Do you want to contact them, or gather more information about them? QuickWho can help you with these tasks. QuickWho is shareware. The download is a 30-day demo; you can purchase a license to use the program past the 30-day trial period. Mac OS X Lion is the minimum supported platform. QuickWho is a universal binary and licenses cost $24.99. Quick is a behavior-driven development framework for Swift and Objective-C. Inspired by RSpec, Specta, and Ginkgo. // Swift import Quick import Nimble class TableOfContentsSpec: QuickSpec override func spec describe ( 'the 'Documentation' directory') it ( 'has everything you need to get started') let sections = Directory. Quickwho 5 1 0 Textsoap 8 5 Photo Plus Image Editor 1 1 Iexplorer 3 6 0 0 Download Free Macbook Pro Retina Hard Disk Upgrade Exactscan Pro 20 1 24 Download Free Apple Fortnite Controller Anamorphic Pro 2 0 – Professional Lens Blur Tool Replacement Bettertouchtool 2 291 – Customize Multi Touch Trackpad Gestures. I've released version 6.1 of QuickWho, my whois client for macOS and Windows. This release includes UI enhancements and a transition to a more secure update mechanism. As with my other apps, updates are free to registered users. Sun, 29 Jan 2017. PortAuthority 7.5, Manpower 6.4. Tried using Quickwho 3.3.0 on an Intel iMac with OS X 10.6.8. However, the application crashes immediately on startup (even though it is located directly in the application folder) with the not very descriptive message 'QuickWho Error'.

Released: 2009 October 1 (Announcement)

Version 5.2.0 has been superseded by the latest version of the Unicode Standard.
Version 5.2.0 of the Unicode Standard consists of the core specification (The Unicode Standard, Version 5.2), together with the delta and archival code charts for this version, the 5.2.0 Unicode Standard Annexes, and the 5.2.0 Unicode Character Database (UCD).
The core specification gives the general principles, requirements for conformance, and guidelines for implementers. The code charts show representative glyphs for all the Unicode characters. The Unicode Standard Annexes supply detailed normative information about particular aspects of the standard. The Unicode Character Database supplies normative and informative data for implementers to allow them to implement the Unicode Standard.
Version 5.2.0 of the Unicode Standard should be referenced as:
The Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Standard, Version 5.2.0,defined by: The Unicode Standard, Version 5.2 (Mountain View, CA: The Unicode Consortium, 2009. ISBN 978-1-936213-00-9). (http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/)
A complete specification of the contributory files for Unicode 5.2.0 is found on the page Components for 5.2.0. That page also provides the recommended reference format for Unicode Standard Annexes.

Contents of This Document

A. Online Edition
B. Overview
C. Stability Policy Update
D. Character Additions
E. Conformance Changes
F. Unicode Character Database Changes
G. Unicode Standard Annex Changes

A. Online Edition

The text of The Unicode Standard, Version 5.2, as well as the delta and archival code charts, is available via the navigation links on this page. The charts and the Unicode Standard Annexes may be printed, while the other files may be viewed but not printed. The Unicode 5.2 Web Bookmarks page has links to all sections of the online text. A zipped version of the core specification (10 MB) is also available for download.
This page summarizes important changes to the standard from Unicode 5.1.0. The core specification and the Unicode Standard Annexes are not delta documents; they incorporate all of the textual changes for their updates for Version 5.2.0.

B. Overview

The Unicode Standard, Version 5.2, adds 6,648 characters and significantly improves the documentation of conformance requirements for the specification of normalization forms, canonical ordering, and the status of types of properties. Version 5.2 brings improved clarity of presentation in many Unicode Standard Annexes.
Seven new contemporary scripts have been added in Version 5.2: Bamum, Javanese, Lisu, Meetei Mayek, Samaritan, Tai Tham, and Tai Viet. New character additions to existing scripts now provide greater support for Abkhaz, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Coptic, Devanagari, Khamti Shan, Malayalam, and Myanmar. Of particular note are Devanagari additions in support of Vedic Sanskrit. Encoding Vedic is significant because Sanskrit is one of the principal languages for the religious heritage of India, and because Vedic represents the earliest attested phase of the language.
The seven contemporary scripts and newly encoded individual characters expand support of language and orthographic communities in Africa, India, China, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
Other character additions include important modern use symbols and historic characters. With Unicode Version 5.2, scholars will now have access to the Gardiner set of Egyptian Hieroglyphs as well as other important historic scripts: Imperial Aramaic, Avestan, Kaithi, Old South Arabian, and Old Turkic. Several key symbol sets were added or expanded: the ARIB set of Japanese broadcasting symbols, additional number forms used in India, and currency symbols.
This latest version of the Unicode Standard has exactly the same character assignments as ISO/IEC 10646:2003 plus Amendments 1 through 6.
Unicode Version 5.2:
  • Updates stability policies to add property value stability guarantees for identifier-related properties, a guarantee of property, property alias and property value alias stability, and a policy on alias uniqueness.
  • Incorporates into Chapter 3, Conformance the formal definitions of normalization formerly presented in Unicode Standard Annex #15, 'Unicode Normalization Forms.' Sections that were modified include sections 3.6 and 3.11.
  • Revises Section 3.5, Properties to better explain the status of Normative, Informative, Provisional, and Contributory properties.
  • Clarifies the definition of Deprecated and its relationship to ”strongly discouraged,” and updates the set of Deprecated characters in view of this clearer definition.
  • Updates best practices for the use of replacement characters.
  • Improves the description of compatibility characters in Chapter 2, General Structure.
  • Adds standardized named sequences for Tamil.
  • Contains significant changes to properties and behavioral specifications.

Errata

Errata incorporated into Unicode 5.2.0 are listed by date in a separate table. For corrigenda and errata after the release of Unicode 5.2.0, see the list of current Updates and Errata.

C. Stability Policy Update

The Unicode Character Encoding Stability Policy has been updated. This update strengthens normalization stability, adds stability policy for case pairs, and extends constraints on property values. For the current statement of these policies, see Unicode Character Encoding Stability Policy.

D. Character Additions

6,648 new character assignments were made to the Unicode Standard, Version 5.2.0 (over and above what was in Unicode 5.1.0). The character repertoire corresponds to ISO/IEC 10646:2003 plus Amendments 1 through 6.
The exact list of characters added for Version 5.2.0 is documented in the file DerivedAge.txt in the Unicode Character Database. Among the characters added, there are a few notable cases which may impact existing implementations.These cases are highlighted here, so that implementers can check for any problematical assumptions in their code.
  • There are three new characters in the newly-encoded Kaithi script that will require changes in implementations which make hard-coded assumptions about composition during normalization. Most new characters added to the standard with decompositions cannot be generated by the operations toNFC() or toNFKC(), but these three can. Implementers should check their code carefully to ensure that it handles these three characters correctly.
    • U+1109A KAITHI LETTER DDDHA
    • U+1109C KAITHI LETTER RHA
    • U+110AB KAITHI LETTER VA
  • One of the compatibility CJK ideographs added in this version has a decomposition mapping to a unified CJK ideograph in Extension B. The effect of this is that for the first time a character in the BMP normalizes to a character not in the BMP:
    toNFC(U+FA6C) = U+242EE
    Implementers should check their implementations of normalization to ensure they are not assuming that no BMP character can normalize to a non-BMP character.
  • Any hard-coded range assumptions about Unified CJK Ideographs in implementations may need fixing, because the end range for those has changed from U+9FC3 to U+9FCB in this version. There is also an entirely new block of CJK Unified Ideographs: CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C (U+2A700.U+2B73F), with characters encoded in the range U+2A700 to U+2B734.
  • There is now an assigned Hangul jamo character at U+11A7. This may interfere with some implementations' boundary testing for Hangul decomposition.
  • There are a number of new Hangul jamo characters added for support of Old Korean. Some of these are encoded in new blocks. An implementation may run into trouble if it assumes that the repertoire of conjoining jamos is fixed, or that all conjoining jamos occur only in the Hangul Jamo block, U+1100.U+11FF.
  • New uppercase parenthesized symbols have been added. Unlike the circled letter symbols, there are no uppercase/lowercase relationships for these new characters.

Character Assignment Overview

The new character additions were to both the BMP and the SMP (Plane 1). The following table shows the allocation of code points in Unicode 5.2.0. For more information on the specific characters, see the file DerivedAge.txt in the Unicode Character Database. For more details of character counts, see Appendix D, Changes from Previous Versions in Unicode 5.2.
Graphic 107,154
Format 142
Control65
Private Use137,468
Surrogate2,048
Noncharacter66
Reserved 867,169

E. Conformance Changes

There are several changes to conformance requirements in Unicode 5.2 that impact implementations. The most important of these are noted specifically here.
  • The formal definitions of normalization formerly presented in Unicode Standard Annex #15, 'Unicode Normalization Forms,' have been moved to Chapter 3, Conformance.
  • A key conformance clause on the modification of character sequences, C7, has been tightened to eliminate security risks resulting from deletion of noncharacters from uninterpreted text strings. In Unicode 5.2, the conformance requirements now disallow their removal, except where strings are explicitly being modified.
  • The status of Normative, Informative, Provisional, and Contributory properties is clarified in Section 3.5 Properties.
  • The types of code points are clarified in Chapters 2, 3, and 4, with coordinated updates in Unicode Standard Annex #44, 'Unicode Character Database.'
  • The PropertyAliases.txt file in the Unicode Character Database is now designated as the normative listing of Unicode character properties and their names.
  • The BidiTest.txt file in the Unicode Character Database is a new feature in Unicode 5.2. This file contains test cases for assessing conformance to the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm.
  • There are additional changes in Unicode conformance requirements due to changes in the UCD data files and the Unicode Standard Annexes listed below.

F. Unicode Character Database Changes

The detailed listing of all changes to the contributory data files of the Unicode Character Database for Version 5.2.0 can be found in UAX #44, Unicode Character Database. The most significant changes include:
  • There are new case-related properties in DerivedCoreProperties.txt and DerivedNormalizationProps.txt. The new case-related derived properties are NFKC_Casefold, Case_Ignorable, Cased, Changes_When_Lowercased, Changes_When_Uppercased, Changes_When_Titlecased, Changes_When_Casemapped, Changes_When_Casefolded, and Changes_When_NFKC_Casefolded.
  • Contributory is considered to be a distinct status for a Unicode character property. Contributory properties are neither normative nor informative. The status of all character properties is listed in the property table in UAX #44, Unicode Character Database.
  • Two new joining groups, FARSI YEH and NYA, were added. These new joining groups may require an update to implementations of Arabic shaping rules.
  • There is a new data file in the Unicode Character Database, CJKRadicals.txt, which maps the radical numbers used in the Unicode Radical-Stroke Index to the actual Unicode code points for the corresponding radicals. Unlike other files, the first field is not a code point number.
  • The Unihan.txt file in Unihan.zip is split into 8 separate files within the zip file, organized by category. See UAX #38, Unicode Han Database (Unihan) for details.

G. Unicode Standard Annex Changes

In Version 5.2, many of the Unicode Standard Annexes have had significant revisions. The most important of these changes are listed below. For the full details of all changes, see the Modifications section of each UAX, linked directly from the following list of UAXes.
  • UAX #9: Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm
    • Added Section 4.4 Bidi Conformance Testing
    • Added BN to Rule X6 (removing certain characters)
    • Clarified examples in Rule N1 (affecting characters next to EN or AN characters)
    • Added to HL6 the clause: Those with a resolved directionality of L and whose bidi class is R or AL.
  • UAX #11: East Asian Width
    • Updated the description of the property value for unassigned code points
  • UAX #14: Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm
    • Added class CP, reintroduced rule LB30, adjusted other rules for class CP.
    • In section 5.1, clarified that the lists of characters for each property contain representative characters, and are not necessarily complete.
    • Unassigned code points in CJK regions default to class ID.
  • UAX #15: Unicode Normalization Forms
    • Moved formal specification of NFC and NFKC into Chapter 3.
    • Added general introduction to the document itself.
  • UAX #24: Unicode Script Property
    • Updated short alias for Inherited from Qaai to Zinh.
    • Rewrote Section 3. Added a new subsection 3.4, to clarify the distinction between script designators and script property value aliases, their respective matching rules, and the use of underscores. Added a new subsection 3.5 to clarify ambiguity in the term script name.
  • UAX #29: Unicode Text Segmentation
    • Added characters that may be tailored to be in MidLetter.
    • Added section 4.2 Name Validation
    • Revised 6.3 Regular Expressions
    • Changed property of ZWSP to XX (Any) in 4.1 Default Word Boundary Specification
  • UAX #31: Unicode Identifier and Pattern Syntax
    • Updated the table, Candidate Characters for Inclusion in Identifiers.Updated the placement of various scripts in the two tables, Candidate Characters for Exclusion from Identifiers and Recommended Scripts [for Identifiers], and marked some of the recommended scripts as limited use. Added pointer to CLDR for information about scripts in limited use.
    • Added the following to Candidate Characters for Inclusion in Identifiers: U+0F0B ( ་ ) TIBETAN MARK INTERSYLLABIC TSHEG and U+30FB ( ・ ) KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT.
    • Added the following to Candidate Characters for Exclusion from Identifiers or Recommended Scripts: Default Ignorable Code Points, Tatweel (-like) characters, and scripts Old Turkic, Old South Arabian, Imperial Aramaic, Inscriptional Parthian, Inscriptional Pahlavi, Avestan, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Samaritan, Kaithi, Lisu, Meetei Mayek, Tai Tham, Tai Viet, Javanese, Bamum.
  • UAX #38: Unicode Han Database (Unihan)
    • Reclassified kDefinition, kHanyuPinlu, and kXHC1983 fields as Readings.
    • Documented revised structure of Unihan.zip.
    • Updated regular expressions of tags.
  • UAX #42: Unicode Character Database in XML
    • Added attributes for new properties and values.
    • Changed types of certain elements.
    • Updated the patterns for Unihan properties.
  • UAX #44: Unicode Character Database
    • Completely reorganized and rewritten, to include all the content from the obsoleted UCD.html.
    • Extensive new content added to account for all property changes and additions for Unicode 5.2.
    • Further clarifications were added regarding character properties, including the definition and contents of the Deprecated property, the nature of Contributory properties, the description of numeric properties, format issues for the Unihan database, constraints on property changes between releases, the description and exact values of defaults for property values, and many others.

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Fri, 29 Dec 2017
TextSweep 4.0
I've released version 4.0 of TextSweep, my search-and-replace tool for macOS and Windows.
The big feature in this release is a new scripting interface, for both Mac and Windows. The scripting interface makes it possible to drive TextSweep from other programs. While the specific nature of TextSweep does not require it to return data to other programs, it can still be called as a helper tool from other applications that need search and replace functionality.
As with my other apps, Mac scripting support is offered for AppleScript through my aem library. For Windows, after looking at several different API's for inter-application communication, I chose Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE).
The selection of DDE is not a common one these days, so I wanted to offer a bit of explanation. Like Apple Events on macOS (the underlying mechanism for AppleScript) and the Component Object Model (COM) on Windows, DDE provides a mechanism for communicating data and executing code across applications. DDE is a very old technology on Windows, dating back to Windows 2.0, and is relatively simple compared to the much more powerful COM. In this case, however, simplicity is a virtue--DDE is easy to implement, is supported natively on Windows by Tcl, and can be exposed without issue from other programming languages that incorporate a Tcl/Tk GUI. An excellent extension library, TWAPI, supports COM and greatly simplifies the process of setting up a COM interface--but it is still overkill for my needs.
As always, TextSweep is a free upgrade for registered users.

[/software] permanent link

Thu, 14 Dec 2017
Tk-Cocoa 2.5
Nearly three years ago I announced a significant overhaul of Tk on the Mac that amounted to a redesign of major portions of the GUI library. The changes were intended to address flaws that had emerged in the initial, whole-cloth migration of Tk from the Carbon to the Cocoa API by Daniel Steffen. At the time I envisioned that this overhaul would put Tk on sound, stable footing going forward, and would require only routine maintenance and the occasional feature enhancement.
Ah, the best-laid plans of developers. Tk on the Mac in fact was NOT in a complete place, and later that summer, Marc Culler, who contributed many of the critical patches for Tk-Cocoa 2.0, and I did some additional major refinements. At that point Marc's contributions were so substantial that he essentially became the co-maintainer of Tk on the Mac, and I added his name to the author list.
Over the past six months, we have gone through an additional heavy round of development on Tk, to the point where I consider this yet another major iteration of the toolkit and not just an incremental set of updates. Should this round be called, informally at least, Tk-Cocoa 2.5? I think so.
This round of development was led by Christian Gollwitzer, who implemented some long-broken functionality in file dialogs; Marc Culler, who fixed some major crashing bugs on macOS 10.13 and implemented several major, low-level improvements to drawing and image code; and Francois Vogel, who worked closely with Marc on the drawing code specifically with the text widget and who has undertaken an ongoing cleanup of the Tk test suite on macOS.
Here's a quick overview:
  • Cleanup of clipping regions in drawing code fixes many subtle, low-level drawing bugs especially with embedded windows and in text widget (Culler and Vogel). Marc dove into some very subtle, long-standing bugs with widget rendering in specific contexts--especially with embedded windows and the text widget. Francois assisted with these changes as well as providing guidance on applying them to the text widget, one of Tk's most complex components internally. Francois has also worked at integrating these changes, and fixing other issues, in Tk's test suite.
  • Cleanup, enhancement, and re-organizing of image rendering code to make it easier to develop with (Culler). Marc re-factored Tk's native image-rendering code on the Mac into a separate file to make it simpler to understand and work with (previously it had been in the drawing code). This work also led to the fixing of several bugs related to image rendering especially with transparency.
  • Implementation of wm_iconphoto command to allow setting of custom icons (Walzer). I implemented this command, with assistance from Marc's work on the image code.
  • Overhaul of app initialization code to make it easier to manage (Culler). Marc re-worked Tk's app startup code to conform to Cocoa conventions.
  • Cleanup and simplification of memory management to improve stability (Culler). The episode that triggered this entire round of development was Tk suddenly crashing on macOS 10.13. I'm not sure what caused this to occur when Tk ran stably on older versions, but Marc, who had updated most of the memory management code over the past couple of years, was able to streamline it a bit to avoid crashes.
  • Overhaul of file dialogs on macOS (Gollwitzer). Christian put together a significant update of the file dialog code to provide better filtering of file options and to take full advantage of dialog customization on macOS.
  • Detailed documentation of macOS-specific API design (expose events, clipping regions, HITheme, etc.) in the 'Readme' file. (Culler). Marc put together detailed documentation on the design approach to Tk, especially with the recent changes. This documentation will help future developers understand the design of Tk. It formalized many things I understood intuitively, and also made clear portions of the API that eluded me.
    • While I did most of the early heavy lifting on updating Tk-Cocoa and was later joined by Marc, in this round I contributed far less code. Marc has done most of the substantial work, with Christian making a major contribution with the file dialogs, and Francois has provided ongoing consulting on integrating these changes into other aspects of Tk. It's great to have more developers working on Tk on the Mac these days; it has allowed us to make infinitely faster progress on fixing bugs. It also adds far more expertise to specific problems; Marc and Francois have expertise in certain areas that I've never been able to master, and Christian's work would have taken me some time to equal. I'm grateful for their efforts.
    Right now this work can be downloaded from the core-8-6-branch of Tk at its core development site, and it will soon make its way into the next stable point release. Keep an eye out for it, and give it a try.

    [/software] permanent link

    Mon, 04 Dec 2017
    PortAuthority 7.8, Manpower 6.6
    I've released updates of PortAuthority and Manpower. Both apps feature under-the-hood enhancements thatresult in a smoother, more refined UI. They are free updates for registered users.

    [/software] permanent link

    Sun, 15 Oct 2017
    PortAuthority 7.7
    I've released verison 7.7 of PortAuthority,my GUI for the MacPorts software managementsystem for macOS. This release is primarily for stability and refinement on 10.13/High Sierra, which is now the minimum supported OS version. User reportsand developer observation of crashes in PortAuthority led to a great deal of bugfixing work in the underlying Tcl/Tk libraries, which is now complete.
    As always, this release is free to registered users, and I encourage allusers of MacPorts to give it a try. PortAuthority is the oldest, longest-developed GUI for MacPorts.If you want to look at the source code, it is available from https://fossil.codebykevin.com/fossil.cgi/portauthority/timeline under the MIT license.

    [/software] permanent link Download audio editor for windows 7.

    Sat, 23 Sep 2017
    Stringscan 1.1
    I've released version 1.1 of Stringscan, my text search tool for Mac and Windows. This release includes a number of UI enhancements to make using it more intuitive and simple. As always, updates are free to registered users.

    [/software] permanent link

    Tue, 11 Jul 2017
    Stringscan 1.0
    I'm pleased to announce the release of Stringscan 1.0, a text search tool for Mac and Windows. Stringscan offers functionality similar to the Unix 'grep' command: it recursively searches files in a directory for a string of text. I wrote it because I wanted a GUI tool that could do more than just retrieve a list of files; Stringscan currently lists files and displays their content in the main window, and eventually I plan to enhance its functionality further.
    Stringscan also interesting because it is written in the Ruby programming language. Like my other applications, its UI is based on Tk, but Ruby is somewhat different than the other programming languages I've worked with; it combines the terseness and power of with a cleaner style that is closer to Python. Ruby was once considered a language of great promise for desktop application development, but seems to have lost momentum in that domain in favor of web development. Nonetheless, Ruby is quite useful on the desktop; its standard library and 'gem' extension packages provided all the tools I needed to implement a file and text search function.
    Regarding deployment, the Mac version of Stringscan was built using ruby2app, the tool I developed a couple of years ago to bundle a standalone Ruby-Tk application on macOS. The Windows version is deployed in a manner similar to my other Windows applications, with a C executable linked to the Ruby libraries.
    Stringscan is priced at $29.99 and, as always, upgrades will be free to registered users for life. I encourage you to give it a try if you want a richer tool for searching for text in a directory.
    Download

    [/software] permanent link

    Tue, 25 Apr 2017
    Additional app updates
    I've posted updates to all my apps, fixing UI and security bugs on macOS and fixing a security issue on Windows. As always, upgrades are free to registered users.

    [/software] permanent link

    Sat, 25 Mar 2017
    TextSweep 3.1
    Quickwho 5 1 0
    I've released version 3.1 of TextSweep, my search and replace tool for OS X and Windows. As with my otherrecent releases, this version increases security on app updates and includesminor UI refinements. As always, updates are free to registered users.

    [/software] permanent link

    Fri, 03 Mar 2017
    QuickWho 6.1
    I've released version 6.1 of QuickWho, my whois client for macOS and Windows. This release includesUI enhancements and a transition to a more secure update mechanism. As with my other apps, updates are free to registered users.

    [/software] permanent link

    Quickwho 5 1 000

    Sun, 29 Jan 2017
    PortAuthority 7.5, Manpower 6.4
    I've released version 7.5 of PortAuthority, my GUI for MacPorts, and version 6.4 of Manpower, myman page viewer, both for OS X.
    These releases focus on minor UI updates and the major upgrades to theapplication update mechanism, switching to a more secure download method.

    Quickwho 5 1 0 Free

    Both releases are free to registered users, and $29,95 to new users.

    [/software] permanent linkTue, 17 Jan 2017

    FileMorph 2.8
    I've released version 2.8 of FileMorph,my file modification app for OS X and Windows. As prevously discussed, the main feature of this release is the new app update mechanismI am introducing.
    As with all my apps, this version is a free update for registered users.

    [/software] permanent linkSun, 15 Jan 2017

    Changes in app update mechanism
    I'm working on a round of application updates that are focused on (yet another) re-work of their application update mechanism.
    This change has been driven by three factors: the recent upgrade of my websites to support encryption via Let's Encrypt; changes in Apple's API's in macOS Sierra to require encryption in web connections, and in how app updates can be installed on the system through a mechanism called App Translocation; and a desire to simplify the code of my app updates mechanism.
    Let me address each of these in turn.
    Encryption: This one is pretty easy. It just requires the addition of a Tcl library, TLS, to support encrypted web traffic. In addition to including the library, it requires a few lines of Tcl code, and then everything Just Works.
    Apple's API's. The encryption part is simple, as discussed above. The 'app translocation' API has taken me a bit more time to figure out and test; the only file format that Apple will allow to avoid app translocation (in the name of system security) is a signed disk image, or DMG. Zip files, tar files, and other formats don't get that benefit. (In app translocation, an affect application is copied to a hidden read-only format and then launched, to avoid injection of malicious code in the process; it also means the app cannot be updated or otherwise modified while it is running, which makes updates that Mac users expect impossible.) Using signed disk images instead of zip or tar formats is simple enough, and I've gotten it working after some trial and error.
    Dissatisfaction with my code. For years I've tried to emulate the popular Sparkle app update mechanism in my apps. First I tried a basic imitation; then I tried to actually integrate Sparkle into my work; then I tried to use many of Sparkle's mechanisms under the hood and layer my own implementation on top of it; and, now, I'm back to doing a basic imitation. The reason for this is that I've never been able to cleanly integrate Sparkle itself into my work; it integrates perfectly with applications written in Objective-C, but I've never been able to figure out how to call it directly from Tcl, even if there is a C layer between. Later I used Sparkle's XML 'appcast' mechanism under the hood, but this added a lot of complexity; Tcl's XML-parsing libraries don't play well with other scripting languages, which meant that I had to write additional code to parse the appcast if the application was written in, say, Perl. Additionally, my Tk-based knockoff of Sparkle's UI was just plain ugly.
    So I'm back to a basic Tcl implementation that more or less follows Sparkle's example, using the following steps:
    1. Application pings my server to check an app version. In my case this is a simple Tcl file with one line of code: the new app version.
    2. App compares the new app version with the installed app version. If it's the same, it presents a native dialog stating so. If there's a new version, it downloads a list of changes from the server stored in a separate Tcl file.
    3. If the version is new, it asks the user if they want to install the new version. If the answer is no, the update exits. If the answer is yes, the app downloads the new version in a DMG file, mounts the DMG file, and informs the user the new version is ready for installation.
    4. When the user begins installing the new version, the running app moves itself to the trash, copies the new version of the app to the install location, launches the new app, and exits.
    This format works pretty identically to Sparkle, at least in its basic moves; it's much simpler to maintain; and it will be portable to another platform, specifically Windows, whereas Sparkle is Mac only. Some Windows-specific code will be necessary to accommodate the differences in Mac and Windows installers, but apart from that, it will be identical.
    I'll begin rolling this new update mechanism out in my apps in the near future.

    [/software] permanent link

    Quickwho 5 1 0 Manual