Developer Product Briefs
August's New Apps & Upgrades for Your Toolkit
Accusoft Corp., Uniloc USA Inc., FarPoint Technologies Inc., Data Dynamics Ltd., Softgauge.com
AccuSoft Corp.:
ImageGear for .NET
Imaging software vendor AccuSoft has released a new version of its ImageGear toolkit for .NET apps. The updated version extends the imaging, scanning and printing component's reach to the .NET Framework 3.0 and Windows Vista, the company says.
The new release also provides support for the new Microsoft graphics platform Direct3D 10 and for raw images in more than 100 digital camera manufacturer formats, AccuSoft says.
Other new features include support for embedded ICC color profiles and the addition of a new ImageClean function that allows problems in digital pictures and other graphics to be corrected automatically, the company says. Some new image-processing methods, such as red-eye removal and image filters such as "mosaic" and "solarize" also have been added to the ImageGear API, allowing developers to build them into their apps.
The product supports a number of image file formats including PDF, PS, JPEG and DICOM, the company says. The cost starts at $1,995 for new customers. http://accusoft.com
Uniloc USA Inc.:
softANCHOR 5.0
The 5.0 release of the anti-software-piracy suite softANCHOR allows developers to protect their apps with embedded security configurations, including an unlimited number of tripwires and validation checkpoints, according to maker Uniloc USA.
The company says the softANCHOR suite is designed to prevent license exploitation, offer enterprises a global view of their losses due to piracy with the LicenseAUDIT tool and enable "throttling" to fine-tune device activation parameters, as well as provide open source license-management. The tool employs code variations and obfuscation techniques to safeguard code.
The LicenseAUDIT mechanism, which can be deployed independently of the softANCHOR suite, helps enterprises to adjust licensing strategies on the fly by seeking to quantify the pervasiveness of piracy problems with real-time statistics about license usage, the company says. The cost varies according to configuration and environment, according to the company. http://www.unilocusa.com
FarPoint Technologies Inc.:
FarPoint Spread for Windows Forms 3.0
This new version of FarPoint Spread for Windows Forms adds display improvements to the embedded spreadsheets component, including Microsoft Outlook-style grouping, annotation mode and custom focus indicators, according to maker FarPoint Technologies.
Other features new to the 3.0 version include more calculation functions, interactive functionality such as undo/redo and a data-bindable, multiple-column combo box cell. The new release also improves the performance of very large spreadsheets, the company says.
FarPoint bills the product as a fully customizable WinForms spreadsheet component that allows developers to build Excel-like functionality into their apps. A single control can now handle up to two billion spreadsheets, each with up to two billion rows and two billion columns, according to the company. The cost is $899. http://fpoint.com
Data Dynamics Ltd.:
Data Dynamics Reports
This reporting engine plugs into Visual Studio, enabling the creation of reports within the IDE. It's written in Visual C# and is based on the Report Definition Language, according to the company.
Data can be displayed in a variety of manners, from charts to banded lists. Compatible data sources include ADO.NET data sets, SQL Server, .NET objects, Oracle and XML data sources, the company says.
The product also comes with a number of controls that may be included in users' applications, including viewer controls for WinForms and ASP.NET. Data Dynamics Reports costs $1,499. http://datadynamics.com
Softgauge.com:
XmlShell 1.5
This lightweight shell editor is designed to help developers manage the powerful but complex Extensible Markup Language (XML) while building apps.
Softgauge says XmlShell is designed to be flexible and useful in solving real-world development issues without taking up lots of hard drive space or hogging the memory on a developer's machine. The tool provides a structured editing interface as well as a "free-form text-editing mode," both of which are linked and synchronized, the company says.
The GUI includes a view of the XML tree structure alongside the table, editor or browser view to help programmers find the specific code they want to work on. The bug fixes new to the 1.5 release include the repair of a DTD validation function that had failed to work properly in some cases in previous versions of the tool, the company says. XmlShell costs $35.
http://softgauge.com/xmlshell/