Mathieu Tozer's Dev Blog

Yesterday I had some beers at St Arnou in the city. We chatted about
software, computers, RSS feeds. Nerdy stuff in general really. He
said he liked my Words idea and wondered if I might be interested in
doing it under Plasq. I was surprised but pleased! He also said to
ask about any UI stuff or anything really. Thanks Cris!

Oh and I got a mighty mouse too.

Does this warrant a whole decimal incement in version number? Whatever. I've got a drawer! Thank's Cocoa Recipes for the help with working this one out. Again it's actually pretty simple.

Feeling more confident with bindings, and with UI autosizing.

I have also just finished watching the Drunken Blog organised independant Mac Developer confrence held in Chicago. Insightful and interesting, and very motivating.

Basic, but it only really took an hour or so. That's China's Three Gorges Dam project in the background.
It uses this stripped down, single- entitiy Core Data Model.

Baby steps, baby steps...

Some critical notes.
1. The 'extra' information, 'definition', 'example' etc should be in a drawer on the side. Or even to the side in the same window to make room for a larger list of words.
2. Brushed metal is probably not the best look to go with.
3. Searching for real examples through google and spotlight would be difficult to automate.
4. The border isn't needed really.
5. It's not really scalable for a large number of words.
6. All input is manual. No automation implemented yet.

On a higher note:
1. Spotlighting a word and looking for examples of words I have used was interesting. Great to see what gets mined out.
2. You can't see it here, but all the resizing and auto sizing of the elements when the window changes is pretty smooth, and was easy to do.

Improvements:
1. Remove the 'form border'
2. Put the Table flush up against the left and right of the window, and move the detailed stuff into a drawer (default right).
3. 'Add word' service in the services menu (and all the other featured really).

I have been meaning to get all my sketches and notes for all my
software and ideas scrap-booked into the one book. And I can't
believe I had not yet thought of doing the most obvious and geeky thing!

I took photos of each page, which meant that finally all the notes
that were scattered through at least 20 (if cute) paper notebooks
were looking at me from behind the screen ALL TOGETHER! There's 43
photos related to words. All that thinking and information, finally
released from it's paper fetters and presently zooming it's way
through the air and making itself available to the world!

I'm a bit excited.

I made a folder for the Words project, and put all 'pages' into it.
I'm now making my first ever upload to flickr, and I'm doing it
easily through iTunes too. Bravo!

I feel somehow lighter. Now that I can put all those notebooks in the
one place and just take them as I need them. Use them as a paper
store, for the odd times when I feel like using pen and paper to
design and think (sometimes it's better and more flexible). No need
to worry about now loosing it though in this book or that. As long as
I get a single snap of it, it's all going to end up being managable
and in the same place.

I still can't believe I didn't do it till now.

Ok, so I want to build a prototype. But exactly what is that going to
entail?
The idea is to give an idea of what the main functionality of the
software will be like. It doesn't have to be pretty, and it can have
some bugs.

Functioning:
1. iTunes like Manual and Smart Groups with a word library.
2. Addition of words through the services menu with a key stroke.
3. Look-up of words in a dictionary to add to library and recent
smart list.
4. Don't worry about multiple languages yet.
5. It all should be saved as it goes.
6. A minimised window of recent words.
7. An window (or drawer) to edit the finer details of a word.

That's it basically. That's all I want for the prototype.