Fun and games with mailMaker, NSMailDelivery, NSStream and SMTP

As I said in an earlier post, mailMaker is undergoing a serious rewrite.

In an attempt to move away from using clients, such as Apple Mail, to send the final e-mails it was decided to add smtp (simple mail transfer protocol) support directly to the program. That is, to give the program the ability to send the e-mails directly.

First stop was an attempt to use NSMailDelivery. However, NSMailDelivery was found not to be powerful enough (main reason is it insists on using the ‘default’ smtp server in Apple Mail and there is no way to change this behaviour!). So the attempt was abandoned as mailMaker needs to be able to control the smtp server settings.

Mac OS X 10.3 introduced a new API called NSStream. This looked more promising. However as it is a ‘low level’ API it is more problematical to use and effectively means I am having to ‘roll my own’ smtp client. What fun!

Bottom line. Looks like this is going to take longer than I thought!

(There are a number of frameworks available which could be used to add email capabilities to programs but most of these, upon inspection, really seem to be overkill for what I need.)

Work starts on mailMaker version 2

After completing the update of the MMISoftware website it is now time to start the next project!

mailMaker has been an odd program. It was released towards the end of last year and has never sold very well. It has only had around 800 downloads between VersionTracker and Macupdate. (The server logs at MMISoftware shows that it it is more than 800.)

Why so few downloads? Why so few sales? I use the program daily for e-mailing friends, colleagues and customers, and find it very useful!

One possibility for poor level of downloads and purchases is the misconception that the program is for producing spam, well, it is not, it would be a very inefficient way to spam people! Could the poor level of downloads be a result of a backlash against spam?

The program is now going through a major ‘make-over’ with a number of new features being added….

Watch this space for more details!

MMISoftware website update

The MMISoftware website has undergone a compete update. Although the content of the site has not been changed the site now has a new look and feel. Hopefully users will be able to locate the software they need easier and faster, and can find the additional information they require. It was amazing how long the process took, and how much repetition was involved….. May be this could be something for a ‘One Trick Pony‘?

Minor update to iCalMaker released

A minor update of iCalMaker has been released.

The update addresses a bug which was causing some problems with the appointment format in iCal files (this was causing the appointments not to be displayed correctly in iCal – this problem only occurred with direct exports to iCal but not if the appointments were saved to file first) [Thanks to Peter Hamburger for the report of this bug.]

The update also includes an update of the eSellerate integrated purchase engine.

General ’round-up’ of what has been happening……

Well, things have been busy….

Skiing:

Just got back from an excellent week of skiing at St Anton, Austria…. (see the picts – site generated using Web Photos). The place is amazing. The skiing was great and the ‘after ski’ partying was awesome.

Programming:

Work on iCalMaker 1.6, quickWebAlbum, webSiteCleaner and JPEGCleaner was finished last week and the programs were released. (Download – iCalMaker, quickWebAlbum, webSiteCleaner or JPEGCleaner)

Bug reports:

There is only one bug report on the books at the moment and this is to do with mailMaker. It appears that if an e-mail contains more that 900 characters that the program will not work on some machines. The source of this bug is currently unknown….. Worryingly mailMaker is the worst selling program on the site. It was always thought that this was because users were confusing it with software that may be used to produce SPAM, however, it now appears it may be due to an unreported bug (the bug did not show up in beta testing and I am currently unable to reproduce the bug)!

If you do encounter bugs in any of the the software please report it to bugs@mmisoftware.co.uk.

Other news:

The main website is currently undergoing a major redesign. The site has grown significantly over the last year and is in desperate need of a ‘make-over’. Watch this space for further news…..

iCalMaker 1.6 is finally released!

After some delay version 1.6 of iCalMaker has been released.

The program contains a number of new features:

New Features:

• Improved the handling of poorly formatted iCal (ics) files upon import
• Removed the ‘five-event-limit’ on the import of iCal appointments from iCal (ics) files and direct from iCal
• Improved error message reporting
• Added additional help information on error messages
• Added an updated eSellerate integrated purchase engine

Bug Fixes:

• Dealt with a 10.2/10.3 specific bug which was causing some problems with the import of comma/tab delimited data
• Complete re-write of the iCal (ics) import method (now has better error reporting and conforms more closely to the vcal version 2 standard format)
• Dealt with a rare bug that would cause some iCal file output to be incorrectly formatted
• Fixed a bug that was causing problems when importing some short duration events
• Minor correction to text export so that ‘shifted-repeats’ (repeating events where one or more of the events have been moved to a different date/time) are now correctly handled
• Fixed a bug that was causing occasional crashes on the export of events to vCal (vcal version 1) format (thanks to Martin Haas and Joshua M. Whitman for finding that one!)
• Solved a problem with the import of iCalMaker generated vCal files that would not import correctly in to iCal (thanks to Martin Haas for providing calendars that demonstrated this really weird bug!)

The program can be downloaded here and purchased using either the integrated eseller or at the secure MMISoftware webstore.

Minor updates

Minor updates of the ‘one trick ponies‘, webSiteCleaner, JPEGCleaner and quickWebAlbum have been released. All three contain updates to the esellerate purchase engine and webSiteCleaner also contains a minor bug fix.

Download webSiteCleaner, JPEGCleaner and quickWebAlbum.

All ‘one trick ponies‘ can be purchased ($5 USD) either using the integrated eseller in the program or at the secure MMISoftware store.

Trial versions of all programs are available, just download the programs using the above links and give them a try

Another day, another ‘date’ problem!

Well, I keep saying the thing is finished and then beta testing throws up a new problem!

The latest is some flakiness in NSDate and the handling of ‘natural language’ (dateWithNaturalLanguageString). Some times it works as advertised, and sometimes not. In addition, the behaviour seems completely different between 10.2.x and 10.3.x!

The program now tests for which OS X version is being used and then applies a solution to the problem depending on the OS!

Hopefully, the program will now pass final beta testing and will be released soon.