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Thoughts from the Publisher
Issue: 7.4 (May/June 2009)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: When RBD publisher Marc Zeedar was a kid he used to create magazines just for fun. Now he's doing it for a living! You may contact him at
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 3,375
Starting Page Number: 5
Article Number: 7400
Related Web Link(s):
http://www.rbdeveloper.com/renew/
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RBD in Book Form
For those of you who prefer RBD in print form, I've got great news: as of now all the back issues have been compiled into annual collections and are available in printed book form!
Late last year I released RBD Archive Volume 6 (all of Year 6 in one volume) and now I've produced Volumes 1 through 5, so all six books are now available for purchase. Even better, these older books are cheaper, and they are available at an even more discounted price for current subscribers. This is your opportunity to complete your RBD collection. Each book is over 300 pages, printed in black ink inside, with a glossy color cover. Six books are a lot easier to manage than 36 individual magazine issues!
If you're curious if we're planning on releasing Volume 7 in book format, you can rest assured that we are. In fact, current subscribers can pre-order RBD Archive Volume 7 for just $19.99! The book won't be printed until next fall, of course, after issue 7.6 is released, but if you order now we'll ship it when it's ready.
http://www.rbdeveloper.com/renew/ In This Issue
This issue we have a printing theme (as you can tell by our terrific "recursive" cover), with two articles covering different perspectives on printing. First, Tom Baumgartner covers the obstacles he had getting printing to work cross-platform. Jens Bendig shows a fascinating alternative: instead of working hard to make your app support sophisticated printing, use a document template approach. Basically your app just replaces placeholders in a word processing template with new content and then saves that as a new file which can be printed with the original application. Though not suitable for all printing needs, in many circumstances it's a terrific approach (it's ideal for in-house apps or simple report generation).
Other features include part two of Will Phillips' TickerMenu Postmortem, this time exploring marketing and other aspects of development, and Christian Schmitz walks us through creating sophisticated charts and graphs using his impressive ChartDirector plugin for REALbasic. The variety of graphs his plugin can create is amazing, and he shows it's not hard to use.
For those of you uncomfortable with the complexities of regular expressions, JC Cruz has you covered with a detailed explanation of how to use such powerful pattern recognition. And unlike most general purpose regular expression articles, he shows exactly how to use RegEx within REALbasic.
In our columns, we got articles on database reporting, control and variable naming, I explain typecasting in my Beginner's Corner column, and Brad finishes his Graph Paper Maker project. We're still missing a few columnists this issue, but hopefully they'll be back soon. Enjoy!
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