Buggin' My Life Away : Other

BBEdit 8.5

Rick Schaut — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 01:14:00 GMT

MacWorld has a decent review of BBEdit 8.5, but it fails to mention a new feature that is of particular use to programmers.

One of the features of CodeWarrior that I'd missed was the syntax highlighting that the IDE applied to symbols that were defined within the project. In fact, I hadn't realized just how much I'd come to rely on that feature when writing new code until I started working with BBEdit and XCode. I had a sudden, new-found paranoia about whether or not I'd typed in a symbol name correctly.

Well, if you use ctags in association with BBEdit, BBEdit will apply syntax highlighting to any symbol that's in the tags file that it would use for the "Find Definition" command on the Search menu.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: The Rainy Season by Marc Cohn

Scoble's New Adventure

Rick Schaut — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 10:55:00 GMT

The buzz around the bloggosphere is about Scoble's New Adventure. Robert adds his own words on the subject.

I've had a chance to meet Robert over the past couple of years, and I'll miss his presence in the area. He threw some fun parties, and nights at Robert's house were always interesting. You never knew who you'd meet, but the conversations were always worth while.

After Robert's mother died, he asked for advice on perspective. I sent him mine advice, which is really rather simple. Fifty years from now, no one will care whether or not I made great software. Quite a few people will, however, care very much about how well I've raised my children. So, Robert's moving closer to his son Patrick. That's a good thing. In the long run, it's probably the best thing.

One of Robert's greatest contributions to Microsoft was instilling the notion of engaging in conversations--conversations between users and the people who really write the software. One theme that's been running through some of the reactions seems to be that we'll loose this idea. Joe Wilcox says that we Microsoft bloggers are only just putting out Microsoft' spin. Doc Searls seems to think that the rest of us aren't as human as Scoble. Dave Winer says that we're still thinking in old terms.

Joe Wilcox is, well FOS. When I say that Joe's FOS, it's my opinion, and not Microsoft's. What's worse is, how can we engage in a conversation if my participation is already prejudged to be a less than honest spin on the facts? Were this a debate, that'd be known as an ad-hominem argument. Can we keep the discussion about ideas, please? We can disagree with each other without characterizing each other's opinions as being something less than honest.

I'm not sure if I'm reading Doc Searls right or not. Robert may seem more of a human resource than the rest of us, but that's only because Robert's been more public than the rest of us. Spend some time sitting in a room with any randomly selected group of Microsoft employees, and I think you'll find that we're all very important human resources in our own way. If you have any doubt on that, I have a bevy of references I can send your way about those of us who work in Mac BU. I don't think the rest of the company is all that different.

As for Dave's ideas about ideas, I'm not sure what to say. There's a myriad ways in which Microsoft is adding new ideas to the pot, and I don't think they all represent old thinking. Have you seen, for example, how easy it is to add a web service to a project in the latest version of Visual Studio .NET? Point Visual Studio to the web service's URL, and Visual Studio creates all of the plumbing code for you. Dave focusses on new ways to get people connected to one another. We tend to focus in taking those ways to get connected, and making them more approachable to people who are less technically inclined. I think we need each other in order to make this stuff really happen.

I've singled out these three comments for a couple of reasons. First, these three bloggers are rather well-known bloggers. Secondly, each of them has, in a way, said something that's antithetical to what Robert has been saying about and doing for Microsoft ever since he started working here. Each comment reflects a certain amount of prejudice, and prejudice blocks conversations. Prejudice gets in the way of seeing the truth, and becomes a means by which we discount each others' ideas without considering the merits of those ideas. I think Robert would like nothing more than to see the elimination of prejudice, and I think he'd not appreciate people using his departure from Microsoft as a sounding board for expressing their prejudices, regardless of whether those prejudices favor Microsoft or don't favor Microsoft.

We'll miss Robert in some ways, but that forthright honesty of his will always be wherever he goes. It's what Robert brought to the table. It's what he will always bring to the table. That's good for all of us regardless of where Robert happens to work.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Ain't Wastin' Time No More by The Allman Brothers Band

Flying Pigs

Rick Schaut — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 18:25:00 GMT

Last July, pigs flew through Hyde Park, and yesterday they flew through Cupertino.

The only thing I want to know is, of those who've installed Boot Camp, how many of them have dragged their task bar to the top of the screen?

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Land of Make Believe by Chuck Mangione

Another Win Office Blogger

Rick Schaut — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 07:00:00 GMT

The list of Win Office 12 bloggers is growing. The latest addition is Will Kennedy, who is the general manager of the Outlook team.

Will's a former Word developer. Before that, Will was an intern on the Mac Word 5.0 project. Back in those days, we would occasionally "name" some of our testing releases--an effect carried out by changing the string that was used for new untitled documents in the debugging build. When you started up Word, the window title for a new, untitled document might, for example, be "FearAndLoathing1" (for the Fear and Loathing release) instead of "Document1".

When Will's internship was finished, we did a WillKennedy release, and, for a week, new, untitled documents would come up with "WillKennedy1" for the window title. As far as I know, Will's the only person to have had a testing release of Mac Word named after him.

Stop by, and say, "Hi" to Will. While you're at it, tell him how many customer accolades he'd receive if he went back to working on Mac Word.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

Veteran's Day and Poppies

Rick Schaut — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:18:00 GMT

November 11 is my birthday. As a kid, I used to think it was cool that people would put flags out on my birthday. In that self-centered, woefully uninformed, way that kids view the world, I'd mistakenly thought people were putting them out for me.

By the time I was six or seven, though, I knew it wasn't about me. In fact, over the years, my understanding of the significance of this day has gone through several rounds of evolution. The latest occurred in November of 1997. My wife and I were on vacation in London. As we stepped off the elevator and into the lobby that morning, we noticed a large number of people wearing poppies. It was then that I fully understood how significant this day is outside of the US.

Part of the evolution of my own understanding has to do with how the observance of November 11 has morphed in the US. It wasn't always about veterans.

At 5:00 AM on the Monday morning of November 11, 1918, in the poppy fields near Compiègne, France, the Allies and Germans signed the order that brought World War I, what was then known as the war to end all wars, to an end. The cease fire on the western front went into effect at 11:00 AM that day--the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

In 1938, Congress passed a law, and from then until May of 1954, 11 November was known as Armistice Day. In May of 1954, Congress passed another law that transformed the observance into a tribute to the veterans of all wars.

In Commonwealth nations, it's now known as Remembrance Day, and has taken on a similar meaning. The poppies that people wear in their lapels harkens back to that day in 1918, and comes from Lt. Col. John McCrae's poem In Flanders' Fields.

So, my appreciation for 11 November has evolved in a direction opposite of how our observance of 11 November has evolved. I now see how it involves a dedication to peace as well as a remembrance of people who've lost their lives in wars. After all, the significance of the day is that it marks the end of a war.

None of this, however, has anything to do with why I'm posting this today. The reason is, well, rather odd. Here I was, working away in my office with some of these thoughts revolving rather disjointedly in my head when my "Random Least-Recently-Played" iTunes play list hit Sting's Children's Crusade.

Weird, no?

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Children's Crusade by Sting

Hitting the Office Links

Rick Schaut — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 20:23:00 GMT

No, I'm not talking about a swing around the wing. Over the past several weeks, a handful of Office 12 related blogs have started up. While these are dedicated to the work that's happening in Windows Office, I expect quite a few people who read my blog will be interested in at least some of the subjects discussed there.

The top of the list would be Brian Jones' discussion of Office 12 XML formats, and Brian's discussion of the file formats has a direct impact on Mac Office 12.

The next item on the list would be Jensen Harris' blog about the Win Office 12 UI. While we aren't going to mimic this design in Mac Office 12, we are going to implement some of the ideas in a way that more closely resembles that of a standard Macintosh application. In his latest post, Jensen points out that he was in Junior High School when we shipped Win Word 2.0, which wasn't long after we shipped Mac Word 5.0. What is the penchant that Microsoft program managers have for making a guy like me feel old?

Perhaps the least interesting to readers of my blog would be the new Win Excel Blog.

Lastly, for a more high-level view of what's going on in Win Office, take a gander at Steven Sinofsky's blog. Steven is the Senior Vice President in charge of Office. You won't read much about Office per se on Steven's blog, but you'll get a pretty good picture of how Office is run as a business.

If you head over to the home pages of these blogs, you might find a few other links to new MSDN blogs worth exploring.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: The Chain by Fleetwood Mac

Abriendo Puertas con XML

Rick Schaut — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 02:55:00 GMT

When Win Office 2003 shipped, there was a great deal of debate as to the “openness” of Microsoft’s use of XML. The debate resurfaced with the announcement of the new Office 12 XML-based file formats, and it’s been further brought to the fore in recent days with Massachusetts’ recent decision regarding the adoption of “open” file formats.

On one side of the debate, you have those who would argue that, as long as it’s XML, it’s open. The other side of the debate would argue that mere use of XML isn’t sufficient, that the schemas need to be established or endorsed by an independent standards body. There are subtle shades on both sides of the debate, including schema publishing and licensing, but even with a published schema with a royalty-free license, there are those who would argue that a format isn’t open unless the schema itself has been approved by a standards body.

One of the most articulate proponents of the “standards body” side of the debate has been Joe Wilcox over at www.microsoftmonitor.com. Joe's reasoning can be found here and here.

In reading Joe's remarks, however, it's difficult to find a coherent position. At one point, he bases his notion of "open" on the acceptance of a standard by an independent standards body. At another point, he defines "open" based on the extent to which independent software vendors have supported the format with a certain degree of fidelity. Thus, OASIS's OpenDocument XML format is "open," but so is Adobe's PDF.

As a side note, back on September 1, Joe was scratching his head about Massachusetts' inclusion of PDF in their definition of "open." Apparently Joe forgot that he'd done exactly the same thing back in June. To be fair, Joe's reasoning was subtly different from that invoked by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but neither line of reasoning is all that coherent in the exclusion of Microsoft's use of XML in Office from the "open" rubric.

Joe's second post from last June comes closest to articulating a coherent stance on the subject. In that post, he likens OASIS's OpenOffice format to a simpler, more widely understood, idiom, albeit within the same XML language, to the idiom adopted in by Microsoft Office. Joe write:

But, even though the two people agreed on a common language, suppose one starts using geeky engineering jargon the other can't understand. Tough to communicate, right? So the one gives the other a big, fat book of definitions for the jargon--kind of like Microsoft publishing its schemas--so that they can talk. But the other person would have to learn the jargon first. Sure all the jargon is in the book, but wouldn't it just be better to communicate (e.g. be more "open") by speaking the basic language previously agreed on?

I think Joe's reasoning would be sound if Microsoft's addition of "geeky engineering jargon" was merely gratuitous. His reasoning breaks down, however, when we note that the "geeky engineering jargon" in Office's use of XML is necessary to adequately describe the features that are available in Office.

We can see this by altering Joe's analogy. Suppose we aren't talking about "geeky engineering jargon." Suppose, rather, we're talking about the jargon used within an academic field. The jargon in any academic field arises when various academics coin new terms to express various ideas within the field. Economists, for example, talk about IS-LM curves. Lay people haven't a clue what that's about, but, among Economists, a great deal of information can be conveyed very succinctly by using the jargon of IS-LM curves.

One important point of the academic jargon analogy is that anybody can extend the vocabulary. No one sits around waiting for some standards body to approve each new term before they're allowed to coin it in some academic paper. Academic jargon is open not only because anyone who is willing to engage in a study of the field is able to understand the lexicon. It's also open because anyone who works in that academic field is able to extend the lexicon.

Moreover, extension of the lexicon is based entirely on voluntary adoption of that lexicon within the field. An academic can coin a new term, but that term won't get adopted into regular usage unless other academics find enough value in the ideas that's expressed by the new terminology.

And, yes, there is a point where the analogy breaks down. Academic jargon doesn't get the same copyright protection that XML schemas get, and no academic field is bifurcated into those who produce new studies and those who only read the new studies the way the software field is bifurcated into vendors and users.

But, I think the difference between Joe's analogy and mine is still instructive in terms of the underlying values that each analogy expresses. Joe's analogy values user choice of equally adept vendors. My analogy values the ability of vendors to extend software to resolve new user problems. I would contend that both values are worth preserving for the benefit of people who use software.

Users do benefit from software commoditization in their ability to choose different vendors and in the ability of offerings from different vendors to interoperate. But this benefit comes at a sacrifice of product differentiation. Users benefit from product differentiation as vendors strive to solve user problems in new, and more effective, ways.

The ideal solution would be able to accommodate both aspects of "openness." In the world of software, it might not be possible to come up with a solution that balances both values, but I have difficulty imagining one that does a better job of balancing both than the approach we've adopted with Office's use of XML. The schemas are published with a royalty free license. Anybody is free to use those schemas.

Moreover, the way XML support is implemented in Office, people can extend those schemas. Word 2003 supports custom schemas, and the number of solutions providers who are incorporating Office 2003 into solutions that make use of a number of XML standards relevant to particular vertical industries is growing at an impressive rate.

Lastly, XML, with the inclusion of XSLTs into the standard, provides a ready tool for translating one idiom into another. Through the use of XSLTs, for example, it's possible to have Office support OASIS' file format out of the box, albeit with a certain loss of information on the save side.

"Abriendo puertas," is Spanish for "I'm opening doors." In an ideal world, we would be "opening doors" for both vendors and for customers to both use common formats and be able to extend them. That is at least what we're trying to do with the new XML formats. The future will tell us how well we've succeeded.

I just hope that the future gets decided by the people who actually have to use the software than either by government fiat or by pundits who have difficulty arriving at a coherent definition of the word "open".

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Hablemos El Mismo Idioma by Gloria Estefan

The MVP's are Coming!

Rick Schaut — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 11:15:00 GMT

And some are already here. Microsoft's global summit of Most Valued Professionals is this week. The official kick-off is tomorrow, and ends on Saturday.

Scoble says he's looking forward to seeing what the MVPs learn from us, but I get excited about what I'm going to learn from the MVPs.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I get excited. As I type this, it's well past midnight. On a normal evening, I'd either be asleep at this hour, or I'd be a brain-dead couch potato dozing off while trying to watch a Tivo'ed rerun of Law and Order.

Yeah, sure, we'll get a chance to show them some of the ideas we've cooked up over the past year or so, but, more importantly, we'll get some really good feedback on whether we're heading in the right directions.

So, Beth, Paul, Corentin, John, Jim and all the rest of you. Welcome. It'll be great to see you people again. And, if you're not coming, I'll miss you horribly.

By the way, the song for this post isn't a joke. In fact, it's so seriously appropriate that I have to include the lyrics:

Hello, I’m back again
To share with you
My heart and soul
Are you surprised?
I said I would
So here I am

It’s time for us
To say goodbye
So until we meet again
Keep smilin’
Keep smilin’
Keep smilin’
Keep smilin’

The song is more than 5 minutes long. As you might imagine, then, what comes between the first stanza and the second is about four minutes of some of the best Carlos Santana guitar playing you'll ever hear.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Transcendance by Santana

KatrinaSafe--the Entourage Connection

Rick Schaut — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 18:52:00 GMT

Dan Manrique tells part of the story of katrinasafe.com, with more to come. I thought you might like to know that Rebecca Harris is currently a tester in Mac BU. Gil Gordon, Steve Friesen and Omar Shahine are former Mac BU people who've moved to hotmail.

In any crisis situation, there is a need and a place for top-down decision-making, but those in charge need to find ways to both accommodate and facilitate this kind of individual initiative. It's fortunate that loose connections were available to make this sort of thing happen, but I've also seen times when the absence of connections caused some efforts to fall through the cracks.

Nonetheless, a very good part of the reason I still work at Microsoft after 15 years is the fact that I get to work with people like Rebecca, Gil, Steve and Omar.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side) by Peter Frampton

A Meager Tribute

Rick Schaut — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 21:39:00 GMT

With all the political wrangling and the coulda-shoulda-woulda flotsam bobbing to the surface in Katrina's wake, it's all too easy to forget the unique role that New Orleans played in the development of a uniquely American art form. Were it not for New Orleans' unique cultural mix--a mix that owes itself as much to New Orleans' geography as it does to New Orleans' demographics--we would never have had jazz.

So, rather than get all caught up in the stuff that only serves to arouse anger regardless of what political stripe one might be, I've immersed myself into the music for a while. In the process, I've run across a couple of gems that I thought worth sharing.

One is a new release from Sonny Rollins. AMG's review is here. This one seems rather appropriate, as it was recorded on 9/15/01. Why it's taken four years to be released, I have no idea. Regardless, I'm sure you'll be as enchanted as I am with Rollins' ability to explore harmony without losing sight of the song's melody. This is jazz improvisation at its best.

The other is a live album by the Derek Trucks Band at the Georgia Theater. The AMG review is here. The line about "aimless guitar wankery" is priceless. The Mac connection: this one is available only via iTunes or via the Sony Music Store. If you're outside the US, try HittinTheNote.

Rollins is classic, straight-ahead jazz. Trucks, I sincerely hope, represents a significant future direction for music--a blending of a variety of musical styles and genres into a coherent whole delivered with a virtuosity that is always subservient to the music. That's what New Orleans gave us with jazz. It'd be great to see that kind of thing happen again.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Kam-Ma-Lay by Derek Trucks Band

Pigs Have Flown...

Rick Schaut — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 01:22:00 GMT

...through Hyde Park. Way cool!

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V) by Pink Floyd

Feeling Antinomial

Rick Schaut — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 01:44:00 GMT

Today's theme seems to be names. Dave Winer and Kosso are wondering about Robert Scoble's middle initial. Sorry, Robert, but I've already staked a claim to having all the relevant initials.

On almost related note of vanity, having a last name that happens to be a common verb in some other language makes for a Feedster search that will occasionally turn up a movie review that you can't read. Google searches tend to suffer from a similar problem of turning up multiple web sites that have the German equivalent of "Click here to view guest book." I knew I should have taken German in high school.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Rick Kick Shaw by Cecil Taylor Trio

Got Frontier and MacBird Experience?

Rick Schaut — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 17:52:00 GMT

Dave Winer is looking for a Mac developer with knowledge of Frontier and MacBird to work on his latest project: an OPML editor. According to Dave, the Mac version is stalled.

If I didn't just get a load of work heaped on me, I'd be sorely tempted to toss my hat in. It'd be a great, and really fun, chance to work with Dave Luebbert again.

At one point in my life, I aspired to be a guitar player. I still play guitar, but my day gig is just too good to give up. Back in those early days, however, I absorbed as much as I could. I still have a dog-eared copy of the late Tommy Tedesco's For Guitar Players Only.

Tommy gave a lot of great advice in that book, and one of the best is that there are really only three reasons to ever take a gig: you'll make money from it, you'll learn from it or you'll just plain have fun doing it. Winer's gig looks like it has two out of those three.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: The Life by Alicia Keys

Big Dave (Which One?)

Rick Schaut — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 07:36:00 GMT

Dave Winer provided this link to an article posted by Dave Luebbert. Dave Luebbert was the development manager for Mac Word 5.0, and was my first boss at Microsoft.

Dave (L) is an incredible guy. He's a musician, and a very big fan of Jazz. He's been working on a music composition program (Song Trellis) for as long as I can remember.

I learned a lot from Dave, not all of it related to developing software. You can, too, if you follow the link above. I highly recommend his article.

As for which "Dave" is "Big Dave"? Well, Dave L is no small guy. We had another Dave who worked on the Mac Word 5.0 project. He wasn't a little guy either, but Dave L still got the moniker "Bid Dave." I suppose one could say that Dave Winer is "big" in many ways, but Dave L will always be "Big Dave" to me.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Famous Alto Break by Charlie Parker

Flipping Out

Rick Schaut — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 01:12:00 GMT

I've seen quite a few people comment in blogs that the endian issue I mentioned yesterday won't turn out to be much of an issue. Well, you can't say I didn't warn you about drinking the Kool-Aid, but it you still have some lingering doubts that there isn't a significant number of developers out there who are going to have issues, go wade your way through this stuff.

For a more concrete example, Apple have produced documentation for developers who use PowerPlant. PowerPlant uses various resources to describe the UI objects that are created--windows, menus, dialog boxes, etc. Reading these resources correctly in the context of a universal binary will be crucial. They've included some sample code to flip bytes in PowerPlant resources. It's more than 780 lines of code--780 lines of tedious, byte flipping code.

Now, there are quite a few people who are likely to say that this is really just an extreme example of where byte-swapping is problematic; that, if developers followed all the "rules" they will have no problem. The fact is that these "rules" are nothing more than rules-of-thumb--general guidelines that many developers will disregard for very legitimate reasons.

Consider a drawing program like Adobe Illustrator (I almost said FreeHand--does that date me?). Undo is an important feature in a drawing program. There are two ways to do Undo: save off an entire copy of an object for each user action, or encode user actions as operation codes that can be transacted. In the latter case, you save the object in its original state plus all of the changes the user made to the object as opcodes. Chances are that the opcode solution will result in much smaller files. It does, however, break the "rules" that unknowing people tend to tout when these kinds of discussions arise.

No. The PowerPlant resource example isn't extreme. It's just a common, specific example for which Apple have been kind enough to provide a solution. Anyone shipping serious applications that have not already had to solve this problem for cross-platform scenarios has quite a bit of tedious work to do. While I've welcomed this change for my own circumstances, I don't envy the position in which a number of my compatriots down in San Jose find themselves.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: If 6 Was 9 by Jimi Hendrix