Easy Programming with great frustration

In my search for an elegant MarkDown solution for my Power Mac G5, I have continued to dig into all kinds of options from fiddling with open source editors written in Python to building my own.

Programming on your G5 is actually pretty straightforward.

I remember the first Power Mac G4 I got my hands on at a previous IT job many years ago. As I was studying computer science at the time, my first action was to jump into terminal and see if “gcc” was really included by default. And sure enough, every Mac comes with a standard open source compiler. Cool!

Of course, if you want to build something beyond a simple command line app, you’ll need bigger and better tools. The best is XCode, which you could typically install as an extra from your Leopard DVD. You can still grab XCode 3.1.1 from the Apple Developer site here. You will have to log in.

There are other options too.

One of my preferred options over the years was Real Basic. Today, it’s called Xojo, since it really has nothing to do with the BASIC programming language that some of us encountered years ago. Real Basic was an interesting tool because it let you start at the end of your coding process by building the GUI app first and then adding in the functionality you want to have happen. The code is also fairly readable and simpler than Objective C at the cost of a lot of potential fine tuning.

My first experience with Real Basic was with an academic version in my IT position. We needed an OS 8.6 compatible screen lock to have students log into lab computers with a pass phrase. I whipped one up in like 30 minutes using Real Basic.

On Leopard, I’ve used Real Basic to create game character generators and other basic text manipulating utilities in a pretty short amount of time. I’ve grown to like some of its features even as other things drive me nuts.

To bring this home, I decided to crank out a couple of MarkDown attempts using Real Basic. The last version to work on Power Macs is 2009R3. I first built some basic code that would automatically edit what you type into a rich text field and catch MarkDown formatting. While it sort of half worked, it was way too complicated after even just a few basic formatting commands.

SimpleMark Beta

I then used “brew” to install the ever useful multimarkdown command line utility which can take a text file with MarkDown formatting and turn it into a pdf, html file, or whatever. It’s a really great option for working with MarkDown. In Real Basic then, I created a simple window with a rich text field on one side and a live preview html window on the other. As you typed, the program would quickly use multimarkdown to generate preview html of your document. It was dead simple and started me down the path to a solution.

But then I hit a road block – whenever the live html preview updated, it would steal focus from the rich text field. No matter the workarounds I tried, there was no way around this. It turned out to be a bug that was eventually fixed in a later version of Real Basic, which won’t run on my machine.

This is life with older machines.

If you happen to have a license of Xojo/Real Basic, they will still let you download an access key and older copies of its software. I recommend it if you want to mess around with some simple prototype apps or invite a young person to learn some basic coding building blocks. But where you save time, you’ll ultimately also give up the ability to have an app do what you want it to do.

— Nathan

MarkDown for PowerPC?

Recently, I’ve begun to use MarkDown as a way to speed up my writing and make better use of distraction free tools.

If you don’t know what MarkDown is, it’s John Gruber’s attempt to make an easy to read, fast to write markup language that can be used to quickly produce documents for the internet. It’s great for blogging, for instance. Check out the link above to get a feel for it – it’s sort of an easier and limited html.

MarkDown editors, mostly glorified text editors, are all the rage on the Mac App Store and in other places, but is there one for PowerPC? Initially, I thought not. That led me to the attempt to create my own. I do have a very rough beta in process, as you can see from the screenshot below. I mocked it up in RealBasic 2009, which leaves a lot to be desired. If there is interest, I will touch it up some more and offer a beta version from this site.

A rudimentary version of markdown for powermac or powerpc

Luckily, my web search pointed me to Notational Velocity. If you have seen this app before, there is an older version that is available for PowerPC, and it’s pretty intriguing in its own right if you need a decently polished note taker and organizer. It has not been updated for a while however – enter nvALT, the spiritual and ancestral successor to Notational Velocity. It adds features and moves this quirky note taker into the future. Best of all, it adds MarkDown support. Awesome!

Here’s the bad news – the newer builds are not PowerPC compatible. I am going to offer my help to see if I can help them create more compatible builds, but in the meanwhile, you will need to stick to Version 2.0. MarkDown support is included though. You can download 2.0 from here. Ignore the offer to upgrade – 2.1 and up do not work on PPC as far as I can tell.

nvALT has MarkDown support

Look for more updates to the site in the coming days.

Note: Our RSS feed is hopelessly out of date. I had a manual process in place to up date it, but it’s pretty bad. For now, I am going to take it down until I can get it fully updated.

— Nathan