Entries Tagged 'Mac OS X Software' ↓

I’d always heard that building RMagick was supposed to be just this side of Hell. However, some intrepid soul (I’m sorry, I lost the original post), listed several steps for building RMagick. I put these steps together into a single bash script that downloaded everything that I needed and built RMagick with only a few complaints and what seems to be a working final product. Just beware that the script is nothing fancy, i.e., it is hard-coded to what I believe are the current versions of the RMagick dependencies.

Follow the link for the script.

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O, happy day! One of the WxRuby devs (Alex Fenton) was kind enough to track down the memory leak. I understand that the fix should be released with the 0.40 verison in the next few days!

Prior to hearing word back from Alex, I had rewritten the entire UI in Ruby/Tk. I have to say, it was amazingly simple. IO went from knowing nothing about Ruby/Tk to having a complete Tk GUI in just a few hours. However, sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a a method to access the “Metal” look and feel. For me, this is a huge plus for using WxRuby. Being able to turn off the window controls significantly simplifies the usability of the application.

I’ll post the code for both version of “SimpleSkype” after the coming 1.0 release — and a rebranding. I don’t want to infringe on Skype’s trademark as this can be detrimental to one’s sanity.

I also just discovered Rubyscript2exe which promises to greatly simplify the deployment of my app to OS X! And here I thoughtthat I was going to have to write one from scratch. Man, I love the free software community!

Since I discovered rubyosa, I’ve made it one of my side projects to improve the accessibility of my wife’s iMac. She loves to use Skype to video chat with her mother in Maryland and her brother in New York. However, the tiny buttons in Skype cause the UI to be problematic for her.

What to do?

I planned (and still do) to write a simple UI for Skype with larger buttons and fonts. However, in order to do so, I needed an interface that would allow me to do more than merely send commands to Skype. Sadly, rubyosa falls down here.

But then I found rb-appscript or just appscript. Appscript seems to provide a more direct connection to the Applescript Event layer and it provides return values from Applescript unlike the current 0.4.0 version of rubyosa.

All said, I implemented a small subset of the Skype API as a gem. I’ve submitted it to RubyForge for addition as a project. Until then, I give you rb-skypemac-0.1.0.

I have yet to decide if I will take this gem further. If it proves adequate for my needs, I may just move on to my next project: a more feature complete version of rb-itunes than what has been submitted to RubyForge.

[Get it here: rb-skypemac]

The more that I use TextMate, the more that I love it. While it has yet to reach the same level of utility for me as Quicksilver (the single best free application available for the Mac bar none), I already use it for all of my Ruby editing (although that may change with the addition of Ruby introspection to NetBeans). But now, it turns out, that TextMate includes a Blogging “bundle” that almost provides the same features of MarsEdit–itself a $29.95 purchase. While TextMate isn’t free, that it handily provides so many features out of the box simply adds to its value.
If you’re a Mac user and a coder, it is well worth the expense.