Cleanup MBS Xojo Plugins

For later this year we plan to do a cleanup of our plugin collection for Xojo.
The following list marks the current list of what we may remove. But you – as a developer using our plugins – can still tell us whether you actively use one of the following items. We may discuss keeping them longer or helping you move away from the classes:

Remove Tesseract 3.x (use 5.x instead)
Remove DuckDB class (use SQL Plugin instead)
Remove macOS 32-bit target
Remove building Real Studio plugins
Remove Linux 32-bit for Intel support
Remove Addressbook. and Calendar classes (use Events and Contacts)
Remove BackgroundThreadMBS class and related methods. (Not used anymore)
Remove CFXMLParser classes
Remove WebKit 1 classes for macOS.
Remove Growl* classes.
Remove deprecated controls.
Remove old Speech classes
Remove some old dongle classes
Remove old DarwinPingMBS class.
Remove CarbonWindowsEventsMBS and CarbonEventsScrapMBS
Remove some older SQLAPIMBS class (and subclasses) as functionality moved to other SQL classes.
Remove old NSUserNotificationMBS code. Use UNNotification classes instead.
Remove ZintRenderMBS classes. Use the newer ZintVectorMBS class instead.
Remove old DNSServiceDiscovery classes. Use newer DNSService classes instead.
Remove old WiringPiMBS class.
Remove old CompFace functions
Remove GameKit classes
Remove InternetExplorer classes
Remove MAAttachedWindowMBS class
Remove OpenCL classes
Remove old Phidget classes, Use new classes.
Remove PHP classes. Please use Shell class.
Remove UniMotionMBS module.
Remove text and auto data type support since those are deprecated.
Remove CloneRecordSetMBS, BuildRecordSetMBS and BuildRowSetMBS. Use in-memory SQLite database if needed.
Remove zxing classes. Use zbar instead.
Remove GammaMBS and GammaFadeMBS classes. CRT monitors are a thing of the past.
Remove IMServiceMBS class and related.
Remove UniversalCharacterDetectionMBS class as they are outdated.
Remove TimeZoneMBS and DateDifferenceMBS classes, since those are now superseded by built-in Xojo classes.

The idea is to remove about 5 to 10% of the plugin code to make the whole thing a bit slimmer and quicker to build. Especially by removing targets, we can speed up build times a lot.

If you use one of the items, you may use current plugins in future. We may also make one of the things standalone (without license check), so you can use it perpetual in future. But in general we don’t expect people to need those items any more.

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Is there a replacement for UniversalCharacterDetectionMBS? I’m still using the class.

I like the idea of cleaning the plug-ins up, and slimming them down. Most of the above have replacements already, or are historic items, except for GameKit which Apple had more sessions on this year at WWDC, and is still being developed and improved.

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Well, if it is still used, I may update it and keep it. We’ll see.

Please don’t remove the support for Linux 32-bit for Intel

Ubuntu 18 LTS, with its 32-bit version, remains supported till next year. I’d recommend keeping your support around at least that long.

Will you still make new 32-bit Linux apps with Xojo in 2023?
I’d assume everyone moves to 64-bit.

Still using DateDifferenceMBS as it’s easy to use but we can replace it surely with Xojo once removed from MBS plugins

As of today, I am not aware that a single Xojo developers uses those classes.

I definitely prefer DateDifferenceMBS over the built in Xojo functionality, which is lacking the TotalDay property available in the plugin.

We have some reporting libraries which are 32bit and need to support that. Please keep the 32bit support until atleast xojo supports it.

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A post was split to a new topic: Adding Pigpio to MBS?

Thanks. Seems like I collect a few users for some of those features.

Although CRT monitors are indeed outdated, I still use the class to make transitions in an app. That’s far more easier than creating a whole window with a timer (etc.). Any reason the GammaMBS class would specifically be tied to CRT monitors?

Well, I am surprised that it is still used. So we may keep it.

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Yes, I like this for a transition when I show a screen from a remote computer, in my app, for example.
Thanks.

Yes, we most likely will do that.
So please keep Linux 32Bit (Intel).

And besides: I’d expect all of Xojo’s supported Build Targets to be available in a current Plugin.

I use them @Christian. At least, experimentally.

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Please don’t remove BuildRecordSetMBS and BuildRowSetMBS I use them in my projects (with my DB framework (SQLite over Network and local DB))

Nice to see that someone uses them :slight_smile: