Cocoalicious Honor Roll
I wanted to wait until I was actually ready for a release to do another post about Cocoalicious progress, but right now I’m at home waiting for Ikea minions to come retrieve the load of crap they brought me a few weeks ago, and I have so little time to post these days, so I suppose there’s no time like the present. I’m also kind of eager to talk about the project, because I’m very pleased with the way things have been going.
In the month or so since Cocoalicious has been on SourceForge, the project has had what is (to me) a surprising amount of interest. Because of this, Cocoalicious has come a relatively long way in a short time. In particular, I’d like to publicly recognize the following contributors:
- David Schaefgen really dove in and contributed what is probably one of my favorite features: the ability to post the current page in Safari. He also finally gave users a way to see their extended text in a way that I hadn’t though of: through tooltips (based on Marc Northrop’s feature request). And, finally, he completed his hat trick by implementing an oft-requested feature that I like to call “tagging by dragging.”
- Mark Eichin submitted a clever patch that makes “New Post from Safari” even cooler: he modified the feature’s AppleScript implementation to grab the current page’s selected text for use as the new post’s extended text. I had told Mark I didn’t think this was possible, but he proved me wrong (by using Safari’s “do JavaScript” AppleScript command to call the JavaScript “getSelection()” function).
- Armin Briegel surprised me completely by implementing AppleScript support. Adding scripting to an app is a task I’ve always found trying, but Armin pulled it off in style: not only did he submit his implementation in the new(-ish) but somewhat lightly documented sdef format, he also factored all of the Objective-C code he needed to create away from the rest of the app by using categories.
- Probably the all time most requested feature for Cocoalicious is the ability to hide the web preview pane, and, admittedly, it’s one I’ve been too slow to implement. Fortunately, a discussion with co-worker (and HyperEdit creator) Jonathan Deutsch finally convinced me to bite the bullet and get it done, and the change is in the current CVS version. There are a few things my implementation doesn’t do, though, (like allow the pane to be collapsed by dragging) and for that, there’s Colin Mattson’s patch. It should probably be integrated this weekend.
All of this work (and more—including a Safari-style toolbar I’ve been working on) is in the current CVS version if anyone feels like checking it out. I’ll also probably be doing a release very soon for the non-SourceForge set. In the meantime, a hearty round of applause for our generous contributors, and for the very concept of open source software!