Tunes Menu has been updated to version 1.3.1

Tunes Menu has been updated to version 1.3.1. The update includes a number of bug fixes:

• Restored Kelkoo searching in the UK
• Fixed a problem with searches on dStore, ozcdshop, and TopShop in Australia
• Solved a minor problem with CD WOW! searches in Hong Kong

Tunes Menu is free, requires Mac OS X 10.2 or greater, and is available for download (204 KB) at http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/downloads/tunesmenu.dmg.sit.

PLEASE NOTE: TUNES MENU IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE AND IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED

‘Tunes Menu’ updated to 1.2 and now supports Mac OS X 10.2

‘Tunes Menu‘ has been updated to version 1.2 and support for Mac OS X 10.2 added.

‘Tunes Menu‘ is a Mac OS X program which provides a simple and easy way to search online music stores via a system-wide menu. The program is fully integrated with iTunes and allows rapid searching of selected local online music stores. The program currently support Amazon (World wide, Europe and UK); Kelkoo, and WHSmiths in the UK; CDUniverse in the US; and CD WOW!, dStore, ozcdshop, and TopShop in Australia. More stores will be added in the near future. (If you have a suggestion for a store please send it to: store_suggestion@mmisoftware.co.uk

Tunes Menu is free, requires Mac OS X 10.2 or greater, and is available for download (180 KB) at http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/downloads/tunesmenu.dmg.sit. The update has added support for Mac OS X 10.2 and the CD WOW! music store in the UK.

PLEASE NOTE: TUNES MENU IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE AND IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED

Fun and games making ‘Tunes Menu’ 10.2 compatible!

‘Tunes Menu‘ was written using Xcode and tested on a number of machines running 10.3. However, when the program was beta-tested on machines running 10.2 it was found not to work! The question is, “why wouldn’t it work”?

It turns out that it was a number of problems. First, 10.2 doesn’t contain the necessary features that would allow ‘Copy and Find’ to work (this was known and had already been solved in version 1.0); second it was known that 10.2 did not support ‘user initiated menu updates’ (this was known and a solved); and third, it was discovered that there were major differences in how system-wide preferences were stored and handled.

Problem 2 was solved by using a ‘run-time’ loop that automatically updates the menu every 5 seconds, plus, any ‘incoming data’ also automatically triggered a menu update.

Problem 3 was solved by putting in a check for the OS number and then using the correct calls.

This was all a bit of shock and shows how Mac OS X is maturing and changing!

PLEASE NOTE: TUNES MENU IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE AND IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED

iCalMaker updated to 1.6.5

iCalMaker has been updated to 1.6.5

The update includes a number of bug fixes and a few new features.

New Features:

• Added the option to allow the expansion of repeating events in tab- and comma-delimited export
• Major improvement to the help system – searching (10.2 and greater) and context-specific (10.3 and greater) help now works correctly

Bug Fixes:

A number of minor bug fixes

• Recompiled using Xcode 1.2
• Updated the eSellerate integrated purchase engine

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.

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.

Bug problems with Mac OS X less than 10.3

After several long days of wrestling with bug in mailMaker which only appeared when the program was run on machines not using 10.3 it has been decided to drop support for 10.2 in mailMaker. It is a shame that mailMaker will not run on 10.2 (or 10.1) but I was left with no option (the program now puts up a warning window if you try to run it on a machine pre-10.3).

There were two problems in 10.2 that couldn’t really be nailed:

1. Unicode support - Unicode (international text) support is a problem is somewhere in the ‘deep depths’ of the OS, hence mailMaker was unable to satisfactorily pass international text to the default mail programs (also, some of the mail programs have poor support for Unicode).
2. Machine dependent - There is something going on with the configuration of some users machines under 10.2.8 that meant they did not work well with mailMaker. After much chasing it appeared that the problem may be with a component installed by Toast (and for the life of me I can not figure out why that should be the case), but, equally, there was also something else going on….

Therefore, it was decided to concentrate development efforts on mailMaker under 10.3.

Busy few days bug chasing and adding new features

Bugs are funny things. No matter how much you test a program you can be sure that there is some one out there with a computer set up in such a way that your program won’t work! And ever so often a user will say ‘does your program do X?’ or ‘it would be great if it did Y’, and you think ‘why didn’t I think of that!’ (if you have some idea, or bug reports, please send them to: bugs@mmisoftware.co.uk or feedback@mmisoftware.co.uk)

So a round up:

mailMaker: Added support for export to PowerMail. Also caught a really nasty bug which was causing the program to crash for some users on Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.2.8. There is also another weird bug that I haven’t been able to solve. It appears that if Toast is installed, and the default e-mail program is not running, then mailMaker cannot send the messages to the e-mail program.

JPEGCleaner: No bugs to deal with but support has been added for importing jfif files and exporting as jpeg.

iCalMaker: Added some new features such as support for the export of iCal "invitations" direct to Apple Mail, Eudora, Microsoft Entourage, Mailsmith and PowerMail, and direct support for the export of iCal files to PowerMail. Also caught a number of bugs.

The bugs:

• some problems with the import of tab- and comma-delimited files
• problems with unicode text not to be exported correctly to iCal
• some repeat events not to being correctly formated in vCal (Palm) export
• solved a problem that was causing the return and delete keys from working as advertised
• have all been squashed!

Also, corrected some broken links in the ‘Help System’.

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!