I’ve started designing possible icons for Relationship Completer. I know an Address Book plug-in doesn’t exactly need an icon but I enjoy messing around with graphic design from time to time. Here are a few of the front runners:

At the moment they all look a little too back-and-white or bland for my taste. I’m sure I’ll come up with something I find suitable soon. Any comments would be appreciated.

For those of you who are interested, I used the open-source vector graphics editor Inkscape to create these icons. Although the UI is very clunky (and doesn’t fit well in Mac OS X) it is still a great tool for creating simple vector icons like these. I’ve never used any of the commercial editors out there so I have nothing to compare it with but it seems to fill my needs without any problems.

I spent a fair amount of time today trying to figure out how to add multi-langauge support to my Address Book plug-in Relationship Completer. This adventure was started when a few users requested a German version of the plug-in. After reading Apple’s documentation on the matter it seemed like a fairly easy task. My first try, however, didn’t work. Either did my second, third, or fourth.

I soon found myself turning to Google. Obviously someone has had the same problem as me. Indeed they have. I found this thread discussing the same problem I was having. The question that I needed the answer to was asked:

Does CFCopyLocalizedString(…) work with plugins or applications? Or doesn’t it matter?

I had been trying to force CFCopyLocalizedString to work in my plug-in all day. I tired everything I could think of. Luckily, someone answered with this:

Definitely with applications, but indeed you probably need to specify the bundle if you’re a plug-in. In that case I’d use something like the following:

#define CopyMyLocalizedString(key) \
CFBundleCopyLocalizedString(MyGetBundle(), (key), (key), NULL)

Ah-ha. I hadn’t thought of that. All the documentation I was reading from Apple was pertaining to applications. When you use CFCopyLocalizedString in an application things are as simple as I tried the first time. However, for plug-ins things get a little complicated. When my plug-in calls CFCopyLocalizedString it is doing so as its parent (Address Book). That means it is using Address Book’s bundle and my strings aren’t in Address Book’s bundle… they are in mine. Therefore I would have to use CFBundleCopyLocalizedString.

The solution however simply uses MyGetBundle() as a generic call to get the plug-in’s bundle. I still didn’t know how to do that. A few minutes of searching through Apple’s documentation and I finally had the complete answer. In order to get my plug-in’s bundle I had to call CFBundleGetBundleWithIdentifier, passing it in my plug-in’s identifier. An example call to get the translation of “Relationship Completer” can now be made like:

CFBundleCopyLocalizedString(CFBundleGetBundleWithIdentifier(CFSTR("com.tl.software.relationshipcompleter")), CFSTR("Relationship Completer"), CFSTR("Relationship Completer"), NULL);


Of course I put this in a nice tidy macro and I can now finish making Relationship Completer support multiple langauges. That being said: If anyone would like to help translate Relationship Completer (to any language) please leave a comment, I will get it touch with you and provide the list of strings that need translation. I am sure others will thank you for your effort.

Today my Buffalo LinkStation Pro ™ arrived. The first thing I did after opening up the box was install Debian on it. This was a pretty straightforward experience thanks to the guys at the LinkStationWiki. I followed the instructions here and didn’t have any problems at all.

I’m hoping this will make a nice, little, cheap (I got my 250 GB model for $170), and quiet version control and defect tracking server (among other things – it’s running linux afterall). A couple of years ago I ditched my linux desktop machine in favor of an iMac G5. I wouldn’t ever dream of switching back since the Mac is a dream but it is nice to have a linux machine at home again.

When my work’s CVS server went down earlier this week (due to a hardware failure) I quickly learned how dependent on CVS I really am. This is not a bad thing; in fact I think it’s a Good Thing ™. The server was down for less than 24 hours but I was definitely going through withdrawals.

I have officially added CVS (or whatever source control software I happen to be using) to my list of “things I can’t imagine living without”. This is an ever growing list which already contains: my car, my cell phone, my iPod, and my wife.

CVS related links:

• TortoiseCVS – my favorite Windows CVS client
• Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS – a good book on using and managing CVS
• Official CVS web page