Category Archives: Writing Software

Notarization …

Apple is really pushing the whole notarization thing right now. It does seem a bit like the apocryphal story of boiling the frog, adding small additional restrictions on software freedom each year until the whole platform is under absolute control. … Continue reading

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[NSColor highlightColor] differs in dark mode

I noticed a point today while working on dark mode for Mojave 10.14. The value of -(NSColor*)highlightColor differs depending on whether you’re in light mode or dark mode. This particularly affects -(NSColor *)highlightWithLevel:(CGFloat)val; By calling: [[NSColor highlightColor] colorUsingColorSpace:[NSColorSpace genericRGBColorSpace]]; I … Continue reading

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Github desktop and the tree view

Github desktop has been a helpful companion to my development work for some time now. It’s lightweight, easy to use and integrates nicely with github.com However there is one neat feature that github desktop v1 had that the newer v2 … Continue reading

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SQLEditor 3.0 release

SQLEditor 3.0 is ready! I’ve feel like I’ve been working on this for ages, so I’m really happy that it’s now ready. The most visible change is the new user interface, which has been merged into a single window. Single … Continue reading

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Apple Developer Program improvements

Apple has made some big changes to their developer programs, which I think are a big improvement: 1) You can now apparently develop and deploy to your own iOS device without a program membership. (Possibly only with Xcode 7, I’m not … Continue reading

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Webkit Javascript Optimizing JIT compiler(s)

Is your JIT compiled javascript function running too slow? No worries, just wait and the javascript engine will recompile it and then replace the function with a faster version! But that’s not fast enough either? Webkit will compile another version … Continue reading

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Using NSDockTile for debug info

Often when I’m working on an app or something I end up running several different versions of it in a short period of time. There’s usually some bug that I’m trying to fix and I want to make sure that … Continue reading

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SQLEditor upgrades

One of the big questions I’ve been thinking about recently is how to price upgrades for SQLEditor. So far upgrades have all been free as 1.0 became 1.1 and eventually 1.7. But with the new 2.0 release appearing soon, the … Continue reading

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Xcode 4 – Great!

Xcode 4 took a little while to get used to, but as I’ve been using it more, I’ve been liking it more. The change initially is significant, and there were new ways of doing things and certain other things that … Continue reading

Posted in Macintosh, Writing Software | 2 Comments

SQLEditor now zip file not a dmg

In a change that will probably affect almost nobody at all, SQLEditor is now being distributed with a zip file rather than a dmg as the default download. Why? Zip files are simpler to create It prevents the problem of … Continue reading

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Mac OS X will still have Java in the future.

There has been lots of stuff written recently about how Java on the Mac has been deprecated. The reality is that one particular Java runtime has been deprecated: the one that Apple write themselves. Java as a language will still … Continue reading

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Apple WWDC videos

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

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Big changes to Mac Developer Program

Apple have rearranged their Mac developer program so that it now costs only $99 and seems to have only one paid variant rather than the three previously available. (Student, Select, Premier). The online only variant is still available and still … Continue reading

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Rails Migrations and Schemas

A schema.rb file is typically a ruby script containing a call to the ActiveRecord::Schema.define method. A rails migration is a ruby class which inherits from ActiveRecord::Migration and contains a method called up The useful fact that I realized only after … Continue reading

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XCode function popup

I love the XCode function popup, particularly in Objective C, because I can add #pragma mark comments to divide up the list. Unfortunately languages that aren’t C derived don’t offer #pragma, so I missed these little dividers Then I noticed … Continue reading

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Reggy for regular expression testing

Handy new tool I came across today which allows you to test regular expressions and see what they select. Reggy

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Flash CS3 – Trace not producing output?

Found an odd problem with Flash CS3 today. I was working away and I realised that I wasn’t getting anything in the output window from calls to trace(). Just a completely empty output panel. The answer is simple, make sure … Continue reading

Posted in Macintosh, Writing Software | 7 Comments

XML, UTF-8 and Java

Apparently, valid UTF-8 strings aren’t necessarily valid XML. You can get a situation where you have valid UTF-8 strings which fail xml parsing. Fortunately Mark McLaren offers a solution.

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HTMLValidator 1.0

HTMLValidator 1.0 is finally released. As I write this, it’s been out since Friday, so I guess I’m a bit late in writing this. HTMLValidator 1.0 is identical to HTMLValidator 1.0b8, except of course that it 1) doesn’t expire and … Continue reading

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building antlr 2.7.7 on Mac OS X

It appears that antlr on Mac os x doesn’t like the jikes compiler, at least when I tried building antlr it gave lots of weird compile errors like this: Found 2 semantic errors compiling “ANTLRException.java”: While it would be a … Continue reading

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