Note: This article is marked deprecated. It means that it might contain old and/or outdated information that is no longer accurate or even relevant.

Adorn-small-tidy-old

Balthisar Tidy 1.0 Released to the Public

I’m proud to announce that Balthisar Tidy version 1.0 is available now! After 12 years of beta, sub-version-1 releases, I finally think that Balthisar Tidy is ready for general public acceptance!

What’s New

If you’ve been using Balthisar Tidy for a while then you already know the basics. The 1.0 release has been geared toward making new users comfortable. To support this, I’ve added:

  • Mac OS X 10.8 compatibility. Hey, not everyone is on Mavericks, and so reaching a broader audience is in everyone’s interest. As soon as I figure out how to target Lion from Xcode 5, expect to see support for it, too.
  • A first-run helper that describes the interface. You may be an expert now, but it’s often the case that new users download Balthisar Tidy, run it, and then have no idea what to do next. The first-run helper will explain things in just a few, short steps.
  • An input-encoding helper. New users typically don’t know what the input-encoding Tidy option is, and they can be surprised when a file the open shows up as a blank document in Balthisar Tidy. Now Balthisar Tidy intelligently tries to capture these conditions and provides help to such users.
  • Help files have been added. No proper Mac application lacks a help file, and no friendly application refuses to provide some type of user assistance. I’m happy to say that after 12 years, Balthisar Tidy finally offers help.

Other Stuff

A lot has changed in Objective-C (the language that Balthisar Tidy is written in) and the Cocoa frameworks (the stuff that Apple gives us developers in order to make useful programs for you) since Tidy 0.4 on Mac OS X 10.2. Little by little I’ve been migrating the code into the modern Mac OS X paradigm (I bet you thought that buzzword was long dead!). Things like bindings, modern Objective-C syntax, properties, key-value observing, etc., are all new to Tidy. Luckily Tidy’s initial design was flexible enough to allow this refactoring. If that’s all Greek to you, just know this: the architectural changes will make it easier and faster to bring future enhancements to you.

App Store

I’ve submitted Balthisar Tidy to the Mac App Store. If/when it’s approved it will be available as a free application. I’m hoping that this will bring significant exposure to Balthisar Tidy. While I won’t make money, I can hope for payment in Internet fame, right? I have a good career that allows a good lifestyle, and I have no desire to exploit the App Store for some meaningless profit. My pledge is this: there will always be a free, ad-free version of Balthisar Tidy available on the App Store. No nag-screens, no pleas for money. Just a basic, working Balthisar Tidy that you can use free of any guilt.

Open Source

Don’t forget: Balthisar Tidy is completely open source. It’s available on github, right now, with the permissive MIT license. If you’re an Objective-C hacker, please feel free to contribute to the cause. Even if you’re not an Objective-C hacker, maybe you’d like to see better help files, or even other localizations?

comments powered by Disqus