Much more than crafting Ice Cream.
I got it to work… Well, I just used ASIHTTPRequest, an open sourced class to make http networking a bit more easier to use. Still, a lot needs to be done before it catches up to 1.0 version of MAL Client OS X.
I’m beginning to like Objective-C and Cocoa… Yes it’s a bit harder, but I can do alot more than what I could in RealBasic.
Anyways, if you want to track my progress, the git repo for the MAL Client OS X Rewrite can be seen at: http://github.com/chikorita157/MAL-Client-OS-X-Rewrite
Learning a new programing language takes time, especially when the programing language is based on C, the hardest language ever, but at least I had some knowledge and experience from Object Oriented Programing from Visual Basic/RealBasic… Trying to breeze through a few chapters tonight… The book I’m using by the way is “Programing in Objective-C 2.0” by Stephan G. Kochan.
Sooner or later, having a basic foundation of Objective C will make Cocoa programing a breeze.
As you heard, I have recently released MAL Client OS X 1.0.1 and even the final version just last month. I haven’t been doing much development on it since the whole program is rather functional and stable compared to iMAL, which makes MAL Client OS X a suitable replacement for iMAL, except the lack of Manga support and Scrobbling.
As I recalled on my blog, MAL Client OS X was written primarily in RealBasic. However, the project is becoming a bit more constrained and limitations arise. Sure, everything work and I tried my hardest to make it more Mac-like as I can, but in the end, a few things still aren’t what I wanted it to be. Another thing is that since MAL Client OS X is built from RealBasic, it is still using Carbon, which Apple is not seemingly want to support anymore. This is why I come to the decision that starting with 2.x, MAL Client OS X will be rewritten in Objective C and Cocoa.
Why would you do such a thing? Sure I have to learn the whole language (I have books on Objective C 2.0 and Cocoa), but in the long run, it will be worth it. With RealBasic, you are pretty much limited to what you are provided, but with Cocoa, you can call other frameworks to add functionality and MAL Client OS X can grow and become more like a Mac OS X application than it is currently. Also, Objective-C have Garbage Collection like RealBasic, so I don’t have to worry much about memory management, although this means that the 2.x branch will require Leopard and higher, although it will still support PowerPC Macs.
When you will expect 2.x preview builds to come out? After Spring Semester, but probably in June/July since I need to take some days to learn the Objective-C language and have some knowledge of it before diving in and start rewriting the whole program. In the mean time, if Manga support comes, it will be added to the 1.5 branch of MAL Client OS X. From this change, expect the interface to be the same, except that I may put the Search in a HUD panel than on the same window.
If you don’t know what Kalafina is, well that link will tell you what it is…
However, this is not why I’m writing this post. Their most recent single, Hikari no Senritsu came out last month I think is one of my favorite songs… why? Well, it’s because of traditional sounding theme on this song, which pretty much fits with the theme of Sora no Woto, so far being one of the best 2010 Winter Anime so far.
They are also well known for their songs from the anime Kara no Kyoukai and releasing a new album this month titled “Red Moon.” So, if you haven’t heard of their songs yet, I suggest take a listen at it… you might be amazed.
Also known as “Shiori’s Diary.” Anyways, I felt that I really wanted to write on other topics, but can’t really since it defeats the purpose the main blog is intended to be, the discussion of Anime and anything related to it. To keep myself from distracting the readers and feeding non-related Anime posts onto Anime Nano thus polluting it, I decided to create a side blog to discuss these topics.
Keep in mind that everything covered in this blog is completely meta, meaning posts can be on completely different topics. Thats okay, but if you are interested on a certain subject, click on a category and subscribe to that feed. It will only feed the posts that are in that category only. Also, I will be writing all the posts in MacJournal, which is a journaling and blogging software on the Mac. You might have noticed that I have used this in recent posts on my main blog. This is because I’m afraid of losing blog posts after the incident where Notcliche was moved to another datacenter and losing two of my recent posts. I was able to recover it, but I don’t want to take chances on my hard work…
Anyways, I hope you enjoy what I will write in the future…
Also, sorry about the banner. I need to make a new one for this blog…