Mac on Angus Thinks

Mac OS X will still have Java in the future.

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

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 be available, only it won’t be Apple that writes it and possibly it might be an optional download.

The confusion is because up until now there has really been only one Java runtime on the Mac, which Apple wrote themselves using code licensed from Sun. Now Apple has chosen to discontinue their own particular runtime, but this doesn’t mean that there won’t be any Java at all.

SQLEditor 1.6 final

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

So, if you’ve seen SQLEditor recently, you’ll hopefully have seen that there is a new version out: version 1.6 . This got released just at the beginning of December 2009

1.6 is something that I’ve been working on now for a long time, it is essentially (the unreleased) version 1.5 with improvements and updates. In particular it contains a SQL parser that was written using ANTLR and a new JNI based system for using JDBC drivers with support for Java 6 JDBC drivers.

SQLEditor 1.4.4 Released

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

SQLEditor 1.4.4 was just released on Tuesday, the main feature improvement is the support for compound foreign keys. I posted a bit about this before and the final version is pretty much the same as I described.

Unfortunately there were a couple of bugs that slipped through relating to clicking objects. :-(

These are going to be fixed in a point release that should appear soon.

The new version is available from the automatic update system or download here:

SQLEditor: Compound Foreign Keys

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The newest version of SQLEditor (1.4.4b1) now has support for compound foreign keys. This is something that people have been asking about for a while now, so I’m pleased that it got included.

There are some things that may need to be improved, but I’m fairly happy with the first revision of this.

[caption id=“attachment_400” align=“alignnone” width=“443” caption=“Diagram showing compound foreign key”][/caption]

The compound foreign key object is a new table level object that you can add from the Object menu just like a field or index. Then you drag from the foreign key to the target table. Finally you use the inspector to create pairs of columns to link together.

Handy database of recommended Mac Apps

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Johan Basberg (who designed the beautiful SQLEditor icon) has a handy list of recommended mac applications at

http://dittverk.no/mac/files/tag-editor.php

And SQLEditor is on this list :-)

SQLEditor 1.4b2

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Another day, another beta. (Kind of)

SQLEditor 1.4b2 is now available, which is pretty much bug fixing against 1.4b1.

There were several issues with 1.4b1 including an annoying bug that would sometimes delete foreign key connectors when you deleted an unrelated table.

There are some fixes for other bugs which turned up and some improvements to undo/redo, to make it more stable when you undo or redo lots of things, one after the other.

Openoffice aqua looking good

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I just downloaded the new aqua port of OpenOffice a few days ago and it looks good. There are some bits which aren’t finished yet, but it runs quickly, it runs natively and it runs the same as the other OpenOffice platforms. (So far as I can tell). It may well be the best upgrade path for people using VBA macros on the Mac.

What have I been doing recently?

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Well no updates for a bit. Humm?

The main things I’ve been working on:

SQLEditor . Lots of things are being worked on. The user interface is being rewritten to improve speed and increase flexibility, the data layer is being rewritten to switch it to cocoa (instead of java), the JDBC code is being rewritten to make it use JNI instead of cocoa/java and a new crash reporting system based on Google BreakPad is being worked on. There are also some other things too like live source view and assorted bug fixes. 2) HTMLValidator . Also undergoing development. It recently moved across to use Sparkle (yey!) instead of the SQLEditor derived update system (which will also be replaced eventually). The final 1.0 release is due very soon now and several people have set in nice comments. 3) A new idea (still secret) :-)

WWDC keynote: Games

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

(Watching WWDC keynote log over at MacRumors.com)

(It seems to be a blogging day for me?) Gaming seems to be one of the big things at this year’s WWDC keynote. EA is apparently going to be doing simultaneous releasing of some games this year including Harry Potter. This is interesting because EA is so important in mainstream gaming.

Whether EA will follow Blizzard in putting both games on the same CD (hopefully YES) or have separate releases for the two platforms will be a point to note. Dual platform releases like Blizzard are great because it means that you can buy Mac games at mainstream gaming stores and the titles then get released on budget labels (often with the Mac part still attached). I’ve picked up several of the Blizzard games at my local branch of Game here in Edinburgh this way as impulse purchases. (Of course where this leaves the Mac Porting development companies is anyone’s guess)

Google Talks: Camino

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Mike Pinkerton of Google talks about the Mac web browser Camino. It also includes some interesting history of the Mozilla and Gecko projects.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6765603919277760697

HTMLValidator beta 2

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

HtmlValidator beta 2 has just been released. The new version offers assorted fixes and a slightly improved interface (a green tick or red cross now appear in the validation window!)

There is also a new downloads page which currently offers an Applescript to validate the source of the front page in Safari.

Usefully it validates the actual source that the browser received, it doesn’t download the url itself.

HTMLValidator

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

HTMLValidator 1.0b1 has just been released.

It runs on PowerPC or Intel Macs with Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

The current version expires 28th February 2007.

HTMLValidator is a new desktop HTML validator that works on both web pages and files. It’s something I’ve been working on for a while now in between SQLEditor releases. The main motivation is that I often seem to use the W3C validator, but I can’t always do that with files I’m working on locally. I also tried installing the W3C validator on a local web server and although it works, it seems to require a lot of installation effort, with different dependencies. So the idea occurred to me: what if you could have a drag and drop installation. From there came a web version using drag and drop and finally the application bundle version that is being distributed from today. The earlier application versions actually displayed the results in an html webview in a window, while the newer releases display the results in a table.

SQLEditor 1.3.2

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

SQLEditor 1.3.2 received a very limited release to a few selected testers at the end of 2006. However there were some additional issues that needed a bit more work, so the current plan is for a 1.3.3 release before the end of January.

MacFuse released - userspace Mac OS X file systems

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I just noticed this announcement on the google mac blog.

Amit Singh has released a mac version of Fuse, which is way for people to write interesting extensions to the file system without writing kernel code. The way it works (as I understand it) is that the Fuse system runs one kernel module which communicates with the actual file system code in userspace.

It looks really clever and there are already a number of useful file systems available for fuse (including ssh as a filesystem and a ntfs driver). [link ]

SQLEditor 1.3.1

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

SQLEditor 1.3.1 got released on Friday afternoon, this was really just a bug fix release which fixed a handful of problems that were identified. I think the only major fix was that the new UID system was slightly broken in that if you copied an object, or duplicated it in some cases, then SQLEditor would not always recreate the unique ID numbers that represent each object. This had the effect that if you copied an object, SQLEditor couldn’t distinguish between the objects when reloading and so all connectors would be attached to the original object and not the new one. An unfortunate bug. :-(

Writing Unit tests for Cocoa

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I realized something interesting today.

I use unit testing to (hopefully) improve the quality of my code.

With Java I use JUnit . With native Mac stuff I use OCUnit .

One really clever thing about OCUnit that I realized today is that if you have several SenTestCase subclasses, each with multiple tests in it, you can put all of them into one XCode target and OCUnit will automatically run them as suites in one test run. This means that you get a summary of all of the tests at the end.

static link library to replace dylib in mac os x

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post on the xcode-users list explains a neat trick on how to get xcode to link a static library instead of a dynamic library.

Imagine the circumstance: you want to use a particular non-standard version of a native library which is already part of the system; perhaps you want to use an old version with better compatibility, or a newer version with more features. The obvious thing to do is to take a static build of the library and add it your xcode project.