Progress Report

John Montgomery — Mon, 24 May 2004 19:23:26 -0000

Ok, so I didn't quite manage to release alpha 5 when I was hoping - my uni project and exams got in the way.

I have done some more work since then, as I currently have a several days gap before my last exam. I have mainly been working on the XML conversion code. In particular I have moved over to using some of Java's code to serialise Java objects into XML (using java.bean.XMLEncoder/XMLDecoder). This is making my life _much_ easier. So much easier in fact that I have just successfully converted a Psion Word document, with formatting, to XML then back to Psion Word with no loss of formatting. It can't handle embedded objects yet, but this is a big step.

My desire to get XML conversion working is that it makes other people's lives easier. As XML is a text-based format it is a lot easier to decode/parse than the Psion files formats, which in turn means it's easier for people to read _their_ data and potentially to write their own synchronization/conversion scripts to and from XML.

Anyway, I hope I'll have a new release soon and in fact I might scale back some features for now, so that I can can do so.

Progress on Alpha5

John Montgomery — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 12:31:40 -0000

Seeing as I'm now on holiday from university again, I've had some time to get some more work done. I've rewritten a lot of the conversion code and have a much better GUI for this now. I have also fixed a bug that sometimes caused a disconnection of the link, when it shouldn't have.

Other new features include conversion of Record files (uncompressed ones only) to and from sounds files (e.g. .wav, .au), conversion of Sketch files to and from gif, png and jpg. There is also basic conversion of Word files from txt, html and rtf (currently very little formatting is retained).

I hope to make a new release in the next few weeks.

JPL2 Alpha 4

John Montgomery — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 15:04:25 -0000

Features a few bug fixes and more importantly now handles backups from multiple machines correctly and allows restoring from backup (at last).

JPL2 Alpha 3

John Montgomery — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 20:18:56 -0000

Well JPL been due for a new release for a while and seeing as I'm not going to be any less busy soon I thought now was as good a time as any.
This version generally behaves very well, but there may be some odd behaviour, because I haven't had the time to go over everything. Please mail me if you get anything odd happening.

John

Bit Busy

John Montgomery — Sun, 12 Oct 2003 10:25:51 -0000

Ok, as usual I haven't managed to get a release out. I was planning on getting something released before I went to Uni, but I haven't quite got there yet...

However I have just upgraded to MacOS X, so that should help a bit. The next version probably won't be tested/released for MacOS 9, as it's too much hassle and I suspect most Mac users have upgraded already - for those who haven't there are always the earlier releases.

John

Changing to LGPL

John Montgomery — Sat, 30 Aug 2003 23:46:18 -0000

Just updated the source files to use the LGPL licence. This is because I have had some interest in JPL being used as part of other programs, that are not GPL'ed.
My view that is that if other people use the code in that way they are more likely tofind bugs with it and fix those bugs, thus making JPL better.

In other news I have fixed a couple of bugs:
zip backups were sometimes confusing zome zip programs. This meant that they were extracting files with names like System\data\jaslkj... Rather than putting things into relevant directories. Otherwise all the data was still there.
Hidden files were being uploaded by JPL. e.g. MacOS X files like .DSStore etc. Now I check whether a file is "hidden" before uploading it.

Still Here

John Montgomery — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 10:39:26 -0000

Just a quick note to say JPL is still being developed. Just being a bit disorganised as of late. The good news is I now have broadband, so once I set up CVS again I'll get some code uploaded, and hopefully do a new release too.

Beyond that JPL will probably be changing to the LGPL license, to allow people to use it as a library without their code having to be made GPL'd. This is because I've had interest frmo several people about this, and I figure the more developer types using the code, the more chances of finding and fixing bugs.

Current new features include being able to double-click on files in JPL and open them with desktop applications! Also I have the start of a Jotter converter.

John

Fixed It

John Montgomery — Mon, 28 Apr 2003 19:41:40 -0000

New version uploaded, which should work fine. Also fixed a minor bug that meant JPL wouldn't work if swing was not present (Whoops).

Whoops

John Montgomery — Wed, 09 Apr 2003 20:54:56 -0000

Looks like in my haste to get alpha2 out I may have messed up the binaries! I'll try and get some new ones out soon, so if in the meantime you download alpha2 and it doesn't work then it may well be my fault! Try alpha1 instead or for the intrepid there is always the source code.

cheers,
John

JPL 2.0 alpha 2

John Montgomery — Sun, 16 Mar 2003 14:19:46 -0000

The second alpha has finally been released. Lots of new features and therefore potentially more bugs.
However it does seem to run very well and I haven't encountered any major problems yet.. As usual I'm more than happy to hear from people about this.

p.s. This version has some support for Ducth and French, however this support is incomplete; some pieces of text will appear in english as they have not been translated yet.

Recent posts to news

Progress Report

Progress on Alpha5

JPL2 Alpha 4

JPL2 Alpha 3

Bit Busy

Changing to LGPL

Still Here

Fixed It

Whoops

JPL 2.0 alpha 2