Is GraffitiSuite a MonkeyBread competitor?

On the forum, there was mention of an upcoming Grid tool. When it was mentioned in an Address by Xojo - very quickly - some EXCELSoftware’s name was dropped. But their Grid tool is hundreds of dollars.

Then I checked GraffitiSuite - I used to have all those packages a decade or so ago. It seems it is sold/sponsored by Xojo as a set of development plug-ins (for $400!).

It that the same sort of thing MonkeyBread is selling. Or is Xojo saying they use GraffitiSuite plug-ins as their development tools; i.e. you get them with Xojo?

What with the different licenses for different platforms, different plug-ins, some taking the place of Xojo’s, some adding to Xojo’s … it’s like a road in a small town that used to be quiet and simple but now has a lot of traffic on it.

NO

They sell plugins to write and read Excel files, not a “excel grid”

I don’t know what you are looking for, but in terms of what is available RIGHT NOW, my favorite third party tool for a grid-type control in desktop apps is DataView from piDog. It starts at $60USD for the encrypted license version.

It is like a super-charged ListBox, but not subclassed from a Xojo ListBox, and thus able to do LOTS of things which a normal listbox cannot. Download the demo to play around with what it can do.

I also license the MBS Complete set of plugins, in addition to some of their individual plugins. But MBS plugins do not provide a grid type control. They do provide an interface to the excellent LibXL library for manipulating Excel files which would not normally be available to Xojo developers.

You can also read/write Excel files using plugins from Einhugur Software but from your wording I suspect you are looking for a grid-like control for projects. Not working with Excel files.

GraffitiSuite is mostly UI-related classes which are coded in either Xojo or JavaScript to which you currently get full source code access upon subscribing. For Desktop, GraffitiGrid is a powerful data grid component where you can build an Excel-like grid. It’s sold as part of the full suite, so for the target-specific price of $399.95 you get access to everything for that target.

As has been stated by others, MBS offers a plugin for manipulating Excel files, but does not have a data grid component. MBS typically provides non-UI plugins that provide an interface to OS functionality or other libraries. There are some exceptions, such as ChartDirector and Scintilla.

Xojo does not use GraffitiSuite in any way that I’m aware of, but both GraffitiSuite and MBS are available to purchase via the Xojo Extras store.

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MBS has a data grid component called NSTableview. But the control is only for macOS.

You are correct. I suppose I didn’t consider it because it is limited to one platform of the target.

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I think @Paul_Chance means this one: https://www.excelsoftware.com/rbapp

I‘ve never tried it.

We also have an example to show how to use NSScrollViewMBS class to smooth scroll a list of containers:

Smooth scrolling list control with ContainerControls

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Yes, I was referring to excelsoftware. It sounds like there are alternatives for a grid, but I haven’t seen any mention of a “native” Xojo control. My interest has nothing to do with MS Excel files It’s more about loading the grid cells with data - either numbers or characters - and being able to lock rows and columns or move them around via click-drag.

I’m considering rewriting an old program I wrote for FurtureBasic. At that time there was a “blink” option I could call on a Key Down event in a cell (clicking cell A blinked the contents in cell X). And I was able to add a drawn circle, surrounding the letter inside a cell.

These days I might find a font that has circled letters and I could just change the font in the one cell to that for the same effect. Maybe I could implement a blink by, - via a loop while key down in the cell - changing the content’s color to the same as the cell’s background-color

We do have a grid control on our roadmap. To be clear, the feature on our roadmap is not associated with any third party developers.

Look at the demo apps included with piDog’s DataView control. It is third party, but the encrypted license is only $60. And it lets you lock rows and columns. Variable row heights. Span cells vertically or horizontalls. Drag stuff around. And lots more.

If loading the grid with data, you can instead define a “data source” and it will dynamically display the visible contents for great speed regardless of the size of the data.

I have the source code version, so I know how much code is behind this control. There is absolutely no way to justify doing it yourself if you want a fraction of the features it is built in.

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