There is one thing that boggels me for ages now, why is it so hard to use multiple languaes on one Computer. Since I sit in Germany here it is a situation I often encounter. Let me explain the problem at hand.

For letters, mails and most of writing I require a german keyboard (layout) to write all the funny german letters like äöüß. Also my laptop (both private and work) have a german keyboard build in - can't change that sadly or only for insane prices.

For coding I relly prefare an english keyboard since the layout is way more programmer friendly, I don't have to use AltGr to get things like curly or edged brackets - I would show you which I mean but just to proove my point my laptop right now refuses to enter them at all.

So it sounds pretty simple in itself, for coding I use an english keyboard - I have one on the docking station at work and a blue tooth one for coding at home. For letter writing use a german keyboard. Sadly it is not, it seems that some smart software developper decided input language should be based on the widnow you're in - doh. so when I take my work laptop from the dock I've to change the input language FOR EVERY FREAKING SINGLE WINDOW! No fun trust me! Even worst it gets with windows login screens and other security stuff, which entirely refuse to accept english keyboard layout. On my Mac it is nearly as bad, the language is window based again but at least it does not tend to randomly forget what I wanted.

The worst was when I tried to switch to german today and since I got fed up with chanign every window I disabled the language chaning - which did not mean he puts all the windows in the selected language just that he now don't let you change the language in them any more - so now I'm stuck with an explorer window with english layout which I guess will ge back to normal after reboot - which will likely be when I want it to be english and it is then set to german for all eternity...

What I don't get about this is why it seems entirely imposible to every OS to base the input language on the device I use. I really really wonder why this is so hard. When I've two keyboards one english one one german one wouldn't be the simplest way to tell the OS 'this keyboard is german that one is english'.

Okay,

Today I’ve something a little sad to write about. I am, as so many people lately, a mac user. I love OS X and the software for it, yet I stumbled about something that pretty much dissapoints me.

Okay to get to the pint, in the latest versions OS X allows to use ‘HFS+ case sensitive’ which is a great thing and I assume a lot of the people from the unix world are pretty happy about it. It’s cool, after all OS X is a unix system right should be a nice feature (and about time that it came)

WRONG! Using the case sensitive HFS+ can pretty much wrack your entire system and render it useless. Here is what I found:

Case sensitive and Adobe

I just would like to say here, way thanks a lot Adobe. Hire some coders that can use the correct case in filenames when you sell software for thousand of dollar!

Just imagine you’re running some design firm and happen to have case sensitive HFS+. Yay reinstalling a dozens Macs! Again very very much thank you!

Okay, so much for the rant. It’s just pretty disappointing it makes OS X kind of look like a bad joke… it also makes me wonder how things will be on Leopards ZFS, will people have to stay with old rusty case insensitive HFS+ when they want to keep using their software?

Abut again, it’s not a fault of Apple in my eyes, they can’t change the fact that some people seem to be too busy counting money them fixing their software…

Good news! Or bad news as you take it… As version 0.1 may be take a bit longer then even I expected so here is a mid way release.

It does not feature all the stuff I wanted to see for versionj 0.1 but a few improvements that make it far more usuable (hence why 0.08 and not 0.02)

Changes

• Formating / Unformating of mushcode
• improved highlighting
• completely rewritten engine
• improved compatibility to non Penn Mushes
• fixed saving of files

You can get the file
here

OKay there won’t be a new update for somet time as some BIG things are coming, werll a bit bigger … so they might take a few days. Which includes rewriting good aprts of the datamanagement and stuff like that.

A nicer userinterface is also planned, neat functionality and all that nifty stuff. So to make waiting easyer here are a few screenshots of the thing I’m working no – reworked gui.

Left is still the tree with the objects, in picture
4
and
5 you see how one can now easiely add new objects. Also I made some new pictures for the different types – well I got the idea from XCode cause I liked it, color and letter simple but easy to spot. You can see that in picture
8

Okay so that are a few things that are coming in 0.1 :) stay tuned!

Finally a list of all pics I took:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Okay more good news! After another one and a half day of haaard work on this I added a few new features and removed a few bugs I found!

What is new?

• Parentheses matching:Yap works neat as long as you don’t do ugly things in your code like not escaped parentheses!
• Syntax Colors: Looks much better now!
• Icon: I got down to make two icons, one for the files another one for the app itself – I like them!
• removing objects: You can now remove objects again from your list of objects – might be handy ;P
• Object names: Names are displayed instead of DB’Refs
• somethig else: I forgot what it was but it’s usefull I’m certain about that!

What is coming up?

• support for big attributres (currently the code might get funny on attributes that can’t be send at once (not sure if that can ahppen at all but I am better carefull)
• ofline editing
• keychain support
• auto identing for code
• smart groups
• internal rewrites of stuff

Again use it at your own risk: download

&tOkay,
has been long enough but finally something new here. I’ve started a new project and got it to a state where it actually can be used. It leas a lot of the planned features and surely has still quite a few bugs but hey it’s far enough to allow everyone who want’s to to have a look at it.

What is it for?

Well I am coding at times in a language named MUSHCode, it’s used in text based online RPG’s called
MUSHs
. The language used there is a LISP deviate and without any kind of aid of even an editor can be a pain. So that is where MushCoder (and I hope I find a nicer name with time) comes it, it’s supposed to be a IDE for Mushcoding.

As a note, it’s an cocoa app so won’t run under OS’s different then OS X.

What does it do?

• Projects:
  Currently it features a simple project layout, one can create projects (which are a collection from objects and a server to connect to.
• Source Browsing:
  You can brows the objects of a project for their attributes
• Syntax Highlighitng : When editing a attribute MushCode gets syntax highlighted (might not be perfect)
• Attribute Classes: base on common prefixes attributes are sorted in classes and handled differently.
• Context sensitive unformating: This are two functions actually, for code unformating works just by removing all line breaks and tabs that are in the code you have edited (mushcode does not feature multiple lines in a attribute). For attributes that are meant to hold readable text (like descriptions) it replaces tabs and line breaks with the appropriate characters.

What is it missing?

• Code completion
• A icon
• a good name
• fool proof syntax highlighitng including bracket matching
• a more intuitive gui
• bug-fixes (I’m sure there are a lot still left)

Last words

Well feel free to download a
copy
. So keep in mind it’s still alpha at best, no guarantee whatsoever is given for your code, projects, computers, pets or lunch!

But if you find a bug, or have an idea about what to include feel free to mail me or drop a comment here. The mail addy is included in the about screen.