Future of SimpleMarkPPC

Happy New Year!

This is just a quick post about my current thoughts of the state of SimpleMarkPPC.

The Good: I feel like the app is functional enough, with a few rough edges that can be fixed to give a little more options. For example, I do plan on making a preference file so font/font size/font color options become persistent.

The Bad: Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that performance is still not what I want it to be. I think this is due to a focus bug inherent to the version of RealBasic that I use, which when using the html viewer control, robs focus from the main text field in which you type. It’s also more prevalent with larger text files. They just become slow to work with, and I need to do some investigation. This ultimately may mean that I will undo the automatic html view and make it manual. I don’t want to do this, because this is essentially what you can get with a few other apps out there for Power Macs that do have working markdown support. Maybe I can simply slow down the cycle a little bit and see if it helps.

Worst case scenario? If I can’t find a decent solution, I am going to stop development and look to rebuild the app using the source from Bean, for instance, or even a basic TextEdit clone. I think performance (and look and feel) will be a lot better too, but it will take a little time. Stay tuned!

— Nathan