We’re out of office until March 31st. There will be no e-mail checking until we get back, so please be patient with your requests and wishes.
We’ll be back at your service on March 31st.
Moving from SVN to GIT
When we started with Source Code Management (SCM) – at the time – we still had a virtual Windows server running with QualityHosting.de. So a friend set up VisualSVN for us on this box. This got us started with Subversion.
A few years later I got started with git. Then I got into it a bit more with git submodules. Those were the beginnings of a beautiful friendship.
Two years later we decided that was enough of procrastrinating. Finally the time had come to switch to git for good. Read more
Radar: Skipping Ahead Broken in Some Podcasts
The bug occurs in 2 out of 10 well-known tech podcasts and can be reproduced in iTunes 11. This isn’t related to iOS or Mac development but since I spent much time in researching this, I want to post it on my blog as well. Also I believe that if people file better bug reports Apple has more reason to fix the bugs.
I noticed then when I was investigating why skipping in some of my own podcasts didn’t work. Turns out that the reason for that was a combination of ngnix + WordPress Multi-User + one pesky rewrite rule. But this is not the root cause that some podcasts are having.
If you know how to read (and understand HTTP headers) let me know in the comments if you spot a possible explanation for this bug.
Filed as rdar://13490726 and on Open Radar.
Sir Ive Puts His Foot Down
Apple’s “new” Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Sir Jonathan Ive took on the additional role of also being of in charge of the iOS Alu.. Alumino.. Chrome when Scott Forstall moved into an advisory position.
In the latest update to the Podcasts.app I believe we are seeing the first hint of the fresh breeze that Jony is bringing to Apple’s app design.
The unword that definitely plagued Apple in 2012 was Skeuomophism. It means to make something look like it has different physical properties than it really would have. Like the Gamecenter app showing green felt when touching it really feels like touching glass to me.
Other examples include leather-bound digital calendars, the style of the Find my Friends app and a few more attempts to make iOS look more valuable by including expensive materials or craftsmanship.
DTXMLRPC for Posting to WordPress
On Fridays I like to do something fresh. Today I wrote an XML-RPC framework. The reason for doing that is that I love Amy Worrall’s QuickRadar.
Since I am trying my best to file good bug reports I spend much time on them. Being economically minded I like to reuse the same content I produce as much as possible. So when I file a Radar with QuickRadar I post to Apple’s bug report, to OpenRadar, share the link on App.net and on Twitter. What was missing in my opinion was to also get the text of the bug report into a new WordPress blog post.
Using Custom Fonts with DTCoreText
Friend of DTCoreText Holger was having problems getting DTCoreText to use the bold font face of his custom font.
I want to take this opportunity to explain what the root cause for Holger’s problem was and what you need to know if you’re using custom fonts with DTCoreText.
Parts Store Spring Cleaning
We received an overhaul of our WordPress template today which allows for a better shopping experience if you buy components on our Parts Store. The new system allows us for showing the price calculation and also lets us show an arbitrary number of options.
Localization Unit Test
It happens to the best: you add new features to an app localized in several languages. You are not the lazy type that names the NSLocalizedString key’s the same as the English-language strings. Instead you name the keys semantically, like DOWNLOAD_ALERT_MSG.
Then when it comes to shipping you send the client a note that there are some new strings and assume that he will be able to find out which are new and need to be translated. Which he would if he was using a tool like Linguan. Which he is not, because you might have forgotten to recommend it to him, or if he’s extremely unlucky then he’s a Windows user.
Radar: Update Ruby shipped with OS X
Using QuickRadar decreased my barrier of pain for filing Radars to a level that I find myself also filing way more benign ones like …
Filed as rdar://13450321 and on Open Radar. Please dupe it if you agree.
Linguan 1.1.3
This is a very minor bugfix release for Linguan to fix one issue and possibly address a second one.
Changes
- Fixed Problem with Filter Scope
- Addressed an Issue that might prevent some users from closing the Preferences Windows
The second problem was reported by two users but so far we have been unable to reproduce it. If you are a developer and too find that you cannot close the preferences window we need your help! Please e-mail us so that we can arrange for inspecting the problem on your machine.
Update March 28: Approved after 10 days.
