pineapple news 0.8.4

[Allen Brunson]

lord love a duck. it took me almost a month to move all the strings out of
the program and into the strings file. according to the running tally of my
codebase, i added a little less than two thousand lines in that period.
normally i can write a lot more code than two thousand lines per month.
that's an indication of how tedious this was, and how often i had to stop and
web-browse to keep my mind from going numb.

http://www.platinumball.net/pineapple/news/macosx/

okay then, i want to see some localizations! i added a help topic that
explains the whole process in shocking detail. anybody who translates the
program into some other language gets a free paid registration in return.
come on michael, i know you're dreading this, but it will really help to
legitimize my program if it has localizations.

there's not a lot else in this version that's new, but there are a few minor
bug fixes and speed-ups, so everybody else should download it as well.

[Michael Koenig]

Post by Allen Brunson
lord love a duck.

Wouldn't that be sodomism? ;-)

Post by Allen Brunson
okay then, i want to see some localizations!

Uh-oh, now I'm screwed...

Post by Allen Brunson
i added a help topic that explains the whole process in shocking detail.

I gave it just a brief look, but one problem I noticed is your AM/PM stuff,
because in Germany we are more used to the 24-hour clock if it's digital.

Post by Allen Brunson
come on michael, i know you're dreading this, but it will really help to
legitimize my program if it has localizations.

Never underestimate the power of the dark side of translation, my Master! I
think your estimation of 10 hours is wishful thinking...

I guess I'm probably the most obvious one to tackle the German translation, so
I'll do it, but it'll take some time.

The reason why I have been silent for so long has been that I was ill and I'm
still not totally recovered. I have some problems with my right foot, so when
I come home from work I actually spend a lot of time on my bed reading, to
give my foot some rest. So it'll take some time until the translation will be
finished.

[Allen Brunson]

Post by Michael Koenig

Post by Allen Brunson
i added a help topic that explains the whole process in shocking detail.

I gave it just a brief look, but one problem I noticed is your AM/PM stuff,
because in Germany we are more used to the 24-hour clock if it's digital.

my scheme allows you to specify a date/time string that is in 24-hour time, if
you want. my new help topic outlines all the variables that can appear in the
format string. if you don't want am/pm, just don't include that variable.

Post by Michael Koenig
Never underestimate the power of the dark side of translation, my Master! I
think your estimation of 10 hours is wishful thinking...

i'd guess i spent around 30 hours writing the manual originally. it wasn't
nearly as hard as it could have been, because i was just editing the beos
version of the manual to make sense for macosx. it seemed to me that a third
of that time for translation was about right.

on the other hand, i know it's kind of unpleasant to work within other
people's time constraints. a couple of months ago, some guy on the mac
programmer groups said he wanted a spotlight indexer plug-in for wordperfect
documents. some programmer friend of his had told him that it would be "very
easy, only a few hours," so surely some programmer would be thrilled to do it
for him for next to nothing? yeah, i'm sure he got a whole ton of offers for
that. people breaking his door down, no doubt.

but i wasn't really going for absolute accuracy with that ten-hour estimate, i
just wanted to discourage drive-by day-trippers who aren't serious. for
example, some guy offered to do a french translation for me, but it turned out
his idea of "translation" means not doing the docs. he seemed dismissive that
i'd even suggest such a thing! feh. i couldn't very well write "go away,
amateurs," so putting a fairly high time estimate on the job was the next best
thing.

Post by Michael Koenig
The reason why I have been silent for so long has been that I was ill and
I'm still not totally recovered. I have some problems with my right foot,
so when I come home from work I actually spend a lot of time on my bed
reading, to give my foot some rest.

sorry about that! get better.

Post by Michael Koenig
So it'll take some time until the translation will be finished.

eh, it's no big hurry. it's still early days for macosx/pnews.

once i get filtering working, i'm going to have a more formal introduction.
i'm going to release a version that allows people to use all the premium
features for free, but it will expire in, say, three weeks. i'm hoping a lot
of newbies will find themselves hooked at the end of that period, and will
feel like buying a key.