Thankfully, it seems Blogger fixed the problem they introduced when they rolled out their new beta services recently and MacJournal can now safely post to Blogger via Atom again. That crisis averted, I spent most of the weekend working on .mac syncing. I don’t have any prior experience with SyncServices against which to judge this, but I think things are almost there. I have it doing a round trip with data on the same computer. The next step is actually syncing between two computers and working out whatever problems pop up there. After that, another beta can be released with this functionality turned on (finally). I’m looking forward to having it working soon!
Monday, August 28, 2006
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Problems with Blogger
Blogger (aka Google) rolled out some new services a few days ago and it seems to have changed the way existing applications can send data, which is charming. I suspect it's the authentication, but I will look into it some more. I wasn't planning a 4.0.5 before 4.1, but this might require a change of plans. Of course, it could turn out to just be server problems on their end relating to the new functionality that will be worked out soon. We can hope, at least.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
MacJournal 4.1d1
Get it here.
Welcome to the very first test release of MacJournal 4.1! This is quite a large release with some new features and a lot of enhanced functionality. Before we proceed with what is new, a quick word about version schemes. This release is labeled, 4.1d1, where the 'd' stands for "development" or "delta" (no one is really sure, but "diggity" is my favorite guess). That is a stage that comes before "alpha." Alpha is when all the features of a release are more or less included. After that comes "beta," where most of the bugs have been fixed and the user interface changes have all been made and locked down. After that comes the final release to the public. But 4.1d1 is before all that because it is still missing some key functionality that I want it to have. Keeping that in mind, let us continue on to what is actually in this release:
Big Items
- Recording has been completely rewritten to use QuickTime. This should provide a more stable platform going forward and allow for a lot more configurability. It also means iSights are usable.
- You can now send multiple entries to a blog at once. They must all go to the same place though.
- Exporting has been much improved. You can specify a text encoding for plain text files. More of your metadata is saved along with the file so if you export an entry and the re-import it, things like labels and edit-ability will be preserved. You can also specify what metadata you want included in the text of the file (instead of date+time or nothing).
- I gave up waiting for Apple to fix their bug in tables and worked around it. Tables should now be useful, even after you relaunch the app.
Little Enhancements
- Creating a new journal may insert the journal into another journal, depending on where you are in the app.
- New "Highlight" toolbar icon (it looks better)
- "Lock journals after idle" will now use the time that MacJournal itself has been idle, instead of the whole system.
- Attachments in the text will display their filename, Mail-style.
- You can now specify whether or not you want to enable comments on a Movable Type post.
- You can now specify the key equivalent for Full Screen mode right in the (real) prefs.
There are loads more changes that are too numerous to mention, including some bug fixes. You should check out the Version History for the full details.
Not Included
- .mac syncing. More work needs to go into this. Probably quite a bit. I wanted to get all the other changes into people's hands before I devoted my time to that though.
About the last public release:
MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.
MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration
This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.
MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).
Reporting Bugs
If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me email.
Welcome to the very first test release of MacJournal 4.1! This is quite a large release with some new features and a lot of enhanced functionality. Before we proceed with what is new, a quick word about version schemes. This release is labeled, 4.1d1, where the 'd' stands for "development" or "delta" (no one is really sure, but "diggity" is my favorite guess). That is a stage that comes before "alpha." Alpha is when all the features of a release are more or less included. After that comes "beta," where most of the bugs have been fixed and the user interface changes have all been made and locked down. After that comes the final release to the public. But 4.1d1 is before all that because it is still missing some key functionality that I want it to have. Keeping that in mind, let us continue on to what is actually in this release:
Big Items
- Recording has been completely rewritten to use QuickTime. This should provide a more stable platform going forward and allow for a lot more configurability. It also means iSights are usable.
- You can now send multiple entries to a blog at once. They must all go to the same place though.
- Exporting has been much improved. You can specify a text encoding for plain text files. More of your metadata is saved along with the file so if you export an entry and the re-import it, things like labels and edit-ability will be preserved. You can also specify what metadata you want included in the text of the file (instead of date+time or nothing).
- I gave up waiting for Apple to fix their bug in tables and worked around it. Tables should now be useful, even after you relaunch the app.
Little Enhancements
- Creating a new journal may insert the journal into another journal, depending on where you are in the app.
- New "Highlight" toolbar icon (it looks better)
- "Lock journals after idle" will now use the time that MacJournal itself has been idle, instead of the whole system.
- Attachments in the text will display their filename, Mail-style.
- You can now specify whether or not you want to enable comments on a Movable Type post.
- You can now specify the key equivalent for Full Screen mode right in the (real) prefs.
There are loads more changes that are too numerous to mention, including some bug fixes. You should check out the Version History for the full details.
Not Included
- .mac syncing. More work needs to go into this. Probably quite a bit. I wanted to get all the other changes into people's hands before I devoted my time to that though.
About the last public release:
MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.
MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration
This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.
MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).
Reporting Bugs
If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me email.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
What's going on lately?
Here's what I'm working on nowadays:
1. First development release of 4.1 should happen next week sometime. I think I've got everything worked out for the things that are in there so far, and there will be more to come. No, .mac syncing does not make its debut in this release, but that is coming.
2. Universal build of TimeCard, which I forgot to do earlier this year. It should be out in the same timeframe as 4.1d1.
More about 4.1d1 when it comes out next week.
1. First development release of 4.1 should happen next week sometime. I think I've got everything worked out for the things that are in there so far, and there will be more to come. No, .mac syncing does not make its debut in this release, but that is coming.
2. Universal build of TimeCard, which I forgot to do earlier this year. It should be out in the same timeframe as 4.1d1.
More about 4.1d1 when it comes out next week.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Status update
4.0.4 was posted a little while ago; everyone should see it in their Update panel. There were a few releases in a row to fix a few small problems and get everything squared away before 4.1. There will be a little while before 4.1 comes out, but I plan to start offering test releases in the middle or end of this month. I'll post more about the release and what is done already when we get there. .mac syncing is indeed back on the schedule for this release, although it may not make the first test release.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
MacJournal 4.0.1
Download it from Mariner.
This is a small release to fix a few issues in 4.0. Blogging support has been enhanced and a few crashers have been fixed.
- Fixed sending line breaks and tabs to Atom blogs
- Fixed sending dates to MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed sending images to MetaWeblog servers.
- Improved downloading entries from MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed problem saving entered text in blog configuration window.
- Fixed a crash clicking "macjournal" links in other applications.
- Updated Danish, Japanese, and French localizations.
- Improved click accuracy of Full Screen cursor.
- Fixed rare crash when searching.
MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.
MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration
This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.
MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).
Reporting Bugs
If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me email.
This is a small release to fix a few issues in 4.0. Blogging support has been enhanced and a few crashers have been fixed.
- Fixed sending line breaks and tabs to Atom blogs
- Fixed sending dates to MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed sending images to MetaWeblog servers.
- Improved downloading entries from MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed problem saving entered text in blog configuration window.
- Fixed a crash clicking "macjournal" links in other applications.
- Updated Danish, Japanese, and French localizations.
- Improved click accuracy of Full Screen cursor.
- Fixed rare crash when searching.
MacJournal 4.0 brings major new features and large improvements to existing features. Every single part of MacJournal has been improved in some way. For bloggers, the blogging support in MacJournal is all-new. MacJournal now supports more kinds of blogs and it is easier than ever to use them. Each journal can have a different blog and the entries will remember their settings so they can be updated on the server later.
MacJournal 4.0 also has a lot of other new features:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
- Improved keywords configuration
This is just the list of big features. If you want to see the full list of all the changes in the included Version History.
MacJournal requires Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther).
Reporting Bugs
If you see any problems in this release please let me know about it by using the "Report a Bug" menu item in the "Help" menu to send me email.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
MacJournal 4.0.1b1
4.0.1b1 is a beta release to fix a few bugs in 4.0 before the final release of 4.0.1 (which will be very soon). Please try it out if you are having trouble with the release and let me know if it fixes what you were seeing and if it causes any new problems. Here's what is going on:
- Fixed sending line breaks and tabs to Atom blogs
- Fixed sending dates to MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed problem saving entered text in blog configuration window.
- Fixed a crash clicking "macjournal" links in other applications.
- Updated Danish and Japanese localizations.
- Improved click accuracy of Full Screen cursor.
- Fixed rare crash when searching.
- Added some basic error reporting for FTP uploads.
Download it here.
- Fixed sending line breaks and tabs to Atom blogs
- Fixed sending dates to MetaWeblog and Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed problem saving entered text in blog configuration window.
- Fixed a crash clicking "macjournal" links in other applications.
- Updated Danish and Japanese localizations.
- Improved click accuracy of Full Screen cursor.
- Fixed rare crash when searching.
- Added some basic error reporting for FTP uploads.
Download it here.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
MacJournal 4.0
Holy cow, MacJournal 4.0 is out! After development of just over a year, it is finally out and available for download. Go to Mariner to get the final release. The betas will continue to work until they expire in a few weeks. There are already plans to get back to .Mac syncing very soon and hopefully get that working for reals this time. I don’t have a real timeframe for that yet, but I expect there will be betas for that as well.
Pricing details are on Mariner's website, but for the curious there is a $15 upgrade option for 3.0 users.
In the meantime, there are a certain number of things that are best done after a project is over, like switching version control systems. I’m thinking of switching to Subversion, so now is an opportune time to do that. Not that it matters at all to the user, but I just thought I’d mention it. ☺
Onwards and upwards!
Pricing details are on Mariner's website, but for the curious there is a $15 upgrade option for 3.0 users.
In the meantime, there are a certain number of things that are best done after a project is over, like switching version control systems. I’m thinking of switching to Subversion, so now is an opportune time to do that. Not that it matters at all to the user, but I just thought I’d mention it. ☺
Onwards and upwards!
Friday, April 07, 2006
MacJournal 4.0b4
Get it here.
This is the fourth (and probably final) beta release. This release fixes a few small bugs here and there in the application. A few crashes were fixed and a few small behavioral and appearance bugs were squashed. The biggest area of change was in the blogging: FTP-ing images works again, and sending categories to Movable Type blogs should work now.
Remember, last release I enabled some new licensing code in this release. If you haven’t used 4.0b3, You will be prompted for your serial number but the 3.0 serials will still work. I want to shake out any bugs in this new code before the final release.
Changes in this release:
- Fixed categories with Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed an occasional range exception in the journals drawer (usually seen when searching).
- Downloaded entries will be checked more thoroughly for duplicates before adding them to the journal.
- Improved the custom I-Beam cursor during Full Screen mode.
- Improved auto-recognition of Movable Type blogs.
- Lots of other little improvements; check out the Version History for the full details.
Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.
Reporting Bugs
This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released.
This is the fourth (and probably final) beta release. This release fixes a few small bugs here and there in the application. A few crashes were fixed and a few small behavioral and appearance bugs were squashed. The biggest area of change was in the blogging: FTP-ing images works again, and sending categories to Movable Type blogs should work now.
Remember, last release I enabled some new licensing code in this release. If you haven’t used 4.0b3, You will be prompted for your serial number but the 3.0 serials will still work. I want to shake out any bugs in this new code before the final release.
Changes in this release:
- Fixed categories with Movable Type blogs.
- Fixed an occasional range exception in the journals drawer (usually seen when searching).
- Downloaded entries will be checked more thoroughly for duplicates before adding them to the journal.
- Improved the custom I-Beam cursor during Full Screen mode.
- Improved auto-recognition of Movable Type blogs.
- Lots of other little improvements; check out the Version History for the full details.
Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.
Reporting Bugs
This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
MacJournal 4.0b3
Get it here.
This release adds a few more localizations and fixes a few bugs from the previous betas. I’m also enabling some new licensing code in this release. You will be prompted for your serial number but the 3.0 serials will still work. I want to shake out any bugs in this new code before the final release.
Changes in this release:
- Added Italian and Korean localizations.
- Fixed a crash sending entries to Atom servers (like Blogger.com)
- Added new toolbar icons and recording bar appearance.
- Made it harder to accidentally type next to a link and extend the link.
- Hopefully made the Template window a little more accepting of font and color changes, even if the topic field is selected.
- A few other small bugs were fixed with an eye toward finally releasing the version.
Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.
Reporting Bugs
This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released.
This release adds a few more localizations and fixes a few bugs from the previous betas. I’m also enabling some new licensing code in this release. You will be prompted for your serial number but the 3.0 serials will still work. I want to shake out any bugs in this new code before the final release.
Changes in this release:
- Added Italian and Korean localizations.
- Fixed a crash sending entries to Atom servers (like Blogger.com)
- Added new toolbar icons and recording bar appearance.
- Made it harder to accidentally type next to a link and extend the link.
- Hopefully made the Template window a little more accepting of font and color changes, even if the topic field is selected.
- A few other small bugs were fixed with an eye toward finally releasing the version.
Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.
Reporting Bugs
This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released.
Monday, March 20, 2006
MacJournal 4.0b2
Get it here.
This is the second beta release. This release adds a few localizations and fixes a few bugs from the first beta.
Changes in this release:
- Added Danish, German, and Taiwanese localizations.
- Fixed a problem saving and restoring blog server information.
- Fixed a problem retrieving entry text in AppleScript.
- Added ability to edit and delete license information in the about box.
- Fixed a problem posting links with ampersands to Atom blogs
- Fixed crash reporting.
- Fixed a crash changing entries when an empty search is active.
- Fixed a problem in the Entry Template window that would not use the default text attributes of a journal if there was no text.
- Downloading entries from Atom blogs will use the default styling of that journal.
- The keywords field in the Inspector will now auto-complete as you type.
Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.
Reporting Bugs
This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later.
This is the second beta release. This release adds a few localizations and fixes a few bugs from the first beta.
Changes in this release:
- Added Danish, German, and Taiwanese localizations.
- Fixed a problem saving and restoring blog server information.
- Fixed a problem retrieving entry text in AppleScript.
- Added ability to edit and delete license information in the about box.
- Fixed a problem posting links with ampersands to Atom blogs
- Fixed crash reporting.
- Fixed a crash changing entries when an empty search is active.
- Fixed a problem in the Entry Template window that would not use the default text attributes of a journal if there was no text.
- Downloading entries from Atom blogs will use the default styling of that journal.
- The keywords field in the Inspector will now auto-complete as you type.
Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar.
Reporting Bugs
This is a beta release so things are pretty much locked down. If you see any problems in this build please let me know about it so I can fix it before the final is released. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
MacJournal 4.0b1
Here comes the first beta release. MacJournal 4 is feature complete for this release. .mac syncing is still being worked out and won't be ready for the final 4.0. Too much is at stake if something goes wrong and I want 4.0 to be as solid as possible. Syncing will hopefully follow 4.0 by not too long.
Changes in this release:
- You can remove keywords in the sheet again.
- Fixed the search type menu in the Search toolbar item.
- Fixed custom background colors around checkboxes.
- Command-W will now close the current tab if there is more than one tab open.
- Added the modification date above the topic field if you click on it.
- Fixed the "Escape Non-ASCII characters" setting for blog servers and applied it to the topics as well.
- Fixed printing of white text.
- Restored Panther compatibility
Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
Changes in this release:
- You can remove keywords in the sheet again.
- Fixed the search type menu in the Search toolbar item.
- Fixed custom background colors around checkboxes.
- Command-W will now close the current tab if there is more than one tab open.
- Added the modification date above the topic field if you click on it.
- Fixed the "Escape Non-ASCII characters" setting for blog servers and applied it to the topics as well.
- Fixed printing of white text.
- Restored Panther compatibility
Keep in mind that this is still developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- Browser-like tabs for quickly switching between entries
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
- Improved searching
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
MacJournal 4.0a2
Welcome to MacJournal 4! This is the second alpha release. MacJournal 4 is for the most part feature complete. There is a chance that .mac syncing will make an appearance soon. I am working on it right now. Progress is being made, but there is a lot of danger inherent this sort of thing. There is still the possibility of only including it on a provisional standing in 4.0 and fully supporting it in 4.1. The goal is to get MacJournal 4 out in March and we need to get to localization soon. Between now and beta there will be a lot of small tweaks to get things ready to be locked down for the release.
Changes in this release:
- Added the ability to specify a journal in which to create a new entry and fixed a crash there.
- Added a warning when replacing the previous audio recording.
- Added toolbar items for Recording, Insert Table, and Text Color
- Text completion in the Font Name toolbar item is now case insensitive and added a hidden pref for only showing Roman fonts.
- Changed the default filename of the .Mac sheet to be based off the content.
- Upgraded date formatting to behave better with different locales.
- Reworked Drawer preferences.
- Added a PDF export option.
- Added a warning when using Text Cleanup menu items on multiple selections in the drawers.
- Fixed Typepad blogging support and fixed a crash with Friendster blogs.
- Added automatic crash log checking: if the crash log changes in between launches, MacJournal will offer to email the log to me.
- URL discovery is now a little more lenient about things like periods, commas, or a close parenthesis after a URL.
- Restore the pref for disabling automatic list discovery that accidentally got left out of a reorganization.
- Redid the Keywords sheet to show all keywords in the app with checkboxes next to the active ones.
- The Quick Note window should be movable and saved across launches.
- Added Insert->Safari Address menu item.
- Fixed a problem with Text Zoom not saving across launches.
Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
Changes in this release:
- Added the ability to specify a journal in which to create a new entry and fixed a crash there.
- Added a warning when replacing the previous audio recording.
- Added toolbar items for Recording, Insert Table, and Text Color
- Text completion in the Font Name toolbar item is now case insensitive and added a hidden pref for only showing Roman fonts.
- Changed the default filename of the .Mac sheet to be based off the content.
- Upgraded date formatting to behave better with different locales.
- Reworked Drawer preferences.
- Added a PDF export option.
- Added a warning when using Text Cleanup menu items on multiple selections in the drawers.
- Fixed Typepad blogging support and fixed a crash with Friendster blogs.
- Added automatic crash log checking: if the crash log changes in between launches, MacJournal will offer to email the log to me.
- URL discovery is now a little more lenient about things like periods, commas, or a close parenthesis after a URL.
- Restore the pref for disabling automatic list discovery that accidentally got left out of a reorganization.
- Redid the Keywords sheet to show all keywords in the app with checkboxes next to the active ones.
- The Quick Note window should be movable and saved across launches.
- Added Insert->Safari Address menu item.
- Fixed a problem with Text Zoom not saving across launches.
Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
MacJournal 4.0a1
Download here
Welcome to MacJournal 4! This is the first alpha release. MacJournal 4 is now feature complete. All the features that are planned for release are now included in some fashion (although they may be changed a bit before beta). The goal is to get MacJournal 4 out in March and we need to get to localization started in February. Between now and beta there will be a lot of small tweaks to get things ready to be locked down for the release. I doubt I'll be able to resist a few small additions but nothing is for sure.
This release brings a full implementation for audio recording. It seems to only work on Tiger right now but I'm hoping to get it working on Panther before the final release. There is also a new "Quick Note" feature: set a key equivalent in the preferences and then use it in any application to make a quick note in any existing entry or create a new one.
Changes in this release:
- Added Movable Type as a real protocol type. If you have a MT blog, you'll want to reconfigure your blog settings.
- Added a special appearance for checkboxes in Full Screen mode
- Fixed a problem copying an entry URL to someplace only plain text is accepted.
- Added new recording UI, including meters.
- Added exporting of recordings in a journal to a podcast.
- Added importing of existing podcasts into a journal.
- Hold the Option key when clicking a checkbox to entry a "mixed" state.
- Tabbing with the insertion point next to a list item will take that list item with the tab.
- Fixed a bug with time zones when sending an entry to an Atom blog.
- iPod Notes export (essentially just text exporting but with internal links handled in the iPod Notes format)
Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
(By the way, the change-made-at-the-last-minute prize this time goes to "drag and drop in the recording bar." Congrats!)
Welcome to MacJournal 4! This is the first alpha release. MacJournal 4 is now feature complete. All the features that are planned for release are now included in some fashion (although they may be changed a bit before beta). The goal is to get MacJournal 4 out in March and we need to get to localization started in February. Between now and beta there will be a lot of small tweaks to get things ready to be locked down for the release. I doubt I'll be able to resist a few small additions but nothing is for sure.
This release brings a full implementation for audio recording. It seems to only work on Tiger right now but I'm hoping to get it working on Panther before the final release. There is also a new "Quick Note" feature: set a key equivalent in the preferences and then use it in any application to make a quick note in any existing entry or create a new one.
Changes in this release:
- Added Movable Type as a real protocol type. If you have a MT blog, you'll want to reconfigure your blog settings.
- Added a special appearance for checkboxes in Full Screen mode
- Fixed a problem copying an entry URL to someplace only plain text is accepted.
- Added new recording UI, including meters.
- Added exporting of recordings in a journal to a podcast.
- Added importing of existing podcasts into a journal.
- Hold the Option key when clicking a checkbox to entry a "mixed" state.
- Tabbing with the insertion point next to a list item will take that list item with the tab.
- Fixed a bug with time zones when sending an entry to an Atom blog.
- iPod Notes export (essentially just text exporting but with internal links handled in the iPod Notes format)
Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
(By the way, the change-made-at-the-last-minute prize this time goes to "drag and drop in the recording bar." Congrats!)
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
MWSF
MacWorld San Francisco begins tomorrow. I'll be up in the exhibition hall in Mariner's booth on Friday if you'd like to stop by and say hi. We'll be demoing the latest builds of 4.0 and taking feedback. So come by if you can because I'd love to hear what you have to say and talk about it with you!
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
MacJournal 4.0d5
Welcome to the fifth developmental release of MacJournal 4! There are a few new features and a fair amount of cleanup in a lot of areas. The last release's new blogging architecture will probably trump anything new this time around, but it's a good release nonetheless. Probably the biggest addition is the support for audio recording. It's not pretty, it's not configurable, and it's not even entirely functional, but it works well enough to try for now. Just in case, audio recordings won't stick around between launches. This is to ensure the final solution won't conflict with the current one.
There is also a change to searching so the results are presented in a flat list instead of a hierarchical one in the Journals drawer. This one might be controversial, so please let me know what you think.
In the realm of smaller changes, there are more drag and drop improvements, tied in with Services improvements as well. This releases also marks the departure of the venerable Blogger and LiveJournal sheets. Farewell, old friends! We knew you well.
Changes in this release:
- Audio Recording is partially implemented. Get there from the View menu. Recordings will not be saved across launches until things mature a bit.
- Search for entries will now show a flat list of results in the Journals drawer instead of the normal hierarchical result.
- You can drag entries onto other entries to append the text.
- You can drag text/entries onto the dock icon to append it to an entry or create a new entry with it.
- You can now selectively strip styles out of incoming text from Services
- Exporting journals to HTML as one-file-per-entry will now convert the internal MacJournal links to relative links to the other entry's exported file (if that entry is being exported).
- In addition to FTP, an iDisk (yours or someone else's) is now a possible location for attachments when sending to a blog.
- The character count is shown alongside the word count now.
- Improved handling of slow data locations, like putting your data file on an iDisk. The app should not hang while it is saving to disk anymore.
- I also added a way to show the font previews in the font toolbar item (which is hidden and disabled by default).
- Added "Copy URL to Entry" to Edit menu
- Hitting return on an empty list line will end the list (like Word)
- Added a search category for Labels in the Search toolbar item.
- Fixed a variety of crashes, quirks, and behavioral oddities in a number of places.
Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
There is also a change to searching so the results are presented in a flat list instead of a hierarchical one in the Journals drawer. This one might be controversial, so please let me know what you think.
In the realm of smaller changes, there are more drag and drop improvements, tied in with Services improvements as well. This releases also marks the departure of the venerable Blogger and LiveJournal sheets. Farewell, old friends! We knew you well.
Changes in this release:
- Audio Recording is partially implemented. Get there from the View menu. Recordings will not be saved across launches until things mature a bit.
- Search for entries will now show a flat list of results in the Journals drawer instead of the normal hierarchical result.
- You can drag entries onto other entries to append the text.
- You can drag text/entries onto the dock icon to append it to an entry or create a new entry with it.
- You can now selectively strip styles out of incoming text from Services
- Exporting journals to HTML as one-file-per-entry will now convert the internal MacJournal links to relative links to the other entry's exported file (if that entry is being exported).
- In addition to FTP, an iDisk (yours or someone else's) is now a possible location for attachments when sending to a blog.
- The character count is shown alongside the word count now.
- Improved handling of slow data locations, like putting your data file on an iDisk. The app should not hang while it is saving to disk anymore.
- I also added a way to show the font previews in the font toolbar item (which is hidden and disabled by default).
- Added "Copy URL to Entry" to Edit menu
- Hitting return on an empty list line will end the list (like Word)
- Added a search category for Labels in the Search toolbar item.
- Fixed a variety of crashes, quirks, and behavioral oddities in a number of places.
Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- All-new blogging architecture
- New per-item attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
• blog server
- A real implementation of tabs
- Audio recording
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Whither dee-five?
What's the deal with the next development version of MacJournal? I was hoping to have it out today (the 22nd) before the weekend Holidays. But then I got sick as all get-out and my mobility was... limited. And by "limited" I mean non-existent. So it didn't happen today. It will likely happen at some point next week now. I was planning on attacking more audio recording things next week so the release might include that (although it may not be enabled).
See you next week and a Happy Holidays to everyone!
See you next week and a Happy Holidays to everyone!
Monday, November 28, 2005
MacJournal 4.0d4
Welcome to MacJournal 4! This is the fourth developmental release. The biggest thing going on here is the all-new blogging system. The old stuff has been thrown out (or will be eventually) in favor of a much more integrated approach. Now you can configure many different blog servers of all different kinds and associate them with journals (or even entries) to which to send entries automatically. There is now support for the MetaWeblog and Atom protocols. MetaWeblog is great for talking to WordPress and Movable Type, and Atom is great for talking to Blogger. LiveJournal support has been rewritten as well. The configuration process should be fairly easy: all you need is the URL to your blog, not the URL to some obscure XML-RPC endpoint. MacJournal will do all it can to figure out the details for you based on the front page URL. Please let me know of any failures in this area and be sure to include the URL that you tried. In addition, the entries will remember details about how it was sent to the server and will only update the entry the next time you send it there, instead of creating a new post. There is now support for sending images to an FTP server and including those images in the blog entry. There is also limited support for downloading entries from the server. Some of the protocols do this better than others though. It turns out Atom- and LiveJournal-based servers handle the best. The Blogger and MetaWeblog API don’t really have facilities for this (MetaWeblog descends from Blogger). Keep in mind though that Blogger.com blogs are now handled by the Atom protocol, so this isn’t a problem there. Also, there is also support for creating entries based on an Atom feed found at the site (regular RSS might be added in the future).
Note: This blogging stuff is still very new and can change a lot as I improve it. For this reason you not should expect that blog configurations will carry through to the final release, or even to the next developmental release.
Other changes in this release:
- Performance improvements for the Individual Files backup
- Cleanup option for e-mail quotes
- Appearance tweaks to Full Screen mode: the cursor is larger to make it easier to see and selected text will look better.
- Added a new Full Screen preference to disable editing if you just want to read it.
- Full Screen mode also now has a Find panel. Use Command-F to get at it.
- The Full Screen prefs now have controls for the margins.
- You can now auto-complete keywords in the Inspector as you type them
- Ordered and unordered lists in HTML form in imported text files are now converted (along with bolds and italics as before).
- You can now import text clippings.
- The list in the drawer will now have a soft background color if a search is in progress (this is a little experimental).
- Click and hold the Browse toolbar item to show a history of entries that you've been to.
- A few crash fixes and a few other behavioral fixes.
Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- New per-object attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
- All-new blogging architecture
- A real implementation of tabs
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
Note: This blogging stuff is still very new and can change a lot as I improve it. For this reason you not should expect that blog configurations will carry through to the final release, or even to the next developmental release.
Other changes in this release:
- Performance improvements for the Individual Files backup
- Cleanup option for e-mail quotes
- Appearance tweaks to Full Screen mode: the cursor is larger to make it easier to see and selected text will look better.
- Added a new Full Screen preference to disable editing if you just want to read it.
- Full Screen mode also now has a Find panel. Use Command-F to get at it.
- The Full Screen prefs now have controls for the margins.
- You can now auto-complete keywords in the Inspector as you type them
- Ordered and unordered lists in HTML form in imported text files are now converted (along with bolds and italics as before).
- You can now import text clippings.
- The list in the drawer will now have a soft background color if a search is in progress (this is a little experimental).
- Click and hold the Browse toolbar item to show a history of entries that you've been to.
- A few crash fixes and a few other behavioral fixes.
Keep in mind that this is developmental software: there are probably bugs lurking somewhere that could cause crashes and/or data loss. MacJournal 4 has a lot of new data being stored and I can't guarantee the future of that. I may need to change how it is stored and I can't guarantee that everything will work. That being said, it works pretty well for me in normal usage. You should definitely read the Version History to see what is new. Here are the top-tier things:
- New Inspector for manipulating attributes of entries and journals
- New per-object attributes
• background color
• label
• sorting
• entry template
• editable
- All-new blogging architecture
- A real implementation of tabs
- Links, smileys, and words are recognized as you type now (not just when you save), including a live word count field.
- AppleScript support
- Improved Full Screen mode
But that's just the really top stuff; there is a lot of good stuff (not just bug fixes) in the Version History. It will do you well to read it. The Preferences as been reorganized and split up and will continue to change. I added a few new panes and I think there's one too many now. Expect to see lots of change there.
The good news with all the new data types (like labels and background colors) is that the recently released 3.2 supports them insofar as it won't discard them when saving the data. So you can add labels in 4.0, go back to 3.2 for a while, and when you come back to 4.0 the labels will still be there. The exception here is per-journal sorting: this was added after 3.2 was released and will be lost if you save your data with 3.2.
MacJournal no longer supports Jaguar. At this point, it might not support Panther either. Development is being done on Tiger and there might be some lurking bugs on Panther that will be weeded out later.
Reporting Bugs
This is a developmental release so things are still very much in flux. For that reason, reporting bugs isn't as important as normal. There are a lot of areas that are still changing a lot and will continue to change for some time. Some new icons are temporary and will be replaced later. I would appreciate comments about the general direction of the release though.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
3.2.2b1 now, 4.0b4 soon
I put out a small beta for 3.2.2 just now; it's at http://danschimpf.com/dev.html. If you're not on Jaguar and/or a non-English localization, it may not do much for you right now. I will add a few other small bug fixes for everyone if I can pin them down.
4.0d4 should be out this month with all new blogging support. I'm getting the final pieces in now, although a lot of things might change after this release depending on how everything looks. I'm pleased with the way it's going though; it's a lot more powerful than it used to be.
4.0d4 should be out this month with all new blogging support. I'm getting the final pieces in now, although a lot of things might change after this release depending on how everything looks. I'm pleased with the way it's going though; it's a lot more powerful than it used to be.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Avoiding work with more work that I was avoiding so I can avoid yet more work
I had originally intended to tackle audio recording for 4.0d4. I decided on that because I was avoiding the new blogging architecture, like I had been doing fairly successfully for much of 4.0 so far. I just hadn’t wrapped my head around it yet. But then I looked at audio recording and CoreAudio. CoreAudio is a deceivingly small API but there are loads upon loads of things that you have to do that aren’t readily apparent, which is annoying on several levels. In a happy world, the CoreAudio folks would provide a nice wrapper to do simple operations (like what I want to do) as sample code that I could compile right into MacJournal and we’d all be shiny. I guess this sort of exists, but it’s written in C++, which I dislike more than nonintuitive C APIs. So that’s out the window. I will probably end up using this third-party wrapper framework that I found on the interweb instead. So I’m avoiding that for now.
Instead, I went back to blogging (because I’m really avoiding .Mac syncing) and actually got quite a lot done. The groundwork is all there and rough UI is in place now. This will allow for one-click upload of an entry to a blog (properly configured). This also brings MetaWeblog and Atom support. The latter makes WordPress and TypePad a lot happier, while the former works well with Blogger right now (better than the antiquated API that bears their name could do, paradoxically enough). However, I’d like to minimize the importance of the protocols as much as possible though, if only for the reason that the Blogger API will no longer be the best one to use with Blogger. Over the weekend I put in some automatic configuration so you can just put the URL of your weblog and MacJournal will figure out all the surrounding details to best of its ability. There are loads of different blogging software packages out there, but I’m focusing on six for this release: Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, and Blojsom. Blojsom makes it on the list just because Tiger Server installs it as the weblog software, so it makes sense to try and make that work as best as possible. Others will work just as well once you have them set up, but it will all depend on how nice the software is. The nice blogging sites have little tags that help offline clients like MacJournal to figure out what to do. In fact, of the six, WordPress is the only one that includes no such information. Boo for that. However, there are other ways I can figure out it is WordPress so it’s not such a big deal. It was a little disappointing though, given the fact that WordPress is the most popular right now.
If you’re in for a laugh, check out Xanga. That is some of the worst HTML I have ever seen. There are two body tags! Can someone explain this to me? Yowzers.
The problem is going to be testing all of these sites. I only have capabilities to test uploading to a few different kinds of blogs right now (Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress), so I will need to work out some way to test the others before I can really feel comfortable that the auto-configuration is making the right decisions.
In terms of the next pre-release, I’m still deciding how much of this I want to be done before the next release. I will probably fall on the side of having a more complete implementation that’s closer to the final product rather than putting something out now. Depending on how things go the next release will probably be mid- to late-November.
Maybe then I’ll get back to audio recording. ☺
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