I had this great idea, using URL Schemes on macOS apps, assembled by very simple HTML files that contain a only and produce a GET request so that the data is part of the URL: To my dismay, I discovered that all browsers encode spaces in input and textarea elements as plusses: +. … | Continue reading

Whenever I can, I participate in our local software craftspeople’s Global Day of Code Retreat (GDCR) in November. Yesterday was this year’s event. It was the first time I remember where I haven’t taken away something new for myself as a programmer. I learned much more about peopl … | Continue reading

Sarah Reichelt (@troz@mastodon.social) published a short guide on how app permissions on macOS Sequoia work with unsigned apps, and how you can run them anyway. The context menu trick doesn’t seem to work anymore, and you need to go to System Settings, it seems. (I’m not yet on S … | Continue reading

I find myself looking at an NSView subclass that actually doesn’t do much. It’s an opaque container for a text field that sets a label text. “Opaque” inasmuch as its outward appearance is being view, hiding the actual component’s complexity inside. This is just one example of an … | Continue reading

Type-Driven Design with Swift by Alex Ozun from this year’s SwiftCraft is a recommended watch. Alex covers concepts like replacing the notion of validation user input (with true/false results to represent its validity) with the notion of parsing – transforming unprocessed values … | Continue reading

Recently, our family grew by +1, and we got our lovely daughter back home for a couple of days. The experience in the hospital or clinic surrounding the birthing process before, during, and after made me realize that If you read life hacks and productivity tips including checklis … | Continue reading

Swift is full of syntactic sugar. One particular taste of sweet is the callAsFunction feature. If a type has a method of that name, you can call an instance or value of that type like a function. That’s used in SwiftUI to pass actions around in the environment, for example. Quick … | Continue reading

I wanted to write something positive about the Fairphone Fairbuds. Here it is: They are a great idea. That’s it. Please move on. Continue reading for gory details, but this really sums it up: Replaceable batteries at the cost of a larger form factor is a tradeoff I am absolutely … | Continue reading

In the not-too-distant future of late summer 2024, we’ll be expecting our first child. This is your opportunity to share with someone willing to listen what you usually have to bash into other people’s heads: What heartfelt wisdom do you have to share? Is there anything you wish … | Continue reading

By default, the string output of JSValue in JavaScriptCore printing (e.g. via my console.log) will produce a mere [object Object]. That’s not very helpful. It’s simple to pretty-print objects (if they are merely data-containers) via JSON: | Continue reading

If your macOS app is a SwiftUI app with custom button styles that targets macOS 15+, you don’t need my click-through fix anymore. Reported via Feedback Assistant on 2024-04-11, FB13720950 is now closed because macOS 15 Beta 2 solved the issue. | Continue reading

Primitive Obsession is not called “Primitive Preference” for a reason: we can find ourselves clinging to primitives like addicts, even when every aspect of our project nudges us, hints, and screams that we should be doing something different. It’s never just “a string”. It’s neve … | Continue reading

In my recent post titled “The Rake and Its Prongs” I introduced a function towards the end, called NSRange.isValidInsertionPointLocation(at:). It’s used to consider the after-end location as part of the range. | Continue reading

I wanted to show, just this once for this project, the *compilation* buffer in a bottom split. I also wanted the split to be dedicated, so no other buffers would occupy it by accident, and not be deleted (aka closed) when using delete-other-windows. That should be reserved for co … | Continue reading

Some days I forget to run Denote to create a new journal file for the day, and then the appropriately named note file is missing when I want to write down things later. That’s not how you use a daily journal, I know, but I use Emacs and denote.el to write down things like exercis … | Continue reading

Giles Turnbull shared a link today to a site I didn’t know: https://macmenubar.com It’s a directory of 950+ menu bar apps for macOS. I browsed it a bit, and while each page is a bit short (5 items per page), it’s great to discover new tools – and also check out UI design trends i … | Continue reading

Documentation-writing is not a goal in itself. Code, tests, documentation – all of these are tools to communicate in writing with other programmers. That includes your future selves as it includes teammates and project collaborators. Kent Beck, “The Documentation Tradeoff”: | Continue reading

KOMA-Script is Omakase. If you trust the package, you’re in good hands to get consistent output from compiling LaTeX documents. I’ve been using Markus Kohm’s KOMA-Script for most of my life with LaTeX in some way or another because the package’s document classes really nail typic … | Continue reading

Marco (@esamecar@social.lol) posted a list of alternatives. From that list, I filtered out MAS-only and Chinese-subtitled apps: I’m running Ice at the moment. You can organize menu bar icons into “always hidden” and just “hidden”. The latter will reveal itself when you e.g. click … | Continue reading

I’ve now finished adding an example adapter to get a structural representation of a Markdown code block to my app. It bridges the abstract syntax tree (or “token tree”) of libMultiMarkdown to NSTextStorage-compatible UTF-16 substring ranges – which DeclarativeTextKit works with, … | Continue reading

I started working on DeclarativeTextKit mostly out of desperation, because the naive approach wouldn’t do the trick any longer. I complained about this on Mastodon in the beginning, but until now, I haven’t actually shown the code that made me want to change things. | Continue reading

It is easier to close Threads if you have a great book waiting for you. It is easier to press pause on Spotify if you can play the piano. It is easier to avoid Uber Eats if you know how to cook. It can be hard, but it’s easier if you have something meaningful to do. This is almos … | Continue reading

I invested the past two weeks into making the Markdown highlighting component of my app The Archive better overall. More secure C token pointer handling, more performant token tree mutations, so faster highlighting and fewer pitfalls to worry about. | Continue reading

As the saying goes, if the title of a post is a question, the answer is “no”. I don’t know how you would sensibly apply that to this one 🙂 Most of the days, for most of the time, I’m a software developer. I code, I plan, I think and learn. At other times, I’m writing thin … | Continue reading

Matt Massicotte: Making just one type @MainActor can result in cascade of errors at all usage sites where the compiler now cannot provide that MainActor guarantee. This virality can make it really hard to incrementally adopt concurrency with targeted changes. Perhaps that’s not t … | Continue reading

Niki Tonski with a very well-illustrated post on centering text, icons, and UI elements. The problem is explored in great detail. Every big company fails at this. Type (font) design and UI design and icon design are all part of the problem. After the build-up, this part killed me … | Continue reading

Why change perfectly servicable code today when there are problems to solve? “I’d be changing it again next week. So where’s the value? Might as well keep it as-is.” When you are inclined to change code without defects, this could indicate a new understanding that needs expressin … | Continue reading

On macOS, there’s 1 active window that receives your key input. Then there’s all the other windows, which are potentially invisible or obstructed by other windows. These inactive windows can be brought to the front and made active with a click. Then you can interact with these wi … | Continue reading

Programming is a Soulslike. Dark Souls is notoriously difficult. You need to memorize enemy movements and patterns to get good at the game. You cannot beat it casually. The “Git Gud” meme traces back to this whole ordeal: You need to become a better player, learn the movements an … | Continue reading

Decoupling is hard work, especially when taken to extremes – as the team of Diablo II did when they decoupled the whole rendering stack of the original game from the rest of the engine to reuse both independently. Today I learned that Diablo II Resurrected is a true remaster: new … | Continue reading

Swift KeyPath is a great shortcut for property-based mapping and filtering of collections: When you need a simple transformation, the simplest probably being the boolean negation operator, you only have two choices: So either you use the key path and separate the negation – which … | Continue reading

I spend a couple of hours investigating the XeLaTeX purgatory where character mapping live. I didn’t know what these were before, too, don’t worry. I’ll walk you through it. The observable behavior is the following. Let’s say you start with Markdown with “dumb” quotes like this: … | Continue reading

Of course you don’t need comments in your code. But your future self appreciates explanations: What is this nested loop good for? What is its purpose? Comments provide context, and shortcuts for understanding: “you don’t need to read this, just think of it as …” Once you explain … | Continue reading

I found out that you can bundle TrueType Font files (.ttf) with Swift Packages just fine. It’s not as declarative as adding Info.plist entries to your app, but the code is very simple. First, add fonts as managed resources under e.g. Sources/PACKAGENAME/Resources/Fonts/ (last sub … | Continue reading

Based on the calendar, I’m about two months into a server script project for the Zettelkasten website, but measured in actual work weeks, it’s now the start of week three. I notice that I’m now in a comfortable rhythm to develop features, and that’s always an exciting milestone. | Continue reading

Octavi Navarro reports that (some) people think (some of) his games should be free instead of paid: I’ve got hundreds of “this game should be free” angry reviews over the years but I find it shockinge every time. These are not evil corporation executives, but consumers (most pr … | Continue reading