Elected to the MacTech Top 25, 2007

“The MacTech 25 honors the most influential people in the Macintosh community. How do we know who these people are? You tell us! Once a year, we open up voting to you, the Macintosh community.”

Best technical writer

John Gruber: “I consider [Matt Neuburg] the best technical writer in the business…”

“[The online help for Affrus] is quite simply the finest software documentation I have every encountered. It’s not just that it’s well-written, detailed, accurate, and complete. It’s that it truly takes advantage of the nature of hypertext. It is cross-referenced and cross-linked out the ying-yang. If you have a specific question, it is easy to find the answer and jump to it directly. (And every question I’ve ever had about Affrus is answered in the help documentation.) But if you want to read the documentation linearly, from beginning to end, it’s easy to do that too. Affrus’s help isn’t just good when compared against the deplorable state of your average help book - it’s just plain great by any standard.”

AppleScript book: “Truth.” “Scholarly.”

David Cortesi, on Amazon.com: “The first AppleScript book that tells the deep truth… [Matt Neuburg] has taken the time to test out every corner case and exception of the language, and he lays them all bare. He looks into AppleScript’s baroque scoping rules and its inconsistent rules for implicit coercion of types. All of Part II is meat and drink to a fan of programming languages, and I read it through like a good novel. More to the point, it’s a deep and thorough job of documenting the actuality of AppleScript: what syntax works, what the tricks and traps are, and what to avoid… To sum up: this book is a deep, thorough exploration of all the quirks, dusty corners, and skeleton-filled closets of AppleScript. Reading it will make you far better prepared to use AppleScript productively.”

Reader email: “Your book is the only one I have come across that really explains precisely the basics linguistic concepts of the language. It is a scholarly work.”

One of the Macworld top maintenance and troubleshooting tools

Dan Frakes: “MemoryStick 1.5 (free; Matt Neuburg) lets you know if you’re running short on RAM or if you’ve got too many apps open, by displaying your Mac’s memory allocation.”

“Rocks.”

Email from a satisfied downloader: “I love stuff that just works. Caught the latest MacWorld tip about your stuff and it doesn’t just work, it rocks.”

I’ve taken a lot of photographs that I like, almost exclusively nature images, but have only recently thought of putting a few on the Web.

Here are what I consider the best 100 or so pictures I’ve taken since about the year 2000. Thanks to John for letting me stick these up in his Gallery. Eventually I’d like to put up a lot more, plus I want to continue digitising my negatives from the past 20 years… Could we have more hours in a day, please?

There is also this little collection of pictures from my family’s Alaska Cruise.

Cocoa is an application framework provided as part of Mac OS X. Apple also provides, when you buy OS X, free tools for programming Cocoa. This means it’s easy to write your own Mac OS X-native applications! So naturally I’ve started writing some. My goal is to write freeware only. Software should be free.

What is FaceSpan 5?

First of all, what is FaceSpan? Similar to HyperCard, FaceSpan is a software construction kit; it emerged at the same time as AppleScript, about 1991, and AppleScript is its programming language. As originally conceived, it was elegant and easy to use, a great way for AppleScript programmers to create a user interface for their scripts. It was bought by DTI in 1996. When Mac OS X came out, DTI first let FaceSpan languish, then rewrote it on top of Apple’s own AppleScript Studio, so that it lost most of its virtues and acquired a lot of AppleScript Studio’s faults.

Then in 2005, Mark Alldritt / Late Night Software, for whom I have done some documentation and programming work, bought FaceSpan and started to rewrite it from the ground up again as FaceSpan 5. The idea is to bring back the elegance and simplicity of the HyperCard-type model, where every interface object has its own script, messages are passed automatically up the containership chain, and every object can see every other object and its script. Plus, since Mark also writes Script Debugger, FaceSpan 5 will have debugging built in. This has turned out to be a massive task, but it’s coming along and the results are pretty astounding so far. I’ve been helping out with documentation and other forms of alpha tester support.

• Mark keeps a blog about FaceSpan 5 developments.

• I helped write this description of what FaceSpan 5 is all about.

• I knew were really getting somewhere when I was able to write a useful application using FaceSpan 5.

Take Control is a publishing arm of TidBITS. It involves rapid publication of timely electronic books (PDFs optimized for on-screen reading) which are kept up to date by periodic revisions. Because the books are electronic, overhead is low, so the books are inexpensive and can easily be updated; once you have bought one, the updates are free. This is a good model for computer-related subjects, because the subject matter changes so quickly (plus it sure saves paper).

• When Panther came out in October 2003, we were ready with Take Control of Customizing Panther. (This has subsequently been collected in a print book as well.)

• Shortly after Microsoft Word 2004 came out, we published two volumes, Take Control of What’s New in Word 2004 and Advanced Editing & Formatting.

• When Tiger came out in April 2005, we were ready with Take Control of Customizing Tiger (now also collected in print).

• And then there was Leopard! Gasping and panting, we somehow managed to be on time in October 2007 with Take Control of Customizing Leopard.

AppleScript: The Definitive Guide!

Well, here’s a how-de-do! I’ve gone and written a book about AppleScript — not just a book, but the book. This really is the definitive guide to AppleScript. Endorsed by Apple Computer, Inc. as an Apple Developer Connection title, covering Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and beyond, this book explains the language completely, including many aspects of it that I’ve never seen explained before. Even if I do say so myself, this is the first really good book on AppleScript - the book I wish I’d had years ago.
News flash: This book is now (January, 2006) in its second edition. Completely rewritten, and updated for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4). (Leopard users, don’t worry; there are very few changes in AppleScript for Leopard, so the Tiger edition of the book is still good. See the errata page for information about the few Leopard differences.)

• You can order it through amazon.com.

• You can read O’Reilly’s blurb.

• Want to read some of the book? You can download a sample chapter in PDF format. This is a really meaty chapter and explains stuff like how scoping of variables works in AppleScript, stuff I had to work really hard to figure out all by my little old self because it’s not explained properly anywhere else, not even in Apple’s own manual or in any previous book. So why are those O’Reilly folks giving away this chapter for free??? Are they crazy? Please, don’t read the free chapter; just buy the book, okay?

• Want to read something else from the book? Here’s an article about cool things you can do with AppleScript handlers, extracted from two passages of the book. (This article was originally published in the ill-conceived and now mercifully defunct Mac Developer Journal.)

• You can read or download the code examples (and URLs) from the book, as a textfile. That way, if you want to try out an example, you don’t have to type it; you can just copy and paste. (NOTE: Be sure to adjust your browser or text processor to see this file as MacRoman, or some characters will be wrong.)

• You can download the AppleScript Studio example developed in Chapter 27, as an Xcode project. This is a good example of a basic AppleScript Studio project, with some nice bells and whistles: it shows how to integrate AppleScript Studio with Perl (and curl), and it shows how to add custom AppleScript scriptability to your AppleScript Studio application - something that it took me a long time to figure out how to do (in fact, I sort of stumbled on the secret accidentally, to the extent that I have been able to get it working at all). In this case, three application properties and a command are implemented.

• You can download the Lame Encode Automator action example developed in Chapter 27, as an Xcode project. (Actually, I’ve added some features to the example since the book was published.) To try this out, you will also need to have installed LAME on your machine.

• You can download the Cocoa scripting example developed in Chapter 27, as an Xcode project. This shows how to get started adding AppleScript scriptability to your Cocoa application (in Tiger). You can also read that section of the book, as a separate tutorial.

• You can read an errata page where I’ve compiled a few additions and corrections.

• You can read reviews of the book on SlashDot, in BookBytes, at O’Reilly’s site, and at amazon.com.

• Here’s a supplementary online article about how to use FaceSpan 4 (and AppleScript) to build the example applications described in my book. (Please note: that was FaceSpan 4. FaceSpan 5 will be a whole different ball of wax!)

• Starting in Tiger, AppleScript scripts can easily be distributed as Automator actions. Here’s an online article I wrote showing how easy it is to write your own Automator actions.

What is Ruby?

Ruby is a programming language that incorporates the best features of every other language that I like (such as UserTalk, JavaScript, and LISP). I’ve been using it for quite a while now.

Replacing AppleScript With Ruby

When I want to drive a scriptable Mac application, I’m now much more likely to reach for Ruby than for AppleScript. What makes it possible, as this online article explains, is rb-appscript, which lets the Ruby language express and send Apple events as easily as AppleScript does (the syntax is quite reminiscent of how Frontier’s UserTalk does the same thing). The reason for choosing Ruby over AppleScript is that Ruby is so much richer as a language than AppleScript is; Ruby has real arrays and hashes, great string handling, and true object-orientation. Since moving my scripts over to Ruby, they’ve become much more efficient and maintainable.

The RubyFrontier Project

The most significant and by the far the largest Ruby project I’m working on is RubyFrontier. One of the coolest features of UserLand Frontier is that it provides a framework for building Web sites that are easy to write and maintain. Frontier takes care of the navigation between pages for you, and turns your text into HTML, allowing you to concentrate on content instead of form (in fact, Frontier was really an early “content management system,” though that term hadn’t been invented at the time). But Frontier is getting long in the tooth, especially on Leopard, plus its Web framework is kind of a pain to work with — it was never very consciously or efficiently designed — and UserTalk isn’t object-oriented and its string-handling abilities were never all that great; and the Frontier open source effort, though well-intentioned, is not making much headway (for example, Apple events still don’t work properly in the universal-binary build on Intel). So I’ve been porting the whole Web framework over from Frontier to Ruby, making improvements as I go along.

The project is now in what I would call a complete first-draft stage: it has gotten far enough that some of these Web pages (those that are so labelled at the bottom) are now maintained and built with RubyFrontier, and so is the entire online help for Script Debugger. I haven’t decided where to take this yet (for example, whether to go open-source); anyway, it’s too early for that.

This section is no longer actively maintained and has been moved to here.

This section is no longer actively maintained and has been moved to here.

This section is no longer actively maintained and has been moved to here.

This section is no longer actively maintained and has been moved to here.

JACT Greek Stacks

To accompany use of the JACT Cambridge textbook for beginners in Ancient Greek, Reading Greek. These stacks let students drill and test themselves on most of the exercises, and all of the forms and vocabulary, from the textbook; includes an authoring system to permit the modification of the exercise stacks and the creation of new ones. Requires Mac System 7+ and HyperCard 2.1+. (And, optionally, Apple’s Speech Manager and voices, if you want it to read Greek aloud rather badly!) Click here to download Part One. Click here to download Part Two.

JACT Vocabulary

To accompany use of the JACT Cambridge textbook for beginners in Ancient Greek, Reading Greek. This program includes all the learned vocabulary from the textbook, allows this vocabulary to be sorted and consulted in ways likely to be useful to students and teachers, and creates flashcards. Requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher. Click here to download it. Based on my HyperCard stack, which you can still obtain here.

Greek Verb Help

An application (Mac Classic only) which presents a full paradigm of the Ancient Greek -o-verb in hypertext format. This means you can navigate in ways impossible with 2-dimensional book pages, which helps you visualize and memorize better. Example: if you’re looking at the Aorist Optative Active and you type “middle”, you’re looking at the Aorist Optative Middle. Includes many notes warning about ambiguous or misleading forms. Looks best in color. Written with Storyspace, in case you were wondering. Click here to download it.

JACT Plato Reader

An application (Mac Classic only) which provides a hypertext grammatical commentary on the Plato selections from the JACT (Cambridge) second- or third-year Ancient Greek textbook, The Intellectual Revolution. The Plato text is in it, and so is a reference grammar, and when you click on a word in the Plato text, you are taken instantly to the relevant passage in the reference grammar. Personally, I think the grammar alone is the real point; it’s written from a somewhat revolutionary point of view (active rather than passive, i.e. how to say things in Greek), and disagrees with Smyth on many points. Based on years of research that didn’t do me a bit of good. Click here to download it.

Translation of Aristophanes, Lysistrata

Literal, including an exact reproduction of the original lyric metres; scholarly, yet intended for (and tried and tested in) actual performance. Sorry, you can’t download a copy; this is a published book. You can learn more about how to order it, here.

Translation of Euripides, Bacchae

Like the Aristophanes translation: Literal, including an exact reproduction of the original lyric metres; scholarly, yet intended for (and tried and tested in) actual performance. This one is available as a PDF, for download.

CambridgeLatin

To accompany use of the Cambridge textbook for beginners in Latin, Reading Latin, by Peter Jones and Keith Sidwell. Includes a healthy proportion of the exercises from the Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises volume, letting students drill and test themselves. Requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later. (Based on a set of HyperCard stacks written for and used with students about 10 years ago.) Click here to download.

Online Latin Lexicon

A file for use with Peter N Lewis’ ObiWan. Gives you a Latin lexicon (Latin-English dictionary) on your computer, with instant lookup, and pop-up access from any application. The dictionary is over 1 MB in size, has 15600 entries; yet the whole thing runs in just 200K of RAM. Can be used for English-Latin lookup too, by searching the entries; that’s not instant, but it’s still very fast. You can read more about it, or just go ahead and download it.

Latin Vocabulary Trainer [not by me]

Okay, I didn’t write this one! But I wish I had. It’s got two features I like: it trains you in Latin vocabulary and verb forms, and it’s written (very nicely) in REALbasic! Here’s a link.

This page prepared April 12, 2008 by Matt Neuburg, phd = matt at tidbits dot com, using RubyFrontier. RubyFrontier is a port, written in the Ruby language, of the Web-site-creation features of UserLand Frontier. Works just like Frontier, but written in Ruby!