April 23rd is Download Day
I seem to be downloading a couple of Gigs of stuff this morning. First off is Ubuntu 9.04, which was released today. I am grabbing both the “desktop” and “server” editions. I plan on using the server edition when I rebuild Tnir. Next up is Qt 4.5.1, and this time there are Cocoa, 64-bit Binaries for Mac OS X (last time, with 4.5, you had to compile it yourself to get 64-bit goodness). But you have to dig around to get them. Here are the links to save people some trouble.- Mac Carbon 32-bit 4.5.1
- Mac Carbon 32-bit 4.5.1 debug
- Mac Cocoa 64-bit 4.5.1
- Mac Cocoa 64-bit 4.5.1 debug
- Mac 4.5.1 source code
Why Qt 4.5 is a really big deal
Okay, this will be a post about software development, but I’ll try to avoid using jargon in explaining the impact of yesterday’s release of Qt 4.5. So first of all, what the hell is Qt? Well, it’s a software library that allows programmers to easily write programs that run on Mac, Windows, Linux and even cell phones. If a developer want their code to run on all these platforms without using something like Qt, it often means man-years of work, and platform-specific oddities can arise, such as Adobe not having a 64-bit version of Photoshop on the Mac (because they use Code Warrior’s PowerPlant on the Mac, which is no longer supported except as an open source project). Qt is also an extremely powerful and fast library, which is not often the case for these kinds of things. Ok, so what’s the big deal with version 4.5? Until yesterday, if you used the Qt library, you had to either:
- release your application’s source code to the public under the “Gnu Public License” (GPL), making it Free Software, or..
- pay a lot of money (thousands of dollars) annually for the Qt “commercial license”
gdb_stl_utils for Mac OS X
Posted by rae in development
at 2:31 pm on Thursday, 15 May 2008
Oh ya, this will have a wide audience..
There’s a very useful little utility for debugging
STL
under
gdb,
and it’s called
gdb_stl_utils.
However, the Makefile that comes with it doesn’t account for multiple architectures like Intel/PPC on the Mac. So I updated the Makefile and posted the whole thing on
clith.com/gdb_stl_utils.
I’ve mailed the new Makefile to
the person who most recently updated it
in hopes of helping others use this very useful tool.
at 2:31 pm on Thursday, 15 May 2008
OpenProj
Conflict Notification is In
So today I landed bug 5308, which was the task “Sharing conflict notification UI”.
click for larger version
Interesting css scaled image
I was reading about The Xbox 360’s HD-DVD drive when I noticed that the image was scaling up and down as I resized my browser window. Cool! The magic seems to be in their /media/style.css CSS sheet, which includes this little gem:
.post img.biggie { width: 98%; max-width: 860px; margin: 0;}
max-width; I’ll have to check it out!
Going Native – iTerm 0.7.8 Intel build
Now that I’m on my Mac Pro full time, I’m on the hunt for native Intel apps. Mostly I’m finding my main tools are already Universal (a side benefit for waiting for the Mac Pro before jumping on the Intel bandwagon). However, one app I use almost 24/7 was problematic: iTerm, a terminal program. Now, iTerm has been universal (meaning it has both native PPC and Intel code) since version 0.8. However, I have found all versions after 0.7.8 to be buggy and not well-behaved. I tried downloading the latest and greatest stable version, but i started getting rendering errors (blocks of black showing up) and the main text was over-bold for some reason (I was able to tone it down by setting the colour to a very drak grey instead of black). Well, I’ve had enough. iTerm is open source, so I checked out the version of iTerm that was current as of 0.7.8 (which has a modification date of Mar 11 2004) and built it as an Intel binary (not universal – maybe later when I have copious amounts of spare time). This wasn’t rocket science – zero coding was required. Indeed, I didn’t even have to change **anything**. You can grab it here: iTerm 0.78 intel Here’s all I did:
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@iterm.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/iterm co -D 2004-03-11 -P iTerm
open iTerm.xcode
build/Development” folder.
I double-clicked it and, booya, it ran fine.
Now the development version is not for distribution so, okay, I changed *one* setting:
I changed the popup that said “Development” to “Deployment”.
Another click on “Build” and there sat another iTerm in build/Deployment
I hope this is of use to someone other than me.
I’m I the only one who finds iTerm 0.8 and later frustrating?
Still no Mac Pro
Despite recent stories about Mac Pros shipping if they had been ordered with the Radeon X1900 XT, my order — which I made Aug 8 — is still languishing. I guess Canadian orders are at the bottom of the heap.
… still waiting …
(click for larger image)
Mac Pro price drop
I just got a letter from Apple r.e. the Mac Pro I ordered on Aug 8th:To Our Valued Apple Customer: Apple is pleased to announce a price drop for the Mac Pro you recently ordered. We have automatically adjusted your order to reflect the new price. For up-to-date information on your order, please visit our Order Status website at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus. Once your order is shipped, you can also obtain tracking information on this site. Thank you for your interest in Apple products. Sincerely,I checked and my before-tax price went down by $96. Huh.
Apple Store Customer Support