PxPlus Releases

PxPlus 2017 (version 14.00)

May 2017

PxPlus 2017 consists of various new features and enhancements, including new Word and Excel Objects, a new Custom Title Bar feature, enhanced SQL performance, and new Security improvements.

Major New Features

Ability to create and apply Custom Title Bars to panels at different levels: System Wide, in Library Defaults and in Panel Header
Support for TLS 1.2 with Certificate validation
New Excel Object and Word Object interfaces
New embedded Chromium Browser Object for displaying a Web page, executing JavaScript and subscribing to browser events
Ability to add horizontal bar charts to Grid and List View controls
PNG alpha channel support added to the 'PICTURE' mnemonic, Buttons, Check Boxes, Radio Buttons and Grid bitmap images
New Link File Extensions (.pxplus and .windx) to simplify the creation and maintenance of shortcuts when upgraded versions of PxPlus and WindX are installed
New SFTP Utility that interfaces with a server running an SFTP server

Additional Features

Language Enhancements

TEXT mnemonic enhanced to support both vertical and horizontal graphical text alignment
Added:

'U8' system parameter logic to use Bit 6 (Value 32) to control UTF-8 Support in CVS, UCS and LCS functions
New option for List Views to the SortOnHdrClick property to generate a CTL event and place an EOM code in the READ queue when the column header is clicked
New Make New Folder button in WindX GET_FILE_BOX
Ability to Enforce Journalization by restricting the closure of the journals or the disabling of journalization
New 'AC' system parameter that enables the system to automatically convert values to either a STR( ) or NUM( ) function, depending on whether it detects a numeric value when expecting a string value (or vice-versa)
Image Scaling support for List View controls
Ability to use the Popup_Menu directive to invoke the system menu programmatically
Font Mapping support to *PDF* when using LibHaru ('HP'=1)
New Make Link File button to WindX Connection Manager for creating .windx link files as shortcuts to simplify connections
New AutoFit Grid property that forces the associated Grid to resize the column currently selected by the 'Colno or 'Column property to the width required to fit its contents
New mouse pointer icon when hovering over a button in a Grid

Enhanced IDE, NOMADS and Toolkit

Included the Change Bulk Edit/Property Sort Order option in all NOMADS Panel Designers
Improved accessibility to the creation and maintenance of Info Tips for all applicable controls
Replaced Shell Explorer with the new Chromium Browser control throughout the toolkit (i.e. Google Maps)
Dialogue attribute set to On by default for new panels created in NOMADS
Enhanced Print Panel Utility to accommodate the printing of more groups
Improved usability of the Bulk Program Scan/Edit Utility
Improved usability of Grid Presets by clearing all values in the row when the Property column is changed
Added:

New Custom Title Bar to the development toolkit
New Customize button to Library Object Selection
New iNomads Menu to Library Object Selection for creating and testing panels in iNomads
Vertical and horizontal alignment capability to Fonted Text controls in NOMADS
New Library Bulk Edit Utility for globally changing panel header and control properties
New Chromium Browser control to COM Control properties
Full Screen Drag capability to panels at different levels: System Wide, in Library Defaults and in Panel Header
Ability to create HTML-Type Info Tips
Ability to apply Themes at different levels: System Wide, in Library Defaults and in Panel Header
New Ignore Change Flag property to applicable controls (i.e. Check Box, Multi-line, etc.) to indicate whether the NOMADS CHANGE_FLG variable will be updated
New Tab Height property to Folder controls to adjust the tab height for a sidebar Folder
New Info Tip to the IDE History and Project tabs to list the task icons and the types they represent
About dialog to the IDE menu bar to display detailed licensing information about the current PxPlus installation
Ability to define Web Services as tasks that can be added to the IDE menu system
New Logical File Name field to the System Utilities file information display for PxPlus Keyed and EFF files
New Include Sub-Directories option in Project Maintenance that is used when building a list of tasks to add to a project

Security

Updated SSL to OpenSSL version 1.0.2g libraries
Added:

Support for SNI (Server Name Indication) with TLS 1.2
Ability to define any number of trusted servers for enhanced WindX Security
Ability to add a Certificate and Pubkey to the client (workstation) when using Simple Client-Server interface

PxPlus Licensing and Registration

Online Registration has been enhanced to handle version upgrades, expired keys and license moves.
To allow for changes in the way user counts are controlled and to improve performance, the user count mechanism on Windows has changed for this release. As a result of this change, a Windows workstation cannot share its user slot between this version and any prior PxPlus version. For example, if a workstation runs both a PxPlus 2016 and a PxPlus 2017 concurrently using the same license file (ACTIVATE.PVX), this will be counted as two users.

Functions

Added:

New QPRINT format to the CVS function to convert to/from Quoted Printable text
Support to the CVS function to accept HTML
New FIN function value TLS that returns the protocol version number of TLS in use

Directives

Added:

New DEF NAR directive to reduce the number of arguments that a program sees
New LOCK format to SYSTEM_JRNL OPEN directive to restrict the closure of the journals or the disabling of journalization
New STATIC WHERE clause to SELECT directive when used with external databases

OPTION Mnemonics

Added new options:

SignalCaptionChg generates a specified CTL value nnnn when the caption on the current window is changed
GrayDisabledBmp sets the display of images on disabled buttons to either gray scale or shadows
ClrHighlight sets the background colors used to display currently selected items from a List Box or Drop Box and display the background in a Multi-Line when it has focus
ClrHighlightText sets the text colors used to display currently selected items from a List Box or Drop Box and display the text in a Multi-Line when it has focus
GridAlignLines sets Multi-line text (lines separated by line feed $0a$) in a Grid Button-style cell so that each line of text will be individually aligned as per the 'Align$ property

Added new options for Customizing Radio Buttons and Check Boxes:

CbxImage defines the pathname to the image to be used for the customized Check Box
CbxMarkSize sets the size of the Check Box image to be used for the customized Check Box
RbtImage defines the pathname to the image to be used for the customized Radio Button
RbtMarkSize sets the size of the Radio Button image to be used for the customized Radio Button

Note: All of the above options are also available to read using the FIN function.

Customizer

Improved accessibility to Customizer at run time
Added:

Ability to create/remove the Customizer Definition file for a Library
New Percent Bar custom display option for Application Files and Formulas
New Customize button to Library Object Selection

Data Dictionary

Improved accessibility to the Global Dictionary and added ability to update to the Global Dictionary from any Data Dictionary record
Enhanced browsing capabilities in Data Dictionary Maintenance
Added:

Ability to copy from any Data Dictionary record when using Copy Data Dictionary functionality
Ability to optionally Copy Key Definitions when using Copy Data Dictionary functionality

Ed+ Program Editor

Improved line formatting behavior when using the END SWITCH directive
Added:

New slider between the Book Marks list and program work area to control the size of these sections
F4 keyboard method for closing the selected program
CTRL+O keyboard method for opening the standard GET_FILE_BOX

Data Validation

Enhanced IOLIST directive with additional data validation attributes based on Data Dictionary elements
Added:

New data validation option to Data Dictionary Maintenance
New validation option to all relational databases: ADO, DB2, MYSQL, OCI and ODB

Enhanced Database Access and Performance

Added:

Ability to update only changed fields in generated statements
New STATIC WHERE clause to SELECT directive for enhanced External Database Access to filter the results before sending back to PxPlus

Enhanced Query

Added:

Two Query+ Views: Menu (no toolbar) and Hybrid (menu and toolbar, similar to the Classic Query)
Ability to control which Query+ View to display at different levels: System Wide or in Query Definition
Ability to include Horizontal Bar Charts in Query+
Image Scaling support in Query+
New Grid Lines option for displaying grid lines in Query+
Themes support to Drop Query

Enhanced Web Services/Dashboard

Enhanced Dashboard styling
Added:

Run-time error reporting to Web Services
New Test button to Web Services Maintenance to check if a Web Service has been defined correctly
Ability to customize Maintenance Web Services using a new *web/services/maint_style.css style sheet

Simple Client Server

Added:

Ability to Shut Down specific host processes
New TCP options that can be specified for the Host (Server) and Client (Workstation) Command lines when using Simple Client interface

Utilities

Added:

Ability to create self-signed SSL Certificates
New Data Mirroring Configuration Utility that provides an interface for the set up and operation of Data Mirroring processes
Ability to specify the pathname to the server's SSL Certificate when creating an EZWeb Server Windows service or specify the pathname to a Forced Program when creating a Simple Client-Server Windows service
New NOMADS Logging Tool to record key events and other processing in a log file
New Clear button to Historical File Splitting Maintenance Utility for clearing the fields of a selected record

iNomads Enhancements

Improved the Admin and IDE template styles and added new Cats template
Enhanced TEXT mnemonic to support both vertical and horizontal graphical text alignment
Enhanced SortOnHdrClick property for List View controls
Added:

New Template Configuration option to include a Help Button on the title line
New Template Configuration option to Open a Menu on Hover rather than by clicking
New Template Configuration option to select a Query View
New Test Button to iNomads Setup window to display a template on a Web browser in Test mode
Support for CELL DOUBLE CLICK to iNomads Grids
Image Scaling support to List View controls

Corrections and Minor Changes

Improved usability and addressed a number of GET_FILE_BOX issues when using WindX
Resolved issue with BEGIN * directive not closing certain global files
Enhanced Program Compare logic to not display differences when comparing the same numbered and non-numbered program
Modified 'CellFormat logic when formatting a large value in a Grid
Resolved tab order issue when using embedded panels
Improved the loading of data in Query+ when using a prefix on an alternate key
Addressed issue with a popup menu appearing in a Grid without defining a popup
Resolved the vertical centering of centered panels
Enhanced the display of the PDF viewer in the Edge browser
Improved the display of Shapes in the NOMADS Panel Designer when using a specified radius value
Corrected problem with record length being adjusted due to field insertion in EFF file handling
Resolved issue with losing function keys when using NOMADS+
Corrected LST(IOL()) issue that caused the system to stop working
Improved the display of Query buttons when Multi-line height is less than 1
Corrected buffer allocation for Text property in a Grid
Improved CVS URL formatting to correctly encode certain special characters
Resolved issue with drawing a control at position 0,0 in NOMADS+
Corrected problem with 'FOR WINDOW' objects not being dropped
Improved *PDF* file handling when using FORM and ORIENTATION options
Resolved Alt-Key issues in Data Dictionary Maintenance
Fixed file pathing issue in Historical File Splitting utility
Corrected issue with *IT creating a new line when pasting to a program using line numbers
Improved WindX Command mode window cursor positioning when using backspace or arrow key
Added Tip processor logic so that if TC=-2 is not set, it will only use INFOTIPS if the tip text starts with <!Doctype, <h1> or <html>
New Transparent Background attribute added for Multi-lines in Bulk Edit Utilities
New 'IL' system parameter added for controlling the LOCAL option

iNomads

Adjusted Grid cell tips logic to improve display and support line feeds in iNomads
Improved the handling of the color table
Fixed issue with iNomads class when used as an expression
Corrected problem with button click not being properly discarded in sidebar Folders
Addressed issue with On Timer when defined on a panel
Added support for # option in SortColFmt$ to Grids

Additional Help Changes

Enhanced Visual Class Assignment documentation for the Library Level and Panel Level
Enhanced Themes documentation
Improved IT Program Compare documentation
Added EFF vs. VLR File Formats documentation
Updated *web/email documentation for the -secure option
Added *GETLOCALE Locale Settings documentation (Language Reference)
Added HTML Editor documentation
Updated Debugging documentation for the OPTION mnemonic
Added Button Options documentation (NOMADS Graphical Application)

Other Changes for Reference

NOMADS Properties Added

%NOMADS'Drop_Qry_Color$ sets the default background color for Drop Query
%NOMADS'Enable_Customizer_Popup, if set, enables the Customize Panel option on the panel popup menu system wide
%NOMADS'Full_Screen_Drag', when set, applies full screen dragging to all applicable panels
%NOMADS'LogFile$ contains the path of the current NOMADS log file
%NOMADS'Menu_LeftEdge_Clr$ sets the left edge color for menu items
%NOMADS'Menu_TextBackground_Clr$ sets the text background color for menu items
%NOMAD_Min_Windx_Ver sets the minimum version number that can be run on the workstation
%NOMADS'Query_GridLines is used to display grid lines in the Query
%NOMADS'Query_View is used to select the default Query+ view to use
%NOMADS'SidebarFolderTabHeight is used to set the system-wide default tab height for sidebar Folders
%NOMADS'Theme$ sets the global (pre-defined) Theme to be used
%NOMADS'ThemeOverride$, when set, overrides all other Theme settings
%NOMADS'TitleBar$ is used to specify a panel and library to be used as the system-wide default custom title bar

Environment Variables Added

PVX_CERTIFICATES defines the default setting for WindX SSL Certificate validation
PVX_CERTSTORE defines the default WindX SSL Certificate store
PVX_JOURNAL is used to start a SYSTEM_JRNL_OPEN and enable journalization with the option to apply a lock
PXP_LOGFILE is the path of the log file used by the NOMADS Run-Time Events Logging tool
PXP_CS_OPT is set on the WindX host to define any number of semi-colon separated options that will be added to the option specified on the host Command line
PXP_CS_OPT_CLIENT is set on the WindX client (workstation) to define any number of semi-colon separated options that will be added to the option specified on the client Command line
PXPSPAWN_CMD is used to force either NOHUP or SETSID when spawning a UNIX/Linux PxPlus session
WDXTRUST is set on the client to define any number of trusted servers for enhanced WindX Security