Blog of the Sage

Strange things for your keyring

For anyone needing a complete web, ftp and email server that they can carry around - check out WebServerUSB.

Though much cooler is the ability to have a fully bootable and usable GUI Linux on your USB key OR your iPod(!). Check out MetroPipe's Portable Virtual Privacy Machine.

The Lit Window Library 0.3.1

Although I haven't written much (any?) GUI code in a while, I do keep up with the work of many of my friends and collegues in the field as there are many problems in this area that need solving.

Stumbled across this one open source project today that takes an interesting (and what appears to be a viable) approach to addressing some of the major hassles of GUI programming for applications.

The Lit Window Library 0.3.1

A C++ library with reflections, rule-based programming, and UI patterns.

iCal for Windows?

Not exactly - but EventSherpa come as close as I've seen!

A .NET application, it has an iCal-like interface with full publish and subscribe integration with Apple's iCal application. Also offers a lot of nice features over iCal including Calendar groups, better web publishing and more.

Oh, and the subscribe-only version is FREE - $99 if you want to publish...

I think I'm going to like it here - but I'll report back if that changes...

Mac OS X on a 68K Mac - believe it or not!

Some guy with WAY too much time on his hands, has been able to "run" Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) on his 68k-based Quadra using Debian Linux and PearPC. See here for all the details!

REALbasic is still pretty cool!

Finally got around to updating my aging copy of REALbasic - a development environment that I haven't used in years, but used to think was pretty cool...

Well, it still is - and in some ways even cooler!

I built a cross-platform (Mac OS X, Windows and Linux!) version of our PDFMerge application as a test, which included having to write an RB plugin to link ou C++ code base for PDF rendering and processing to the RB GUI application. It took me about a day - most of which was spent relearning the object model, API, etc.

Hardest part of the development was trying to remember NOT to end lines with a ; - too many years of C/C++ and Java!

Low cost OCR

On one of the many lists that I subscribe to, during a discussion about OCR software, someone recommended TOCR - an extremely inexpensive, no frills but quite accurate OCR application for Windows. You even get full (VB) source to the viewer application - though not the OCR engine.

Interesting possibilities...

JHOVE - Java-based file validation

JHOVE (pronounced "jove") is a "extensible framework for format validation" written in Java with modules forarbitrary byte streams, ASCII and UTF-8 encoded text, GIF, JPEG, and TIFF images, AIFF and WAVE audio, PDF, and XML; and text and XML output handlers.

As you might imagine, I am quite excited about the PDF module which includes support not only for basic PDF, but also PDF/X and the upcoming PDF/A, but also the JPEG2000 module which should prove helpful with some work we are doing.

iRider web browser

Was reading an interesting article today and it mentioned the iRider web browser for Windows.

The program has some pretty interesting features including "thumbnail" views of pages that you've viewed AND WILL VIEW - using a "fetch ahead" type of system so that switching from page to page of a site is quick. Interesting, both of these things are available in Adobe Acrobat, but we take them for granted there - having them in a web browser seem pretty logical and worth trying!

So I'm going to give it a look and I'll let you know what I think...

Frontier goes open source!

Dave Winer, infamous "father of blogging", Mac/Apple harasser, etc., has announced that the software product, Frontier, that he and his company Userland developed has gone open source.

Although I haven't used Frontier in years (since it decided it was a web publishing system and not a general purpose scripting system), I worked closely with Dave on Frontier from pre-release through version 5. So I am quite excited to see it come back to life as it was originally intended, and with access to the code to see how things work under the hood.

A new way to record screens

Interesting open source project, vnc2swf, uses VNC (the remote screen sharing system) to record a screen sharing/control session into a SWF/Flash movie for distribution

Sounds pretty useful for demos and debugging!

Font tools and the new FTMaster

In addition to being a maintainer of the FreeType project, I spend a lot of time working with fonts and text for our PDF and Postscript work. As such, I am always on the lookout for good tools to help debug fonts and font-related issues.

On Unix, I love the open source FontForge program (formerly PfaEdit) - it can open up any font format you can think of, edit them (either manually or programmatically) and then save as the same OR A DIFFERENT format. George Williams does great work - but only for Unix platforms. (OK, I can install X under CygWin, but I've better ways to punish myself ;)

When I'm working on the Mac, I use Font Inspector by Steve Hartwell. Another excellent tool that has saved my butt on multiple occassions. Steve keeps promising me a Windows versions - but nothing yet :(

FINALLY, someone has come out with a tool for Windows that does everything I need - AND THEN SOME - including reading font data directly from PDF files!!! Altsoft's new FTMaster is just what this "doctor" ordered and worth every penny of the $99(US). Of course, that's an introductory price - so get in there before they raise it.

Open/Save Dialog tools for Windows

As a longtime Mac OS user, I have gotten used to having 3rd party add-ons installed that add additional navigation features to the Open & Save dialogs. Products such as Boomerang, Shortcut (which I co-authored with Ray Lau), Action Files and Default Folder (the only one still alive with Mac OS X).

About a year ago, I FINALLY found one for use on Windows - QuickFolders. It has all the features that I like in such a product - favorite files and folders, recently used files and folders, as well as some nice additional features and options including a "map folder as drive" feature! My two biggest beefs with QF are that the company hasn't updated it in almost a year (though they promise me they are working on an update) and that it has some compatibility problems from time to time.

So a few weeks ago, I went looking for a replacement and found PS Hot Folders. Although it doesn't do favorite/recent files, it has a MUCH more flexible favorites system including hierarchical lists with separators! It also doesn't have the breath of extra features that QF does, but one thing that it does that I am getting a lot of use out of is that not only does it appear in Open/Save dialogs, BUT also in Windows Explorer (desktop) windows! Using this feature, I can quickly get to my favorite folders from the "desktop".

Both products are inexpensive and I am actually running them both without any problems. Hopefully either/both companies will improve their products and I could stick with just one - but for now, I have the features and functionality that I missed and am much more productive this way.

Rich text editors for your web browser

I've had a couple of clients recently who've been interested in building solutions around a rich text editing piece in the web browser, linked to a PDF generation piece on the server that will produce a press-ready PDF from it.

We've had the PDF piece for a while - offering full support for rich text (including tables, lists, Unicode, etc.) along with placement of images, other PDFs, SVG and even PS/EPS. - but now we had to help them find stuff for the client

I've found two that seem to solve the problem nicely - and both are based on JavaScript/DHTML and NOT Java!

1. Editlet - a very powerful commercial solution
2. Rich Text Editor - an basic (but nicely done) open source solution

wIX - Build Windows installers from XML

In a strange twist, Microsoft has released into the open source community their Windows Installer XML project.

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WIX is a toolkit for building Windows installers using an XML source description. It is the exact same toolkit that MS itself uses for building the installers for Office, SQL Server, etc.

Looks like good stuff!

PBToMake - XCode to Unix

We're bringing some of our Mac & Windows tools over to Solaris and Linux, and were looking for an easy way to have the makefile (or at least a start of a makefile) auto-generated. A quick web search found this tool - PBTOMake. If anyone else has other suggestions, let me know! Hope others find it useful.

XFDF support for iText

Another open source project that I contribute too is iText - a GREAT Java-based PDF generation library. It also has some basic manipulation facilities, such as stamping, form filling, etc.

Although iText already had support for the Forms Data Format (FDF), it didn't support the new XML-based XFDF. Due to a request from a client, I've written the XFDF support for iText and submitted it to Paulo and Bruno for inclusion in the next update.

If anyone needs it sooner, drop me a line!

GraphicsMagick 1.13 Released

GraphicsMagick, a branch of ImageMagick which focuses on stability and performance, just released stable build 1.1.3

Although I'm one of the maintainers of this project, I haven't been active lately - but I still follow it and contribute when I can

Significant changes associated with GraphicsMagick 1.1.3 (released August 7, 2004)

   Bugs fixed:
     * PNG fixes for CERT security alert TA04-217A described at
     "http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-217A.html".
     * Take resolution units into consideration when resampling an image.
     * If image units are changed, rescale existing image resolution values
     to match.
     * Fixed problems with reading and writing large PCX files.
     * Fixed crash in Wand library MagickSetPassphrase().
     * When a Wand library function is used for which a backing
     implementation does not yet exist, report a "not implemented" error
     rather than just returning an error status.
     * Fixed a problem when reading some BMP v4 files.
     * DESTDIR install now works properly with PERL 5.8.1 and later.

   Improvements:
     * Support reading RGB/CMYK scanline oriented TIFF images with arbitrary
     depth.
     * LZW support for GIF and TIFF is enabled by default.
     * Incorporated lcms 1.13 for more speed, and bug-fixes.
     * The configure script now looks for mozilla (or firebird) when looking
     for a web browser.  Netscape is used if mozilla or firebird are not present.

FoxIt PDF Editor and the "Graphic Keyboard"

Back in May, I discovered a new PDF tool called Foxit PDF Editor from a new entry into the PDF market, Foxit Software.

I was quite impressed with what they had done to build a PDF viewer with basic editing functionality integrated - sort of like Adobe Reader + Enfocus PitStop in a single product! In order to support the company, and given the LOW price of $79, I bought a copy!

I just discovered today, however, that they have a 1.1 update - but as registered user, I am VERY disappointed that they never notified me of this upgrade.

In addition to some performanceand rendering improvements, which are always welcome - the 1.1 version has one KILLER feature that I've not been able to find elsewhere and will help my PDF development & debugging immensely.

It's called the "Graphic Keyboard" and is available when you are editing text. What it does is bring up something equivalent to Windows CharMap...BUT for only those glyphs in the font! In other words, you can actually see what glyphs are available in a subset font!!!

I can't believe no one else thought of this before now - but I know I'll be getting some use out of it

XMLSpy Home Edition goes freeware

Anyone looking for a GOOD free XML editor for Windows - run, don't walk to Altova to grab a copy of the Home Edition of XMLSpy!

HOWEVER, if you are already a paid user of XMLSpy, do NOT make the mistake that I did and overwrite your paid version with the free one - yuch!!

Though the company called me back within 24 hours and helped me get back to my older version