Hello everyone and welcome to your weekly FME news. It's Mark here, deputizing for Liz today.
New Release: FME2021.0.3
A new update to the 2021.0 version was made yesterday. It's FME2021.0.3, build number 21326. The WhatsNew file says of this build:
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FME 2021.0.3.0 b21326 20210528
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internal changesThis doesn't mean all our developers went on holiday; a lack of fixes simply reflects (I think) that their work in 2021.0 was high quality. From a user point of view, the most interesting thing I can find is that the Data Inspector window layout is now properly saved on closing. And we log a better warning when opening an unrecognized FFS file.
But if you want more exciting stuff, just wait a month or so. That's when FME2021.1 will be released.
Work in Progress
So what are we working on? I can't tell you the big stuff, but a few small items I can mention:
- Recent File List in Workbench.
- How do we improve the clarity of the list? Should we include the paths? In full or truncated? We're just looking at some designs to see which works best.
- FME Server Geometry Picker
- A geometry-type parameter is hugely useful on Server, but can we improve its usability? That's something we're just looking at right now, so expect some GUI improvements in the future.
- What's New Changelog
- Look for a refresh of the WhatsNew file for FME releases. Not just the style but the content too!.
Training and Webinars
From the learning side of things, I saw a tweet from a partner this week announcing French training modules:
Alors, francophones, visitez leur site web pour ces nouvelle ressources.
For webinars, the Best in Show (Tips and Tricks) webinar is now available for viewing. As I mentioned on Twitter, I found it really useful for the JSON handling section alone. We also have recorded webinars on Linear Referencing and an Ask-Me-Anything on Business Intelligence.
Upcoming are webinars on ArcGIS Indoors Experience, codeless web apps, and Kailin and I are just starting work on a webinar about handling datetime fields in FME.
Fun and Random Things
Many thanks to Danilo for spending time at the weekend helping out with the FME Community:
I'm sure this is appreciated by our users. I know it's appreciated by us at Safe.
And last week at Safe, someone asked the question: If you were able to add a new law, what would it be?
Most of the answers were around development, such as "using tabs instead of spaces in source code should be punishable by an hour of community service for every tab"!
I figured that there should be penalty points applied to your FME license for things like using lots of Tester transformers instead of one TestFilter. Or maybe a yellow card pops up on screen each time you publish a workspace to Server without any bookmarks in it (hey, I really think we could implement that)!
So what do you think are crimes against FME? And what unique punishments can you think of?
I've witnessed workspaces with 10+ of these 
