Angus Thinks

Author: AngusThinks

  • SQLEditor now zip file not a dmg

    In a change that will probably affect almost nobody at all, SQLEditor is now being distributed with a zip file rather than a dmg as the default download.

    Why?

    • Zip files are simpler to create
    • It prevents the problem of the app being run from the dmg
    • Safari handles zip downloads really nicely
    • Disk images created in 10.6 tend to loose their background images in 10.5

    That last problem is quite significant, because most of the friendliness of the dmg is the background image; if you loose that, you might as well have a zip file.

    There are some benefits from dmg files:

    • They have the background image and the drag to applications directory install
    • DMG files can be smaller
    • DMG files are handy to store

    But then if you loose the first point anyway, it might not be worth bothering.

    Now there are excellent tools like DMG Canvas for creating cross platform disk images that work fine and keep their background images, but I began to wonder if it was worth the effort for SQLEditor. Were the benefits of the background image sufficient to make up for the trouble?

    Various notables including John Gruber, Panic and Sofa recommend or use zip files, so it’s becoming more popular. (The Mac App Store uses pkg but it’s a different story altogether)

    The change isn’t actually as significant as it seems anyway, because SQLEditor has been available in both zip and dmg formats for some months now. The release process automatically builds both zip and dmg format archives and uploads them at the end of the build release process. The change is really just that the website links now point to the zip instead of the dmg. (And if you really want the dmg you can change zip to dmg in the download link and get a dmg)

    Enjoy!

    Or take absolutely no notice of it at all 🙂

  • Chalkboard paint

    Chalkboard Paint makes a chalkboard anywhere you can paint.

    Some ideas on what to actually do with the stuff on the walls.

    I like the idea of a calendar made of the stuff.

  • SoyLatte 10.6 bundle template


    This is a simple template to use SoyLatte in Mac OS X 10.6 and have it appear in the JavaPreferences system.

    You need to copy all of the contents of the /usr/local/soylatte16-i386-1.0.3/ directory into the directory contents/Home (inside the package), then copy the .jdk folder to /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/

    soylatte16-i386-1.0.3.jdk_1

    [Edit] revised based on suggestions by Mike Swingler, it now doesn’t advertise capabilities that the SoyLatte distribution doesn’t offer.

    Also another version: This simply symlinks to the existing installation in /usr/local/soylatte16-i386-1.0.3/ and doesn’t require anything except copying the result to the /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ folder.

    soylatte-103-symlink

  • Mac OS X will still have Java in the future.

    There has been lots of stuff written recently about how Java on the Mac has been deprecated.

    The reality is that one particular Java runtime has been deprecated: the one that Apple write themselves. Java as a language will still be available, only it won’t be Apple that writes it and possibly it might be an optional download.

    The confusion is because up until now there has really been only one Java runtime on the Mac, which Apple wrote themselves using code licensed from Sun. Now Apple has chosen to discontinue their own particular runtime, but this doesn’t mean that there won’t be any Java at all.

    There are already alternatives, in particular the OpenJDK and SoyLatte variants; a little rough in places possibly, but they definitely work. Undoubtably in time they will improve and others will appear, including possibly an Oracle one.

    Obviously it would have been nice to have the deprecation notice and an endorsement of another runtime made at the same time, but given how long it will be until the current runtime becomes unsupported, I’m not terribly concerned.

    Also, whether such a future Java release has a native visual appearance is not of virtal importance. While the Apple Java team has made enormous efforts to get it to look and feel native, it takes quite a bit of work to create an application that looks seamless. The very first version of SQLEditor was a Java Swing application and although it looked fairly good, it was taking too much time making things match exactly. Switching it to a native cocoa application made my life much easier (but killed off any immediate hopes of a Windows version)

    I think most people accept that Java Swing apps don’t look native and will accept that the visual appearance will differ.If you want a truly native feeling Java app in the future you should look at SWT or better Rococoa, not Swing.

    What is important is that future Java runtimes don’t require X11 for Swing. But I’ve seen good progress by several projects towards this goal and I’m not worried about it either.

    Ideally of course, Apple would release their Java Runtime as open source, but whether they are in a position to do that with respect to licensing is unclear.

    Having seen the deprecation notice last week and been somewhat concerned, I’m now fairly confident about the future of Java on the Mac,

  • Drizzle JDBC supports MySQL

    I came across the Drizzle JDBC driver today, which seems very interesting

    Most interesting though, is that it supports MySQL and it is BSD licensed. This could solve some of the licensing problems that applications like SQLEditor run into.

    I’m hoping to have a good look at it later this week.

  • A Microsoft vision of the future

    A vision of a technology future that is almost magical in its fluidity and the absence of any obvious equipment. This is what the future should be:

  • Helpful forums?

    Spotted recently in a technical forum (which shall remain nameless):

    Your answers are useless. Thank you anyway. I found answers on my questions from another source.

    Although I still don’t know what the final answer was, alas…

  • Real buyers getting tired of speculators

    Real cocoa buyers, who are probably chocolate manufacturers, are getting tired of excessive speculation in the cocoa market; they’ve threatened to move from London to unspecified US cocoa futures exchanges if something isn’t done to improve things:

    Telegraph Article
    (Third section, after Gold movements and Shipping rates)

    I suppose speculation is good if it balances demand and evens out prices, but bad if the end customers feel that they are being cheated.

    More

    Another article: Mystery trader buys all Europe’s cocoa.

    No wonder people are annoyed.

  • Apple WWDC videos

    Brilliant work on Apple’s part in releasing all of the WWDC videos to registered developers. In previous years these were only available for a fee (I seem to remember $500), so including them is very nice.

  • Pay to play?

    back in my day, we didn’t pay to win a video game … we simply played them well

    Marketing crazy