Sprouted ~ Software that grows with you...

It’s been a few months now since the last Journler update so I’m very happy to announce the latest iteration, Journler 2.5.5. Version 2.5.5 is a maintenance update to the 2.5.x line. It addresses a number of bugs and adds a useful improvement here and there. Journler 2.5.5 is a free download for registered users and a recommended update for everyone. If you’re already using Journler you can auto-update from the Journler > Check for Updates menu inside the program.

Download Journler 2.5.5

Disable password protection
If you are running Journler 2.5.3 or lower, before installing the 2.5.4 update you should disable password protection for your journal and re-enable it only after 2.5.5 has been downloaded and installed.

Changes in Journler 2.5.5
Most of the changes for this release are smaller, under the hood fixes that you may not notice but keep things running smoothly. Of course there are few significant changes and goodies:

• Improved A/V recording for Leopard uses
• Taking better advantage of Leopard UI elements
• Fixed problems with the German and Danish translations
• Added Journler’s own Quick Look preview generator
• Added support for Quick Look preview of files Journler cannot otherwise view (registered users only)
• Fixed a number of URL dragging problems related to Firefox and Camino
• Fixed problems with the way Journler handles folders and file packages
• Fixed a number of problems with the tabs bar

Enjoy!

Journler promotional offer at macZot

A heads up for all the folks out there who haven’t purchased Journler yet but are thinking about it. macZot is doing a Journler promotional offer right now. There are about 8 hours left to the promotion, an opportunity to pick up a fully registered copy of Journler at a discounted price of $19.95. That’s the same as the educational price and a savings of 43%.

So if you’ve been using Journler but have been waiting to grab your copy of the license, now’s a great time to do it! And of course, this is a full license like any other which means the upcoming 2.6 upgrade will be free.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be unavailable most of the week. WWDC starts Monday and I imagine it’ll be 12 hour days M-F. This means I’ll only intermittently be answering emails and forum posts, something I was finally getting better about in the last few weeks!

WWDC looks to be exciting this year. Definitely all about the iPhone, with many sessions dedicated to iPhone development. Gotta christen the new platform with a WWDC. 2008 is it.

Event attendance looks like it will be at an all time high. WWDC is actually sold out this year. “Um, oh yeah, get here early for everything” were the last words offered as I finished checking in. Oh baby! Slow lunch lines, at capacity presentations and a Keynote you won’t see in person unless you arrive at Moscone at 7am. Love it.

If any other attendees would like to meet up send me an email. Contact info may be found at the aptly named Contacts page. I’ll be at the conference and after hours events, but I also live in the city so am around anyway.

Sprouted Roadmap

What follows is a tentative roadmap for projects I am currently working on. I have intentionally overestimated the time I believe required to complete Journler 2.5.5 and 2.6. Previous estimates were always too optimistic, so I’m going in the other direction. Think Scotty in Star Trek, but don’t expect any miracles.

Journler

Journler 2.5.5 in 2 months
I would like to release Journler 2.5.5 within two months time or by the end of July. Journler 2.5.5 includes one or two new, minor features, but it is otherwise dedicated to bug fixes.

I had originally planned to focus on integrating a number of mostly finished translations but I no longer intend to do so. I have found that I am not capable of coordinating that work while I also code and manage user support. Instead, all new translations will be postponed until Journler 2.6.

Journler 2.6 in 6 months
I would like to release Journler 2.6 within six months, or by the end of December this year. I hope that I’ll actually release 2.5.5 earlier and so also 2.6, but I am giving myself that much time.

No iPhone support, syncing unlikely
A number of significant feature requests have been made for 2.6, notably iPhone integration and syncing. I consider both worthwhile features and would like to see them appear in Journler some day. Nevertheless, there are no immediate plans for iPhone integration. Syncing is a higher priority, but I do not expect syncing to be ready for Journler 2.6.

Plugin API, iCal and Mail
The single biggest change I have planned for 2.6 is the plugin interface. Rightly or wrongly I believe this change will benefit the most number of users, as it will enable myself and other interested parties to customize Journler’s interface and other behavior. I have dozens of other planned changes, including better iCal and Mail integration, but none are as significant.

I would absolutely love to have iPhone integration and syncing. Once again, however, I am simply not capable of programming and managing these features while also doing my other work.

Lex on hold

I am indefinitely delaying Lex until Journler 2.6 is released. I made the mistake of announcing the product and openly discussing it while it was in its earliest phases of development. While I have made some excellent progress on the application, as an individual I am not capable of working on a second major product. Coding aside — which is usually not difficult — I am certainly not capable of overseeing the testing, localization and support of Lex in addition to managing the same for Journler.

Parsers in 2 months

I would like to release Parsers 1.0 in two months time or by the end of July. Parsers is a tiny application with very little code and what I predict to be a small user support requirement. The application accomplishes a simple task and I anticipate few problems and little time required to maintain it.

—

I understand that many of you may be disappointed with this roadmap. I’d like to say that I believe the decisions are the best I can make but I’m not sure that’s the case. I’ve erred before, focusing on Lex in the months before Leopard was released and then racing to fix Journler incompatibilities afterwards, producing a 2.5.4 update that took what seemed like an eternity to complete.

The decisions are if nothing else necessary. I am overwhelmed. I am halting Lex development because I simply cannot work on or maintain two major projects simultaneously. I’m having a hard enough time handling a single project as it is.

The same may be said of the major features which will not appear in Journler 2.6. Let me say again that I would absolutely love an iPhone app, syncing and even a re-appearance of blogging. They are excellent features which Journler deserves. But I cannot implement and support them alone and my financial condition continues to prohibit me from expanding the business to take on additional help.

[[ Crossposted to the Journler forum ]]
Please reply at the forum. It tends to better foster conversation.

Download Parsers 1.0b1
http://www.getsprouted-mirror.com/downloads/Parsers1.0b.zip
[[ Mac OS 10.5 Leopard only ]]

Screenshot

Alright, I’m pretty excited about this! In my free time I’ve been working on another small application, Parsers. I believe it’s finally ready for open beta testing.

Parses is “drag and drop text parsing and data mining”. The app is designed to help you preprocesses data so that you’re left with only the information you need in a format you can easily apply elswhere. In a visual environment you create and test re-usable, rules based documents for parsing well formatted text.

For example, let’s say you want to download your local weather information from an online feed. The temperature, conditions and forecast change by the hour but the html in which that information is contained otherwise stays the same. That is, the relevant information or variables change but the format remains constant. Parsers helps you extract the temperature, conditions and forecast from the feed so that you can use the information elsewhere, in a widget, your own webpage or a spreadsheet for example.

Parsers is a utility application targeted at a specific class of users. While it won’t be for everyone, those who do integrate Parsers into their workflow may find that it saves hours of work.

The application should be straightforward. Try one of the tutorials and you’ll understand immediately what the application does.

Featurewise Parsers sports an Apple Script interface, bulk file processing and support for regular expressions. It can read text, rich text, Word and PDF documents and output XML or native property lists. Error checking occurs at every step. When something goes wrong you should be informed in a helpful manner.

This is flat out some of the best code I’ve ever written, and unlike Cork (which I posted as an R&D project a while back), Parsers is pretty much finished. There are some finishing touches to take care of and the need for a thorough testing, but once that’s done I fully intend to release the application.

Feel free to check it out. Feedback is appreciated!

[[ Crossposted to the Journler beta testing forum ]]

I’m extremely happy to announce the latest and long in the works update to Journler: v2.5.4. Journler 2.5.4 is a Leopard and Tiger compatible upgrade to your favorite journaling application. It is a recommended upgrade for all users. Individuals already using Journler may auto-update from within Journler using the Journal > Check for Updates menu.

Download Journler 2.5.4

Disable password protection
Before installing the 2.5.4 update disable password protection for your journal and re-enable it only after 2.5.4 has been downloaded and installed.

Features
Journler 2.5.4 sports Leopard compatibility and dozens of improvements for both Tiger and Leopard users. Many of the changes are behind the scenes improvements that guarantee a more stable application and consistent user experience. Some of the more significant include…

• Leopard compatibility: many fixes and improvements
• Improved Tiger performance: dozens of fixes and improvements
• All new token based tagging
• Built-in blogging removed; support for 3rd party weblog applications
• Support for MailTags keywords
• Faster PDF importing
• New license: Journler is becoming a shareware application

Improved Tags
Journler 2.5.4 introduces a much improved token based tagging system, one that has become an industry standard for web and desktop applications alike. The new system is considerably more capable than the previous one but may take some getting used to. For help with the transition you can read about Tags and Comments at the Journler wiki.

Blogging
Support for built-in blogging has been dropped in Journler 2.5.4. I realize this is a disappointment for many users but after weighing the options I decided it would be more important for the time being to focus on novel features rather than duplicate what a number of applications already available for the Macintosh do quite well. In its place Journler has added support for the weblog protocol, ensuring integration between Journler and some of the most popular blogging applications for the Mac. I hope to re-introduce built-in blogging at a later point. Read more.

The new license
It was a difficult decision, but Journler is in the process of becoming a shareware application. Previous versions distinguished between a personal and a non-personal license. That distinction no longer applies. All uses of Journler now require a license. A single license costs $34.95 with educational, family and bulk discounts available.

Read more about this decision.

Journler 2.5.4 is meant to help users transition to the new license. With the release of Journler 2.6 there will be a 60 day trial period after which a license is required. Journler 2.5.4 introduces the new license without imposing a trial period. A license is still required with Journler 2.5.4, and I request that anyone using Journler on a regular basis purchase it. Users who purchase a license now will be able to upgrade to 2.6 at no additional charge.

Purchase a Journler license

Happy journaling, and yay Journler 2.5.4!

If you’re trying to download the 2.5.4 beta and are running into my .Mac bandwidth limit, try download it from here:

Download Journler 2.5.4b

Please note that this is not the same as the currently available 2.5.3 version. If are wanting to download that, please wait until tomorrow afternoon and then try again.

Thanks to David for the temporary hosting.

Just a heads up, folks trying to download the 2.5.4 beta or 2.5.3 version of Journler today will notice that I’ve reached my .Mac bandwidth. I host on the Journler download at .Mac with a 300GB data transfer partitioned into bi-monthly segments. That allocates 150GB data transfer to my account every two weeks. I reached that number this morning and the limit won’t be reset till sometime tomorrow.

I’m working on a solution to this right now. I’ll be hosting the beta download in a temporary location until I am able to set up a second storage space with a significantly larger data transfer limit. We’re talking terabytes here! Call it a business investment.

On a related note: for the folks wondering why I’ve decided to start charging for Journler who may be upset at the decision, this is an excellent example. As strange as it is, I have business expenses, and I need a way to pay for them when Journler and programming more generally are what I do.

Beginning today I’m pleased to offer student and family discounts on purchases of the Journler license. These licenses are full licenses simply offered at a lower price for qualifying individuals.

The student license is for K-12, undergraduate and graduate students and costs $19.95. That’s a savings of more than 40% on Journler’s full price. University students purchasing a discounted license must be able to provide evidence of their student status, preferably by the use of a .edu email address. Folks who would like the student discount for K-12 students should contact sales@journler.com before making the purchase or shortly thereafter.

The student license is for students only. Academic pricing is available but generally reserved for large classroom or district orders.

At $99.95, the Journler family pack secures five licenses at a savings of 40%. Up to five members of the immediate family may use the license on five computers in a single household. Five copies of the Journler license normally cost $175 when purchased individually.

Purchase journler now

While previous versions of Journler were donation-ware and relied upon an unenforced distinction between personal and non-personal use, Journler 2.6 will require a license for all uses. The upcoming 2.5.4 maintenance update is a stepping stone to the new policy. It introduces the new license without forcing a purchase. Journler 2.6, however, will require registration after 60 days of use. Individuals who purchase Journler now will be able to upgrade to 2.6 at no cost.

Read more about the changes to Journler’s license

Every once in a while I get a request for a printable version of the Journler manual. The help files are extensive, and having them in print would make reading them more enjoyable for many people.

A PDF version of the help files actually exists, but it’s hidden. I just wanted to mention it again so that everyone knows about it. The PDF version covers Journler 2.5.3 and, while still very relevant, will be somewhat dated when the 2.5.4 change are taken into account. I will be updating the PDF manual once I release 2.5.4.

Download the Journler Manual (PDF - 2.9MB)