|
|
|
A few slight bugs
Although MacTF 1.3 seems to work pretty well, a couple of people have
reported crashes when they try to upload or download anything. It was
hard to pin down why (as the bug was in a piece of code that has been
fine since it was introduced back in 0.3 or 0.4). It's most likely due
to the subthread handling memory a little differently, and maybe a 10.3
vs 10.4 difference too, as all reports so far are from 10.3.9. Either
way, the bug is now fixed.
I'm halfway to getting a few other things finished though (rec file
header preview, and a
navigation bar to get rid of the ".." entries in the file list),
so I'll hold off on releasing an interim fix for the moment, in the hope
of finishing them soon. However, if you
are getting the crashes and want them to stop, just drop me an email and
I'll send you a fixed build.
|
|
|
MacTF 1.3 released
As indicated earlier, MacTF has been updated to v1.3. The main changes
are a redesigned interface and multithreaded
transfers. A Finnish translation has also been added, as well as a number of bug fixes.
|
|
|
 MacTF 1.3 delays
I've been planning to get MacTF 1.3 out for a while now, but due to the interface changes I needed to redo a lot of
the localization things, and unfortunately I have been very busy lately. Also, I still need to test some things as I
finally made the file transfers threaded! This
makes things in the UI work much better (eg. no need to use Exposé to get back to the screen) but did make the
code a bit complicated as I have to try to avoid various combinations of actions that don't go well together (like
disconnecting while transferring could cause a crash).
Hopefully though these changes will allow me to pause and resume transfers in a future version though, and it should
be possible to also resume partial downloads.
|
|
|
Universal apps
With the release of the first Intel-based Macs yesterday, I've had to begin thinking about whether MacTF and my other apps will work nicely on
an x86 system. The answer is that I just don't know, and as I'm not looking for an iMac or a 15" laptop, I'll have to wait until an iBook
equivalent or a Mac mini is released so I can test it out myself. Before then, if anyone tries them under Rosetta, I would appreciate a note
saying if they worked or not.
Some possible problems I could envisage: - Byte-swapping could cause data problems. The data coming from the Toppy USB port is all
backwards (little-Endian) and I swap it back to normal before using it. I think this should be OK, as when I write out data to files (or read
it in to upload), the file-system should deal with any conversion. But it may not, so files might turn out to be all garbled.
- Divide-by-zeros - I was surprised to learn that on PPC "x/0 = 0", but on x86 "x/0 = CRASH!". I'm not sure if I ever do a divide-by-zero
anywhere, but it's possible I haven't checked for it somewhere, so this could cause problems (but is pretty simple to fix and should be easy to
see in a crash log).
- Anything else I haven't thought about.
I'll probably flick the switch over at some point and make MacTF-EPG universal, but if I do so for MacTF I will lose 10.2 support as far as I
know. I'm not sure if anyone is still using 10.2, but I'd like to keep it as long as possible. I'll get someone who owns an Intel-based Mac to
beta-test if they want.
|
|
|
Voice Command of your Toppy
This was just a bit of silly fun, but someone mentioned a few weeks back if it was possible to mute the Toppy by telling it via vioce
recognition. It turns out that it was really very easy, as I had already put AppleScript into VirtualRemote.app. So all you have to do is make
an AppleScript like this:
tell application "VirtualRemote"
sendKey numbered "65548"
end tell
Then if you save this as an app with the title of what you want to say eg "Toppy mute" or "Silence", put it in the Speakable Items folder in
~/Library/Speech/Speakable Items (just the main section if you want to access it at any time), then turn Speakable Items on in the Speech
Prefs. Make sure that the VirtualRemote TAP is running (you will have to run it without any other TAPs though - press 0 during startup and then
launch just the VR TAP), and say the magic words. The Toppy should then mute or unmute as appropriate.
|
|
|
 Sneak Preview of MacTF 1.3
The last few days, thanks mainly to more email conversations with Janne, I've been changing the look and feel of MacTF a great deal. I still need to add a bit more code under the hood and also fix a few more bugs etc, but I thought I'd share a screenshot or two. The main change is that all the buttons for the various functions have been replaced with a toolbar, which is user-configurable. Note that the icons in this picture may not be the final ones, some are just placeholders.
This has allowed me to alter the layout of the rest of the app, so overall it should look cleaner and be a bit more intuitive.
|
|
|
Belated MacTF v1.2 announcement
I forgot to put a post when MacTF moved to v1.2 (and
also forgot to update VersionTracker as well), so I might as well put a note here for anyone who
reads this blog but doesn't visit the main page (new versions now have a "NEW" button next to
them for ~2 weeks).
|
|
|
