macs

MelScrobbleX 0.1 Alpha Released

March 29, 2010 by chikorita157

I finally decided to release MelScrobbleX at its current state so I can release my work. Currently, most the functions will work without any problems, with some minor flaws. I know it’s not perfect, but someday, it will become better as time goes on. If you decide to install and try for yourself, leave Sparkle to update the program automatically since I will be pushing updates as the program gets better.

If you wish to try, see the project’s Github Download Page. Download the zip and unzip it. Run the program. You notice that if you try to post something, it will complain that there is no user info stored. To set the user infos, click on the Melative Logo, which will be located with the rest of the MenuExtras > Preferences. Click on Login and type your Username and Password. Save the login info. This will verify your account and if it’s successful, saves it to your Keychain. To remove the login, click Remove Login and read the instructions. This program is obviously meant for personal computers since it requires a Keychain. I will try and add some other method of login to solve this problem.

If you don’t want the Scrobble Window to show every time you want to start up, that setting is in General. Uncheck the “Show Scrobble Window at Startup” and when you relaunch the program, the Scrobble window will not show up anymore.

When you are playing an Anime or Music and want to make a post about it, press detect with the appropriate mediatypes. Anime will detect what is playing in MPlayer OS X Extended and Music will detect what is currently playing in iTunes. Beware that with some fansubs, depending on how its named will affect the output for the media title and segment. In most cases, it should output correctly.

Next versions of MelScrobble will have a improved interface and probably take advantage of imediabrowser.framework so you can select any iTunes track from your library and scrobble it without needing to have it playing in iTunes. If you encounter any bugs, please report them on the project’s Github page.

MelScrobbleX requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. PPC and Intel Compatible.

I did it again!

March 28, 2010 by chikorita157

I discovered the power of NSStatusItem and UIElement options that made it possible to get rid of the MelScrobbleX Dock Icon and put it on the Menubar. The window can be shown and hidden at any time and it will retain your datas entered like Media/Segment until you quit out of the program. Don’t worry though, the Preferences and Check for Updates options are still accessible by clicking the Melative Logo on top of the menubar. Still, more improvements need to be done before I release the alpha version of the program…

For details on the commit: look here

MPlayer detection… Works!

March 27, 2010 by chikorita157

I managed to get the lsof output from mplayer (Also works with MPlayer OS X Extended, an excellent mplayer frontend), but couldn’t get the regex to take out the media title and segment info. RyanA helped me with the RegEx stuff and eventually, I put this in with the help of OgreKit framework and it works.

The result of it is outputing the media title and segment with the appropriate media title and segment. Beware that with some files may not work correctly with this because of how they are named and stuff. Nevertheless, I’m happy that I managed to get iTunes and mplayer detection to work in a few days and I just began learning ObjC last week during spring break… well, some of it of course. MelScrobbleX should be ready for a preview release, but first, I need to fix a few things before I can actually release the program, so stay tuned.

Introducing MelScrobblerX, a new Melative Scrobbler for Macs

March 24, 2010 by chikorita157

MelScrobblerX is a new project I have been working on. Used to be Melative Cocoa Test aka Melative Example, which is a sample Melative Microblogging client pretty much the same to Melative Library’s Media Microblogging, but without the stream. However, I decided to expand the project and added iTunes track detection… Heck, why not just make its own program… and I did… I renamed it to MelScrobblerX

MelScrobblerX is different from the ActionStatus that RyanA is currently working on. MelScrobblerX is written in Objective-C and Cocoa and I still learning that darn language… It’s pretty darn powerful if you know what you are doing and there is alot of resources on it. Anyways, it differs from ActionStatus not only because it’s a native program, but it uses different methods in obtaining the played media. Since most Anime bloggers who uses Mac would use iTunes and MPlayer OS X Extended, I decided I will only support those, but support for other media players like Play can be added later, providing they support the Scripting Bridge with Applescript. MelScrobblerX will use powerful frameworks, OmniFrameworks and Sparkle for updating. Also, MelScrobblerX will use a HUD window so that it cause little distraction when you play media and stuff.

MelScrobbler will only work on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, but compatible with existing PowerPC and Intel Macs as it will be a Universal Binary.

No actual release of MelScrobblerX is out yet since there is still alot of work to be done on it such as adding Preferences, Keychain support to store Username/Password, MPlayer support and other behind the scene stuff.

If you want to experiment what I have done so far, be my guest and head to the project’s github to obtain a copy. Be warned… This app is still in active development and can change at anytime and I’m not responsible for any damages you do with the program on the computer or with your Melative account.

Melative in Cocoa!

March 15, 2010 by chikorita157

COCOA!!!
Planning on making a native scrobbler thingy on Mac OS X using primarily Objective-C/Cocoa and AppleScript. Still not polished yet, but later on, I will be adding iTunes detection which will take the album and track and add it to the update with the message and other stuff. Of course, this experiment only works on Mac OS X Leopard and Higher. Stay tuned for what will happen next.

Also, this can’t be ported onto Linux and Windows… sadly.

Never say never…

March 13, 2010 by chikorita157

After several hours of frustration on trying to make it work.

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

Objective-C Madness!

March 12, 2010 by chikorita157

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.

The Future of MAL Client OS X

March 12, 2010 by chikorita157

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.