12. Release notes #

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A version you own never loses its components: 4.0 contains the thirty-two from 1.0 to 3.0, and a key whose maintenance covers the date of your build compiles with the latest DLL — see License.

4.0 — October 2026 #

Five components: data, charts, documents and sound #

• Cartesian chart — an animated cartesian chart: columns, bars, lines, areas, scatter, bubbles, heat maps, candles. The type is set per series: a combination chart (columns and a target line on two axes) fits in a single component.
• Data grid — a modern grid laid over a DataStore: typed columns and rich cells, sorting, filters, grouping and subtotals, in-place editing, very large volumes, CSV and Excel export. It reads what the DataWindow says about each column (title, format, code table), and the DataWindow stays the master of your data.
• Markdown view — a read-only Markdown document in the colours of the theme: headings, lists, tables, task lists, coloured code, pictures — from a text or a file of the workstation.
• Scheduler — an Outlook-style calendar: day, work week, week, month and agenda views, drag and drop, resources side by side, colour categories, cards and tooltips written with templates — filled appointment by appointment or from a DataStore.
• Sound player — a non-visual object that plays a file of the workstation, an https address or a synthesized beep, asynchronously (events) or synchronously (the call returns when the sound ends).

What changes #

• A change asked for by your code (of_select_*, of_expand, of_open…) raises the same event as a user gesture, as SelectTab does in PowerBuilder; the questions asked before a change are optional and switched on by an ib_veto_* property.
• Two methods go: of_set_data of the crosstab becomes of_from_datastore, and of_transform of XML leaves with XSLT, which the browser engine is removing. A few names and counts are aligned with the rest of the library. The details, and what to change: Migrating from 3.0 to 4.0.
• Themes follow the application: the accent it sets survives a change of theme, and a theme axis left empty follows the application's.

Elsewhere in the library #

• The window keyboard: Enter presses the default button nearest the focus, a component's shortcuts answer from anywhere in the window, so does an underlined letter (&Save), and F10 opens the menu bar.
• Every drop-down menu searches as you type and stays smooth with thousands of entries.
• Rich text: the [symbol=name] tag adds eighteen monochrome glyphs (clock, location, person, calendar…) that follow the colour of the text.
• Additions in most shipped components — tabs from the keyboard (Ctrl+Tab, middle click), panels detached by a double-click, overflow chevron of the menu bar, drop-down list in the toolbar, line-by-line log of the statictext, actual size of a picture, reading a cell of the crosstab… The full list, component by component, is in Migrating from 3.0 to 4.0 and in the history of each component.
• An AI assistant (Claude, Cursor, VS Code…) can look up the exact API of your version and check the code it proposes, through the documentation MCP server shipped with the demonstration.

Fixed #

• A decimal property (double) was read back with the workstation's separator: on a French Windows, 1.5 came back wrong.
• A right-click on an item now produces a single event, in every component.
• Tiles box: of_get_layout returned an empty layout.

3.0 — September 2026 #

Eleven components: data, utilities and media #

• Breadcrumb — the breadcrumb trail: where you are, and back to any level in one click. Branches opened on demand, direct path entry, files dropped on a segment.
• Button bar — a row of command buttons — icon, label or both — in a single component; a click reports the button's key.
• Crosstab — the live pivot table of a DataStore: rows, columns, aggregated values, filters, subtotals, calculated fields and measures, CSV and Excel export.
• Crypto — hashes, HMAC, password or key encryption, RSA, ECDSA and Ed25519 signatures, JWT, salted passwords, two-factor TOTP and DPAPI — with nothing to install.
• JSON — build a JSON document type by type, read it along a path and edit it in place, in pure PowerScript.
• JSON tree — a JSON document shown as in a code editor: line numbers, colouring by type, every block foldable, search.
• REST client — a native, asynchronous HTTPS client: GET, POST, headers, JSON, multipart, cookies, retries, file downloads — without a browser's CORS wall.
• Speech out — reading aloud with the voices installed on the workstation: current sentence and word, queue, pronunciation dictionary, synchronous reading.
• Video player — a video player with its own themed bar: subtitles, full screen, chapters, markers, playlist, frame capture.
• XML — build an XML document element by element and read it with real XPath: namespaces, editing, XSLT transformation.
• XML tree — an XML document shown as in a code editor: tags, attributes and text colour-coded, every element foldable, search.

What changes #

• Every position given to a method counts from 1, like the ones the reordering events already report; a cascading entry reports its full address. The details, and what to change: Migrating from 2.0 to 3.0.
• Button is still shipped and supported, but it is deprecated in favour of Button bar: a row of buttons fits in a single component.

Elsewhere in the library #

• of_set_property, of_get_property and of_component_name: drive a property by its name, for a settings screen or a saved configuration.
• The message box offers a list of choices (of_add_choice, of_choose) besides its buttons.

Fixed #

• A colour read back (il_text_color, il_accent…) returned 0, black, whether set or not: it returns the colour set, and -1 when it is the theme's.
• ue_error of Picture and Shell explorer was never raised.
• Rich text: an unknown [word] made the rest of the text disappear; it is now shown as written.
• Status bar: ue_panel_rclicked gives screen coordinates, to hand as they are to a context menu.

2.0 — September 2026 #

Five components, all about navigation #

• Menu bar — application menu bar: menus, submenus, checkable entries, separators, icons, shortcuts and &File mnemonics, drawn by the library in the application's theme.
• Command palette — one shortcut, three letters, and any action of the application is reached without hunting through menus. Searches the label, the group and the keywords, several words at once.
• Radial menu — commands in a ring around the cursor on right-click, chosen by direction rather than by walking a list.
• Shell explorer — the real Windows shell tree: Desktop, This PC, drives, folders, Network, with the machine's own icons. A single of_expand opens a deep path.
• Stepbar — a wizard's trail of steps: the ones done, the current one and the ones to come, horizontal or vertical.

A reshaped API on the sixteen from 1.0 #

One key, one address; everything from the component; an addition returns a code. The three rules, the before/after and every changed signature are in Migrating from 1.0 to 2.0. What motivated it: a handle that added could not say it had refused, and three arguments to name an item forced every component to invent its own way of doing so.

On every component #

• of_count, of_keys_at and of_has, on the component and at every level: what a component holds can be asked, there is no need to keep track of it yourself.
• Every method returning a long says what its return means: 0 applied, -5 invalid argument, -2 component not created — in the demo's embedded doc as well as here.
• Item properties read back live: the icon of a listbar entry, the text and icon of a tile, the state of a bar button — a getter says what is on screen, never a remembered value.
• ib_visible on every menu entry — menu bar, context menu, radial menu, ribbon menus: hiding is not greying, the entry leaves the menu, shortcut included, and keeps its key to come back.
• The status bar builds its menus one entry at a time (of_add_menu_item ("panel/id", …)), with an entry handle that greys, checks and hides — instead of the two parallel arrays of of_set_panel_menu.
• ue_script_error: a script error in the page reaches PowerBuilder with its message and stack, instead of being lost.

Fixed #

• A disabled or hidden item no longer answers anything: neither click nor keyboard — the listbar still selected a greyed entry on Enter.
• Greyed text is legible in every theme (3:1 contrast at least), and hovered text too in dark mode — two disabled ribbon buttons went invisible in Office 2007.
• A Windows path read back from the page came with its backslashes doubled (C:\\Windows); a value holding a quote was cut short.
• Dock container: the panel pinned on the left lost its right border above 100% display scaling.
• Ribbon: the icon of a disabled button was not greyed in compact mode; a menu bar title lit up together with the hovered one.
• Code editor: the text read back after folding was the old one, and unfolding overwrote what had been typed.

1.0 — August 2026 #

First release: sixteen components — button, code editor, dock container, listbar, message box, PDF viewer, picture, progress, ribbon, statictext, statusbar, tab, tiles box, toaster, toolbar, web browser — one DLL to deploy, x86 and x64 under the same name, no .NET, ActiveX or PBNI dependency. Office, Fluent and Metro themes, light and dark; six languages and RTL; entirely offline licensing; PowerBuilder 10.2 to 2025.

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