. And while it's impossible for REALbasic applications to totally eliminate flicker in Windows (because Windows does not have double-buffered windows like Mac OS X and Linux), REAL Software has done a good job of reducing the flicker and most developers should welcome these changes.
One of the controls that received significant work to reduce flickering was the StaticText control. In Release 2 update it received two new properties that most will find useful. The StaticText control now has a Selectable property which means that users can select and copy the caption text.
There is also a new Transparent property in the StaticText control that only affects Windows builds. It, as you may surmise, makes the text background transparent. The default setting is false so if you have StaticText controls layered on another control you will immediately notice that the control uses the window color and is 'blocky". This makes your StaticText controls look very odd but simply setting the Transparent property will fix it. Unfortunately, this setting is not true by default so you might be spending a little bit of time setting your StaticText.Transparent properties.
After a brief showing for Release 1 and subsequent quick takedown due to technical difficulties, the Wiki documentation is now back and is now the default Language Reference! This assumes you have internet access and if you do not, it will open the PDF version of it. It should be noted that the PDF version is still stuck at Release 1 but will be updated in future releases (according to the the Documentation Read Me in the Documentation folder). The Wiki is also available online at http://docs.realsoftware.com/.
Printing in the IDE has been updated to allow for the Window layout to be printed. To enable this, go to preferences, select the Printing option and make sure the "Print Images of Windows When Printing" checkbox is checked.
The IDE icon editor has been tweaked so that small icons aren't blown up to huge proportions. This is very welcome since seeing 16 x 16 icons blown up to 128 x 128 isn't very pretty.
The reporting system also received some attention as you can now set the report groups to start a new page after it completes rendering. The reporting system now uses significantly less memory for large reports. Subclassed report controls now draw properly in the report designer. Report fields and labels that have their italic property set no longer clip when aligned left.
A number of important bug fixes made their way into this release:
• The StyledTextPrinter now works properly when using text alignment.
• Controls on container controls no longer bleed through page and tab panels.
• Popup Menu's no longer leak the memory allocated to the Tag property on Mac OS X when closed or DeleteAllRows is called.
• Using GDI+ no longer improperly prints scaled images.
• The canvas.doubleclick even now fires even when you return true from the mousedown event.
Release 2 shipped with new PostgreSQL and MySQL plugins. They no longer block REALbasic threads and this is very good news. However, in my testing on a large PostgreSQL project the new plugin generated some serious errors and was unusable. I cannot verify if the same thing happens to the others or not. I would urge you to be very cautious with these new plugins and verify that they work in your installation before releasing your app to the public. Keep some old versions around if you find problems.
REAL Software indicated that more ActiveX controls may now be imported into the project. Since the associated feedback report is open again, this may not be true for your ActiveX controls.
Feedback 9035 is marked as fixed. This bug's title is "Autocomplete causes window change in XP". Several users have noted that the bug is still not fixed and manifests itself in Windows 7 and Vista, not just in XP.
The R2 release notes are buried in the documentation folder of the download package but can be accessed via the Feedback application and the online wiki. Viewing in the Feedback application is kind of nice because you can quickly view the original feedback report. However, when FeedBack tried to update the release notes, it didn't download the entire thing. I had to wipe the folder at ~Library/Application Support/REAL Software/Feedback to force it to reload. Doing so will lose any folders you've created in Feedback so do so with caution. Feedback: 12125
Another annoying thing about the release notes is there a lot of Cocoa related items in the list. But since Cocoa isn't IN this release it's kind of silly, in my opinion, to see them at all. Funny enough, the wiki doesn't have this limitation.
Another annoyance are feedback titles like "I do not know. I fixed this a long time ago." and "Redundant Page removed." Really!? Entries like that should have their title changed to be useful at a glance or simply removed.
Release 2, all-in-all, is pretty solid. If you are a Windows developer the DLL location and reduced flickering of basis controls makes this release a must have. The release is not without some issues, but since you should be evaluating each release to see if it fits your needs, you should spot any problems right away during your testing cycle.
[Updated to change some wording about flickering. Added Tab Panel to the list of controls that were updated to reduce flickering. Removed REALSQLDatabase from the list of non-thread blocking plugins.]
