Finished!

Yep! mailMaker is complete! It has passed final beta-testing and is ready to be released in to the wild! Always a nervous/worrying time. The program has been tested on range of machines, and under various OS conditions/types, and yet there will always be something that will not work on some ones machine. For example, iCalMaker was tested on numerous machines, and yet for certain users it always crashed at start-up. The problem turned out to be a rare problem with the configuration of some users Apple Address Book. A configuration I had never managed to mimic….

I guess it just shows you can’t test for everything!

Happy Thanks-giving!!

Getting towards the end!

Well, the new program has almost completed beta testing. Everything is now working as it should!

It is now on to the finishing touches. Checking the help system, creating and adding the new pages to the main website (www.mmisoftware.co.uk), and running some final checks on machines with different configurations.

Once this is all complete the program will be released, hopefully this Friday or Monday of next week.

What is it? Well, it is a $15 (USD) ‘e-mail assistant’ program…… More details to come!

Rugby, computers and an Expo

Just got back from the MacExpo in London.

The trip went well, however, the weather was awful (it rained for the three days I was in London)!

The Expo was packed out. Very busy. Apple had a great stand which was very busy. It was great to see the new 20 in iMac. Very nice! Apple was also putting on some good ‘lectures’ on Panther and the G5s.

The ‘usual suspects’ were there, Adobe, Epson, MacWarehouse, Macworld, MacUser, Microsoft etc. It was interesting to see some people from a new Mac magazine, iCreate, and to chat to people from the Mac User Groups (MUGS), particularly the London based group.

The day (Saturday) started very well as when I arrived nearly everyone was watching the Rugby World Cup on a large screen! It certainly added to the atmosphere!

Going to the MacExpo (UK)

Well, later today I am off to the MacExpo in London. Should be an interesting trip….

More fun and games with Applescript and unicode…

I have finally solved the problem of working with Unicode in an Applescript list. I wouldn’t claim the solution is elegant, but it works!

This is, hopefully, the last bit in the puzzle before the release of some new software. Now that this problem has been solved there is some last minute beta testing to do, and if that all goes well, the software should be released early next week.

Once that is done it is back to iCalMaker and chasing a couple of very minor bugs reported last week.

Using Applescript in a Cocoa application

Since version 10.2 it has been possible to incorporate Applescripts as part of an application. The fun really starts when you try to allow for international text, that is, Unicode text. This seems to be a real weakness in Applescript. Unicode text cannot be displayed directly in the editor, although it will be displayed in ‘Event Log History’ and this makes life difficult when testing new scripts, particularly if they contain Unicode!

MMISoftware offers a 10% discount for MacExpo2003

To celebrate the MacExpo2003 in London MMISoftware is offering a 10% discount on the purchases of iCalMaker before 31st december 2003.

Fun and games with dates and languages

iCalMaker started life as a simple project to solve a particular problem I had with getting a plain-text, tab-delimited, file of data into iCal. The simple solution was to just enter everything in to iCal by hand. But being a computer type of person I thought I could write a quick program to do the job. That was a year ago! The ‘simple’ program (just for me) took only a couple of days to write and check, it was then suggested I release the program. Therefore after 6 months of writing, polishing and testing, iCalMaker 1.0 was released in May 2003.

So, what have I learnt in the last 12 months?

1. The ical/vcal/ics format is a lot more complicated than I first thought!
2. We (i.e. the planet!) use a wild and wonderful array of methods to express dates and times (not only are there different names for the dates (which I knew) but there are also hundreds (thousands?) of different ways to say the same date, e.g. 12/3/03 could be the 12th March 2003, or 3rd December 2003, it could also be March 12th, Mar 12, 12 Mar, 12 March, 3/12/3, 03/12/2003, 2003/12/03 etc. etc.)
3. People like using diaries and it is a constant source of amazement as to what they wish to record and the weird and wonderful format of the files!

Right, back to hunting a tricky vcal 2.0 to vcal 1.0 conversion bug and to trying to find a way input dates from a file sent to me by a French customer.

Continuing work on the new program

The latest project/program, like all the programs at MMISoftware, was born out of my own needs! I had a problem I needed to solve, I solved it, and then thought, may be other people will find it useful? However, it is easy to produce a program to meet your own needs but getting the program to ‘release standard’ is where all the hard work starts!

The program is now entering late beta testing and if all goes well it should be released some time next week…. Watch this space….