Sugar Maple Software

I recently wrote my first draft of documentation for my upcoming application. Integrating this documentation into Apple Help was much easier than I expected. The Apple Help Viewer simply displays HTML files. More impressively, cascading style sheets (CSS) are supported. I hope this will allow me to share the identical HTML files between my application and the support section of my web site and simply have different CSS files for each. …

I’m a big fan of Perforce for source control. I have limited experience with CVS and Subversion, but compared to MPW Projector and tlib, Perforce is a godsend. While not free like CVS and Subversion, an unlicensed version of Perforce does not expire and support two users and five client workspaces. BBEdit integrates well with Perforce. Xcode also integrates with Perforce, but I ran into some difficulties getting it configured.

The Mac community is an amazing beast. More generally, the Apple community is an amazing beast. In the days before the advent of the Internet, when I first starting programming on Apple computers, the community was local and gathered at computer fairs held at area malls. Later, when I began developing for the Mac, the community had a fledging on-line presence (e.g., Guy Kawasaki’s Evanglist and various web sites), but I still eagerly awaited my Apple developer mailings and develop magazine. Today, the community is global and gathers on a variety of mailing lists and web sites. The general Apple community seems stronger today than ever before; this is especially the case of the Mac developer community. For someone starting down the independent software developer path, this is quite fortuitous since this community is an incredible resource.