is almost here!

Work on iCalMaker version 1.6 is coming to a close. Testing is almost complete, and all that remains are a few tests with some of the more obscure calendar formats that I have collected.

If all goes well (and, so far so good) the new version should be released later this week.

Still trying to get iCalMaker 1.6 completed….

Work is still continuing on iCalMaker version 1.6. In fact, one of the reasons for the lack of posts is because of the all the work on the next release! Unfortunately, for all the hard work there will be very few noticeable changes in the appearance of iCalMaker, however, there are vast internal changes/improvements and these will act as the ‘building blocks’ for version 2.

Some time ago I stated that “The new ‘parsing code’ for iCal (ics) files is now complete”

and that it was being tested. Well, testing produced a few more interesting problems, iCal entries that didn’t behave as expected, and a few oddities. These have now been dealt with. This of course has knock-on effects to the iCal export!

Hopefully, iCalMaker version 1.6 should be ready (assuming no last minute problems) by the middle March! As for version 2…….

Minor update to Power on X

Power on X is a statistical power calculator for Mac OS X. The program can, using means, standard deviation (SD) or standard error of mean (SEM), and the sample size (n), calculate the effect size (’sensitivity’), and therefore, for a given alpha level (significance level) the associated power of a given test.

The program has just been updated to version 1.5.4 which corrected a small problem with some power calculations when SEM was used.

This is not really the time, or the place, for a full discussion on the importance of statistical power.

Additional information can be found at:

http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/pages/power.html

Information on the program (basically the help system for Power on X)

http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/pages/powerh/index.html

And some suggested reading at:

http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/pages/library/

Power on X can be downloaded from MMISoftware and is US$20.

iCalMaker 1.6 – an update of progress

Work on the latest version of iCalMaker is continuing.

The new ‘parsing code’ for iCal (ics) files is now complete and has been tested with numerous iCal calendars (a big thanks to all the users that have sent in calendars for testing) and appears to be working as intended. The next thing to do is to update some of the export methods:

iCalMaker to iCal:

This is proving to be a bit of a problem. At present the appointments are passed to iCal (in most cases) using AppleScript. This only works for a limited number of types of appointment (and this is why iCalMaker will sometimes force an iCal quit and restart to pass some events) and the changes to the ‘parse code’ means the new event types have to be correctly caught and passed to the appropriate method, i.e. AppleScript or for direct export to the iCal file.

iCalMaker to iCal file:

Not a problem to code. The current code just needs updating to catch the new iCal appointment parameters that can be handled.

iCalMaker to vCal file:

This is a real problem. The iCal file (ics) format is really version 2 of the vcal format. The vCal file, as used by Palm, is version 1. Translating vcal version 2 data to vcal version 1 is not always possible as some of the vcal version 2 data format is not supported in version 1. Therefore the translation is ‘lossy’ and has to be handled carefully.

iCalMaker to tab- or comma-delimited:

Again, fairly easy, however, the conversion tends to be ‘lossy’ as there is not an obvious way to deal with repeating events etc. Should a repeater be repeated or should only the first occurrence be listed? What about attendess? Appointment status? etc….. (If you have any thoughts on this please e-mail: support@mmisoftware.co.uk) (N.B. Version of 2 of iCalMaker will give the user options on how the output in comma- or tab-delimited files is supported).

iCalMaker to text:

This is almost complete and just needs a few “tweaks” to deal with repeating events that have what I call ‘offset’ days, i.e. a repeating event where one appointment or more has been moved to a different time/date. Again, there is a question of how much information should be included in the output. This will be addressed with ‘preferences’ in version 2 of iCalMaker.