PUBLISH/SUBSCRIBE in Applets

PUBLISH and SUBSCRIBE have been upgraded to switch automatically to local multicast channels when their environment does not support UDP communication, e.g., in Applets. See the PUBLISH_0 documentation in the net folder and the CODEC_TEST and CODEC_TEST2 examples in the ita folder of the FB Navigator.

PUBLISH/SUBSCRIBE Update

The implementation of PUBLISH and SUBSCRIBE has been updated to ensure that all data transfer can occur within a single Ethernet packet using UDP over IPv4. For details, see www.holobloc.com/doc/fb/rt/net/pubsub.htm and http://www.holobloc.com/doc/ita/s3.htm#3.5.

Enhanced RADIO_N

The functionality of the RADIO_N FB type has been enhanced:

• The occurrence of an INIT+ event will cause the current set of radio buttons (if any) to be replaced with a new set of buttons and initial selection (OUT) as specified by the LABELS and IN inputs, respectively.
• The occurrence of an INIT- event will delete the current set of buttons, and the QO and OUT values will be set to false and 0, respectively.

Copy and Paste Service Sequences

You can now copy and paste service sequences in the element navigation tree of the FBEditor. This is documented under the SIFBs heading of the FBDK 2 How To page.

Metal Look and Feel

To ensure cross-platform consistency, the Look and Feel (LAF) of the FBEditor has been restricted to the Java "Metal" CrossPlatformLookAndFeel. Accordingly, the "lookAndFeel" entry in the Preferences dialog has been removed. This has been checked in both Windows 8.1 with the Oracle Java 7 runtime, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with the openjdk7 runtime. It has also been checked with the Java applets used in the FB Navigator in both Google Chrome on Windows 8.1 and Firefox with the icedTea plug-in on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

Help menu updates

Web links to this blog and to the "About FBDK" information have been added to the FBEditor Help menu.

Improved fbdk2.jar

You may want to download the updated bootstrap file fbdk2.jar, available on the FBDK2 Home Page. File updates will then be shown in the bootstrap window as soon as they occur, before the main FBEditor window opens and partially covers the bootstrap window. This will help you to notice when files are updated; then you can consult this blog to see what changes (improvements?!) have occurred.