Go Here to Download 3.1b1
This is the first beta of MacJournal 3.1. There are only a few code changes but a lot of localizations are updated. The following localizations should be ready for 3.1:
- Serbian
- Spanish
- Danish
- Taiwanese
- French
- Norwegian
- German
In addition, a problem with printing was fixed and a hidden preference for Wiki links was introduced. Read the Version History for the details. The code is largely finished at this point. We're waiting on one or two more localizations, so I'm shooting for sometime in April for the final release.
Reporting Bugs
Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.
If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
MacJournal 3.1a4
Get It Now.
This is the fourth alpha of MacJournal 3.1. The big change in this release is with networking. All of the networking code was rewritten to use WebKit APIs, which should provide for more reliable connections and in more network setups. The areas affected are LiveJournal, the Update window and the Known Issues window. The Blogger window uses a different set of APIs that can't be migrated. Please test these areas out and let me know if they still work for you and if they actually work better. A side effect of this is MacJournal now requires Safari to be installed. You can either have 10.2.7 or higher installed, or 10.2 with Safari. You don't have to actually use Safari at all, just have it installed.
Some other changes:
- Daily backups can now be manipulated in the Advanced prefs, as well as the period of days in between between backups.
- Decoupled the Full Screen Text Zoom pref from the other appearance prefs.
- The Stats window is now accessible from the View menu and will take into account what is selected in the drawers. It will also count words in nested journals.
- Encrypted journals will show up with a gold lock to indicate their encrypted nature.
- Added a new HTML template that is similar but written in HTML 4.01.
This will be the last alpha. In fact, the interface will be frozen very shortly to be localized. I'm hoping to get 3.1 out in April so I can get to work on the next big release with support for multiple documents, multiple blogging servers, tabs, labels, and loads more.
Reporting Bugs
Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.
If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!
This is the fourth alpha of MacJournal 3.1. The big change in this release is with networking. All of the networking code was rewritten to use WebKit APIs, which should provide for more reliable connections and in more network setups. The areas affected are LiveJournal, the Update window and the Known Issues window. The Blogger window uses a different set of APIs that can't be migrated. Please test these areas out and let me know if they still work for you and if they actually work better. A side effect of this is MacJournal now requires Safari to be installed. You can either have 10.2.7 or higher installed, or 10.2 with Safari. You don't have to actually use Safari at all, just have it installed.
Some other changes:
- Daily backups can now be manipulated in the Advanced prefs, as well as the period of days in between between backups.
- Decoupled the Full Screen Text Zoom pref from the other appearance prefs.
- The Stats window is now accessible from the View menu and will take into account what is selected in the drawers. It will also count words in nested journals.
- Encrypted journals will show up with a gold lock to indicate their encrypted nature.
- Added a new HTML template that is similar but written in HTML 4.01.
This will be the last alpha. In fact, the interface will be frozen very shortly to be localized. I'm hoping to get 3.1 out in April so I can get to work on the next big release with support for multiple documents, multiple blogging servers, tabs, labels, and loads more.
Reporting Bugs
Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.
If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!
Friday, March 11, 2005
3.1 coming along
3.1 is coming along well so far. I put some more work into tabs last night and got a lot of improvements in; it's shaping up quite nicely. I don't know if they will ship with 3.1 by default, but it will be available via the hidden preference if not. I got some performance improvements out of the calendar as well. I don't think any more large features will be in 3.1 (due to time constraints), however I would like to do some more under-the-hood work. To that end I am strongly considering raising the minimum OS to 10.2.7 to allow for use of WebKit (Safari's underlying engine). This would improve some of the networking functionality, especially for LiveJournal. It could also open up some interesting possibilities for HTML exporting. I don't think it will be a problem for most users, but let me know of any strong objections. I will be dropping 10.2.x entirely eventually, but I don't know how and when yet.
There have been new alphas the past few weekends but I think I might skip this weekend to do the WebKit changes. So far all the changes I have are to the tabs so I want to get something else in there in case you don't like tabs. ☺ Maybe sometime next week, although I do have jury duty....
There have been new alphas the past few weekends but I think I might skip this weekend to do the WebKit changes. So far all the changes I have are to the tabs so I want to get something else in there in case you don't like tabs. ☺ Maybe sometime next week, although I do have jury duty....
MacJournal 3.0.2
MacJournal 3.0.2 has been released! Download it from Mariner's download page. It's a very small update that just fixes the undo problem and adds a Norwegian localization. There was a problem in 3.0.1 that caused all undo operations to get combined together after you created a journal. This is fixed now, along with a handful of very small fixes. Let me know if there are any problems with it as I'm not planning any more 3.0.x releases; everything is focused on 3.1 right now.
Monday, March 07, 2005
MacJournal 3.1a3
Get It Here
This is the third alpha of MacJournal 3.1. Before I get into the big topics that need discussing, here are some bugs that were fixed:
- Fixed a crash while switching list styles
- Fixed a problem with exporting non-ASCII characters to one file per entry
- Fixed some problems with auto-expansion in the journals drawer
- Journals should now re-sort automatically if you change the name of a nested journal
- Fixed Undo in Full Screen mode
Some new things were also added:
- A hidden preference to search entry text as well as the dates when searching from the calendar. The preference specifies the format of the date in the text that you want to search.
- A hidden preference to prevent the "Loading Data" window from appearing at app launch. The application will just show the spinning cursor until the data are ready. This will primarily help people who set MacJournal as a login item with the "Hide" checkbox.
- Added tabs in a prototype state. It's actually a hidden preference, but it is enabled by default for this pre-release (although it won't be for the final release of 3.1). There is an menu item in the Entry menu and a menu item in the contextual menu for entries to open an entry in a new tab. Please note that this is very rough implementation and not yet complete. Please do not report a lot of bugs on this. For example, unsaved changes are saved back to the entry when you switch tabs (which may not be that great). The appearance is not final either. Give it a little slack and let me know if you like it from a broad perspective.
In addition, some things will be enabled by default now: Hidden Prefs, Tabs, and Daily Backup. This is just for the pre-releases, these will be disabled by default for the real releases. I want to get Tabs and Daily Backup exercised before the final release.
This is the third alpha of MacJournal 3.1. Before I get into the big topics that need discussing, here are some bugs that were fixed:
- Fixed a crash while switching list styles
- Fixed a problem with exporting non-ASCII characters to one file per entry
- Fixed some problems with auto-expansion in the journals drawer
- Journals should now re-sort automatically if you change the name of a nested journal
- Fixed Undo in Full Screen mode
Some new things were also added:
- A hidden preference to search entry text as well as the dates when searching from the calendar. The preference specifies the format of the date in the text that you want to search.
- A hidden preference to prevent the "Loading Data" window from appearing at app launch. The application will just show the spinning cursor until the data are ready. This will primarily help people who set MacJournal as a login item with the "Hide" checkbox.
- Added tabs in a prototype state. It's actually a hidden preference, but it is enabled by default for this pre-release (although it won't be for the final release of 3.1). There is an menu item in the Entry menu and a menu item in the contextual menu for entries to open an entry in a new tab. Please note that this is very rough implementation and not yet complete. Please do not report a lot of bugs on this. For example, unsaved changes are saved back to the entry when you switch tabs (which may not be that great). The appearance is not final either. Give it a little slack and let me know if you like it from a broad perspective.
In addition, some things will be enabled by default now: Hidden Prefs, Tabs, and Daily Backup. This is just for the pre-releases, these will be disabled by default for the real releases. I want to get Tabs and Daily Backup exercised before the final release.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Blogger Testing and UI Ruminations
The Blogger thing is elusive and hard to reproduce when I need it to. I might release 3.0.2 regardless tomorrow or Wednesday just so it's not delayed any more. I'll try more tonight. After a lot of testing, I may be prepared to blame the OS on this one. It seems to happen a lot more often if you have an ampersand in your text, which is supposedly an illegal character for the protocol that it uses to transmit (XML-RPC). I think I might have a fix though: the ampersands were getting encoded twice, leading to badness. In fact, if you see this message then it means that things are working better because there are a bunch of ampersands near the end. ☺
On the UI front, I spent some time Sunday working on some prototype UI for a future version. The interface of the main part of the window has not really changed in a long time. I'm referring to the area excluding any drawers and toolbars. Just the text view, topic field, and elements around there. Someone a while ago suggested integrating the topic field into the text view as that's more like how it is in a real journal. So I was able accomplish a prototype of that during the Oscars. I was considering posting a test application with it, but you can get a good idea of what it's like by just looking at a Mail message window. I don't know if I like it though for a few reasons:
1. Mail only uses that kind of view when the data it is representing is not editable; when you can edit those fields (sender, subject, etc.) they are shown in real text fields, like MacJournal does. So the user might not know that these fields are editable.
2. In the prototyped appearance it is a decent amount smaller, which is both good and bad.
3. What is good for Mail isn't necessary good for the rest of the world; this is probably not the appropriate design for this kind of data (see #1).
What I'd really like to do in the future is provide a more realistic journal view. So the topic and date might be integrated into the text view, but not in the way Mail does it. In addition to the current appearance settings you could also set a "Journal" view that would look like a hard-bound journal with the topic and date at the top of the "page." I had also prototyped a "lined paper" view that looked pretty good at the time. I don't know what I'll do about this yet but it looks like something will happen like this. The Mail-like view wasn't all for naught; I can easily rearrange things to look like the "Journal" I was talking about and will probably do that. I might revisit the lined paper view, but that's a little farther out for various technical reasons. In addition, the whole lined paper thing doesn't really add anything to the UI; it's just eye candy. And while eye candy is not inherently evil (if you can turn it off somehow), it does get a much lower priority when compared to "real" features. But the "Journal" view might be useful because it would be a lot simpler visually and might end up more usable because it is laid out in a more logical fashion for the app. What is there now would continue to be available of course.
Just thoughts for the future.
Epilogue
Just because Blogger loves them, here are a bunch of ampersands: &&&&&&.
Sweet.
On the UI front, I spent some time Sunday working on some prototype UI for a future version. The interface of the main part of the window has not really changed in a long time. I'm referring to the area excluding any drawers and toolbars. Just the text view, topic field, and elements around there. Someone a while ago suggested integrating the topic field into the text view as that's more like how it is in a real journal. So I was able accomplish a prototype of that during the Oscars. I was considering posting a test application with it, but you can get a good idea of what it's like by just looking at a Mail message window. I don't know if I like it though for a few reasons:
1. Mail only uses that kind of view when the data it is representing is not editable; when you can edit those fields (sender, subject, etc.) they are shown in real text fields, like MacJournal does. So the user might not know that these fields are editable.
2. In the prototyped appearance it is a decent amount smaller, which is both good and bad.
3. What is good for Mail isn't necessary good for the rest of the world; this is probably not the appropriate design for this kind of data (see #1).
What I'd really like to do in the future is provide a more realistic journal view. So the topic and date might be integrated into the text view, but not in the way Mail does it. In addition to the current appearance settings you could also set a "Journal" view that would look like a hard-bound journal with the topic and date at the top of the "page." I had also prototyped a "lined paper" view that looked pretty good at the time. I don't know what I'll do about this yet but it looks like something will happen like this. The Mail-like view wasn't all for naught; I can easily rearrange things to look like the "Journal" I was talking about and will probably do that. I might revisit the lined paper view, but that's a little farther out for various technical reasons. In addition, the whole lined paper thing doesn't really add anything to the UI; it's just eye candy. And while eye candy is not inherently evil (if you can turn it off somehow), it does get a much lower priority when compared to "real" features. But the "Journal" view might be useful because it would be a lot simpler visually and might end up more usable because it is laid out in a more logical fashion for the app. What is there now would continue to be available of course.
Just thoughts for the future.
Epilogue
Just because Blogger loves them, here are a bunch of ampersands: &&&&&&.
Sweet.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
MacJournal 2.6.1
As promised, MacJournal 2.6.1 is out today. It has a few small fixes for the known issues in 2.6.1. Chief among them is a fix for "Multiple Spaces to Space" and row selection issues in the drawers. There are also a few small fixes here and there from "top of tree" (MacJournal 3.0.1). Download it from here and let me know of any problems.
Look for 3.0.2 early next week. I want to try and debug some issues the Blogger panel locking up under certain network situations when I can get under those situations so I can try and squeeze that fix in there (if any comes about). That's the reason for any delay; the rest of it is all done and waiting.
Look for 3.0.2 early next week. I want to try and debug some issues the Blogger panel locking up under certain network situations when I can get under those situations so I can try and squeeze that fix in there (if any comes about). That's the reason for any delay; the rest of it is all done and waiting.
MacJournal 3.1a2
Download it here
This is the second alpha of MacJournal 3.1. This is an alpha release, which means that most if not all the planned features are present, but there is more work to be done before beta. The user interface is not final and will definitely change before the final release.
Here is what has been changed since the last alpha release:
- Some improvements to the Stats sheet include type-selection, stats exporting, and performance boosts
- Improved appearance of auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode under "normal" appearance
- Fixed crash associated with combining search terms with quotes
- Fixed sizing of the calendar view in the journals drawer
- The .Mac sheet will now send over included attachments as well (such as pictures) unless you tell it not to.
Reporting Bugs
Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.
If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!
This is the second alpha of MacJournal 3.1. This is an alpha release, which means that most if not all the planned features are present, but there is more work to be done before beta. The user interface is not final and will definitely change before the final release.
Here is what has been changed since the last alpha release:
- Some improvements to the Stats sheet include type-selection, stats exporting, and performance boosts
- Improved appearance of auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode under "normal" appearance
- Fixed crash associated with combining search terms with quotes
- Fixed sizing of the calendar view in the journals drawer
- The .Mac sheet will now send over included attachments as well (such as pictures) unless you tell it not to.
Reporting Bugs
Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.
If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Releases for everyone!
Just a quick post to announce some upcoming releases. MacJournal 3.1a2 will be out tomorrow with some improvements over alpha 1. 3.0.2 will be out Monday or Tuesday with a fix for the undo problem and a few other very small fixes. MacJournal 2.6.1 should also be out tomorrow with some small fixes over 2.6. As always, software release schedules are subject to change so check back tomorrow for more information.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Whither Highlight?
The Highlight toolbar item was actually the first thing I worked on for 3.1. I had actually tinkered with it during the 3.0.1 development stage but had disabled it for the 3.0.1 release build. Before the 3.1 alpha release I added the code back in but forgot to put it in the big list of toolbar items. So it's there, but you just can't pick it. So that's useful. :-) I'll fix it for the next alpha but you can make it work right now if you want.
1. Open your preferences file in a text editor (like TextEdit or BBEdit) or even better a dedicated property list editor (like Property List Editor, including with Xcode).
2. Find the line that says "NSToolbar Configuration." If you've never customized your toolbar, this won't be there so you should make some change first, however insignificant.
3. Under the Configuration key is another key called "TB Item Identifiers." There is a list of strings under that.
4. Make a new line in between one of the strings and add this line: "<string>HighlightIdentifier</string>" and save the file.
5. Launch MacJournal and you should have the Highlight toolbar item.
You can Command-Drag it around wherever you want, but if you drag it out you'll have to edit the property list to get it back again.
1. Open your preferences file in a text editor (like TextEdit or BBEdit) or even better a dedicated property list editor (like Property List Editor, including with Xcode).
2. Find the line that says "NSToolbar Configuration." If you've never customized your toolbar, this won't be there so you should make some change first, however insignificant.
3. Under the Configuration key is another key called "TB Item Identifiers." There is a list of strings under that.
4. Make a new line in between one of the strings and add this line: "<string>HighlightIdentifier</string>" and save the file.
5. Launch MacJournal and you should have the Highlight toolbar item.
You can Command-Drag it around wherever you want, but if you drag it out you'll have to edit the property list to get it back again.
MacJournal 3.1a1
Get it here
Welcome to the first alpha of MacJournal 3.1! This is an alpha release, which means that most if not all the planned features are present, but there is more work to be done before beta. The user interface is not final and will definitely change before the final release. Some of the planned changes will be mentioned later in these release notes.
Here are the larger features in MacJournal 3.1:
- New Calendar view in the Journals Drawer. Dates with entries in the current journal will be highlighted. Clicking on those days will bring you to the first entry from that day. Select multiple dates to only show entries from those days (a new kind of search).
- Better automatic lists: the list style will automatically changed based on what line you are on.
- .Mac export: a new sheet to export entries and journals to a .Mac account.
- Auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode: previously available via a hidden key combination, auto-scrolling in Full Screen mode can not be activated via a new button.
- New toolbar item for highlighting text a certain color.
On the next tier down from those are these fixes:
- The Stats window has some additional capabilities: double-click a work to go to the first instance of that word. Hit the delete key to remove that word from the frequency analysis.
- A new message in the Blogger window will tell you if there is no response from the server.
- Added a new option to back up your data daily (which doesn't have any UI yet; look in the Hidden Preferences)
Some fixed bugs:
- Fixed the undo state after creating a journal (every action after that would get lumped in with the journal creation)
- Fixed some appearance problems with fonts in HTML
- Fixed a problem where the selection in an entry wouldn't get restored if the insertion point was left at the very end of the entry
This being an alpha release, some things are not done. Here are some things that will be changed (please do not report any bugs about them):
- The appearance of the Auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode when "Use Custom Appearance" is disabled is less than perfect and will be improved.
- The statistics window will get type-selection support soon
- The .Mac panel will get added to the Share menus in the menu bar and the contextual menus
- Preferences might get added for customizing the Highlight toolbar item
- Some other prefs will get added, such as the new nightly backups
- The height of the calendar (and whether it is shown or not at all) may not get saved and restored correctly right now
Reporting Bugs
Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.
If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!
Welcome to the first alpha of MacJournal 3.1! This is an alpha release, which means that most if not all the planned features are present, but there is more work to be done before beta. The user interface is not final and will definitely change before the final release. Some of the planned changes will be mentioned later in these release notes.
Here are the larger features in MacJournal 3.1:
- New Calendar view in the Journals Drawer. Dates with entries in the current journal will be highlighted. Clicking on those days will bring you to the first entry from that day. Select multiple dates to only show entries from those days (a new kind of search).
- Better automatic lists: the list style will automatically changed based on what line you are on.
- .Mac export: a new sheet to export entries and journals to a .Mac account.
- Auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode: previously available via a hidden key combination, auto-scrolling in Full Screen mode can not be activated via a new button.
- New toolbar item for highlighting text a certain color.
On the next tier down from those are these fixes:
- The Stats window has some additional capabilities: double-click a work to go to the first instance of that word. Hit the delete key to remove that word from the frequency analysis.
- A new message in the Blogger window will tell you if there is no response from the server.
- Added a new option to back up your data daily (which doesn't have any UI yet; look in the Hidden Preferences)
Some fixed bugs:
- Fixed the undo state after creating a journal (every action after that would get lumped in with the journal creation)
- Fixed some appearance problems with fonts in HTML
- Fixed a problem where the selection in an entry wouldn't get restored if the insertion point was left at the very end of the entry
This being an alpha release, some things are not done. Here are some things that will be changed (please do not report any bugs about them):
- The appearance of the Auto-scroll button in Full Screen mode when "Use Custom Appearance" is disabled is less than perfect and will be improved.
- The statistics window will get type-selection support soon
- The .Mac panel will get added to the Share menus in the menu bar and the contextual menus
- Preferences might get added for customizing the Highlight toolbar item
- Some other prefs will get added, such as the new nightly backups
- The height of the calendar (and whether it is shown or not at all) may not get saved and restored correctly right now
Reporting Bugs
Please let me know about any bugs you find in this release as soon as possible. Use the "Report A Bug" menu item in the Help menu to see a list of known issues for your current build (as they arise). You can also automatically create a new e-mail.
If MacJournal crashes on you, look for a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter and include that in your report. If there's some funny behavior, try looking in the Console (in /Applications/Utilities/) and include any output related to MacJournal in your report. Please be specific about things that you are doing that aren't working out, whether it's a crash or a behavior that you don't like. Also, include in your e-mail what release of MacJournal you are using. I appreciate your feedback!
Thursday, February 17, 2005
3.1 Alphas start very soon
The first alpha of 3.1 will be released this week when I get around to tying up the loose ends for it. Breaking with some tradition I think I'm going to include all the previous localizations in this alpha. The nature of the changes so far don't really invalidate them yet, just add some things which will be in English only for now. Everything is coming along well and I hope to get it out tonight or Friday. After that look for the first beta in March or very early April with final release in late April or May sometime. Keep in mind though that this is just a projection at this point. It could very well be June for the final release. We will have to see. ☺ I'll post more about what is included in the alpha when I post the notes for the alpha release.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
3.1 Alphas start very soon
The first alpha of 3.1 will be released this week when I get around to tying up the loose ends for it. Breaking with some tradition I think I'm going to include all the localizations in this alpha. The nature of the changes so far don't really invalidate them yet, just add some things which will be in English only for now. Everything is coming along well and I hope to get it out tomorrow or Friday. After that look for the first beta in March or very early April with final release in late April or May sometime. Keep in mind though that this is just a projection at this point. It could very well be June for the final release. We will have to see. ☺ I'll post more about what is included in the alpha when I post the notes for the alpha release.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Released Versions Do Not Expire
Just to be clear: pre-release versions have an expiration date to ensure people upgrade to a newer beta build or final build. Final releases like 2.6, 3.0, or now 3.0.1 will never expire. Sometimes in the battle between planning and reality reality wins out and a release comes later than was expected a month ago when the expiration date was set and that is certainly regrettable. But there is always a release version you can use that will never expire. I will try to make sure that the expiration date doesn't run out too soon again.
MacJournal 3.0.1
Just slightly after the expiration of 3.0.1b2 comes the final release of 3.0.1, available from Mariner's site. Many localizations are included in this release:
- Danish
- French
- German
- Japanese
- Korean
- Serbian
- Spanish
- Taiwanese
There are also some bug fixes included. Problems with Services should be resolved, as well as problems switching List Styles. There are also a few more bugs fixed in this release. Check out the included Version History for the full report.
- Danish
- French
- German
- Japanese
- Korean
- Serbian
- Spanish
- Taiwanese
There are also some bug fixes included. Problems with Services should be resolved, as well as problems switching List Styles. There are also a few more bugs fixed in this release. Check out the included Version History for the full report.
Monday, January 31, 2005
Our wacky calendaring system
Just a word of warning: this is not going to be a useful entry so if you're in a rush please feel free to skip it. ☺
I've been working on the calendar view in MacJournal off and on the past few days and the view itself matured very quickly. Then I put that done to work on some stuff for the new searching architecture. Now that that's looking better, I went back to the calendar view to get multiple selection working (so you select multiple dates to only show entries from those days). All I can say is that whomever designed our calendar obviously hated humanity. I mostly blame Julius Caesar: he had the chance to make it a lot more sane than the previous Roman calendar and accomplished some of it but he didn't go far enough. Obviously Julius Caesar when he designed the calendar in 45 BC had never written any code before and never had to describe a calendar and multiple discontinuous ranges of date selections in C.
I'm not really saying Pope Gregory hated humanity. But a zero-based array of days with a upper-limit that is easily expressed as a power of two would have made my life a lot easier right now. ☺
I don't yet know if the new searching will have any special UI in 3.1. It might not be prudent for this release. The search field and calendar view might be only ways to control the search for now. A special search window like Mail's Rules configuration is planned but will take a little while to implement so it's up in the air for now. There are other things I want to accomplish for 3.1 as well, such as a real way to start auto-scrolling in Full Screen mode (shift-command-2 was never meant to be a permanent solution) and a way to publish a journal to .Mac. We will see in time. 3.0.1 will be out very soon (the code is all finished) and I might start with 3.1 alphas sooner rather than later to just get the new features out there and in use.
I guess this did turn into a more useful entry than I had planned, but that's what happens when I get off topic and on to something actually informative.
I've been working on the calendar view in MacJournal off and on the past few days and the view itself matured very quickly. Then I put that done to work on some stuff for the new searching architecture. Now that that's looking better, I went back to the calendar view to get multiple selection working (so you select multiple dates to only show entries from those days). All I can say is that whomever designed our calendar obviously hated humanity. I mostly blame Julius Caesar: he had the chance to make it a lot more sane than the previous Roman calendar and accomplished some of it but he didn't go far enough. Obviously Julius Caesar when he designed the calendar in 45 BC had never written any code before and never had to describe a calendar and multiple discontinuous ranges of date selections in C.
I'm not really saying Pope Gregory hated humanity. But a zero-based array of days with a upper-limit that is easily expressed as a power of two would have made my life a lot easier right now. ☺
I don't yet know if the new searching will have any special UI in 3.1. It might not be prudent for this release. The search field and calendar view might be only ways to control the search for now. A special search window like Mail's Rules configuration is planned but will take a little while to implement so it's up in the air for now. There are other things I want to accomplish for 3.1 as well, such as a real way to start auto-scrolling in Full Screen mode (shift-command-2 was never meant to be a permanent solution) and a way to publish a journal to .Mac. We will see in time. 3.0.1 will be out very soon (the code is all finished) and I might start with 3.1 alphas sooner rather than later to just get the new features out there and in use.
I guess this did turn into a more useful entry than I had planned, but that's what happens when I get off topic and on to something actually informative.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
MacJournal 3.0.1 tonight or tomorrow
Since I'm already knee deep in 3.1 stuff, I should probably release 3.0.1 before the water gets any closer to my waist. I will finish up 3.0.1 and make it available before the end of the month since the betas expire on Tuesday (although you can always use 3.0 after they expire). It should be a really good release.
I will also release 2.6.1 separately using the appropriate fixes from 3.0.1 as promised within the next few days.
I will also release 2.6.1 separately using the appropriate fixes from 3.0.1 as promised within the next few days.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Back to WordPress
Thanks to the suggestions I got I was able to do some testing with publishing to WordPress from MacJournal. From just the test text that I had everything seemed to work okay, titles included. Now, I know some people have had problems so I just don't have the right tests here. Can some that has had problems publishing before (specifically with the title) please send me some text that exhibits this problem? An RTF file would be super. At this point any changes are probably too late for 3.0.1 as that will most likely come out by the end of this week but a 3.0.2 release is a possibility and there's always 3.1.
Friday, January 21, 2005
Calendars and WordPress
Two topics to mention today:
Calendar view
I worked on a calendar view for 3.1 last night and it came out pretty well. It's not too attractive yet but it's functional. I just have to integrate it into the MacJournal UI in a meaningful manner. I've got a few thoughts on the best way to do that:
1. Clicking on a day will bring you to the first entry in the current journal from that day
2. Optionally, clicking on a day which does not have an entry will create an entry for that day (and maybe the current time)
3. Shift- and Command-Clicking on different days will start a search and only show entries from the selected days.
#3 is the most ambitious because this is something MacJournal's search engine can not yet do. However I was also ruminating over some enhanced search features (such as having an Advanced Search window with a bunch of options and such), so this might be the first usage of that.
WordPress
Does anyone know of a WordPress blog somewhere that has development accounts? I have accounts at Blogger and LiveJournal for testing protocol compliance and I'd like to test WordPress as well as it seems to be gaining in popularity. But the WordPress site itself just lets you download the server software; they don't have any servers up and running themselves. So I'm a little bit of a bind there and if anyone has any tips I'd be much obliged.
Calendar view
I worked on a calendar view for 3.1 last night and it came out pretty well. It's not too attractive yet but it's functional. I just have to integrate it into the MacJournal UI in a meaningful manner. I've got a few thoughts on the best way to do that:
1. Clicking on a day will bring you to the first entry in the current journal from that day
2. Optionally, clicking on a day which does not have an entry will create an entry for that day (and maybe the current time)
3. Shift- and Command-Clicking on different days will start a search and only show entries from the selected days.
#3 is the most ambitious because this is something MacJournal's search engine can not yet do. However I was also ruminating over some enhanced search features (such as having an Advanced Search window with a bunch of options and such), so this might be the first usage of that.
WordPress
Does anyone know of a WordPress blog somewhere that has development accounts? I have accounts at Blogger and LiveJournal for testing protocol compliance and I'd like to test WordPress as well as it seems to be gaining in popularity. But the WordPress site itself just lets you download the server software; they don't have any servers up and running themselves. So I'm a little bit of a bind there and if anyone has any tips I'd be much obliged.
Monday, January 17, 2005
MacJournal 3.0.1b2
http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/dev.html
- Fixed Stats panel on Jaguar
- Contractions are no longer considered seperate words in the frequency analysis in the Stats panel
- Print margin settings are saved in between launches
- Fixed some rare erratic behavior (caused by exceptions)
- Fixed some more List Style behavior
Plus the following new localizations:
- French
- Danish
- Spanish
- Japanese
- German
The final release is close at hand.
- Fixed Stats panel on Jaguar
- Contractions are no longer considered seperate words in the frequency analysis in the Stats panel
- Print margin settings are saved in between launches
- Fixed some rare erratic behavior (caused by exceptions)
- Fixed some more List Style behavior
Plus the following new localizations:
- French
- Danish
- Spanish
- Japanese
- German
The final release is close at hand.
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