December 7, 2002

MapX update released I've released a new version of MapX, map viewer for EverQuest players.  Mainly it's an update to include new map files done for the latest expansion, Planes of Power. MapX is basically a custom control written in C# that knows how to load and render the ShowEQ format vector .MAP files.  The source may be interesting if you're doing that sort of thing - source is included with it, and I've also mirrored the source here and release archive here.   12:15:00 PM    comment []

Public service announcement:  If you're a developer and you're thinking of getting a new keyboard, take a close look at the keyboard before you buy it.  Microsoft and Logitech have been playing with the layout of function keys, arrow keys, and keys like home, end, PgUp, PgDn, etc., and it's making debugging with VS.NET much more difficult having to dig around for the F9 key when I want to QuickWatch (etc). The best layout, in my opinion, is the one with the three groups of four function keys across the top; this makes finding any function key easy without having to look at the keyboard.  The worst layout is the one I'm using now, the "Microsoft Wireless Natural Multimedia Keyboard".  It's got 5 function keys on the left, and 8 on the right - 13 in total.  To the right of F12 is another special "F Lock" key that changes the meaning of all the other keys.  Most frustrating is that when you (accidentally) press the "F Lock" key, Alt-F4 changes from "Close" to "New".  Argh!  The first time this happened to me I was trying to close a webpage and it looked exactly like the site was popping up a new window when you close it (as some sites do).  Very confusing. 10:40:32 AM    comment []

Before I forget, there's one important part of Mac OS X programming that I wanted to mention.  Coming from a Windows world, I'm used to finding information using one of two mechanisms:  MSDN and Google Groups. If you have a question about a Windows API function you can find an answer in one of those two places pretty much guaranteed. Part of the reason Google Groups works so well for Windows developers is that the API has been pretty much constant for what, 15 years?  Generally an answer to a question asked about GDI any time since the dawn of Windows is probably still useful. The Macintosh went through a major overhaul of it's API for Carbon (and Cocoa is a completely new thing, which I haven't worked with yet).  I found that Google Groups rarely had answers for me when I had questions, and Apple's developer website has very little useful documentation on how to use something or why you'd want to use it. For example, if you're looking for information on the function to create a window on either platform, Google Groups (currently) has 196 articles for you to look at for the Macintosh CreateNewWindow function, while searching for "win32 createwindow" finds me 5920 articles. There's a series of books called "Inside Macintosh" that Mac developers all know by heart, but my local bookstore said the old ones were out of print and there weren't any Carbon ones available yet - so I was stuck there. Then I found an invaluable resource:  The Macintosh system header files.  Every function, every message, etc., had a large description in the comments right in the header file. Moral of the story:  If you're looking for information on a particular message, you're likely to find the name of the message on Apple's site, and people asking questions about it on Usenet, but you'll probably find what it actually by searching the include files on your own hard drive.   9:41:17 AM    comment []

Hey cool it's still here.  I've decided that I need to be more active about getting the stuff I write (mostly C# code these days) out onto the 'Net, and this will be a good way to do it.  There are an awful lot of sites called "Just Another Weblog" so I guess I'll have to rename it.    9:24:51 AM    comment []