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.)

A possible solution to the xcode problem?

As I said a few days ago, every so often I get this weird problem with xcode (the new programming environment from Apple).

Work was continuing on the new project when the ‘no longer can add files’ problem returned. I still have no idea why this should happen, but I have found a solution! And the solution is to replace the xcode project file with one from a pervious backed up version of the project (from a version of the project when I could add files). When I do this the problem is resolved. Why should this work? I have no idea… However, it suggests that either something I am doing in the project is causing the file to change or xcode is somehow breaking/corrupting the project file.

The lesson of back-ups

Never solved the strange behaviour of xcode, the new project, and the folder that couldn’t be accessed! In the end I resorted to going to a back-up copy of the project.

Next problem was adding the help, which I have done countless times with ProjectBuilder (PB). For some reason ‘the help’ was not showing up when help was selected. Finally realised that the files had not been added to the bundle. Discovered this can be done using ‘drag and drop’ in xcode. Was that the case in PB?

The new project has now entered beta stage! Watch this space……

Fun and games with xcode…

Well, I have been working on a the new product and trying to chase a bug in iCalMaker.

Looks like I have the bug cornered. It is a rare beast that only comes out during the conversion of iCal files back to Palm (i.e. vcal files version 2.0 to vcal files version 1.0) and only appears during the conversion of yearly repeats with no end. Once the bug has been squashed there will be a round of intensive testing and version 1.5.1 of iCalMaker will be out.

xcode, the new programming environment from Apple, has been causing some problems. I am working on a new project and for some reason I can no longer add files. Most weird. I have no idea why this should suddenly happen. I can’t think what has changed. It is really annoying as I was in the final stages of completing the work, i.e. the features in the program were finished, beta testing was going well, and all I was trying to add was the help system!