ByteProject

Random effluxions hosted by Stefan Vogt

[byteproject]

Tau Ceti - AppCode theme

Tau Ceti is a gorgeous color scheme for Jetbrains AppCode. I created it because I did not feel comfortable with any of the bundled themes. It comes with carefully selected colors to boost up your coding experience and productivity. You can grab it from the official repository on GitHub.

https://github.com/ByteProject/Tau-Ceti-theme

[byteproject]

Trapped in Mail Hell

Before we continue with our very own roundup, let's talk about my motivations behind this blog post. Many of you agree with me when I say Apple's Mail.app does the job it's been made for but it's far from outstanding. When I switched to OS X several years ago, Mail.app suited my needs. With every new OS X release, it has been slightly tweaked but basically it remains what is was back in the day. Now with Mavericks, I've been finally overwhelmed by the feeling that the current Mail.app is definitely not contemporary anymore, a feeling that should not come into your mind for an app you need to work with on a daily basis. I knew it was time for a change. It's a common opionion that e-mail generally has not changed very much the last few years and won't change very much in the future. Right? No. E-Mail actually has changed because people have changed. The way they interact changed. Their requirements changed. A good example is POP / IMAP. While POP3 was the standard for many years, it has been long succeeded by IMAP. People don't just have computer anymore. In the so-called post-PC era we live today, they have a mix of devices like computers, smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles and they want a live connection to their inbox on all of their devices. Mail.app, of course, is IMAP capable but it hurts to see that essential features like Gmail support are rudimentarly implemented and broken. Gmail users are no marginal group. We also have social networks and probably want them integrated into our e-mail client, doesn't matter if it's just for the Avatars. The more the better. Apple is very innovative with it's own software and defining standards. Sadly this doesn't apply to Mail.app. Sad but true, blah blah blah. People who know me also know I'm not going to mince matters. I also prefer to go blue as long as it's apropiate. Here we go.

Mozilla Thunderbird (free | get)

The first app we review is the prefered client of choice on many operating systems, most notably Linux and Windows. While there are other clients available for Linux (I used Novell's Evolution back then, being a Linux user for a long time), Thunderbird is the client of choice for many Linux distributions, one notably is Ubuntu. So I guess everyone knows Thunderbird. But what about Thunderbird on OS X? I'm tempted to say it does the job. Adding my e-mail addresses worked out of the box. Imports from Mail.app did not. It told me that the import was done and imported nothing, while successfully ignoring my local folders. Thunderbird supports local folders which is very important to me. I heard it's exchange integration sucks ultimately (I don't care about exchange so I did not try), though it can be configured to work seamlessly with Gmail, which might be more relevant to many OS X users. Thunderbird isn't native and you feel that in every single breath the app takes. Of course it comes with a Mac inspired theme, but you just see it's not what a caring OS X user will call it's home. Thunderbird will integrate nicely with your Contacts.app. There are thousands of extensions available to add new functionality. This is a big plus. No other app we are going to investigate today is as extensible as Thunderbird. I should mention it's pretty resource friendly. It doesn't need an insane amount of memory, nor does it violate your beloved CPU. The UI feels old. I switched it at least to a more modern layout (which can be configured in the view menu) but basically what I'm seeing here is a "blast from the past". If you are looking for a cost-friendly extensible client and you don't care much about interface porn, this app is for you as it does what it's been made for. As being very driven by the desire for gorgeous functional interfaces, this app is not for me. Next.

Postbox ($9.95 | get)

Here it is. Postbox. If there was a prize to win today, I'll give one to Postbox for creating the most native looking app for OS X that in fact is not native. Other than Thunderbird it feels like a native app to a certain degree. The only thing that bothers me is that the content view won't bounce when I'm scrolling. You should visit the website for taking a look at the standard monochrome UI. I customized it a bit and switched to the more colorful alternate icon set. But why did I mention Thunderbird now? Allright, Postbox is based on Thunderbird and some of the Postbox developers are former Thunderbird developers. The question is now: did they manage to create something better? Oh yes, definitely. Postbox is created with the Mac user in mind. In comes with so many nice features and absolutely comes close to what I expect from a contemporary e-mail client these days. Postbox has conversation views, just like Mail.app but Postbox's approach is better looking and also goes further by gathering conversation fragments from multipile folders. Love that. It supports tagging your e-mails, which is very important to me and does it in a powerful way. You won't find another client out here that is handling Gmail better than Postbox does. Period. It supports Gmail Labels, it detects dates you can automatically add to your Google Calender and it supports Gmail keyboard shortcuts. I don't use Gmail, but probably a lot of my readers do so it's absolutely necessary talking about Gmail here. For large attachments, postbox can integrate into Dropbox and send Dropbox links instead, nice. The compose window summarizes conversations, which they call a "who said what when digest". Great addition, which I really appreciate. There are many enhancements and features in Postbox where I caught myself wondering "why did nobody else come up with this already".

Postbox is social as well. It auto-imports profile photos from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Gravatar, you can update your status on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and there are quick and easy links to sender's profile pages. Social integration is a big plus for me. Digital signing and cryptography works out of the box. Postbox also supports extensions. I thought if based on Thunderbird, it can work with it's extensions. Sadly, the website says something else. You can make Thunderbird addons work with Postbox, but they don't work out of the box. Supporting the massive amount of Thunderbird addons out there would have been superb. Though it's no deal breaker to me. There is a lot more I could write about this really great app. I found out it's not native and I did not even want to give it a go. I'm glad I did because Postbox really is close to what I want to work with. This app would be the absolute killer if they manage to wrap the underlying framework in an all-native UI. Considered now as alternative. Next.

Unibox ($9.95 | get)

Allright. Here is Unibox. Been announced long ago (I remember the initial announcement in 2012), then silence for a long time. Now it's finally released. Was it worth the wait? We'll see. Unibox is what I would call people-centric. It's highly focused on conversation and presents them in a chat-like manner. If you are thinking of e-mail that way it's probably an app for you. I need to organize my business and my private messages in an e-mail client, so this is not an app I'm going to take into consideration. I found Postbox's solution much better, as you have your regular stream of messages and you get your conversation, clever summarzied when hitting on the message itself. Tagging is currently not supported by Unibox. Another no-go in my opinion. Well, this is version 1.0, I'm sure we can expect new features to be added as people drop in suggestions for enhancements and developers need to reinvent themself with new app releases. What Unibox presents you with is a bold and fresh idea of trying to make e-mail something more personal. Focused on the individual. It works with many services, including Gmail, iCloud and MS Exchange. The latter only if it has IMAP enabled. Unixbox generally works just with IMAP accounts. So if you're using POP3 in favor of IMAP, sorry. Not an app for you.

The interface is well designed and beautiful. Exactly what you are expecting from an OS X app these days. Well, sort of. The only thing that really gives me the creeps are those round avatars. I mean, come on! What's this round avatar thingy going on right now? I hate it and I'm proud to say I even hate Apple for giving us round avatars on OS X login screens and in Contacts on iOS7. While I'm pretty happy with most of Apple's design choices, I just can't get over round avatars. I get the creeps even more when seeing developers adopting this. Round avatars look like somebody did a dump right onto your screen. So please, if you think about round avatars, give your customers at least an option to switch between regular and round avatars. Thanks, much love! One more thing to mention: Unibox is organizing it's messages based on your contacts. That said, if you receive messages from a limited amount of senders, it might be useful. I think that's a rather unrealistic scenario. I appreciate the efforts of it's developers and I see that an app like Unibox surely has it's right to exist. It's well crafted, good looking and innovative. But right now I see it as a niche product, pleasing for a limited amount of people. Next.

Sparrow ($9.95 | get)

Sparrow brought some fresh air to OS X with it's release back then. I bought Sparrow, but I was not really comfortable with it. It came with a modern and customizable interface, which felt very much like good old Tweetie and generally like an iOS app brought to Mac. I did not really like this approach. I was hoping for an UI as polished as Reeder for Mac at some point down the road. But that's just me. Raising a significant amount of popularity, many OS X users switched to Sparrow. There were some deal-breakers for me. I missed local folders and other important features. Anyway, I was excited to see where this app is going. Well, nowhere. Sparrow has been bought by Google and there is no intention to further develop it. The last update on the Mac App Store is from October 2012, even though the developers promised to further submit bugfix releases. People still use and buy it, with the current situation in mind I would not recommend it. So use at your own risk, you surely won't get much support and don't expect further development in the future. Next.

Mailplane ($24.95 | get)

Mailplane is a client focused on Gmail. That's it. You don't use Gmail, you don't need this app. The whole app feels like a Cocoa / Mac UI that's embedding Google's standard Gmail web view. Multipile accounts are organized in different tabs. Which you may like or may not. It integrates great with your OS X and it can be set up as your standard mail client, just you would expect it from any other client on your operating system of choice. Mailplane combines Gmail with Google Calender, which is nice (in case you use Google Calendar). There are native menus and toolbar buttons for deleting, forwarding, composing new mails and much more. Mailplane of course makes your OS X contacts available in-app. It communicates with many tools like iWork, iPhoto, Evernote, Things, Omnifocus, Alfred and Lyn. There is also an AppleScript interface to automate your daily workflows.

If you are one of those people logging into your Gmail account with your browser, I can see a real improvement when switching to Mailplane. I personally expected a little bit more from what I see here. Mailplane acts like a bridge to Google's web interface, rather than a full-featured OS X e-mail client that's going all the way native. You have to decide if this is an app for you. I think with Mailplane it strongly depends on your point of view and your expectations. If you used Mail.app to just access Gmail, you might consider it. If you do Gmail from your browser, you really should consider it. Though there are other clients available that integrate nicely with Gmail and other clients do it without embedded web interfaces. I don't complain about pricing here generally, I'm an indie developer myself. I understand how much time it takes to polish a product and expenses need to offset. It's up to you to decide if the money you pay for an app is worth it. Next.

Airmail ($1.99 | get)

Phew Phew! Here it is. Airmail. Aiming to bring love into the broken heart of every Sparrow user. One might say that Airmail started where Sparrow left off. That might be a good thing, I don't know. Strongly depends on your personal likes and dislikes. But the fact that Airmail started where Sparrow left off is just half of the truth. The UI is more flexible and highly customizable with different themes and improvements. Airmail is Sparrow on steroids. It is so much more packed with features. As I already mentioned, I did not really like Sparrows approach. That's why I don't like Airmail. If you loved Sparrow, it's your time to switch now. I extensively test-drived Airmail and there are many nice features implemented, like Gmail integration and Gmail keyboard shortcuts, POP3 and MS Exchange support, a markdown composer for e-mails, multitouch gestures, tagging, to name just a few. Airmail is crowded with features and it is very actively developed. But where it excels is where it falls short. It seems like right now the development team is strongly focused on adding new stuff before clearing out bugs and polishing existing ones. I read a review on the German Mac App Store (for the current version) where a user complained that his password was sent in clear-text to the server even though he enabled password encryption. He needed to reset his password on all devices and nuked the app instantly. Holy shit. What I absolutely dislike (and no, there is no option to turn it off) are those round avatars. I shared my point of view about rounded avatars with you all so I'm not repeating myself now. iCloud support is still missing. Overall, it's a nice app from an active development team but it needs definitely more polish. A lot more polish. Former and current Sparrow users should take a closer look. One thing I really don't understand is the low pricing. Not sure if they're trying to compensate lower earnings with mass-sales. As Indie developer, I think price-dumping like in this case should not be supported. So, I bought it for this review. I would not have bought it otherwise. You might welcome the app being offered that low. I don't know. You decide. Next.

MailMate ($49.95 | get)

Don't get fooled by a old-fashioned looking UI. And with old-fashioned I mean really old-fashioned. Like 'ye olde e-mail client', you know? Sigh. But actually, MailMate is not bad at all. MailMate is an native OS X e-mail client with the power user in mind. It's highly configurable and offers tons of features, some very unique. There is markdown support, you can customize headers and it supports tags. MailMate even lets you tag your mail in compose mode. MailMate only supports IMAP and makes extensible use of IMAP's unique IMAP keywords features. It tags your mail with IMAP keywords so synchronization between clients supporting IMAP keywords is very easy. What I really like are smart mailboxes. As the developer notes, you can construct arbitrarily complicated expressions and save your searches as smart mailboxes. Said feature working out of the box (haha, get it?). That's not enough for MailMate. You can even create so-called submailboxes, which allow you to partition the messages of a mailbox based on sender, date, subject, or anything else you might find useful. There are even regular expressions availale for identity related searches. When it comes to searching, filtering and organizing MailMate is just unbeatable.

Security is also taken seriously by MailMate. It's also possible to customize the look of MailMate. You can't apply new times or iconsets, but there are options for changing fonts, message list columns, CSS used for the message view. There is also a selection of alternate layouts available (some experimental) in-app. What I really like is the thread arcs layout as seen on the 2nd screenshot. It lets you take a refreshing look at conversations (message thread). Overall, MailMate is a cool client. There are just two things bothering me. One is the very old-fashioned look, but more important is that developer has a "crowdfunding 2014" button on it's website. Sadly he can't effort to continue working full-time on MailMate. So the future of this client might be unclear. Anyway, if you don't mind the design choices and you make extensible usage of e-mail generally (maybe in a professional environment) you should give MailMate a go. Next.

Foxmail (free | get)

Foxmail is a new competitor on the Mac App Store. Crafted by a Chinese well-known company (Tencent), Foxmail is mostly based on their very own cloud services. You can make it work with POP3 and IMAP generally, with Gmail and exchange but it lacks support for some favorite services like Yahoo. The interface looks nice and clean. Overall a client that deserves it's right to exist. What has already been implemented seems not to be buggy, which is also a big plus. I should mention that I don't like the icon, but guess what: no round avatars. Foxmail comes with various export and import functions which makes it easy to give it a go (from wherever you come from) and to ditch it afterwards. There is no support for local folders, nor is there support for taging e-mail. Gmail labels indeed seem to be supported though. You get a nice conversation view and it's easy doing a quick reply. Foxmail is basically not an app for me. No encryption and no digital signatures. There is also a foul aftertaste coming alongside Foxmail. It's rumored to talk home even if you don't want it. Reviewers on the Mac App Store report that Foxmail intercepts your e-mail to do... no idea. Maybe you can make profit with that. So the missing encrytption could be a feature ;) I have no idea if it's true, I just did a short review and what I tried worked for me. Saw those not so nice comments regarding Foxmail afterwards and they come from various sources on various App Stores. So there seems to be an element of truth with it. I can't agree nor can I refute it. You should decide if you're willing to give it a try under said circumstances. Next.

Inky (free | get)

Inky is a relatively new e-mail client for OS X. It doesn't look native at all and I assume it is not native. What bothers me is that your account data is stored (encyrpted) on Inky's servers. If you don't mind that, it's probably an e-mail client for you as it comes with some refreshing and unique features. It can filter your inbox for example, by moving shopping sites daily deals, social notifications, newsletters and package tracking notifications to separate places. I really like that. Inky organizes Messages with addresses into one view, they call this feature "maps". The interface is pretty much what I would call unified and what I would expect from any modern, contemporary client. You can even sort e-mail by relevance which is a nice addition. Most of the stuff I need to have is missing but I really have to mention that Inky comes up with some great ideas and no rounded avatars. Next.

Opera Mail (free | get)

Most of you guys know Opera's browser, even though it's just has minor relevance on the Mac. Surprise, they also have a lightweight e-mail client for Mac. It's not native, but it looks Mac-like. I found Opera Mail simple to set up and what I did with it worked out of the box. I can emphasize the lightweightness of this client. It's the truth. You can tag your messages and assign labels, and conversation threads are displayed in a clear mannor. If you use Gmail, your labels will be imported properly. If you worked with Thunderbird on the Mac before, and you're not really satisfied with it, you could give Opera Mail a go. It's basic with an essential feature set but it's not bad.

Outlook 2011 Mac ($219.99 | get)

Now it's Microsoft's time to show what they got. I was able to test it as (thanks to my employer) I have a VLK, gracefully allowing me to check it out. Outlook 2011 is not sold as separate program. You have to buy the whole Office 2011 for Mac suite. This app is native Cocoa (wows). I don't need to talk much about Outlook, as every one of you guys probably knows it. So with this app you really get Outlook for the Mac. Nothing more, nothing less. Personally I can't really see the point using it and it also lacks some features I would like to have implemented. Social aspects, for example. There is full support for Exchange in here (surprise)! Don't stone me, but the interface is not bad at all. I like it. Overall, Outlook 2011 for Mac is no bargain, and it's pretty much business-oriented only. If you need to bridge your Windows-based work environment with your Mac, this is probably an app for you. If not, get something else. As usual, you decide. Next.

---- NOTE: Thanks for reading my blog until here. Be warned, as it gets worse now with... ----

...BLAST FROM THE PAST!

GyazMail ($18.00 | get)

Oh my god. What have I done in an earlier life to get cursed with this? Well, the website says it's an all-new e-mail client for OS X. From what I see on the screenshots (I'm honest, I did not try it out) this is 1997 hailing here. Okay, Jaguar was released in 2002. The app is based on Apple's Cocoa Framework and seems to be actively developed, with the latest release from January 2013. It comes with POP3 and IMAP support. What today's e-mail clients call a feature (POP) are surely remains in a fourhundred years old codebase. While we are talking about features: the developer praises features that are just expected today, like autocompletion of e-mail adresses. I really can't get over GyazMail. I've seen lots of stuff in my life, you probably have as well. This UI gives you guaranteed nightmares for the next few years. There is no spotlight support, nor are there features for encryption or digital signatures. I would not even use this client if it was free. Sorry developer, your app urgently needs a facelift and that is probably not enough. I was looking for a contemporary client. It was never my intention to indulge in reminiscences. Next! Next! Next!

Eudora OSE (free | get)

Qualcomm's Eudora was very popular once. Then they decided they wouldn't develop it any further. It has been resurrected as an Open Source project based on Thunderbird. Then it hasn't been further developed... again. Well, the Mac version is reported to be very buggy at the moment and I also don't see frequent releases down the road. So... NEXT!

Mailforge ($19.95 | get)

Another aim to bring Eudora back to life. Following Eudoras footsteps, it's pretty clear what the role model is for this app. Well... uhm... NEXT!

Powermail ($49.95 | get)

The app is compatbile with Mavericks and it is very actively developed. And surprise, it aims to fit the gap that Eudora probably left in some of you guys. But Powermail makes things better than all the other Eudora-alikes I reviewed. I think. It comes with an extended feature set and works out of the box. So this app is really a "blast from the past" as it rocks and I see people (probably those that liked Eudora) using it. Give it a go if you are willing for some retro goodness.

---- NOTE: After we revised the past let's dive into the future and take a look at our... ----

...MEMORIES OF TOMORROW

MailPilot (? | not released yet)

One app in the bunch has not been released yet, MailPilot. A public beta is coming soon. Reviews for the pricy iOS client with the same name very sort of moderate and I'm not sure if I would like the aspect of organizing my mail in a task-like approach. The interface looks nice and clean though. It's hard to judge an app just by some screenshots, so let's refer to it as coming soon. I probably will update my blog post once it's out. Stay tuned.

CONCLUSION

The perfect Mail client for OS X has yet to be written. Some come with innovative concepts, some come bombed with features (and bugs) and some just better don't come at all. I've been working with Postbox for three days now and I'm pretty satisfied with it. It perfectly suits my needs and also has many specials which are not must-have but more like nice to have. It's just not a native OS X application. I hope they will update it at some point down the road and build a modern native UI on top of their framework. But with Postbox it's moaning on a high level, it's really a great app and you should give it a go.

Basically it's just like @uemit said to me a few days ago: Used each one, they all suck. We’re just trapped in mail hell.

Thanks for your time and thanks to my buddy Adam (@iosengineer) for proofreading. Much love. Drop a note and share if you like what I've written here.

[byteproject]

Gimp replacement icon for OS X

I recently started using GIMP (which is now a native OS X app) in favor of Photoshop. The app is now in a state where I really consider it as alternative to Adobe's flagship. It supports 32 bit color depth and also CMYK (the latter via a plugin called Separate+). All that bugged me in the past seems to be solved. Just take a look what Ollin Boer Bohan is doing with GIMP over here and you know what I'm talking about. Pretty impressive. Tony Thomas created a set of Adobe CS6 replacement icons which I used to create this nice looking GIMP icon. You really should give GIMP a go. It evolved to a strong application, packed with features, extensible with plugins, considered as serious alternative. So grab your self the latest native OS X build. You might want to have a better looking app icon and that is finally why i created what you can get using the link below. It's retina-ready, you're welcome.

Download GIMP replacement icon for OS X

[byteproject]

Legacy

Since the very beginning Ascension has been dual-licensed. Being available under a modified variant of the MIT license, and also available for purchase on the Mac App Store. Not anymore. It remains actively developed (of course it does), but new sources won't be available. Why? Well, it's not easy to explain. Mostly, things just started getting ridiculous. Even though the source code was up on GitHub, cracked versions of the MAS variant spread around the internet. Somehow I felt that's not right and I knew it was about time to just close the doors. You can't protect your app against being reverse-engineered, as long as you make the sources available to the public. Branch 2.x remains as legacy on GitHub, without being further developed. New versions are exclusively available on the Mac App Store respectively.

[byteproject]

Alpha Centauri color theme for Xcode

Alpha Centauri is a custom .dvtcolortheme I created to celebrate the announcement of my upcoming IF / text adventure "The Extraterrestrial Legacy", which draws you into a tale of murder and ancient secrets, right at the solar system of the same name. Alpha Centauri is based upon the popular Tomorrow Night theme. It maintains the fundamental idea to not hurt the eye but adds more contrast to the blurring look of the original theme. I'm pretty happy with the result, considering it as the best theme I've ever programmed with. Drop a note in case you like it. One more thing: enjoy!

Download Alpha Centauri for Xcode

[byteproject]

Do you happen to have a version of Twistori that works on Lion... would love to get it back up and running. Custom search strings would also be cool.

Twistori stopped for me working, too. Sadly the creator doesn't update it. I think it's a shame as it was really one of the best screensavers I ever had :/

[byteproject]

I decided to split development into two separate apps. What you expected to be Ascension 2 will be called Escapes (deriving from ANSi escape sequences), the world's most advanced ANSi and ASCII art app. Ascension 2 on the other hand is now focused on being a lightweight NFO / DIZ / ASC viewer with an essential feature set. Both apps will be available on the Mac App Store at a very affordable price for each. Yeah, I'm running a business now. Some details and my thoughts on going indie will be published in a separate blog post. Until then, feel free to admire the Escapes teaser page.

[byteproject]

Ascension 2.0 alpha 1

What we got here is nearly a complete rewrite, with frameworks and massive changes under the hood that took many months to develop. Each Ascension 2 alpha release will be representing a milestone, alpha 1 is adding support for all known types of ANSi art.

Changelog

built for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

memory and performance optimization

multi-threaded documents

support for ANSi art

Developer ID signed application

read-only / viewer mode

custom about box design

gorgeous new file type icons

modern search / replace bar

Some notes about alpha 1

This is an alpha build. It's far from what the final product will be. Neither the UI is finished nor the preferences are completed. There are many additions and many features already implemented that are either missing a preference, a switch or UI element. ANSi art will always be read-only. Also themes are disabled for ANSi art and thus an ASCII art exclusive feature. Keep that in mind before reporting an issue like "disabling viewer mode fails for .ans files". Talking about issues: feel free to post anything you encounter here. Ascension makes extensive usage of the API's introduced in Mountain Lion, it won't work on any previous version of OS X. I wrote about the matter in this post. You can grab a copy from the download's section in Ascension's repository. Optionally just hit the link below.

Download Ascension 2.0 alpha 1

[byteproject]

Ascension 2.0 alpha | beta

Nearly on the same day Apple released Mountain Lion developer preview 1, I got first reports of current Ascension 1.2.4 crashing on the newly announced OS. I knew I had a problem, but what to do? It took me some days until I made up my mind. I won't submit an update to the MAS that fixes support for a beta operating system. Said bug is wiped in the current development build of Ascension anyway. So far so good. What now? My plan is to publish the next Ascension together with Mountain Lion. Ascension 2.0 will in fact require Mountain Lion. The OS X v10.8 API is just great, giving me the opportunity to develop the best Ascension ever, Twitter support is a good example. It's just a few lines of code for a great experience. Keep in mind that this is a spare time project. If I have the possibility to implement awesome new features with minimum efforts needless to say I'm gonna do it. So if you like to have the most accurate rendering of ANSi and ASCII art ever seen on OS X, Ascension 2.0 will be right here at your fingertips. But Mountain Lion is definitely required, everything else would be just too time-consuming for me. I hope everybody understands my point of view. 

Anyway. All you people test-driving Mountain Lion already won't have to wait until it's official release for a new version of Ascension. As I already mentioned above: the Ascension 2.0 alpha | beta program will be public, with the first build arriving soon. Stay tuned. Welcome to the brave new world!

[byteproject]

We finally managed to finish a project we've been busy working on during the last weeks. It is so great as stand-alone *NIX command line utility and it will also be an important part of my upcoming AnsiLove.framework release 2.0. Feel free to try, investigate, fork, improve, whatever. We released it under a MIT-style license. Like it's PHP ancestor, AnsiLove/C will convert ANSi and artscene related file formats into beautiful PNG images. But this time, our goals were evolution, portability, performance and the most accurate rendering of all known ANSi art file types to date. Needless to say we achieved them all. At this point I'd like to thank my friends Frederic Cambus and Brian Cassidy for their ongoing support. Without you, AnsiLove/C would never have been possible. This project grew so fast because we loved what we did. Pour la legende!

AnsiLove/C - ANSi / ASCII art to PNG converter in C

[byteproject]

The Illusion of Progress

Take my hand and let us dive into the wonderful world of my current projects. Take a brief glimpse on the wonders at your feet.

First of all, why is this post called the illusion of progress? For understanding it, you need to know what I did in the past weeks. Nothing. I did nothing. Already scratching your head? Ok, let me explain.

Sometimes when you're involved in many projects you may feel like you're going round in circles. You keep moving without reaching your destination. In short: I needed a break. So I took some time off. I enjoyed living together with my beloved wife and the cats, watched some shows and movies on TV, jammed a lot on my guitars and played World of Warcraft. The usual stuff non-geeks do. Neither did I plan to have coding holidays nor did I initially knew how badly I needed them. I'm even tempted to say it all happened subconsciously. I did not count the days so I'm not sure when I stopped. Must be more than three weeks now. I even did not think much about it. You know, time just flies. Today, I wrote the first lines code since then. Again, I did not plan any of this, it just happened. I won't say I'm something like recharged, I don't know. But most notably it feels right again and that is what really matters.

The code I did today was for AnsiLove/C, a port of AnsiLove/PHP to the C programming language. Most of you may have noticed that Ascension 2 still has not been released. For good reason. I created a framework for rendering ANSi art, which was the major feature I had on my roadmap for Ascension's 2.0 incarnation. The framework uses AnsiLove/PHP to render ANSi art, invoking PHP CLI which is installed by default on Lion. AnsiLove.framework works out of the box, so everything was fine. Then came App Sandboxing. Guess what? It's not my framework getting sandboxd denies, it's PHP CLI itself. It seems some tasks are just not intended to happen in sandboxed apps. I know I can use temporary entitlements (which I'm actually doing in the current development build), but that's no solution I feel comfortable with. In the end I had to realize it's not a good choice to bundle loads of PHP scripts into a native Cocoa app. Knowing there's nothing like AnsiLove available neither in Cocoa nor in C, what would you do? Giving up? Not an option. There is just one way: I have to port the whole friggin' thing by myself. That's what I'm doing right now. But why to the C programming language? Most people might have ported it directly to Cocoa. Well, let's say it's a noble gesture. I just had to do it in C. This is for the ANSI scene and all those ANSI art lovers out there. Someone else, running Linux, BSD or whatever, will be glad somebody choose to develop it in C so it can be used for tasks or embedded in applications on those operating systems. AnsiLove/C is not intended to run on the Mac only, it should run on all common OS, even on friggin' Haiku. I mean I already have my framework which will run perfectly as a Cocoa layer on top of AnsiLove, wouldn't it be egoistic to develop the whole thing in Cocoa?

So this is what's happening in the future: I finish AnsiLove/C, then I'm gonna update my AnsiLove.framework to use AnsiLove/C and finally I'm able to finish what will be Ascension 2 one day. Excited? I am. Again.

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BadPlastic for Mac

Today my friend Gleb Dolgich (@glebd) released his brand new app BadPlastic on the Mac App Store. It's the perfect tool for tracking your credit card debt and comes with a sexy UI, definitely worth checking out. The about box Gleb is using in here is the one I designed for Ascension 2 (SVEpicAboutBox). 

BadPlastic on the Mac App Store

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AnsiLove.framework

Today I want to introduce you to what I've been coding recently. Here is a Cocoa framework for rendering ANSi art, and it's called the AnsiLove.framework. It uses a modified version of Frederic Cambus' awesome AnsiLove as library, creating PNG images from ANSi source files.

But why? As you may know, I'm busy developing Syntoxic right now but I'm also working on Ascension 2. Yes, that's right. Ascension 2 is coming. A fact you probably haven't known yet. One of the major features I planned for version 2 is rendering ANSi art. There will be a bunch of other great improvements, but this is the most remarkable. While searching the internet for some hints how to interpret ANSi escape sequences, I stumbled upon AnsiLove. Wouldn't it be nice to use that as library and create a Cocoa layer on top of it? I needed to modify AnsiLove as well, but basically that's what I did and it works just fine. Please note that it took me just a few days to create this framework, while Frederic Cambus spent years of coding and testing AnsiLove. He deserves all the honor for it, not me. The sources are up on GitHub, including a very detailed documentation. Drop a note if you like it, and stay tuned for some great things to come!

AnsiLove.framework repository on GitHub

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Farewell, Dennis Ritchie

He was father of the C programming language and without him there would be no UNIX. His pioneering work paved the way for many modern programming / scripting languages like Objective-C, C#, Perl, Java, Go, JavaScript and PHP. Entire operating systems are written in C or build upon the UNIX legacy, most notably BSD and hence Mac OS X. Farewell, Dennis Ritchie... may you rest in peace.

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Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

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First Syntoxic details

Time to to talk about some key features I have in mind for Syntoxic.

Please note the screenshot above is early work in progress, it's not the final UI. I also have more features on my roadmap I'm keeping secret at the moment. The more Syntoxic gets usable the more I'll report on it. Okay, here we go:

syntax highlighting / syntax coloring for many languages

auto-completion

grammars (bnf-style or .plist, maybe both)

themes

extensible with Plug-Ins (API)

Syntoxic Plug-In / Command Creator

execute scripts with your favorite interpreter

scriptable with JSTalk

Syntoxic terminal utility (already 100% done)

powerful text editing and RegEx tools

work in the Cloud, with gists and pasties

Textmate-bundle support

What Syntoxic will not be? Syntoxic won't be a Lemming. It's a trend of upcoming editors to look and behave like Textmate. I prefer doing my own innovations but of course Syntoxic will come with many features, making it competitive to Textmate, at least that's the goal. I hopefully get all those things done, but I'm pretty confident ;)

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WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

My guitars: an Epiphone Annihilation-D (Jeff Waters signature flying-V model) and a Cort X11.