When will we have, as promised, the opportunity to see the update of BKeeney Shorts for printing to pdf?
Thanks
Luciano
Asking is lawful, answering is good manners
I buy a Pro licence in 2013 and waiting too for some promised functions 
me too, as I told above …
Me too. Unfortunately, this is a trend for add-ons developers on Xojo. They release an add-on and then it is almost never updated. At the beginning, I was pissed off, but then I took a different approach. When I buy an add-on, I also buy the source code and do not expect any updates. I use the add-on as a shortcut to save time and start from a working and tested code.
For example, I could start building my own reporting tool from scratch, but I prefer having a look around and if there is a good add-on which does almost everything I want, I buy the add-on and develop my own features starting with the add-on. So far, it works quite well.
The Xojo add-on market is very small and unfortunately, I do not think that we should expect the same level of service/updates from the developer. It is one downside of using a tool used by a small bunch of developers.
I agree with you, but not all developers are like that, there are also the most serious working on the product even after they have sold it, an example is Jean-Paul Devulder with his Dtplugin, Jeremie Leroy and others.
I wish that other members of the forum, with the same experience, will say what they think.
If I agree with you about Jean-Paul, my experience is a bit different with Jeremie. I bought the calendar with a roadmap including recurring events expected a few months later after the purchase. I had to wait 18 months and it still does not work as it should. I reported a bug in his bug system. I am still waiting for this issue to be fixed. For Bob, add-on is a side business that seem to depend on his consulting business. If he needs it, he will develop it or buy an existing add-on to be able to resell it after to its clients (if I understand correctly). Once you understand that, you know what you buy, just a piece of working code that works and with no roadmap.
After sending a lot of mails, the response was always :
[quote]All I can say is that we are in active development of BKS Shorts and using it in multiple consulting projects.
BKeeney Software Inc.
http://www.bkeeney.com[/quote]
Few months ago, after telling Bob what I been thinking about that. He send me a new version, at condition that is was with no support… this sample code was unusable. He promised things on website. Sell version 1, and no more.
At the end of past year, new product : PDF Classes. Is not what a function we are waiting ??
I think Bob bought the PDF classes, brought them up to the current Xojo version (quite a bit of work I would think, since the code base would have been quite old by now) and then released them.
It looks like he bought them in december 2013
see https://forum.xojo.com/7890-bkeeney-software-inc-acquires-fireye-pdf-classes-for-xojo/0
First release by Bob was August 07, 2014 First Public Beta according to his website.
That’s half a year just to make the code current.
Integrating the pdf classes into Shorts might be an even bigger job.
I have no doubt Bob is doing quite a bit of work and some things just take time.
Patience is key.
Hmm it might be helpful to tag @Bob Keeney so he gets a notification and sees this thread. There, done 
Buy whats available - not whats promised.
Same advice I give anyone about Xojo or any other product.
Yes Valdemar, that’s what I thought too. I believe they must simply integrate PDF’s classes in BKeeney Shorts.
“Once you understand that, you know what you buy, just a piece of working code that works and with no roadmap.”
Yoann, this is what you can see on Bkeeney Shorts page since 2013 :
What does the future bring?
Were just getting started! We plan on enhancing the product based on feedback and on our own needs.
External Report Definition files. Design your reports in an editor and simply hand that off to the classes.
Runtime interaction. Perfect for drill-down reports where a user clicks on a field and a detailed report is generated at that moment.
PDFs without the DynaPDF Requirement. We like DynaPDF, dont get us wrong, but for many its simply too expensive.
well…
the plot thickens…
-
"PDF's without the DynaPDF requirement" is a stated goal for shorts. -
"ability to export PDF" is [b]scheduled[/b] in the top feedback cases. -
@Bob Keeney is a Xojo alpha tester.
I suspect he may be about to release Pdf for shorts, once it gets released in Xojo
or maybe not… i love a good conspiracy theory, but don’t forget the 1st rule of fight club.
Well, you can use it as it is and get DynaPDF. Part of OmegaBundle (http://www.omegabundle.com) currently.
But on general, Bob and his team do consulting and make their money there. If they need for one of the projects a new feature, I expect them to add it quickly. All the other features are nice to have.
Same as for Xojo where the framework got specific things added because the new IDE needed them or Xojo needed them for their own projects internally or to improve web framework.
[quote=161028:@Russ Lunn]well…
the plot thickens…
-
"PDF's without the DynaPDF requirement" is a stated goal for shorts. -
"ability to export PDF" is [b]scheduled[/b] in the top feedback cases. -
@Bob Keeney is a Xojo alpha tester.
I suspect he may be about to release Pdf for shorts, once it gets released in Xojo
or maybe not… i love a good conspiracy theory, but don’t forget the 1st rule of fight club.[/quote]
@Bob Keeney owns a PDF class(es) and he bought them after Shorts were released. He could be working on using Shorts with his PDF class(es). Or maybe on the PDF stuff that Xojo will release some day (they have not announced a date so we can’t say for sure when it is coming out).
my suggestion is if you want an update/feedback about Shorts and its direction, please reach out to @Bob Keeney directly. He is responsive to queries.
And no I don’t own Shorts nor his PDF class(es). I do own other products of his.
Valdemar is being only partially truthful. He badgered me into releasing a Shorts update to him despite several warnings that it was an unfinished product. He agreed that he’d stop bugging me (i.e. no support for all time) if I gave him what I had. I did and he’s not happy with the results (as I warned and suspected). It seemed easier to do that than getting an inconsiderate and childish email every couple of weeks.
So onto the rest. All of our developer products combined don’t make us enough income to live off of. Given that one fact, we work on those products when our consulting work takes a lull or when those same consulting projects require the product. Add in the recent push in the training material for iOS and I’m pretty busy. We also lost our senior developer last summer and haven’t replaced him yet (good developers don’t grow on trees after all) and these are NOT the types of Xojo projects that we can just turn over to anyone.
Lets have some history. We picked up the Formatted Text Control, RB Code Reports, and a few other of their products when True North left the Xojo market. We picked up Simple Help Editor and Styled HTML Field when Pandaware left the Xojo market. We picked up the PDF classes from Fireye Software after many years away from the Xojo market. We use some of these products in our consulting projects so we had the need. Offering them for sale is a courtesy to the Xojo community.
Each of those products were created by other developers with varying degrees of coding style and competency. FTC we’ve mostly kept up to date but the transition to Cocoa and the Text Input Class was awful - I don’t think we’ve made our investment back just in that transition. Simple Help Editor required a complete rewrite. The PDF Classes took extensive work to get working in Xojo and we still have to tackle the Linux problem. Let’s not forget ActiveRecord and ARGen, which we use in most projects, needs updating too.
As far as Shorts goes we use it internally in projects that require reports (i.e. most of them). It works in desktop and web and exports to html and PDF. PDF being DynaPDF. We do have an external report definition that we developed for use in web apps. It’s nowhere near ready to release to the public though I have been working (this week in fact) in getting it working in desktop apps. Is it a GUI designer? No, but mainly because web apps can’t do the same sorts of things as desktop.
If it would help solve this stupid I’ll gladly take these products off the market. I’ve already proved that it’s barely worth our time to keep updating them. I can then use these products for my own competitive advantage and not have to worry about sales, and documentation, licensing, and the fact that once source code is out there it can be used by anyone (i.e. piracy).
I’ve stayed out of Valdemar’s petty public tantrums because it’s not worth my time and effort. In the time to respond to this thread I could have been working on a consulting project and making some money to feed my family.
So is Shorts still under development? Yes. Is it fast development? No. Can I say when Shorts, PDF classes, Calendar control, or any other of our developer products will get updated? No. Has anyone other than Valdemar been harping for a new version of Shorts? Nope. And he’s got the full source.
I may be an alpha tester but that doesn’t mean I get anything before any other alpha tester.
I think I speak for everyone when I say don’t leave the market!
I can confirm that making components for Xojo doesn’t pay a full time developer. Even with the scale I have with MBS myself.
Consulting keeps the company running.
If it weren’t for the vendors like Christian, Bob and a few others I wouldn’t be using Xojo. It’s a shame the 3rd party Xojo market doesn’t pay much, but most of that use your products greatly appreciate your efforts.