The year has gone by in a flash. And before the holidays sweep us into 2021, I wanted to share long-overdue update for my friends in the Pick MultiValue community.
Everywhere I go, people ask me two questions: “What’s the future of PICK?” And “Where are you with the new releases of AccuTerm?” Interestingly, in these uncertain times, MultiValue feels more vital than ever. Lightning-fast applications, helping companies adapt through quick customization of code and solving real business problems for people are passionate about the MultiValue data model—I get fired up just thinking about it.
At Zumasys, we’ve always been about aligning ourselves to those who love MultiValue—the developers, users, executives, international businesses and new developers discovering the power of PICK—and we wanted to take a moment to provide an update for my friends in the Pick MultiValue community. Specifically we wanted to communicate some behind the scenes items that we are working on with Pete Schellenbach and our development team to improve AccuTerm 8 and the PICK community as a whole.
Pete has been working thoughtfully to implement AccuTerm GUI into AccuTerm Web. The underlying plumbing is now in place allowing a PICK GUI program to send commands to the GUI engine in AccuTerm Web and receive responses in return. We now also have a framework using Vue.js to render existing AccuTerm GUI applications in the web without the need to change your existing code. It currently supports various GUI components like forms, labels, and text boxes. And we’ve got more components on the way as we march towards a full implementation and release in January of 2021.
We’ve also revamped our licensing model for AccuTerm 8 to enable customers to purchase a single license key for the whole company. We’re still sorting out some details around device licensing for the web version of AccuTerm, but the upshot is that we hope to be able to streamline the process. Also, if you’ve had problems recently with AccuTerm being able to connect with the Zumasys license service, we’ve got a fix.
What we will not be doing—and this may be radical—is raising AccuTerm maintenance fees on our customers at a time when everyone could use a bit more stability. We’re not in this to make a quick buck. We’re here to build value, earn loyalty and build a stronger future for the PICK applications you all rely on to drive your business.
In other related news on AccuTerm 8, we have added support for Microsoft’s popular editor Visual Studio Code as an alternative to the wED Editor. We are working with a community of developers from the MultiValue space—your peers—to enhance the MV Basic language extension for VS Code and create a next generation development environment for MultiValue. There are a dozen or so developers working on this project now and we’d love to have you join in. If you have interest, contact Mike Wright at [email protected]. You can also check out the project on GitHub. We believe that VS Code is light-years ahead of what we could do with the wED Editor and with the continued enhancement of the MV Basic extension, we believe it will include all the features users love about wED and then some.
In addition to integrating AccuTerm to VS Code, we have published the AccuTerm Host Programs library to GitHub under a new open source repository. As AccuTerm customers, you’ve always had access to the full source code for these host programs and that is not changing. What this decision unlocks is your ability to contribute to the core host program code. The code is available at http://bit.ly/at-host-progs and ready for your contributions whether they be source code changes, bug reports or feature requests! This move signals one more step in the Zumasys path to embracing the power of open source and our community.
Programmers will also appreciate the new Programmer’s Mode in AccuTerm 8, which automatically adjusts the screen columns and rows to the window size. Also, you may have noticed an annoying bug where multiple windows come to the foreground when any one of them is activated. As fun as that is, this was not intentional, and we’ll have an update soon to address it.
Beyond AccuTerm, we are continuing to bring the PICK community together through the PickMultiValue Facebook Group which just surpassed 2,000 followers. We’ve published a free Full Stack Tutorial for PICK – a recipe on how to modernize your PICK application with today’s open-source web frameworks. And, we’re thrilled to have rolled out market-driven innovations like Data Integrity Constraints in OpenQM, which was the winner of our $10,000 MultiValue Idea Contest last year.
In the next couple of weeks, we will also be publishing a new whitepaper titled “4 Ways to Ensure Your Pick System Survives.” We are particularly excited to share this step-by-step succession plan and resource guide with you, covering four main topics:
- Train New Developers on PICK
- Teach Your Existing PICK Developers Today’s Web Programming Languages
- Update Your Application Interface with RESTful Web Services
- Modernize your legacy PICK application with the DevOps framework
We trust you’ll enjoy the content as much as we enjoyed preparing it for you!
This has been a year of reflection, of accelerating innovations to help our customers make life a little bit easier, and of strengthening the foundation of the MultiValue industry that we all love.
Thank you for being a part of this journey and helping us with your honest feedback, your encouragement, and your partnership.
Respectfully,
Paul Giobbi
President, Zumasys