Category Archives: Writing Software

DocBook and Apple Help

One of the key tools I’ve been using recently is Docbook. Docbook is an xml-schema which can be used to write documentation for things. This can then be converted via the wonders of XSL, XML and XML-FO processors into PDF, … Continue reading

Posted in Macintosh, Writing Software | 2 Comments

SQLEditor released!

After a rather over-extended development cycle SQLEditor version 1.0 has now been released. Which is a great relief to me. I’ve been working on it for so long now that I can’t quite remember not working on it, which is … Continue reading

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Writing Documentation

I’m currently in the middle of writing user documentation of SQLEditor. I finally settled on docbook as the format of choice since it seems the most compatible with other things. I’m using this tutorial to build the stuff although saxon … Continue reading

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Integrate flyspray with CVSWeb

Currently I’m using flyspray for bug tracking. I use cvsweb to view the cvs tree online. One thing that I really wanted was to be able to click one bug numbers in the cvs log reports and see the bug … Continue reading

Posted in Internet Stuff, Writing Software | 1 Comment

Java FileWriter, XML and UTF-8

Oddly enough the java.io.FileWriter class doesn’t use UTF-8 by default. I’m not exactly sure what the default encoding is (possibly ISO-8859-1 or US-ASCII?) but it doesn’t seem to be UTF-8, which is odd given that java strings are supposed to … Continue reading

Posted in SQLEditor, Writing Software | 41 Comments

Cocoa#

I’ve been playing around a bit recently with mono and cocoa#. There also seems to be an experimental build of Mono-develop. I begin to think that .net and mono are going to be excellent java competitors. I also think that … Continue reading

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Online Store

I’ve been working recently on integrating a registration system into SQLEditor (sorry). Unfortunately I kind of need to make some money out of my software and so people have to pay for it. I really wish this wasn’t the case … Continue reading

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Serial Number Systems

I’ve recently been trying to write a serial number system for SQLEditor. I’m also looking for a new name for it. It was pointed out that the current name is generic and difficulty to pronounce, plus there is already at … Continue reading

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NSLog

I just realised that NSLog allows parameters. I’d previously been using NSLog([NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d",randomVar]) … But now I realise that the I don’t really need to do this. A simple call to NSLog will work as well. NSLog(@”%d”,randomVar); It still isn’t … Continue reading

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Shareware and Serial Numbers

Not much posting recently. But I’ve been working getting SQLEditor ready for release. The big things recently have been bug fixes and developing a serial number system. It’s extremely annoying to have to spend any time at all working on … Continue reading

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Cross Platform Applications

With the announcement of Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4 Apple, like many other companies, seems to have gone for a standards based approach. Dashboard is said to be based on HTML, CSS and javascript. A webpage in all but … Continue reading

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Definitions in spellchecker?

There have been lots of articles today in newspapers because the Oxford English Dictionary publishers have claimed that people are confused and choosing words incorrectly. For example “pouring” instead of “poring”. The problem being that people are basing the word … Continue reading

Posted in General, Writing Software | 1 Comment

New day, new thoughts

Well, I feel much better today. I’ve thought about it a bit more and I realise how very lucky I was that I found about the bug before the thing got a public release. I’m already working on some ideas … Continue reading

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Mac OS X 10.3 problems

Yet again the fact that I’m developing on Mac OS X 10.2.8 is causing problems. Bruce tried out a copy of SQLEditor (Cocoa) on 10.3 (Panther) and it doesn’t seem to work at all. You can’t seem to add objects … Continue reading

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Create a low end database program

Punkish made the suggestion in one of the comments (actually the only comment) back on May 29th about adding an actual database to SQLEditor and turning it into a database program. The more I think about this the more I … Continue reading

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Overlapping NSViews in cocoa

One thing that is desperately obvious when rewriting a java application to cocoa is overlapping views. In java you can often overlap swing components as long as they are lightweight (not operating system controls for instance). The cocoa documentation says … Continue reading

Posted in SQLEditor, Writing Software | 1 Comment

SQLEditor drag and drop

David was commenting that drag and drop from the java version of SQLEditor was handy, so it’s returned! I implemented a new floating window which allows the user to drag and drop objects onto the main canvas. Which seems to … Continue reading

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Menu enabling

Thanks to Cocoa Menu Validation I now know how to do dynamic enabling and disabling of menu in a tidy way. Previously everything was less tidy and more confused. Thank you Chris Hanson!

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File Format between versions

One of the things I’ve been doing recently is to rewrite SQLEditor to use cocoa instead of java’s swing toolkit. This gives a much better application for people using Macintoshes, but it has meant a file format change. The old … Continue reading

Posted in SQLEditor, Writing Software | 1 Comment