Will OS X version use native Font Selector & Color Picker?

[eobet]

I've just discovered that OS X has a lot of nifty thing built-in which some applications take advantage of, and some applications reinvent the wheel (and sometimes get flamed for it on macupdate/versiontracker, especially when they try to use non-native Save windows).

I wonder which route LX will take, since it uses a lot of non-native widgets.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is the ability to print any document to a PDF, natively in OS X (without the need for any Adobe product at all). I read somewhere that Quartz (?), which draws everything on the screen, does this using PDF... did I get that right?

I also wonder how file thumbnail support will be handled across XP/Linux/OS X...

I guess it's still far off and perhaps not even relevant, but I wanted to make the forum post anyway, if nothing else, perhaps to evoke a thought or two.

[Charles Moir]

It's a tricky balance between offering identical interfaces on all platforms - which has numerous advantages, or having a different interface for each platform will be not help users transfer from one platform to another (or possibly be able to follow the huge list of the XaraXone tutorials)

So we tend to prefer to go for a consistent interface for all platforms. So we will use our colour picker by default - we sort of have no choice since it contains a load of controls that are specific to Xara. But we will provide an option to pop-up the system colour picker.

Similarly for font, we will offer the existing font selection, and font gallery which will be identical to the current one, but may provide a way to use the Mac font selector (you wouldn't want to use the Windows font selector - it's terrible.)

And yes OSX uses PDF as it's standard graphics and print format. But then Xara already has very high quality PDF output so that's not a problem.

[todder]

You raise a very important issue. After switching to OSX about a year ago, I've noticed a few things that were OS-wide in OSX that most-but-not all apps take advantage of. Many of these things are a mishmash in Windows so the average switcher takes some time to realize that there is a more organized way to do things.
Here's a few that I can think of right now:
1. Native spell check. (Safari is underlining my mistakes as I type right now. Camino and Firefox don't.) I find this very convenient. It would be nice for Xara to take advantage of the built-in spell checker and implement this eventually. Microsoft Office:Mac stubbornly uses it's own dictionary. So now, if I say "Learn Spelling" in Safari, Word still says it's spelled wrong even though every other app recognizes the new word.
2. Some menu examples: As a Mac user, I would expect "Preferences" to go under the "Xara" menu and not under "Tools" or something. Similarly, I would expect to go to "File>Open Recent" instead of looking at the bottom of the File menu as in Windows. These seem like trivial things, but any Mac user will tell you how good it is to have all apps consistent and predictable.
3. The entire iLife suite uses a Media Browser. It looks pretty goofy and awkward when you first look at it. But WOW is it ever useful once you've got thousands of pictures, tracks and movies on your computer!
4. Maybe the most important consistency of all: Print. I use Windows every day at work. If I click file>print in word, it's different from AutoCAD, and both of those are different from Acrobat Reader .... and those are different from Outlook. In OSX, every app is the SAME!!! Yes, even MS Office:Mac gets this one right.
5. I hope the eventual install process goes as follows: 1. download app into app folder. And I hope the uninstall process is like this: 1. drag app into trash. (not that I'll ever want to trash Xara!)
6. Also, just personal preference here ... but I think the OSX version of Xara would look and function better with a unified window (a-la iTunes or Safari) over a pin-striped window.

Adobe and Microsoft seem a little stubborn when it comes to making their apps inconsistent with OSX. Microsoft seems to hide things in weird places and Adobe likes you to have 300 little separate windows open for every button and command. I use the Windows and Mac versions of many apps and I'd rather them be a little different from each other so they fit in better with the OS. I think there's LESS of a learning curve that way.

I hope Xara can understand this and make their great app at least a little consistent in OSX.

[BPFowler]

1. Native spell check. (Safari is underlining my mistakes as I type right now. Camino and Firefox don't.) I find this very convenient. It would be nice for Xara to take advantage of the built-in spell checker and implement this eventually. Microsoft Office:Mac stubbornly uses it's own dictionary.

If Camino can't do it, then it would be a bold man to make a promise to have this working in the near future. The native spell checker (like Services) is available to Cocoa Applications, so in one sense you are asking for Xara LX to be a Cocoa Application (plain wxWidgets (wxMac) is carbon, like BBEdit, Photoshop the Finder and so forth). This is not impossible: There is a wxWidgets Cocoa project, for example. If you are only going to be satisfied by a Cocoa Application then you are probably going to have to learn a lot about the Model-View-Controller design pattern, and replace the wxWidgets View classes with Cocoa ones, providing a Cocoa interface to the internal Xara LX data model. Whilst this may not be easy - you probably want to retain the Xara look-and-feel - it is certainly possible, and you are very welcome to either sit down with a copy of XCode, or join with other people who will, and produce the exact application that suits you. Because Xara LX is licensed to you under the GPL you do not need Xara's co-operation to get started, but you will need (I'm simplifying slightly) to be prepared to make your sources available to anyone who receives your binaries. This will matter when you get to selling the Todder Extreme LX!

2. Some menu examples: As a Mac user, I would expect "Preferences" to go under the "Xara" menu and not under "Tools" or something. Similarly, I would expect to go to "File>Open Recent" instead of looking at the bottom of the File menu as in Windows. These seem like trivial things, but any Mac user will tell you how good it is to have all apps consistent and predictable.

To be consistent and predictable, Xara's first step is to match the GTK (Linux) version. Actually, I haven't yet seen a full-featured wxWidgets application for the Mac (perhaps wxMUD is there, but IIRC, I can't get it to compile), so it is possible that Xara LX is breaking new ground. (If you know of one, perhaps you could post its name or URL so we can have a look at it). If you study the wxWidgets documentation and examples either on the web or in the Brookyln Bridge book, you will get a feel for how closely the menus match your ideal, and whilst I am not certain about "Open->Recent", I think that Menus will match your OS X expectations.

3. The entire iLife suite uses a Media Browser.

Do you mean that each iLife application has a connection (perhaps using Spotlight) to a system Media Browser, or that each of these applications has its own Media Browser widget? If the latter, then we will probably include one, if wxWidgets provides it; if the former then it sounds like a good RFE

4. Maybe the most important consistency of all: Print.

The first versions of Xara LX will use the wxWidgets printing sub-system; Xara LX will also have an export feature, based on Vectorstation. Maybe PDF export will be on a fast track and treated as a special case (certainly if Xara LX can use OS X's printing system seamlessly, then PDF output comes for free). Maybe additional work will be required to reach the standards that Xara (the company) have in mind for Xara LX, I would be surprised if anyone could say at this stage.

5. I hope the eventual install process goes as follows: 1. download app into app folder. And I hope the uninstall process is like this: 1. drag app into trash. (not that I'll ever want to trash Xara!)

At last, a question I can answer! The answer to this is definitely: Yes. If you are based in the United Kingdom, come to the LUG Radio Live, and I will give you a CD with the then current Mac Xara LX which you can install and uninstall to your heart's content. If it is important to you, I can give you a DVD containing the full source code and build tree. (The current revision is 1370, about 200 revisions get added per month, so we are looking at about r1574 are we not)

6. Also, just personal preference here ... but I think the OSX version of Xara would look and function better with a unified window (a là iTunes or Safari) over a pin-striped window.

Well, many Linux developers certainly act as though the ability to skin an application solves all usability and Human Interface problems. Whilst there are probably better things to do in the Summer months, you could while away a wet Autumn afternoon reading MPT, Havoc Pennington and Daring Fireball

I hope Xara can understand this and make their great app at least a little consistent in OSX.

You have several options:

1. Start coding for the Mac OS X version now
2. Contribute to wxWidgets code or documentation
3. Develop a competing Cocoa Xara LX fork
4. Test the first Xara LX versions and provide feedback
5. Work on the Linux version may free resources for the Mac OS one, and would certainly clear the way for it

Xara have made it clear that Xara LX is a community venture, and if individuals from this community do not step up and work on the Mac OS X version, then there will not be a high quality Mac OS X release. You cannot pass this back to Xara. They have made their code open source, and Free Software, and we cannot demand that they do more. The Xara devs are active on the list, answer questions here, have provided an XCode project and when time permits do make Mac OS X builds; Xara has committed to creating a Mac OS X deliverable. I can only repeat that the timeliness and quality of that depends on people like us!

[eobet]

[*]Test the first Xara LX versions and provide feedback

I would like to do this, but there isn't an automatic nightly build server set up anywhere yet is there? (Also, I do not know how to report bugs/feedback, but that is probably my own fault for not reading up on it... is it down via Sourceforge or some Bugzilla server somewhere?)

The Xara devs are active on the list, answer questions here, have provided an XCode project and when time permits do make Mac OS X builds;

By the last couple of OS X threads on this forum, it seems that the OS X code still doesn't compile cleanly. I have no skills or time to fix such issues, but I do have enough C/C++ skills to hopefully look into fixes in a more mature build. Also, I wasn't aware that there is an xcode project for download (though I haven't really read that carefully). I thought you had to roll your own, including installing a lot of dependencies, and that is why people have such trouble building the OS X version?

[BPFowler]

I would like to do this, but there isn't an automatic nightly build server set up anywhere yet is there? (Also, I do not know how to report bugs/feedback, but that is probably my own fault for not reading up on it... is it done via Sourceforge or some Bugzilla server somewhere?)

No, there is no build server. My latest debug XCode build is only about 20 MByte (using DWARF), so it is feasible.

See the most recent bugs at the Xara Bugzilla.

Judging by the last couple of OS X threads on this forum, it seems that the OS X code still doesn't compile cleanly. I have no skills or time to fix such issues, but I do have enough C/C++ skills to hopefully look into fixes in a more mature build. Also, I wasn't aware that there is an xcode project for download (though I haven't really read that carefully). I thought you had to roll your own, including installing a lot of dependencies, and that is why people have such trouble building the OS X version?

Forgive me, it certainly compiles cleanly. I have taken the current build to our local Macintosh User Group every month since Xara made the source available (it is possible that the Macintosh Users concerned think that this is some kind of nuisance).

There are no major dependencies. The bulk of the requirements are provided by the wxWidgets project, and it is all documented (not perfectly, I admit) on the Mac OS build page. The non-obvious things are headers for the PNG and JPEG libraries - we use the private headers from the wxWidgets sources; and libxml - we are still working on this, and the best bet is to use the libxml from the fink project but this is not felt, with good reason, to be the best way of making official builds. Otherwise it just needs a little elbow grease.

There is an XCode project in svn, and some instructions for it on the mailing list, exempli gratia, XCode project, and quite a number of posts this month.

I am at present working on a 'Personal' XCode project, which will not produce Universal Binaries, just the architecture for your system, and will be more tolerant of paths and other environment issues; and it just so happens that I need the assistance of a willing and energetic first-timer: It is nearly meaningless that I can compile Xara LX using my methods, we need to demonstrate that somebody else can.

Ben.

[eobet]

Well, to me, the gist of your above message seems to be "the instructions from Xara won't work out of the box, so you need to fiddle", which is what I meant by "doesn't compile cleanly".

I have the development tools installed, and am certainly interested in compiling an Xcode project (though only if it can co-exist with the 'official' project, which it should, though?).

However, I am very against installing any "unix" libraries(?), like fink or darwinports, but if I understand things correctly, only the wxwidgets libraries are needed, so that is OK, I guess. (OS X is OS X, and should stay so, imo, I'm not interested in anything "unix"... yes, despite OS X being bsd at the core, but at least that isn't exposed to the user!)

Guess I'm either your ideal tester, or the one you absolutely don't want, since I expect everything on OS X to "just work" and will report every little thing that doesn't.

(I have studied four years of computer science, btw, but only dealt with Visual Studio. I've only used OS X for about three months, but I have compiled universal binaries for some applications, but I am in no way really familiar with Xcode.)

[BPFowler]

Well, to me, the gist of your above message seems to be "the instructions from Xara won't work out of the box, so you need to fiddle", which is what I meant by "doesn't compile cleanly".

I am about to pick nits, and unlike the author of one the recent signature quotations, I am, as you will see, not all that good at it!

1. By following the instructions on the Mac OS build page, an experienced (or merely enthusiastic) dev can produce a working Mac Xara LX in about two half-days of work. I've mentioned the main bridges needing to be crossed in my previous post, and discussed some of them on the Dev list and elsewhere. I know that this is the case because I have done it, and I have watched Pekele do it. I repeat that anyone wanting to follow this trail is invited to a) submit bugs in Bugzilla, if bugs are found; b) start, or take part in, discussions on the Dev list; and c) bring up any other points here

2. I wouldn't say that one needed to "fiddle" with the code - fiddling, or tinkering, with something has negative connotations concerning your attitude towards it and your perception of its quality.

3. I would describe something as "not compiling cleanly" if I felt that the original author had not understood all the details of the code, concepts and methods he was working with. He may have ignored warnings that mattered, have used paths only found on his system, hardware features, special libraries or exploited outright bugs that other people could not be expected to have. Once code is being worked on by several devs on various platforms any such uncleanliness gets cleaned off pretty quickly and the code base matches specifications as found under the names of Kernighan and Ritchie or Stroustrup. Unclean code is usually only seen early in a project or in code that is not being worked on or possibly in very exceptional circumstances in sophisticated projects. Certainly some tweaking or polishing, particularly relating to third party libraries may be needed when moving to a new platform, but I wouldn't call this fiddling, especially as we are only making surface or inconsequential changes ('polishing').

I have the development tools installed, and am certainly interested in compiling an Xcode project (though only if it can co-exist with the 'official' project, which it should, though?).

The co-existence aspect is fine. I have several projects in my Xara LX directory, each of which is there to compile and debug the Xara LX code.

However, I am very against installing any "unix" libraries(?), like fink or darwinports, but if I understand things correctly, only the wxwidgets libraries are needed, so that is OK, I guess. (OS X is OS X, and should stay so, IMHO, I'm not interested in anything "unix"... yes, despite OS X being BSD at the core, but at least that isn't exposed to the user!)

Hmm. If you want to work on large or elaborate projects, particularly cross-platform projects such as Xara LX or Inkscape then you will almost certainly need the fink tools; installing libraries from fink or darwinports is simply a (convenient) alternative to compiling and installing them yourself. Possibly the Xara project will have to move away from fink as we are hearing that the fink libraries will not be Universal Binary, and that Xara LX needs Universal Binary libraries (I am not personally certain of the absolute truth of either of those statements, but that looks the way to bet). It may be that darwinports is a better way to go, but I have no evidence to support that. It is possible that we could ask the wxWidgets folk to publish libraries and headers corresponding to the required PNG, JPEG and XML calls - this makes a lot of sense, but I haven't looked into it. I may have mentioned that the MacOS coregraphics has the PNG and JPEG support that we need, but I can't seem to find the headers. It seems that Apple provides XML calls that are just a bit too old for us. A little bit of research into these questions could be of great help to all of us.

Guess I'm either your ideal tester, or the one you absolutely don't want, since I expect everything on OS X to "just work" and will report every little thing that doesn't.

(I have studied four years of computer science, btw, but only dealt with Visual Studio. I've only used OS X for about three months, but I have compiled universal binaries for some applications, but I am in no way really familiar with Xcode.)

Very much so. The more testy the tester the better the product! And my 'product' is a schema for people to get up speed compiling Xara LX.

When you say Visual Studio, do you mean (only) Visual Basic? Cocoa is rather different: See Alternatives to Hypercard, or any other good match for a Google search on Cocoa and Hypercard; whilst XCode and Cocoa are significantly - by a factor of several times - harder than Hypercard, the results are several orders of magnitude better and more appealing; and if you have the desire and the time to devote to it, take a look at the Cocoa Devwiki and see how you get on. See also the reasons why some people are choosing to use only apps that they have (or could have) compiled themselves.

[eobet]

By following the instructions on the Mac OS build page, an experienced (or merely enthusiastic) dev can produce a working Mac Xara LX in about two half-days of work.

Ah, forgive me, because I haven't coded in a long time, my terminology was a bit off. "Compiling" was a very bad choice of words. "Build", I think is more appropriate. If it takes a day to set up an environment for the Xcode project in order to make it build completely, that is bad news for me. The other OS X projects and sources I downloaded so far (just a few small apps) required only a different setting here and there in the project menu to turn them into Universal Binaries, and then a line or two to get rid of warnings. Admittedly, they were pure Cocoa or Carbon applications.

So, my original view of simply downloading an Xcode project and pressing build and voilà, has turned out to be very ignorant and very naive.

Though the Visual Studio application I have experience with was actually called Visual C++ back then, I still never had to dig around the command prompt (terminal) in order to build any of my projects or get them working (despite some of them actually being SDL or OpenGL projects).

So, I am sorry to say that at the moment, I do not have the time to do what getting Xara LX to build on my machine requires and as long as I need to install additional things into my system, without having proper uninstallation instructions (or information on where the files get placed and what they affect), I feel that I do not wish to go through with it either.

When LX can be contained inside an Xcode project without the need to download and install anything extra through the terminal (perhaps with the exception of SVN), I will be happy to become involved though! But perhaps that is still a naive goal which will never happen.

I am sorry for having wasted your time or getting your hopes up!

PS. At least I am glad that the result is a nice behaving application which installs by dragging it to the application folder (without the need for anything else) and uninstalls by dragging it to the trash (without the need for anything else), just the way it should be in OS X!

[BPFowler]

These are excellent points, but permit me to tie up a few loose ends

Ah, forgive me, because I haven't coded in a long time, my terminology was a bit off. "Compiling" was a very bad choice of words. "Build", I think is more appropriate. If it takes a day to set up an environment for the Xcode project in order to make it build completely, that is bad news for me.

It doesn't. The duration I gave was for a leisurely romp through the command line methods. I don't want to mislead people, so even if I state (correctly), that if you are much faster than I, or better prepared, you might do it one half-day, even if I add that most of the wall time would be spent waiting for hundreds of files to be compiled, I would be teasing if I suggested that an average dev could get this up and running in much less a day.

It is to be hoped that XCode project will be provided or will emerge that will build your own personal Xara LX in the time it takes the CPU to do the compilation + say 10 minutes 'make ready' of your time. That is about what it takes on Debian or on Gentoo.

So, my original view of simply downloading an Xcode project and pressing build and voilà, has turned out to be very ignorant and very naive.

For the avoidance of doubt, that is what we are working on. I have an XCode project which I could mail to you, and you can see for yourself how far from this goal we are. I don't doubt that we will achieve this, and what we are talking about is whether you want to be part of the Advance Guard. If not, I hope that you don't mind my trying to recruit a few foot soldiers by posting in your thread!

So, I am sorry to say that at the moment, I do not have the time to do what getting Xara LX to build on my machine requires and as long as I need to install additional things into my system, without having proper uninstallation instructions (or information on where the files get placed and what they affect), I feel that I do not wish to go through with it either.

That's right. This is mentioned on the instructions page. There are a handful of things needed, some of which will need to be installed, that might indeed affect other development work, but as you pointed out about BSD, all totally separate (or at worst hidden from) your everyday work.

Ben