SmallNews 2.5 - now works on Lion
SmallNews
Saturday, July 30, 2011
SmallNews 2.5 is available for download. This version works with Mac OS X 10.7/Lion.
To get it to work with Lion, it is now a much bigger download than before. While this version does work with Leopard and Snow Leopard (10.5 & 10.6), I have left 2.4 available for download, as this has exactly the same functionality and a much smaller download.
That said, there is one other fix in SmallNews 2.5. A problem with creating PDFs of individual articles from the database is fixed. If you didn’t have Prince XML installed, this would fail. Now, it handles the installation of Prince XML for you.
Mac OS X Lion and Small apps
SmallDVD
SmallNews
SmallShrink
Monday, July 25, 2011
I am pleased to say that both SmallDVD and SmallShrink appear to be working perfectly OK with Mac OS X 10.7 / Lion. If you spot any problems with them on Lion, please do let me know.
Unfortunately, SmallNews has a problem, and doesn’t even start up. I will have a look at this and issue a new release when it’s fixed
The iPad Musician
Friday, April 08, 2011
You may have noticed there hasn't been a lot of news on this site since the beginning of the year. That's because I made a deliberate decision to try and spend a little less of my spare time with computers this year, and a little more on my other hobby, music.
Of course, I never leave the computing behind entirely, and I am a big fan of Garageband. I'm also very interested in the potential of the iPad for playing and recording music. So I've created a new blog called The iPad Musician to talk about this.
SmallDVD, SmallShrink and SmallNews are all still alive and well, and I certainly intend to test and update them (if necessary) for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) when it's released later this year.
Review of 2010, plans for 2011
SmallDVD
SmallNews
SmallShrink
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
At the start of 2010, I wrote about my plans for SmallDVD for the year. This is a quick review of those plans, plus thoughts for 2011.
The plan was to make a few improvements to SmallDVD 2, and start work on SmallDVD 3 which would replace the current AppleScript application with Objective C. The first of these was done, with 2.3 and 2.4 being released, but I’ve made absolutely no progress on SmallDVD 3.
SmallShrink had two releases, 0.3 and 0.4, which has taken it to a state where it works on most DVDs, but would still benefit from further improvement, particularly in the user interface.
SmallNews has had the most active development on it, with five releases, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4, adding significant features such as ePub and Kindle support. I also have a 2.5 release almost ready which adds the option for storing articles in a CouchDB database.
So, plans for 2011. I would still very much like to get SmallDVD converted to Objective C, but it’s quite a big task, and the current version does do almost everything I want of it at the moment. I’ve actually been using SmallDVD a lot less recently, as I have been using disk/network video players (firstly a Networked Media Tank then a new Apple TV) in place of DVDs. So I don’t have a huge amount of motivation to rewrite SmallDVD at the moment.
SmallShrink I was using extensively with my Networked Media Tank, to rip an ISO image of a DVD. But for the Apple TV, I use Handbrake instead. So I’m using this a lot less frequently now as well.
SmallNews is the one I use every day, but again, it does almost everything I want it to do already.
I have considered working on getting some of these apps into the new Mac App Store. But I recently read about VLC being removed from the store because Apple’s distribution mechanism contravenes the GNU Public License (GPL). As SmallDVD and SmallShrink use a lot of GPL-licenced components, it would appear to rule out ever putting them in the App Store. SmallNews may be possible, but I’d have to check the licenses of the (fewer) open source components it uses.
So, right now, I’m not sure exactly where I’m going to spend time in 2011. If you have suggestions or requests, please do feel free to submit them through the feedback button.
SmallNews 2.4 - now with Kindle support
SmallNews
Sunday, October 31, 2010
SmallNews 2.4 is available for download. The main new feature in this release is support for the Amazon Kindle.
On the settings page, you can tick the box to create the Kindle version, and optionally provide an email address to send it to. This works well with the Kindle’s “personal documents” delivery service; if you put your @free.kindle.com address in here, the file will be delivered to your Kindle next time it connects by Wifi (more details on Kindle personal documents here)
The Kindle version generated is actually a .mobi (Mobipocket) file, so should also work with other readers which support this format, but I haven’t tried any of these. It is generated using Amazon’s kindlegen utility, which is only available for Intel Macs, so this feature will not work on PPC.
The licence prevents me from including kindlegen in the distribution package, so the first time it is needed, it is downloaded from Amazon. So if you are going to use this, you ought to agree to Amazon’s terms and conditions first.
One other change in this release - previously, PDFs could only be created if Prince XML was already installed. In this release, Prince XML will be downloaded the first time it is needed, in the same way as kindlegen. So, again, you ought to agree to the licence agreement before using this. Prince XML will be downloaded even if you had previously installed it, but it will be kept separate from your existing installation.
SmallDVD mentioned on TUAW
SmallDVD
Sunday, October 31, 2010
SmallDVD received a mention on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, in a list of alternatives to iDVD. The latest release of iLife doesn’t enhance iDVD or iWeb at all, so the TUAW article looks at the alternatives. I believe that SmallDVD is the only free alternative to iDVD listed.
Kindle
SmallNews
Saturday, October 23, 2010
I finally got round to ordering my Amazon Kindle, and it arrived yesterday. First impressions...
- It’s very light, and very nice to hold
- It’s much, much quicker than my Sony Reader,.
- The screen contrast seems better as well, making it easier to read in poor light that the Sony was.
- Emailing PDFs to it via your @free.kindle.com address works well
- The 6” inch ebook format PDF from SmallNews works well on the Kindle screen. The text could perhaps do with being one point larger, but that might just be my ageing eyes.
However, one big disappointment for me is that it doesn’t support PDF bookmarks, which makes it much harder to navigate around a PDF created by SmallNews. This is a major thing for me, so I am going to look into the possibility of SmallNews creating a Kindle native format edition.
SmallNews 2.31
SmallNews
Monday, September 27, 2010
Oops. The “fix” in SmallNews 2.3 for occasional crashes when writing to MySQL actually made things much worse. It wouldn’t crash… but it just wrote empty data to the database.
That’s fixed in SmallNews 2.31.
[ UPDATE: However, this does seem to have reintroduced the crashing problem. It only seems to happen on MacOSX 10.5 when using a MySQL database. More investigation required. In the meantime, to workaround the problem, just set the database type to “none” ]
This version also adds a new PDF format option. “Mobile phone” will create a PDF with pages 42mm x 42mm. The main device this is aimed at is a Samsung Genio, on which it looks pretty good. It also works OK with my Nokia E63, and I would guess it should be OK with other phones with QVGA screens and PDF readers.
SmallShrink 0.4
SmallShrink
Saturday, September 25, 2010
SmallShrink 0.4 is available for download.
This version (at long last) makes it easier to work out which titles from the DVD you want to copy.
Also, I've finally got round to writing some instructions on how to use SmallShrink.
SmallShrink 0.4 only supports MacOSX 10.6. I thought that the previous version also worked on 10.5, but on closer inspection, it didn't really. 10.5 support is feasible, and I hope to add it back in soon.
SmallNews 2.3
SmallNews
Friday, September 24, 2010
SmallNews 2.3 is available for download.
This release has no visual differences to v2.2, but makes a big change to the configuration of site-specific handlers. Instead of this configuration being stored in the application, it is now retrieved dynamically from the internet. This means that new handlers can be added in without a new version of the software.
A total of 12 site specific handlers are currently available, including new handlers for macosxhints.com, macrumors.com and punto-informatico.it.
You can see a full list of handlers - this is dynamically created based on the current configuration.
If you would like additional handlers added to the configuration, please just drop me a message via the feedback button.
There is also a fix to prevent occasional crashes on MacOSX 10.5 when storing articles in a MySQL database.
Two things planned for v2.4:
- Enabling the output to be sent to an email address when ready
- Adding a little utility to allow any HTML to be converted to ePub or eBook-sized PDF
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