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Beta Testers Needed

I have some new Mac software which I’d like to throughly test before the first public release. It’s going to be a shareware utility to improve the “choose the right app when double-clicking a file” problem, which Snow Leopard made sometime worse sometime better by dropping support for creator codes. So I’m currently searching for some people to find the remaining bugs prior release.

In essence, my software can restore the old behavior of using creator codes, but selectively only for the file types of your choosing. This goes however much further allowing you to choose the right application based on various other characteristics of a file.

Note that this is beta-quality software, not yet ready for production, so there might be some anomalies and although I have taken some precautions, it could leave your system in a strange state. This most likely means incorrect associations between files an applications. And, even though it shouldn’t happen, I won’t take responsibility if it corrupts any of your files, so you should make sure you have proper backups (may Time Machine helps you with that).

So if you still want to participate in the beta program, please drop me an email saying so. If you are chosen, you will be added to a mailing list with other beta testers. You will also need to have a computer running Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) as this won’t work with older versions of the operating system.

Time Machine Translation Mess

In Mac OS X Leopard, I couldn’t help noticing the French translators had a hard time to fit everything in the preference panel. They had to change the layout a bit to accommodate longer text bits, but the final result isn’t too bad. That panel hardly changed in Snow Leopard in its English version, but the French translators redid the whole layout and, this time, in a very messy way. Let’s take a look.

The appearance of the preference panel changed little between Leopard and Snow Leopard, as you can see in the following figure. They changed slightly the descriptive text and that’s all.

Figure 1: English Time Machine preference panel on Leopard and Snow Leopard. Notice the subtle evolution.

Now, take a look a the same preference panel in French. Figure 2 show the Leopard version.

Figure 2: French Time Machine preference panel on Leopard. French doesn’t let as much room as English and things got squeezed a little.

Here you can observe that the text labels take much more space, not enough in fact for the virtual column in English encompassing the disc icon and the buttons. The disk icon was pushed up a little and buttons were moved down and aligned horizontally to leave enough room for the text. It’s hard to notice on the screen shots, but the window has been made a little taller too.

On the left size, you can see how difficult it was to put the text labels around the switch control. The result feels a little squeezed, but that’s probably the best they could do given the length of the text labels. And also, for no apparent reason, the Time Machine logo was moved up.

So, it’s hard not to notice the sleek original design in English is being squeezed up a little, but let’s accept that as a good compromise and move on to Snow Leopard.

Figure 3: French Time Machine preference panel on Snow Leopard. Apparently, someone redid the job in a worse way.

Hum, whoever did this screwed up that panel. I mean, the idea to put the buttons on the top isn’t so bad as it can make the icon look a little less squeezed (compare to the Leopard version in figure 2), but it was done pretty poorly:

1. there is no space between the containing box and the buttons at the top;
2. the box doesn’t respect the spacing standards on the top and right edges;
3. despite this, there is plenty of space inside the box for moving the text labels down and give proper spacing to everything, giving no excuse for the above.

It’s funny how that panel looks unAppleish; it looks like it has been done in a rush, that or with little care which is unusual for Apple.

But it also shows another aspect of the difficulty in software localization through various interface revisions. Here, someone at Apple made some changes to the original English interface description file, adding some text in the Time Machine’s description part. Then, the file has been recopied from its English version then translated again, entirely, and the layout had to be readapted, again.

Recopying then retranslating from the English version, that’s to avoid problem number 2 described by Wil Shipley in Lost in Translation. To summarize, the interface file also contains a functional part of the software. By always retranslating from the version the developers are working on, we make sure that everything else stay synchronized between files of different languages.

In this case, starting from the previously localized file would probably have worked with no problem, but the translator probably has a proper procedure to follow. That doesn’t make it an excuse for the poor result though.

Tumiki Training Night

A few weeks ago I announced that the game Tumiki Fighters was now available on the App Store. This is a game I ported to the iPhone for a client. For those of you who don’t want to fork 99¢ on a game, now comes the “lite” version in the form of a training mission to get you prepared for the real game. This is an original level I made using the engine from Tumiki Fighters and it’s available for free on the App Store.

Tumiki Training Night is a little easier than the first stage in Tumiki Fighters (which is hard as a first level). It’s been designed to help players get used to the controls before being put in a more difficult situation. If you can pass Tumiki Training Night with ease, you can pass the first level of Tumiki Figthers too with some more practice.

So please give it a try and tell me what you think and how much time it took you to pass the game. You can leave your comment here, or you can also make a review on iTunes if you feel like it.

Update to Black Light & PHP Markdown

Black Light (my application and screen saver for applying effects using the gamma curve) and PHP Markdown (a converter of the Markdown syntax to HTML markup) both got a small update today. Here’s a few comments on this update.

Black Light now at 1.7

The screen saver in Black Light was broken in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard when running on a 64-bit processor because the OS needed to run it in 64-bit mode while the binary only included a 32-bit version. This is now fixed.

The application can now apply a new effect to correct the luminance when you connect your computer to an HDTV. HDTVs typically accept luminance values between 16 and 235 (an old relic of analog times), so when you connect one to a computer the computer has to adjust the luminance correctly. Fortunately this is done automatically, most of the time. But when it doesn’t work (because you’re using some DVI to HDMI adapter), now you can launch Black Light and activate the “HDTV Luminance Adjustment” effect.

PHP Markdown 1.0.1n & Extra 1.2.4

A few bug fixes and I finally activated shortcut reference links. The shortcut reference link feature is something John Gruber added to Markdown.pl 1.0.2 beta allowing you to omit the empty brackets following a reference-style link. In Markdown syntax, it makes this:

Let's read [some text][].

[some text]: http://example.com

equivalent to this:

Let's read [some text].

[some text]: http://example.com

I decided I’d activate the feature even though it’s not officially in the spec. The basis for that decision is that the original Markdown implementation and specification hasn’t been updated for years, and most Markdown implementations out there accept this syntax, as Babelmark shows us.