iNMR news #87

[GB, author of iNMR]

Happy New Year to everybody!
We start immediately with important news. Please take the time of
reading this issue.

THE TIME-MACHINE CRASH

This is something that only happens with Lion and iNMR full edition,
and it happens in an unpredictable way. It doesn't matter if iNMR is
running or not. Time Machine crashes and it's very annoying. If this
happens to you, there are two solutions:

solution A: remove the Spotlight plug-in from inside the bundle
"iNMR.app"
solution B: substitute the above plug-in with the equivalent extracted
from inside version 5.

I ignore the exact cause of the crash, though I suspect that Apple
probably knows it well. The old plug-in has been working perfectly for
years, before the arrival of Lion. Its apparent fault is that it
contains 32-bits code. The new plug-in of version 5, that hasn't
crashed so far, is almost identical. The only difference is that it
has been compiled in 64-bits mode.
Maybe Apple will fix this in future, but: if they don't? Neither
solution A nor B is acceptable in the long term. Somebody proposed to
publish two versions 4:
- "version 4 for Lion"
- "version 4 for older systems"
The con of this solution is that there would be too many versions
around (counting iNMR reader and iNMR 5 beta we arrive at 4 different
versions at the same time). I think it's more sensible to anticipate
the release of version 5 by a whole year, which means it will be
released next week. It is risky, because it hasn't been tested enough,
but I am confident that everything will be OK by the end of January.

THE LAST BETA VERSION

Version 5 is now complete. It carries the version number 4.9.11 and
can be downloaded from:

http://www.inmr.net/downloads/5_11.zip

A LITTLE OF HISTORY

When I released version 4, I decided it was the last one for Tiger and
the PowerPC. The next version would have been rewritten completely.
Three years at least were required for the job. I had a tremendous
doubt, however: how to test a completely re-written program? iNMR had
been written and tested piece-wise in a period that of 5 years and it
had not been simple, because the number of testers has always been
scarce. How to test a completely new application? I never found a
convincing solution.

Eventually I changed my plan: I would have recycled as much legacy
code as possible. This is why iNMR 5 is so much resemblant of iNMR 4.
The overall structure is the same, though built on a different
skeleton. Version 4 was based on Carbon, with 1% of code written in
Cocoa. Version 5 is based on Cocoa, with a single line written in
Carbon.

TECHNICAL DETAILS YOU CAN SKIP

If you are curious, this is the only remaining Carbon call:
AHGotoPage( CFSTR("iNMR Help"), page, NULL );

While most programmers think at Carbon and Cocoa as two different
worlds, the distinction is not clear-cut. Both Carbon and Cocoa are
based on an underlying complex platform that includes: ANSI C, Core
Foundation, Core Graphics, Application Services. Most of the iNMR code
links directly to this underlying platform. In the end, iNMR is a
mixture of different technologies and no particular taste is
predominant.

The details that you should know are:

- the new code is 64-bits.
- it is Intel only, no more Universal Binary.
- Snow Leopard (or a later OS) is required.

In practice, you need a Lion-compatible hardware, but you don't need
Lion. iNMR 5 does not support the new Lion features.

THIS UPGRADE IS FREE

As promised 1 year ago, the last upgrade fee was valid for 3 years of
upgrade. Version 5 is going to be a free upgrade for most of the
users. You are not forced to upgrade. Version 4 will continue to
survive for another two years. Keep working with it, if you are happy
in this way. If you want to move to version 5, verify which kind of
license you have got.
We'll ask you a fee in the following cases:

- your license is non-standard; you can either convert your license to
the standard status or pay an upgrade fee and keep your license at the
disposable status;

- you already received a free upgrade from version 3 to version 4;
this time we expect you to cover the costs of my work;

- you are not an academic customers.

LAPTOP EXTENSION

Starting from today's the price of the laptop extensions drops from 75
to 39 euro.

WHAT ABOUT iNMR READER ?

The little sibling runs perfectly on anything from Tiger to Lion. It
will remain at the stage of version 4 for another couple of years.

APPEARANCE

You will notice that the visual appearance of version 4.9.11 is quite
different from the one of version 4.9.9. There are new icons in the
toolbars, new cursors, new buttons and a completely different palette,
courtesy of Pascal Fricke. Nothing is definitive yet. If the
discussion in this group demonstrates that another style is preferred,
that style will be adopted.