Well the holiday season is just about over but we couldn't let it pass us by without reaching out and thanking all our clients for their continued support and wishing them all the best for 2010.

Our holiday gift for you...

This is the time for giving so we decided to give you a little something special to add to your application over the holiday season. How about adding spell checking to all your Nomads input controls?

Almost all Linux systems come with 'aspell' so adding spell checking can be done in less time that it takes to open the presents under most trees.

All you need to do is define the following global variables:

%SPELL_SITE$ = "|aspell -a --lang=@@"
%SPELL_POPUP$ = "&Spell Check"
%SPELL_MIN_LEN = 1

Presto; you now have spell checking on all your Nomads input fields.

Now, if you server happens to be Windows, you will need a bit more time as you'll need to download and install aspell from http://aspell.net/win32 -- so perhaps you should pour yourself a glass of eggnog while you wait. Once it is installed just change the global variables above so that %SPELL_SITE$ is:

"|""c:\program files\aspell\bin\aspell.exe"" -a --lang=@@"

So now, when you arrive back at work after the holidays, you can spread the word about the magic of Xmas.

For more details see: http://manual.pvxplus.com/page/utilities/spellcheck.htm

PDFa-1b - The standard for documents

While the use of PDF documents is pretty standard nowadays, it is important to remember that not all PDF files are created equal. Most PDF creation tools can create portable files; however, if you want to create documents that adhere to the international standard (ISO-19005-1), look no further than PxPlus.

With the release of 8.30, PxPlus provides native generation of PDFA-1b compatible documents that adhere to the ISO standards as required by a number of governments and agencies for document archiving. These PDF files are designed to be completely free standing and do not rely on any fonts pre-existing on the target system. In addition, they contain additional information regarding the format, security and rendering instructions.

If compatibility is what you need, then the PxPlus 8.30 PDF is for you.

Version 9 is coming with a number of new exciting PxPlus features such as:

• Enhanced query subsystem
• Direct file access
• Associative arrays
• Enhanced version control (SVN) interface.

... watch for the announcement in the coming weeks

Ever wanted to know what's going on with a ProvideX process that is running either in background or attached to another terminal? PxPlus has built-in debugging interfaces that allow you to attach to and inspect running tasks. For Graphical users, the Integrated Toolkit provides this, but recently we added a text mode debugger that brings this technology to a new level.

Using the text mode debugger is simply a matter of entering the command DBG. From there, you can connect to any running task to see what is going on and/or take control.

See http://manual.pvxplus.com/page/commands/dbg.htm for more details.

Using iNomads? No problem there is also a web based interface the online debugging allowing you to debug from a browser.

Housekeeping help

During the holiday season everybody needs help around the house. Well there are a number of features in PxPlus that can help. Not with the actual cleaning, of course, but with housekeeping chores in your application code.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the system tie a piece of logic to the closing of a file, removal of a window or control, or just to the termination of the current program?

Associating items (controls, files, windows, programs, or other objects) by using the 'FOR' option when creating objects gives you this capability. So next time you need to close or erase a file when a program exits, just create an object that performs the task on object deletion and, using the FOR option, tie the object to current program.

Of course, like any good housekeeping service, we make this even simpler for you with our *plus/obj/wrapup object. Check it out at: http://manual.pvxplus.com/page/utilities/obj_wrapup.htm

iNomads goes Wii

For the holidays we got a Nintendo Wii console for the family. I got to admit that it’s a lot of fun and we have been having a blast, but better yet it runs iNomads!!! It should. After all, the browser that comes with the Wii is based on Opera.

The Wii interface has a low resolution, but the interface with the remote control wands could be used to easily provide a point & shoot style interface to your application.

So next time you pick up your Wii controller, just tell everyone you're working. And if you don't have one, convince your company to buy you one; just tell them you need to checkout your Nomads based application -- we're sure your boss will understand.