I’ve been slightly concerned recently that the key labels are rubbing off the keyboard of my iBook.
But then I found this. A keyboard with no key labeling at all. 104 entirely black keys, no labels.
Interestingly it promises to offer faster speeds for the experienced typist and has differently weighted keys for different finger strengths. It sounds really interesting, especially as it promises compatibility with Linux and Mac OS X. (USB presumably)
Some old error messages from MPW (which was kind of like XCode for Mac before Mac OS X in one sense).
“String literal too long (I let you have 512 characters, that’s 3 more than ANSI said I should)”
“…And the lord said, `lo, there shall only be case or default labels inside a switch statement’”
“a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program”
[From Buggin’ My Life Away]
One of the interesting things that seems to be happening with Cocoa is the addition of garbage collection. A finalize method has appeared in the documentation for NSObject. There is a curious warning attached to it stating that it isn’t available in 10.4 or earlier releases. This suggests that it may be available in 10.5 or possibly even in notional 10.4.x releases.
It may make Cocoa programming easier for people moving from Java. Although I do hope that Java support for cocoa apps continues (not least because SQLEditor needs it for JDBC interfacing)
I was recently trying to install a particular package from the basic Mac OS X installation (Address Book.app) which for some reason had been deleted. Probably in a desperate attempt to free up some disk space.
It took me some searching before I realized that the packages are located in /System/Installation/ on the iBook’s restore dvd.
It isn’t the most obvious location by any means.
Daring Fireball has a comment from someone who saw a Mac Mini being disassembled and it sounds ok.
A standard issue putty knife and some assistance from a jack knife were all that was needed to crack the case.
In a break from SQLEditor and other similar things I’ve been trying to connect my pocket pc to my macintosh.
After some experimentation I have sucessfully installed synce using instructions .
I have also got the pocket pc to connect to the internet from the cradle using a slightly modified ppp script (use proxyarp) and have Avantgo synchronisation from the desktop using agsync.
I also have a new tool that handles detection of connections and disconnections on the device which I hope to make available shortly.
Unfortunately there are still some bugs, but excellent progress is being made.
I’ve also made some progress on mounting the device on the desktop using a modified webdav server. I can get read support, but I’m still working on write support.
One of the key tools I’ve been using recently is Docbook. Docbook is an xml-schema which can be used to write documentation for things. This can then be converted via the wonders of XSL, XML and XML-FO processors into PDF, HTML or several other formats. I’ve written all of the documentation for SQLEditor using docbook and it is really handy. Slightly verbose, but really handy.
Unfortunately at the moment there doesn’t seem to be an Apple Help stylesheet for docbook. Since one of my targets is Apple Help this is slightly unfortunate, but I suppose in time either I can write one or someone else will. In the meantime, I’m using the microsoft help stylesheet and altering the results a bit to work with Apple Help.
Docbook is definitely a handy tool for documentation though. I wish I had discovered it earlier.
After a rather over-extended development cycle SQLEditor version 1.0 has now been released. Which is a great relief to me. I’ve been working on it for so long now that I can’t quite remember not working on it, which is weird. Admittedly that’s only really about 12 months, but still, it’s a significant portion of my life. It’s also the first major product I’ve released.
In a moment of commercialism I would encourage you to buy a copy because it makes a wonderful christmas gift, or at least it might if the recipient really loved databases or if it was some other kind of program altogether. As it is, it probably wouldn’t make much of a Christmas gift. Socks or bottles of wine would be a better choice for almost anyone.
Releasing SQLEditor isn’t the end of the situation though. Version 1.1 is already being planned and I’ve various other projects that I’m working on as well, but SQLEditor is first and will always be the first piece of software that I released for sale.
Releasing software is complicated. In addition to the actual program, there is the distribution package, online help, the website, notifications to trackers like MacUpdate and Versiontracker, plus checking the online store is working correctly. Bad news with this release for anyone hoping for the pre-release discount. With the release of version 1.0 the offer expired.
People keep talking about MacPAD but nothing seems to be happening at the moment, only MacShareware.net seems to be supporting it (which is logical, since the two are quite closely tied together). I’ve got a MacPAD file up now, but nothing much else. I haven’t integrated it with the release managment stuff I’ve written (a motley collection of php and make files with a bit of XML for good measure).
If there was any market in it there is an interesting opportunity for a release management system (written perhaps in java?) that could generate everything automatically. Perhaps if I get really bored at some point I might do that.
The next step is to write a press release and send it out today. Joy 🙁
So, in conclusion, if you haven’t already tried SQLEditor, then version 1.0 will improve your life so much that you won’t know how you got by without it. Or at least might save some time when designing SQL databases.
I’m currently in the middle of writing user documentation of SQLEditor. I finally settled on docbook as the format of choice since it seems the most compatible with other things.
I’m using this tutorial to build the stuff although saxon has now made it into darwinports which is nice.
http://www.boksa.de/tutorials/docbook_macosx.mpp
I was reading macsurfer today and I came across an interesting article by a Canadian called Joe Clark who wanted to remove the US flag from the input mode menu item. This got me thinking, could I write something that would alter the default US keyboard layout to have a user specified flag. Could I write a keyboard layout with a Scottish flag for that matter.
It turns out that I didn’t need to.
There is already a Keyboard layout generator for mac osx. All you need to do is to enter a name for your new layout (“Scottish”) and then choose xml format. (You may also want to set the autodefine option to “define them all”) Then hit the download button. Finally save the resulting file as name.keylayout. (“Scottish.keylayout”).
If you want an icon to go with it you also need to create name.icns (“Scottish.icns”) using IconComposer or something similar.
Then drop the files into /Library/Keyboard Layouts/
Now logout and log back in again and the new keyboard layout should be available in the international pane for you to select. (hopefully)
But that isn’t the end of it. There’s more! The system is actually much cleverer than it seemed. You can set particular keys to generate combinations of characters. So if you want to do really odd things like have the number keys spell out the numbers as words that seems to be possible. (1 becomes ‘one’ for instance). Or maybe you dislike commas intensely, you would be able to redefine the keyboard layout to give space whenever you hit comma. It is also open to practical jokes of all kinds.
Tip: Check /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ if you’re getting odd effects when typing, someone may already have altered the layout.