MacTF-EPG 1.4.2
It's been a while since my last post, but I should have a bit more time now to devote to fixing bugs and the like. So I've posted a new version of MacTF-EPG with a few tiny bug fixes, but more importantly updated the website which was lagging behind (it was still on 1.3 I think) and also updated the feed that the built-in software update checks. So hopefully any stragglers who don't check the Topfield forums will now be able to find the new version.

Speaking of which, I've added a quick link to the MacTF-EPG Now On menulet to the MacTF-EPG page. I'd previously only mentioned it in a post on the Topfield forum. This is just a quick little menubar app that displays a table of whats playing at the current time. It reads in the same TGD files used by MacTF-EPG, so you need to run them in conjunction.

While I'm on the topic of addons, occasionally people ask me what TGDPicker 0.2 is. This is just a small standalone TGD viewer app. It's where the original code for parsing/displaying the files came from in MacTF-EPG, and it hasn't been developed any further really. It's by no means necessary, but I still find it useful as if you have it around you can double-click on any TGD file and see what's inside, which is perhaps easier than opening it through a text-editor.

MacTF-EPG 1.2.2
I've been a bit lax in posting to the blog, but there's a new verion of MacTF-EPG up now. This fixes the problem that most (but not all) users were having with no data being downloaded by the grabber. Thanks to v8jlene who managed to find what had changed and updated the grabber.

While I was packaging up the new version I also changed the update mechanism to the Sparkle framework. This was a bit last-minute, but looks to be a really nifty way to update your app. It allows me to post a webpage for each upgrade and if you need updating you'll see what's new in a window, with the option to download it. Sparkle then seems to quit the app and restart with the new version. It also has some "always install new updates" features but these are very beta, so please don't enable them (I tried disabling them but haven't worked out how yet).

The best thing in my mind is that if there is an issue like last time where there is a data source problem, I can simply set up a fake "update" and users will be able to see a message explaining what the problem is. Then when I actally get the problem solved, I just add the download and everyone can get it. So I recommend letting the app check for updates (I'll make this a pref soon, now it just asks once).

MacTF-EPG 1.2
I've released a new version of MacTF-EPG. The main added feature is a grid view that is generated by a script from the intermediate XML files that the Oz grabber creates. Unfortunately, the UK scripts go straight to TGD, so I currently can't make a grid from that data. The grids are just a html page and are not interactive at all (no setting timers etc). However, because of this it is quite easy to edit the CSS file (which will be put in the folder in App Support), or edit the settings (to mark favourites on the grid in a different colour, or different genres) in the xmltv2htmlrc file. As examples, news shows are marked as slightly blue, while "The Simpsons" is a favourite and should show up bold.

The other major changes is that I've compiled it as a Universal binary. I'm not sure whether it will make much difference as the scripts used by the app are either Java (and therefore native already) or compiled for PPC. I've also not had an opportunity to test on an Intel-based Mac, so I have no idea if it will break anything. Please tell me if it does.

MacTF-EPG 1.1
I've released the 1.1 update which adds the AppleScript ability and the automation via launchd. As I mentioned before, it's still buggy but I think most of that is due to the bugs in launchd and not due to me. And if by some miracle it does work for someone please drop me a quick note.

The automation involves calling an AppleScript. Unfortunately, due to the way I had download and uploads threaded, I currently haven't got a way to tell (via AppleScript) when the transfer is finished, so I've built a few delays into the default script (4 minutes to download, 30 secs to upload, then quit). You can edit the script (MacTF-EPGScript.scpt) to your own lengths if required (ie on dial-up you may need more than 4 minutes!).

Also UK users should now be able to use the "number of days to load" pref to limit how much data goes into your TGD files. I've also bumped the maximum days up to 14 as some of the UK data goes this long, but Australian users should note that the maximum amount of data you'll get will be 8 days so it's no use setting it any higher!

Automating MacTF-EPG
One of the things on my ToDo list was to hook some of the functions in MacTF-EPG up to AppleScript. This isn't the easiest thing when you do it the first time, but luckily I had worked out how for MacTF, so it was mainly a process of copying the relevant files and changing them to fit MacTF-EPG. This went fairly smoothly and before long the app could download data and upload it to the Toppy via AppleScript.

Where it got a bit harder was adding the automation so it was, you know, automatic... I've not really delved into cron and the like, and as MacTF-EPG is 10.4+ anyway, I thought I'd go for the launchd approach. For those who haven't heard of launchd, it's basically Apple's replacement for cron as well as a number of other Unix processes. It runs off XML files and is actually one of the first processes launched during startup, and it is responsible for starting most of the others.

So far so good. I played around with some of the XML plist files and slowly worked out some of the options. Lots of the links on Google about launchd refer to a number of (fairly large) bugs that existed in 10.4.0 through to 10.4.2. One of these was that repeated launches of a program based on a time/date was broken in that it would launch fine the first time, but never again (until a restart I guess). As this is fairly important (especially as I wanted something to fire daily), it was lucky that it was fixed in 10.4.3. However, it seems it isn't completely fixed, as now when you set a timer for daily use, it won't fire the first go, but then will the next time around (and hopefully thereafter). Which makes it a pain in the arse for testing, as I need to wait 24 hours to fix any errors I make...

The good news is that I think I have it working, so expect an update soon.

MacTF-EPG 1.0 released
Well, actually it was released a few days ago but I forgot to write about it. Most of the changes are to enable UK support. Nigel from toppy.org.uk wrote the great little perl and php scripts that do the fetching and converting to TGD format, and I wrapped them up, much like I did with JavaXMLTV. Due to differences in how the data comes down, the UK functionality only has the one progress bar and currently doesn't have proxy support or configuration on how many days to load. Otherwise, it should work just like the Australian part.

Other changes include a few additions to the keyword logic. Although the live search bar searched within titles, subtitles, descriptions, etc, the keyword matching was on title alone. I've now added the channel, subtitle, category, and other parts of the "shortinfo" section to the keyword search. This is especially useful for the UK people as the repeat flag will show up here, so you can now put a "repeat" keyword in the negative column to cut all these matches out. The side-effect of this is a slightly increased risk of false matches, especially for really common keywords such as "lost". In this case you may need to get a bit more specific by filtering by channel or time.

Speaking of time, dates and times have also been tricky to search on. I've added these to the keyword search now in two ways. Firstly, the start time can be a direct keyword. Secondly, you can use the special keywords in the form "<xx:xx" or ">xx:xx". These will then match any starttimes that fit the condition. So you could have a keyword entry of "lost" ">13:00" "<18:00" to find those matches to lost between 1pm and 6pm. Note that these searches don't handle midnight at all, so 00:01 is considered less than 23:59. So if you want your time period to stretch over midnight, you might need two separate entries (or use the negative column to choose which times it should not cover).

MacTF-EPG 0.8 released
I haven't had much time to add stuff for MacTF-EPG, but thought it was time to release what I had. This version contains the upload bug fix, so USB uploading is smoother as it does not require the timeout workaround that I was using before. A small bug where downloading only one days worth of EPG was broken is now fixed.

The biggest change is the addition of FTP capabilites to MacTF-EPG. This is mainly useful to those who connect to their Toppy via another device such as the NSLU2 box. Simply enter the path to upload to into the prefs and it should upload it via FTP. Note that this uses PORT rather than PASV mode.

MacTF-EPG 0.7
A new version of MacTF-EPG (0.7) is available. This version beefs up the keyword functionality by adding exact matches, auto recording and variable paddings. These functions are only really useful in regard to people who use the epg_uploader TAP.

More generally, a "Check for update..." function has been added and a there has been a reworking of how and when TGD files are loaded and saved. This means that now on startup all the TGD files are loaded into memory, sorted and then written out. They are also written out on quit and after a few other actions. What this means is that if you Force Quit the app it may not have had a chance to write out yet. And startup time is a bit slower, although it runs on a seperate thread so hopefully it won't be a problem. If you switch to the keyword pane too quick you can catch it doing it's stuff, but just give it a sec to finish up.

This change was made to fix up some bugs where the list of entries got out of sync with what was actually on disk, and also to simplify (and speed up) the selection of TGD files on the left pane. However, because the new left-pane code uses predicate searching to work, it means that there's not all that much chance of getting it running on <10.4. So sorry to any people still on 10.3 but v0.5.3 will be your last version (although I could mod v0.6 to work if needed).