Software I have purchased in 2007

Some people like to buy clothes and I definitely have a desire to buy good software. Be it commercial software, or shareware, I would get myself a license as long as I find it useful.

1. Springy
   
2. BetterZip
   
3. PulpMotion
   
4. HTTP Scoop
   
5. Connected Flow - Aperture Plugin
   
6. Connected Flow - iPhoto Plugin
   
7. Sticky Window
   
8. PDF Studio
   
9. Coda
   
10. Parallels
    
11. Oxygen XML Editor (include the license for SVNClient)
    
12. VMWare Fusion
    
13. Screen Recycler
    
14. iLife 2008
    
15. iWorks 2008
    
16. Keynote Pro - Eclipse Pro
    
17. Graphic Converter 6.0 upgrade
    
18. Fission
    
19. Write Room
    
20. VMWare Workstation 6.0 for Linux
    
21. 1Password
    
22. IntelliJ 7.0
    
23. Mac OS X 10.5
    
24. MarsEdit 2.0 upgrade
    
25. TheMacPak
    

The heavily used application

With OS excluded, I still have a couple of candidate.
VMWare Fusion, iWorks, Connected Flow Aperture Plugin, 1Password. This one is tough so there will be two winners - VMWare Fusion and 1Password. You can find both application running on my mbp everyday, my development work rely very much on VMWare and 1Password could help me to manage the password for the different kind of account I am having.

The worst investment

There's several of them, TheMacPak, Screen Recycler, Parallels and Oxygen XML Editor. But if I have to pick one, it will go to Parallels. I bought it even before it ships, it works OK but definitely resources hog. Besides, I am so used to VMWare that I jumped right into it when they have the mac version ready. Sometimes, I should just wait and decide.

The bang of the bucks

Springy. It's very useful, especially with the context menu integration. The good thing is, it even works with JAR files, that helps me to navigate through the java library which I need to tackle in development work.

The interesting candidate

Apart from the application above, I would also like to mention a service which I used a lot over the year. I purchase the stock photo and vector graphics which I used in presentation from iStockphoto. They used to be quite cheap ($10 for 10 credit) but have increased the price recently. Still, they offer a wide range of quality photos that could liven up the boring presentation.

SVN over WebDAV (and proxy server)

I was setting up a project in LaunchPad and is trying to import the source from our SVN server. Since they can only do it via HTTP so I have to enable WebDAV support for my SVN server. But to make things complicate, the request have to get through a proxy server (err, 2 to be precise).

OK, so, what has to be done?

Firstly, you need to setup the mod_dav_svn on your SVN server.

Install apache server, I am using Gentoo Linux, so all I have to do is

emerge apache

And then, I need to enable apache in loading mod_dav_svn, so I modified /etc/conf.d/apache2

APACHE2_OPTS="-D DEFAULT_VHOST -D SSL -D SSL_DEFAULT_VHOST -D PHP5 -D DAV -D DAV_FS -D SVN"

After that, we have to define the context path, as well as the repository location. These information is stored in the config files for mod_dav_svn, mine is located under "modules.d "and named as "47_mod_dav_svn.conf". The file structure is something like the following, you might want to refer to the Red Book for details of each syntax.

<IfDefine SVN>
<IfModule !mod_dav_svn.c>
LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so
</IfModule>
<Location /src/xyz>
DAV svn
SVNPath /usr/local/repository/xyz
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion repository"
AuthUserFile /home/svn/svnconf/svnusers
<LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
Require valid-user
</LimitExcept>
SVNAutoVersioning On
SVNIndexXSLT /svnindex.xsl
</Location>
</IfDefine>

Restart apache and all should be done. Check by issuing the following command,

svn list http://localhost/src/xyz

Requesting the repository via a proxy server

My SVN server is sitting behind the firewall and all request has to be done from the web server in front of it. The web server is running apache and I can do that by using mod_proxy.

The source is served by one of the virtual host, and we need to modify the httpd.conf in configuring the mod_proxy.

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName www.mycode.com
....
<IfModule mod_proxy.c>
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPass /src/xyz http://192.168.0.1/src/xyz
ProxyPassReverse /src/xyz http://192.168.0.1/src/xyz
CacheRoot "/path/to/write/proxy/file"
</IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

Note that I am only showing the excerpt. Restart apache and test by issuing the command

svn co http://www.mycode.com/src/xyz

If you can checkout properly, then, congratulation. You are all set :)

There's always some tricks

But I find that I am the unlucky one, and I have spot a couple of thing

1. In setting up the mod_dav_svn, the "Location" specified has to be the same as the "context path" you define in mod_proxy. For example,

ProxyPass /src/abc http://192.168.0.1/src/abc

It won't work if the request context path differs from the destination URL.

2. If your SVN server is installed behind a SQUID Proxy Server, you will need to make sure it supports all the DAV command that is required by SVN. Take a look at this .

Good luck!

Applause to MacRabbit, Panic and others.

The winner for Apple Design Awards 2007 has just been announced and I am glad in seeing names that I feel familiar with. :)

I've started using CSSEdit since v2.0, it stood out of the crowd at the time when I was looking for a nice CSS Editor. Simple, elegant and fast is a short summary. But it's not only skip deep, the X-Ray, live preview, real time updating and style lookup features simply blew me away! Validation, to-do list, style grouping, smart comment ... I can just keep going on and on. The features continue to grow in v2.5, like tabbed editing, style override, etc. Updating the website can now brings so much fun!

Panic, I've been the fans of this company since Transit. Now, Coda has entered the market for not so long, but has already stirred up a lot of discussion. Following the tradition of Panic, the interface is clean and beautiful, and it brings almost all the tools that a developer ever needs into a single application.

The FTP client, editor is top notch. The build in terminal is the feature I like most and the reference book is useful when you want a quick lookup. You can even setup a number of sites as your favorites in speeding up the connection. It is a very useful tool for the developer although there are still some rough edges. For instance, I find it difficult to change back to a file I was editing if I changed the functions (e.g. from FTP to Preview). Besides, the CSS editor simply pales when compare with CSSEdit 2.5. Also, it's a bit difficult to work with local files, since "Site" is the major idea of the application. You have to ftp back to the own machine if you want to work on local files.

Anyway, a big applause to all the winners, especially to MacRabbit and Panic.

Expression Engine Re-visit

Sometimes ago, I talked about my view towards Expression Engine.

Time rolling forward until May, 2007. I am now determining on how to setup the community site for CECID, which we expect it will be

partly a blog, partly a forum with user activity, some static pages for file downloading purposes.

The challenge is, are the a single platform that serve it all?

Can my old mate help me out?

My first reaction is to consider about Wordpress, the tools I am most familiar with. It is easy to setup, quite extensible (due to the availability of plugin and templates) but it only shines in a single perspective - Blogging. It will be difficult to integrate other features, especially on how to share a single user account across the different function.

So, a no go. Next, Drupal and Joomla comes up in mind.

Time to think alternative

I have tried Drupal quite extensively before, when I was setting up this blog. I remember how tedious it is in both configuration and content publishing. I can't even spot out the route on how to do every thing. The admin panel is messy in short.

Joomla, it has the functions required and provide rooms for the administrator to configure the look and feel. Customization can be done, yet, it's not intuitive. I don't have much interest to try out again, but might consider to take a second look at it.

Can we have a second chance?

And EE pops up in mind again. Headed over to their new homepage (http://ellislab.com/) and noticed about the new look. Gone through the 4 video tutorial in illustrating the main concept of EE (especially the templating system) and I can grasp their templating idea. Like why it is done this way and the strength of the architecture.

They provided the forum module with a single user database, too. So, it matches functionality. What I have done next is to apply for a trial account, allowing me to try out their templating system, forum module and such. Their templating system is very powerful, the content aggregation and look of the website can be designed with ease, it is a very nice MVC implementation. Imagine, you can customize the layout of the homepage in HTML, but you have provided additional tag that allows logical operation in building up the page.

A powerful templating system

For instance, I can define the homepage to show the latest forum post summary on the right hand side, and only show the summary of each blog entry in reverse chronological order. I can even pass in arguments which the tag can understand, e.g. the number of entry to show, etc.

The content of the website can be defined into groups, e.g. product group, download group, etc. For each group, we can define the look and feel individually. I have spoted a nice layout from the Open Source Web Design web page, and have it applied to the "Product" section.

Administration and installation is also a breeze, you post the article, configure the server all in one place. The layout makes much more sense and you can decide to turn on or off certain features as you see fit.

There's always a but ...

With all these features, I am sold, but there's a downside. It is not a free software.

They offered 2 types of license, basically one for commercial and one is not. I checked with them and they said we can use the non-commercial license. This license, together with the forum module, cost the centre for about HK$1200. I would say it is reasonably charged.

Now, what's left are the building of the Information Architecture, and also the templates that will be used in the forum module.

For anyone of interest, head over to Expression Engine and get a copy of Core Edition, which is for non-profit and personal use. It has provided the templating engine already.

H2O - Essential for your life

A couple of my entries are related to Hermes 2, the product that my team develops. Originally, two versions are provided, one as open source and one as closed source for commercial usage.

But on June 1, 2007, it's come to the end of the 2 products. Cause they will be merged into one - the H2O (pronounce as H-two-oh), which carries all the functions in the closed source, plus more.

H2O is a java application, that handles electronic messages, following the specification of ebMS and AS2. A web frontend is provided for configuration and status tracking. If you are looking for messaging solution, I sincerely recomment you to give H2O a try.

You can head to this location in getting the program, as well as related documentation. Additional information will be added to the website soon.