Using ProGuard on jSuneido

ProGuard is a free Java class file shrinker, optimizer, obfuscator, and preverifier.

I'd seen a few mentions of ProGuard and then when I was updating to the latest version of the Guava library I saw that they were recommending it. So I decided to try using it on jSuneido.

It shrunk the size of the jSuneido jar from 2.5 mb to 1.4 mb.  That's pretty good for an hour or two of setup.

I haven't tried the optimization yet, partly because the Guava instructions disabled it. I'm not sure why.

ProGuard also does preverification which should improve startup time, although that's not a big issue for the server usage that jSuneido is aimed at.

It took some trial and error to get a configuration file that worked. I'm not sure it's optimal yet. I still get some warnings from Guava (mentioned in their instructions) and from jUnit, but they don't appear to cause any problems.

Eclipse += Mercurial

It wasn't quite as easy as I would have liked to get the MercurialEclipse plugin working, but it certainly could have been worse.

It was easy to install the Eclipse plugin using the update site: http://cbes.javaforge.com/update

But when I tried to import my project from Mercurial I got a bunch of errors about passwords.

I found a post from someone with the same problem, with a pointer to instructions on how to solve it.

I guess the simple username + password doesn't work with MercurialEclipse, at least on OS X. Sigh.

The answer is to use an SSH key, which I'd avoided till now, but it turned out to be straightforward with the help of the SourceForge instructions. It sounds like it might be a bit trickier on my Windows box - I haven't tried that yet.

I tweaked a few things for the new setup, committed those changes, and pushed the changes to the SourceForge repository. Seems like I'm good to go :-)

The Revenge of the Intuitive

Interesting article by Brian Eno on the user experience problem of too many options, a problem we struggle with all the time with our software. The challenge is that it is the users themselves that keep asking for more options, despite the fact that it ends up making the software harder to use.

Wired 7.01: The Revenge of the Intuitive

Moving jSuneido from Subversion to Mercurial

I've been planning on moving from Subversion to a distributed version control system for a while. Initially I assumed it would be Git since that's what I heard the most about. But I recently listened to a podcast with Eric Sink where he said Mercurial had better Windows support and was simpler to use, especially for Subversion users. An article on InfoQ confirmed this. And Google code has Subversion and Mercurial but not Git. And Joel Spolsky and Fog Creek had picked Mercurial. Joel even wrote a tutorial for Mercurial. So I decided to give Mercurial a try.

When explaining distributed version control a lot of people start by saying there's no central repository, it's peer to peer. This throws off a lot of people because they want a central repository. It's the explanation that's wrong. You can have a central repository, and most people do. The difference is that it's a matter of convention, it's not dictated by the software. And you can also have multiple repositories.

For me, the advantages would be having the complete history locally, even when I'm off-line, and being able to easily branch and merge locally.

Here are the steps I used to convert jSuneido from Subversion to Mercurial. (I haven't converted C Suneido yet, but that shouldn't be too hard, just more history so it'll be slower.)

Download and install Mercurial on OS X from mercurial.selenic.com

Convert the existing SourceForge Subversion repository to a local Mercurial repository:

hg convert http://suneido.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/suneido/jsuneido

Ideally you wouldn't convert directly across the network. Instead you'd clone your Subversion repository to your local machine and convert from there. That's primarily so if you have to tweak your conversion and re-run it, you're not dealing with the network delays multiple times.

I was lucky since my Subversion history did not have anything tricky like branches to deal with. And cloning the Subversion repository looked painful. I figured I could probably get away with doing the convert directly. It ended up taking a couple of hours to run.

One nice thing about convert is that you can run it again to pick up incremental changes. (I had to do this once because I had forgotten to send my latest change to Subversion.)

To check out the result I copied the repository to Windows (under Parallels) and installed TortoiseHg. The repository looked reasonable. (A little roundabout, but I wanted TortoiseHg anyway.) TortoiseHg seems to work well.

Enable Mercurial for the Suneido SourceForge project. Add a second repository for jsuneido. See sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sourceforge/wiki/Mercurial

Push the local Mercurial repository to SourceForge.

hg push ssh://amckinlay@suneido.hg.sourceforge.net/hgroot/suneido/jsuneido

I could have also done this with TortoiseHg (but don't look for a "Push" menu option, it's under Synchronize)

I can now browse the repository on SourceForge.

I found the series of three blog posts starting with From Subversion to Mercurial. Part 1, Setting the Stage quite helpful.

Next I have to figure out the Eclipse plugin for Mercurial. I hope it's less hassle than the Subversion one!

Stylebot

Changing the Look of the Web with Stylebot - Google Open Source Blog

A very nice Chrome extension that lets you easily create custom stylesheets for web sites. For example, I often want a different text size for a given site, or to hide certain annoying elements (e.g. ads!)

This is a good example of how Chrome seems to be pulling ahead in the browser competition.

Balsamiq Mockups

I've heard several people say good things about Balsamiq Mockups. I haven't used it myself but I'm planning to give it a try. I like how it produces something that looks like a sketch so people don't get the mistaken idea that it's a finished design.

What Can't the iPad Do?

The girl next to me on the bus had an iPad, so I asked her how she liked it. I expected the usual "it's great", but instead I got "I don't" I asked her why and she said there was too much stuff it couldn't do. I didn't get a chance to dig deeper.

Someone else I know bought an iPad and immediately got someone to jailbreak it for them. Why? Because there's too much stuff it can't do otherwise. When I asked for examples they couldn't really give me any. This is a non-technical person, it's not that they wanted to do anything special.

Obviously, there are things that an iPad is not ideal for. And there are things that an iPad can't do. But there are a huge number of apps and for most people, I just can't see what it "can't" do. All most people do is email and Internet anyway.

It can't run big programs like Photoshop, but most people don't need that. You can't run Microsoft Office, but you can get word processing and spreadsheets.

The touchscreen keyboard is not great for typing a lot, but most people don't type a lot. And if you really need it you can use a Bluetooth keyboard. Most people are happy typing on their cellphone! (I manage to type quite long blog posts only iPhone.)

I would guess one of the reasons for this idea is that people get overinflated expectations from all the hype. And when it doesn't (can't) live up to them, they have to blame it on something.

Which is where the critics come in. People don't remember the specific criticisms like the lack of multi-tasking or cameras or memory cards. All they remember is that "there's stuff it can't do".

And there's always the most common reason people say you can't do something - simply because they don't know how to do it. We get that all the time with our software. You ask people how they like the software and they say it's ok but they really wish it could do xyz. Half the time it already can, they just didn't know it.

iPhone Undo/Redo

I've was getting ready to write a blog post asking why the iPhone doesn't have undo/redo. Selecting text is tricky and it's easy to delete more than you wanted and then have no way to get it back. But when I did a quick search before writing the post, I found it does have it!

If you shake your iPhone you get an undo/redo popup. It appears you can even undo multiple steps, at least in the Notes app.

I'm surprised I didn't run across some mention of this before now. I'm not surprised I didn't discover it on my own. I don't tend to stop and shake my phone in the middle of typing! Maybe the idea is that you get so frustrated you shake your phone?

Honestly, I think this is poor design. First, it's not discoverable. And when people, even experienced ones, don't discover a feature they're probably going to assume it doesn't exist. Second, when I'm typing I generally hold the phone steady in my left hand and type with my right. Shaking is not a natural action, it's like having to take your hands off the keyboard.

Wouldn't it make sense to put an undo key on the keyboard? It could be on the secondary punctuation layout. At least then it would be discoverable. You could still keep the shake interface - presumably someone at Apple thinks it's great.