This has changed slightly - there is now a 'stop' button that should cancel a connection attempt.
Screen shots: |
Progress: |
To do list: |
Download Source Code (PB Project File) | ||
I've decided to abandon working on Gunnar as a private project. It works as a newsreader but not as well as I'd like. Therefore I'm releasing the source code under the GNU Public Licence (v2) so that anyone who wants can benefit from the work I put in here.
I put this up here to show the work in progress on Gunnar (was GNR - Giles' News Reader), the simple offline usenet client I've been putting together using Cocoa and Objective-C.
It's about 90% complete at the moment, lacking a feature or three it requires for GNKSA approval. Once those bits have been implemented I'll be needing alpha testers.
If you're interested and want to know more, email me at giles@aegidian.org
©Giles Williams 2001
Yes, that's the same Giles Williams that wrote the JQT Java quake editor a few years back
Source Code Release
I've decided to abandon working on Gunnar as a private project. It works as a newsreader but not as well as I'd like. Therefore I'm releasing the source code under the GNU Public Licence (v2) so that anyone who wants can benefit from the work I put in here.
Very Bad News!
My main hard drive crashed, trashing the last two month's work. There will be a short pause while I rebuild the work and get a better back-up regime!
Back to work after my Easter break and I've made a few leaps up the learning curve since the last update.
I now understand internationalization properly, and can get on with making sure Gunnar's right for French and German users. I also started to break up the monolithic nib file into smaller chunks to handle multiple windows. I fixed the GUI bug where elements would get misaligned.
I'm making progress on correcting the problem with non-US-ASCII characters that stemmed from my simplistic (lossyCString) conversion of chracters between 7bit usenet and uni-code. After my experiences with JewelToy I also now plan to drop the column-view thread browser in favour of a MacSOUP style graphical display.
Pre-Alpha testing has turned up problems with the way non-US-ASCII characters are interpreted for display, plus some servers seem recalcitrant responding to the GROUP command. Occasional crashes are also still occurring.
Fixed a crashing bug when unsubscribing. Added AUTHINFO USER / AUTHINFO PASS authentification, I decided to leave AUTHINFO GENERIC unimplemented until requested. Added support for servers that don't implement the STAT command. Revised the servers preferences interface (to allow new server / delete server), and began design of the filters preferences interface. Added the Spelling menu, (spell checking is turned on by default when you go to compose a new message). Fixed the BST date bug and others by reverting to using NSDate's natural Language interpretation of dates. Fixed the problem with identities pop-ups. Prepared for internationalisation by defining all user messages in a separate header file (doh!).
Thank you everyone who downloaded the pre-Alpha and sent a report, if you have not yet sent a report please do so - in particular please tell me what model and speed of Mac you are using.
I've now removed that file from my iDisk, but I hope to make a full alpha version available very soon.
Pre-Alpha testing indicates that Gunnar is being downloaded okay and running on other people's Macs. Hurrah!
There is a known bug that will crash Gunnar when handling a message where the Date: header expresses time in the format Day, DD Mon YYYY HH:MM:SS BST
Various bugfixes to identity panel, implemented abort connection and button enabling/disabling during connection, established what needs to be done for authentification, identified changes to internet settings (now in com.apple.internetconfig.plist rather than com.appl.internet.plist), fixed problems with frameworks during deployment, made list of volunteer alpha testers.
Main Window and Menu
This has changed slightly - there is now a 'stop' button that should cancel a connection attempt.
Message viewing window
The buttons are:
'next' - go to next unread article in threaded order.
'<-' - history backwards
'->' - history forwards
Note that the thread-browser in the lower pane only initially displays the root article of a thread, clicking this reveals followups, etc.
Message composition window
Warning - Closing this window will lose any information within it.
Warning - the Post Followup/Email reply/Post & Email pop-up is unimplemented.
Identity pane
Newsgroup and Server panes
Note that Gunnar does not download a list of available newsgroups so subscriptions will have to be entered by hand.