Tuesday, 14 January 2003
Modeling Framework is an EOF-inspired object-relational bridge for Python. A bit late for my current Python project, but certainly something to take a closer look at later.
6:58 PMSven is an in-development Cocoa Subversion client.
Monday, 13 January 2003
Oracle released a preview of JDeveloper 9.0.3 for Mac OS X today. JDeveloper is Oracle's Java IDE, though it's quite suited even if you're not writing database-centric applications. If you've used an earlier version, this one is no longer based on JBuilder. Will Crawford was raving about it when I saw him last year, and since he does Java development for a living, I figured it was worth a look. I've been trying to get a decent environment for hacking on Zoe, and after the pain and suffering I went through on Sunday attempting to import Zoe into Eclipse, almost anything would be an improvement.
JDeveloper doesn't work on the Java 1.4.1 developer previews yet, according to the docs. It's packaged like a real Mac OS X application, and installing it is as simple as dragging the app package from the disk image. The icon in the Dock is ugly as sin; it uses a MDI-ish interface, and there's no Quit or Exit command (close the parent window to quit).
I've had some window layering problems and other visual anomalies; the UI uses Swing, so it's not exactly what you call responsive, but it is usable. In particular, I'm used to long new-window times in Cocoa applications; it's surprising that a heavyweight Java app such as JDeveloper will open windows faster than Project Builder will.
Back to research—been dealing with some Metakit portability issues today, and I need to move my testing environment since we're taking our beefier cluster down for a much-needed OS upgrade (unfortunately still with Red Hat because of various external dependencies…)
Sunday, 12 January 2003
iCommune is a very neat idea, taking advantage of OS X's built-in Apache WebDAV server, WebDAV filesystem and iTunes' device plugins to provide simple peer-to-peer music sharing between computers. The iCommune “server” produces an index of the ID3 tags, which the client reads via HTTP—that way the client doesn't have to scan the entire hierarchy manually, yet has all the metadata needed to fill out the iTunes listing. You don't even need the WebDAV server to be a Mac—included is a Python tag indexer which works virtually anywhere.
I've already got it set up between my PowerBook and desktop G4—so far, so good. (I also meant to go home an hour and a half ago!)
FaxJobMgr?
This post being empty was causing Apple's XML-RPC implementation, used in NetNewsWire, some consternation, so I may as well fill it.
It originally complained about FaxSTF X preventing my PowerBook from going to sleep in a timely fashion, and asked if anyone else had the same problem. I should have done a Google search first, as I just did and found other people complaining and a workaround for the misbehavior of the FaxJobMgr daemon.
After implementing power awareness in Pester, I know exactly what Smith Micro needs to do to fix this, and it isn't exactly complicated. That they've know about it since last September and haven't fixed it, nor has Apple done anything about it considering they bundle FaxSTF with their portable computers…can't someone else please make some decent OS X fax software? FaxSTF has been around for ages, and has always been abysmal, even back to the 2.x version I remember I got bundled with my copy of MicroPhone II back in 1992 or so. GlobalFax rocked, but was unfortunately left to die. There was a third major Mac fax program I can't think of at the moment, which was also good; I believe Symantec bought it at some point, but left it to die or only preserved the Windows version?
It appears paragraph breaks correctly appear in my RSS feed when I use explicit <P> tags rather than relying on Radio to do it automatically, so I'll start doing exactly that, as ugly as it is.
