C.P.Com Dev Blog

My 2nd big app “for everybody” is available to the Mac using public now. I’ve wanted to make this little app for YEARS now. There was a guy who made a spiffy app to do “multiple image wallpapers”. But I don’t think he ever kept up with it. I have a beta version of that, but I couldn’t convince him to add blurring or that would have been nifty.

So my app does exactly what I want, and come to think of it, can also handle making a desktop drawn across multiple screens from 1 image.

Desktop Blurrifier makes any image a little blurry. It scales up, or down too, and can reposition horizontally or vertically. One really cool thing is that I made the scale slider do a non-linear scale. So 1/2 of the slider scales from 0.1 to 1.0; the other half scales up as a square of the value, from 1.0 to 4.0. It also “snaps” to the middle tick slider with a bit of code. My biggest hurdle on this app was learning how to deal with CIImage class. The examples Apple supplies, the Core Image Fun House app, is fantastic in its own right; but MF! it is so efficient and dense I could not figure out for the life of me how any of it works. Really the point of sample code is to usually show an example of 1 or 2 or maybe 3 concepts. Well this one has every CIImage filter included, plus procedural UI elements! There was another sample I looked at, ImageExample I think, and that was easier to understand but had some color management code completely woven into it that I couldn’t just cut and paste code. Which is generally all the better in the end, but of course frustrating when it doesn’t make sense. I did end up with a reasonably elegant solution for my filter objects, with cues taken from that sample code. Performance was always good on my coding machine, but my wife’s older laptop showed some noticeable lag. Well, it’s not supposed to be Photoshop so I wasn’t going to try to change it much.

I also had fun putting some drag and drop code in, which includes a big fat red stroke when a new image is dropped. One frustrating correction I had to make at the very end was dealing with multiple Space in 10.7 Lion. Lion’s spaces EACH can have different desktops AND can also have changing images as well. The changing image option was a real pain to deal with, as I never used it and it didn’t occur to me until my beta test group (thanks MacDeveloper.net) brought it up to me. I had to sort of hack in a check where if an image failed to load in 2 different ways, then I’d assume the Change Image option was on and then had to dump out to an error dialog. When the change image option is on, the current desktop isn’t actually returned as a picture, it’s returned as a FOLDER URL. And there is no option to know specifically that the option is on, you just have to see if it’s a folder or image URL. Using the set desktop method though, will simply turn this option off. So after I warn users, they can still set a picture, and BAM it’s on. But their rotating image won’t continue to rotate, that would have to be turned back on. Oh well, maybe a preference for another version eh?

I’ve been working on an app that every Mac user can use, not only the graphics/Prepress crowd. It’s something that I honestly wanted to make/have for myself for a long time and I finally got around to starting it. It’ll be here online in a few weeks I’m estimating, also on the App Store, but that always takes more time to massage and dumb down for Apple’s app requirements.

I’ve been kicking around the idea for another app and I’ve started some work on it. It involves images, but no InDesign nor Applescript. My first rev is working OK, but is far from “high performance”. I’ve got to learn some new Cocoa skills to make it work as smoothly as I’d like (and you’d expect). There’s no due date, but like usual it’s an app “I want for myself” and then build it out to be something really polished.

One of the teachers at the Big Nerd Ranch had said that the greatest gift to programming was the internet. Truly without the help of other experienced programmers and sample code, I’d never get nearly as far as I do with applications.

ID Font Catalog is now available on the App Store! I had tried to submit it “as-is” but then some technical glitches showed up. I ended up rewriting the entire app in ASOC in about 2 weeks. Fastest turn around ever on that. Thankfully the core logic didn’t need any changes. I was pleasantly surprised when I could add in saving of a big array of preference items with just 3 lines of code! ASOC is pretty nice!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id-font-catalog/id464149293?mt=12

ID Image Catalog is now available via the App Store! It seemed like forever to get through the approval process. But thankfully there were no coding issues, only some store submission and naming issues. This is one of the few Applescript/ASOC applications on the store. I had to get it in before the Nov 1 deadline for sandboxing, since that means after that date any apps that freely “talk” to other applications on your computer will be off limits. Seriously, this outlaws any and all ASOC apps that drive other applications even though Applescript is supposed to be a first class programming citizen on the Mac. Sandboxing also outlaws Find applications that search your hard drive for file types. Not to get technical but there are certain permissions that apps must only allow in the future. I find it commendable Apple is pre-empting practically any possibility of serious viruses on OSX. But that restriction does hamper some app concepts.

Next up I am going to get to work putting ID Font Catalog on the store. That may require more work as I want it to be 10.5 compatible and not rewrite the whole thing just yet. I need to just find out how to sign the app in XCode 3.

I was out for 2 weeks on vacation, and now I need to get back to programming and finishing up PDF Bee. After that I think I am going to try to make versions for the App store. That my apps are Applescript based isn’t a problem, but I think that they ONLY direct InDesign to build documents, I know there will be some people that buy it, even if they don’t have InDesign. The App Store has no way to verify if a user has a given target application. So it’s a tough decision.

Welcome to my new developer blog. Here is where I’ll post thoughts, updates, and any other information I think it relevant but perhaps not important enough to go into a mass email regarding my applications, scripts, and programming work in general.