For several years MMISoftware has been on a dedicated Linux box, however, maintenance of the machine was a real problem (particularly if coming from a Mac background).

After some hunting around I settled on macminicolo.net. Why? Well, they are Mac based. I could buy my own machine (a Mac Mini), and they would host it. So great, on Mac OS X.

Another deciding factor was the discovery of a great website called DIYMacServer which basically walks you through installing all the ‘add ons’ such as the mailserver, spam filters, etc.

Looking after the server, and maintenance, is a breeze after years on the Linux box. One of the things I really like is the use of ‘Apple Remote Desktop‘ with Chicken of the VNC. Fantastic.

The first thing that was done was to ‘model’ the iCalendar data standard (rfc2445) into an Apple ‘xcdatamodel’.

Part of the iCalendar data standard modeled in ‘xcdatamodel’

This was surprisingly difficult and took a lot longer than anticipated. The model is now complete.

With a working model it now means that data-binding can be used between the main code of the program and the interface. This has the advantage of speeding up development and providing a consistency in the way the data is handled. Plus, it means less code has to be written.

Work on the fix for iCalMaker started back in November, and is still going on. It looks like it is going to be a long haul and that the code-base for iCalMaker needs a rewrite… there are a number reasons for this.

iCalMaker was written back in the days of Mac OS X 10.0, using the earliest xcode (the Apple programming environment) and contains a lot of old code that is no longer needed, plus it wasn’t written to make use of the latest Mac developments.

Hence, time for a rewrite to clear out the old code, bring in the new, migrate iCalMaker over to the latest version of xcode, use core-data and bindings, and objective-C version 2 with all the advantages that includes.

Why the name change? Well, it looks like the new iCalMaker will not work with Mac OS Xs earlier than 10.5. Hence, I feel a name change is needed…

When 10.4 was released Apple changed the way iCal worked. This caused problems with iCalMaker not exporting correctly to iCal. When this was fixed code was included so that iCalMaker would not export directly to iCal in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) until everything had been checked.

When 10.5 was released Apple changed the way iCal worked again. And this time it has caused real problems.

There is a fix for iCalMaker the works and I hope to get a beta out soon. However, it is proving to be difficult as iCal works in a very different way now.

Meanwhile, you can still use iCalMaker with iCal if you go via the file route. Export data from iCal as a file, and then import in to iCalMaker, export data from iCalMaker as an iCal file, and then import to iCal.

Work started on an update of iCalMaker back in November. It has proved to be an interesting challenge and things have moved much more slowly than hoped. However, there is now light at the end of the tunnel…

Over the next few weeks there will be a number of posts on this blog charting the progress of the work, so stay ‘tuned’.

If you would like to take part in beta testing of the new iCalMaker then please drop me a line beta_test@mmisoftware.co.uk. I already have a number of beta testers lined up, but as usual, I am looking for a few more. (If you are interested in beta testing please note that the new version of iCalMaker will only work under 10.5 (Amazon Link).

One of the features I really like in Mac OS X 10.5 (Amazon Link) is ‘Quick Look’, which basically allows you to ‘peak’ inside a file without firing up the file’s program. Dead handy. However, there was, in my opinion, at least one big gap, ‘Quick Look’ couldn’t ‘peak’ inside zip archives, and now I have found another plugin (Folder Quick Look) there may be another gap I hadn’t spotted.

So, how does ‘Quick Look’ work. Easy, select a file in the Finder, click on it once, and then press the space-bar. A ‘mini-window’ then pops up showing the contents of the file, but, as I said above, it didn’t work for zip files or folder.

Zip – A quick look

I can see what is in a zip archive!

The ‘plugin’ for ‘Zip Quick Look’ can be found at this site, complete instructions on how to install the plugin in the Quick Look plugin folder.

Folder – A quick look

I can see what is in a folder!

The ‘plugin’ for ‘Folder Quick Look’ can be found at this site, again, complete instructions on how to install the plugin are on the site.

It appears in Preview that there is GPS metadata support. In fact it says:

“Get real information from your photos. If your image has embedded GPS metadata, Preview will show you exactly where that perfect photo was taken. Open the Image inspector and select GPS. Preview pinpoints the location where you took the photo on a world map. From there you can even open the GPS location in Google Maps.”

Fantastic! I just hope they have iPhoto sorted so when editing photos it no longer ‘chews-up’ added GPS meta-data.

Get the GPS units fired up, and those photos tagged.

For geotagging of photos why not try: PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor from MMISoftware.

MMISoftware GPS Store | MMISoftware Camera Store

Well, MMISoftware will be testing all its programs against the final build of Mac OS X 10.5 as soon as possible. If any updates of our programs are required they will be released as soon as possible as a free update to all users.

And if you are wondering what all the fuss is about, check out the 300+ new features in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

A new version of Wordpress is out, bringing it up to version 2.2. The list of new features was quite interesting, but what caught my eye was:

What was that? A hook to support WYSIWYG editing of blog entries using Safari? I know that webkit (the ‘code’ behind Safari and the maps in PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor) can support ‘WYSIWYG editing’ of web-pages (although it is very flakey), but as far as I know this is not available in Safari… Maybe this will be added to the next version of Safari in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard? Interesting….

Now, if WYSIWYG support is coming to Safari then this could be good news for my web development work. At present I am Coda, which at version 1.0 is a good start for a new program, but lacks WYSIWYG editing… May be I will get WYSIWYG editing in Coda when 10.5 comes out in October?

Read about Wordpress 2.2 – details

Recently I have had some great emails:

Michael emailed me with the report of PhotoGPSEditor crashing. This was the new release (version 1.5.3 – read the post) that was causing the problems, and as he sent the ‘crash log’ I could easily locate and solve the problem (took all of 30 minutes) and a new version was posted this evening (version 1.5.4 – read the post). Thanks Michael.

Tony emailed to say how useful he found PhotoInfoEditor and sent in a few suggestions for changes. What was spooky was 75% of the changes he suggested have already been added to the new version of PhotoInfoEditor, which is currently undergoing testing. Again, thanks Tony.

Kim from Korea emailed to report that PhotoGPSEditor would not display DNG images produced by his camera. We have had a long email chat about the problem and he really helped me chase the problem by providing examples of problem DNG files .

As Kim said: “The kids wear Korean traditional clothes and shoes. Shape of Hair means my hometown symbol pine tree.”

First, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) supports DNG (or so it claims) ‘out of the box’. And indeed it seems to. However, the DNGs Kim sent would not open in Preview, and would not display in PhotoGPSEditor (they reported a formatting error in the debugger). Some digging in the code of PhotoGPSEditor showed that the things really weren’t working as expected. The files were being loaded, but would not translate to an image. Some more work, and a change in the code, and the files Kim had sent (plus some photos from other users), now worked. As a final test I asked Kim for one more example of the type of DNG file his camera produced. And guess what? It wouldn’t load in to PhotoGPSEditor. This was odd… I thought that maybe the file had been damaged ‘in transit’ as Preview also couldn’t open it, but when I tried Photoshop, success! An image! Great! The file was OK, but PhotoGPSEditor didn’t work!

I then tried the file again with PhotoGPSEditor, and it showed a preview image…. odd…. After some ‘experiments’, using an unopened version of the file, I discovered that the act of opening the DNG file in Photoshop, and then closing the file WITHOUT A SAVE ‘fixed’ the photo so it could be displayed by PhotoGPSEditor. How, or why this happens I have no idea!

What was also interesting was that even when PhotoGPSEditor could not display an image from the DNGs, it could still write the meta-data (location information etc.) to the file when it was saved. Therefore, I have now added a ‘feature’ to PhotoGPSEditor that states that the image can’t be viewed, but that the program should still be able to write the meta-data.

If PhotoGPSEditor encounters a file that it can write meta-data to, but can’t display an image, it now states the fact!

These improvements in image handling, and the reporting of ‘problem’ images, will be added to the next version of PhotoInfoEditor.

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

It appears that Steve Jobs will kick off the WWDC with a ‘keynote’. The bit that caught my eye was:

At WWDC, Apple plans to show developers a feature complete version of Mac OS® X Leopard“”

Feature complete? Interesting? Does that mean we will finally get to see the ’secret’ features mentioned at last years WWDC?

Gentlemen, start your rumour engines….

Read the press release