gnufoo.org

Blogging Fears

I've been a little hesitant to setup a real blog on my site for one reason: comments. I fear comments will be abused to send me off-topic messages that should go through email or bug tracker. So if you want to email me, please do email me at shane (at) gnufoo (dot) org. And if you have a bug, file it here for uControl or email me about it if it pertains to another project.

New Blog

I finally setup a real blog.

So version 1.4.3 of uControl is out. Version 1.1 of contacts is out. And I just released a new tool called packagelint to help create packages with the right permissions. I've failed to create packages with good permissions on several occasions, so this is my penance in a way.

Ok, the damn install issue should be completely resolved for uControl 1.4.2. Turns out it suffered from three separate issues. I only knew of and fixed one of them with 1.4.1, but I'm pretty sure I got them all this time. But if not, hey, you know where to file bugs.

Damn, bad timing. The release of 10.3.2 wouldn't let uControl install. And I got sick. Ugh. So a new version (1.4.1) of uControl is out.

New version of uControl is out. Go check it out.

This has been in the works for some time, but I finally got some cajoling to make me push it through. uControl is moving to sourceforge. It has its own project and mailing list now. Also, now bugs can be queried and filed using bug tracker.

The few who dig into the source code will find that it's been reorganized to make it simpler and less idiosyncratic. Hopefully, with a sourceforge project, a public CVS repository, and a mailing list I'll become less of a bottleneck.

So version 1.3.7 of uControl has a bug, whereby the Real Function Keys setting does not stick after the machine goes to sleep. While I'm busy trying to fix that, I might just be able to fix another bug in the process: if caps lock is mapped to something else and its light is on, when the machine is put to sleep it wakes up sticky.

Also, this version of uControl will not work nicely with Fast User Switching. Expect that in the next version.

I've released version 1.3.7 of uControl for Panther, which was made possible by Adam Megacz. There was, unfortunately, a little bit of confusion over how the release of it should be handled. Some people are claiming uControl was "hi-jacked". Granted I would have preferred to release it another way, I don't think anyone should attack the person who invested the effort to make uControl work with 10.3. Adam has given us a wonderful gift and wanted to share it with as many people as possible. Really, it's not so bad.

Very soon now I'll be moving the uControl code over to a CVS repository on sourceforge.net. That'll include more access for developers, and more access for users, and I think it will prevent this kind of miscommunication in the future.

I had been beating my head against my keyboard for the last few days. In an act of desperation, I google'd for "uControl Panther" and came across Adam Megacz's site, where he actually managed to get uControl working again!

Just wanted to update everyone. Progress is being made with the Panther version of uControl. I finally coerced uControl's kernel extension to load into Panther today. Unfortunately, it's impotent i.e. none of the features work save Real Function Keys. I don't know if it's the gcc changes or IOHIDSystem changes that are responsible. But at least it's loading, which makes me feel better.

Have I mentioned I hate C++? Well, I do. The only thing I hate more is probably, well, caps lock.

I've been getting a lot email regarding uControl not working on Panther. Sadly, I haven't touched Panther yet. I've wanted to, but I haven't really had the extra partition to spare. So I'll probably start on that work tomorrow. I figure if I install Panther, it'll force me to deal with it. Either that or I'll have to start dragging my happy hacker keyboard around. Hopefully, it won't take too long. But I wanted to release uControl one last time on 10.2, so 10.2 users would have a working Real Function Keys feature. Thank Alex Harper for that one.

Alex Harper has a lot of other interesting things at ragingmenace.com. For those of you who like the scroll wheel emulation feature in uControl, Alex refined that feature even further in Side Track. It digs a little deeper and allows you to use your track pad as a scroll wheel without holding down any keys. I encourage everyone to check it out.

I want to apologize about taking so long to re-release uControl due to this patent issue, but I didn't want to just squelch the Twerq feature quietly and make it look as though it never existed. I think too much of that has happened since software is so malleable.

Although the code for Twerq is no longer there in a functional form, I have left the UI elements in tact as shown here. And I encourage people to sign a petition against software patents. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many other software professionals, software patents hinder the progress of software and unfairly restrict the user. There are already numerous sites that explain in great detail why software patents are bad, such as the League for Programming Freedom.

Also software already flouts copyright expiration (which may be a moot point now that copyright is functionally forever). The source code in most commercial software is never published; therefore it never falls into the public domain. Why does software deserve all this protection for value that the public will never recoup?

Well, so much for that release. I was contacted and told that uControl's Twerq feature supposedly violates a patent held by Matias Corporation.

[shakes head] Damn lawyers.

It's been a while, but I've released a new version of uControl that clears up a number of issues and has some new features to boot. Also I finally figured out how to load and unload the kernel extension from the control panel. That had previously been impossible because it required root privileges and the control panel runs as the user.