Jesse Grosjean's blog

Any Cocoa experts out there? Core Data (Cocoa’s new data store framework) has been working great for Forest’s development, and I’m glad I made the switch. But I’ve just run into a problem with Core Data’s undo support that I can’t seem to get around. An example project is attached to this posting.

The first problem you will get a “Could Not Merge Changes” error in some cases when trying to save a Core Data document even when using a single managed object context. To reproduce this with the attached example do this:

1. Add new person.
2. Set name for new person.
3. Save document.
4. Undo twice, so that the name is unset and the person is removed.

If you liked our CocoaRadio podcast, check out the next one. This time Blake interviews Frasier Speirs, the author of FlickrExport and Xjournal.

Check out www.cocoaradio.com and learn about the beginnings of Hog Bay Software, our notebook program, and why my career as a radio announcer is on temporarily on hold.

Cocoa Radio is a podcast format of interviews with Cocoa developers for developers, power users and anyone interested in the OS X platform. Check it out to hear the stories behind great Cocoa apps for OS X.

We've just had our first (I think) mention in Macworld magazine. I was just wandering through the bookstore checking out the latest issues (I mean reading my own copy that I subscribe too) when I saw an article on notebooks and outliners. I quickly browsed the article and saw the usual suspects (OmniOutliner, Circus Ponies, and NoteTaker) and grrrg... again no Hog Bay Notebook.

But yeah! I was wrong. Hog Bay Notebook was listed in the article right along with the big boys, but with the major heading "Notebook" since "Hog Bay Notebook" is to hard to fit anywhere. Maybe it's been mentioned all along and I've just been missing it. Hopefully the next version "Forest" will earn the elusive fifth star and have a more distinctive title so I recognize it when I see it.

I’ve just released a new version of Clockwork, here are the release notes.

Development is also started on Forest, the next application in the Hog Bay Notebook line. Forest will be based on our Blocks plugin framework, and will take advantage of many new Tiger technologies. I don’t have anything ready for download yet, but hope to release “something” in the next few weeks. The first releases will not be a completed application, that will still take some months, but it will be enough to try out so you can help me design it from there.

For OS X programmers. There has been some talk about how to support ordered lists in core data, here's my test implementation. I hope this helps some people out, and please let me know if you find improvements that can be made to the code.

The "OrderedNodes" project includes a "Node" subclass of NSManagedObject. Nodes have a parent and a collection of ordered children. The order is maintained by overriding the "children" relationship methods and updating an "orderedChildrenCache" there. It also seems necessary for the node to observer the "children" relationship so that it can get notified when the children collection changes in the case of undo... please let me know if you find a better way to catch this change.

I've just released a new version of Clockwork and a new version of the Blocks plugin framework that Clockwork is built on. The Blocks framework download now comes with an SDK that contains some example plugins that you can get started with including the source for the new talking timer plugin. There is also new new documentation in both the Clockwork User Guide and the Blocks Framework Guide. Now it's time to mow the lawn. We are having

It looks like many people are having a hard time logging onto the site. I’ve just finished fixing a few bugs that were in Drupal’s default login system and think those fixes should solve many of the problems. Please let me know if you still have trouble or ideas to make the login process better.

Clockwork is a donation based upgrade to Hog Bay Timer. I’ll issue a new license for free, but I ask for donations if you find the new features useful. Note that Clockwork uses a different licensing scheme then Hog Bay Timer did, if you are an existing Hog Bay Timer customer use these instructions to get your new license key.

Feature voting allows Hog Bay Software users to vote (one to five stars) on open bugs and feature requests on our website. I’ll then use these votes to help me decide where I should be spending my time.