Any people interested in supporting your native language by localizing Warehouse will receive a free copy and updates for life along with the glorious fame!

Version 1.0 is the first step and already a few key new features are planned:

• Fully bootable backups. I suspect this will be requested often…
• FTP destinations. I have already developed a script for WebScripter which will make mirror copies of files on an FTP server and local disk which I will implement into Warehouse. The uploading/downloading will be slow like any FTP transfers but a handy tool for backing up files to remote servers.
• ZIP archives. I’m not exactly sure how this will work yet but ZIP’ing archives makes a lot of sense since this is how people backup sometimes. Any suggestions are welcome.
• Error logs. The backup log is handy for keeping track of backups that were performed in the background via scheduling but there are no reports of errors. This will be improved upon soon.
• Multiple destinations. This feature will depend on people requesting it but I think backing up to multiple destinations at once would be nice for some scenarios.

Please let us know what other features/improvements you would like to see to make Warehouse a better tool for your needs.

A new backup application named Warehouse is currently in the final stages of development and planned to be released soon.

As of  10.5 Leopard Apple has released a great backup utility called TimeMachine which will keep incremental backups of your entire hard disk on a schedule of your choice. This may be appropriate for many users but for myself it’s overkill and too much of a “one size fits all” solution, like the one button mouse I haven’t used in many years.

Instead of relying on a single button, single backup interface Warehouse uses a task based system which lets you backup based on a task-per-task basis using a variety of backup modes (not just incremental archiving like TimeMachine) and unique destination devices (any mountable device even Macs connected via network). This means that you only backup the files you need, where you want thus saving time and disk space. The real power of Warehouse comes from setting up scheduled backups that run in the background (you can even keep the application closed if you want) so all your data is safely backed up while you work.

As was mentioned Warehouse doesn’t just create incremental archives like TimeMachine but uses other modes as well such as: updating (only new files are transferred), bidirectional synching (both new files on the source and destination are transferred) and synchronizing (newer files are transferred and missing files are deleted on the destination). This makes Warehouse an ideal solution for synchronizing folders across Macs or on removable media like USB memory sticks.

For only $9.99 you can get more control over how you backup your files.

Please visit the website for more information.

When the overhaul is done WebScripter will emerge as a smaller program with stronger core features and cheaper price tag probably about $20.

• Dragging cards to other sheets. This has been a very popular request and has already been developed and waiting for deployment into 1.3. When you drag a card over a sheet it’s image will scale to size then fall into the sheet where it was dropped. Quite nice.
• File/URL attachments (or clippings is another possible name). This is being developed now and I’m not 100% decided on all the details but files and URL’s will be able to be dragged onto cards along with some text (not sure about this yet). Then clicking on the icon will open the file/URL as it would normally in the Finder. This was requested often also by users who wanted to associate a file with a task for reference. Really good idea if you ask me.
• Navigating cards/sheets by keyboard commands so you don’t have to use the mouse.

Those are pretty major feature improvements but also just below them are synching sheet files from Mac to Mac, iCal support and printing. These will probably have to wait until 1.4 but it’s possible one of them could sneak in.

TaskCard now has Japanese and French localizations thanks to the support of caring users. Please support your language by helping to localize TaskCard.

Btw, I have started to port the graphics engine TaskCard uses to iPhone so there will be an app coming out eventually but probably not for a few months yet.

I spent more than a couple months working on this beast but at least most of the effort was placed into the Cocoa framework parser which has been used to support Objective Pascal so no real complaints. Now all Pascal users can enjoy making native Cocoa programs on OS X!

• Preference to not handle application switching like Dashboard.
• Cut, Copy and pasting tasks. Text from other applications can now be pasted easily into cards also.
• Preference to hide the desktop with an image for a cleaner look.
• Global opacity and gradient settings for all cards.
• Auto-update.
• Real help file in the application Help menu like other OS X apps.
• Transition effects when opening/closing cards.
• Some multiple monitor support is added but it’s not yet complete.

Some ideas planned for later releases:

• Printing.
• Undo/redo when deleting and adding tasks.
• File/URL task-attachments that can be opened in the Finder or in Safari.
• iCal synching. I’m not sure how this can be done because there is no calendar concept in TaskCard but I suppose there could be done with some effort. I would like to see a calendar in TaskCard or at least groups for today, this week, this month etc…
• Saving/opening cards to disk so they can be moved across computers.
• Minimizing cards like windows in the Finder.
• “Stacks” of cards to help you organize cards into related categories, like sub-tasks for cards.
• Themes. I thought that it would be fun for users to create custom themes for card designs if they had a portable format they could “fill out” easily.
• Notifications of tasks ending soon.
• Filing cabinet for cards you don’t want to delete but may want to look at later.
• Better color picker that has less options and easier to use.

About iPhone support. Some users mentioned this and yes, TaskCard was designed from the start to become an iPhone app. If you notice the entire interface is totally graphically and thus a very easy port to iPhone without very much changing in the interface. This is however a whole different application we’ll have to wait a while for this one.

As a small bonus there is now support for Objective-C dialect which was recently introduced in FPC. Objcclass/objcprotocol/objccategory (doesn’t exist yet in FPC though) are support as well as “class” methods which are used instead of constructors. Get the latest build of FPC and enjoy!

In coming versions of PascalGladiator I will support the new dialect in the syntax parser and start to package example programs with distribution, a feature only made possible as of 0.7 with it’s improved projects.

As far as I’m aware the key missing features are properties (from Objective-C 2.0) and Categories. At some points excessive type casting must be used to override Pascal’s strong typing conventions but this will be fixed in the future I would hope. Otherwise my tests show that the latest version is practically ready for full time development.

Very special thanks for Jonas and Dmitry for their work on the compiler and promptly fixing bugs in the first 2 weeks of release. Everyone is urged to download the latest version of FPC and test these new features so they can be made stronger.

In the 8 months since releasing 0.4 there was a considerable amount of time spent developing PasCocoaKit then replace the WASTE text editor which used all throughout the program making it extremely difficult to part ways with. The end result is quite excellent though thanks to the intelligent design of NSTextView compared to WASTE. I’m very happy to say after years of very poor WASTE performance I’m rid of that thing and can start making a truly powerful editor core. Sadly however I removed code folding as it was too complicated to replace for this release but it will be ported to the new NSTextView system eventually.

As of this version PascalGladiator is becoming quite a useful tool indeed but my big regret still is that the debugger is not working 100%. Included in 0.7 are some enhancements such as a HUD display which displays symbols in the editor but other features are broken. I would have hoped more than 1 year after the initial release this feature would be working but it never got enough attention in face of these massive efforts, first code folding (big mistake, and now it’s even missing!) and now the text editor. It’s again on top of the priority list after fixing memory leaks and general stability.

This is the biggest update since the initial release, so here is the list of changes.

• PascalGladiator is now 10.5 and higher only. I’m very sorry about this but the new HICocoaView API which was absolutely required only exists in 10.5.
• FINALLY! NSTextView for the text editor core. WASTE is banished to the pit once and for all.
• Code folding is not yet implemented into NSTextView (yet) so it’s pulled
• All DataBrowsers and custom HIViews are re-written in Object Pascal and moved out of static libraries.
• Projects now archive their data into property lists and are much safer, plus you can edit them by hand in the project bundle.
• New logo and application icon.
• Single file editor for editing files without projects.
• Directory browser for navigation folders without projects (drag folders on the application icon).
• Search PasCocoaKit reference in library.
• Class browser is removed (for now) and replaced with light-weight class list in the project browser.
• Resource group now automatically finds NIB’s in your project.
• Disk browser mode in project (the real directory structure as it exists on the hard disk).
• Edit RTF files and use the Cocoa font panel.
• Sweet PascalGladiator logo in the empty tab view pane.
• Find/replace can now search any text field (i.e. console/reference).
• If you build an application you can browse memory leaks (using “leaks”) by showing the memory leaks window in the debug menu. If you enable “MallocLeaks” in the preferences you get a stack trace for each leak.
• The debugging has a HUD mode which sits above the tabs like in Xcode. You can still however using the main debugger window.
• While debugging, symbols that have values are hilited in source and when clicked show their value in a contextual help tag.
• Syntax is compiled in the background when files are saved and re-styled in any open documents.
• Cocoa exceptions can be debugged for PasCocoa projects.
• The editor has an XML mode for editing .plists.
• Builds can be stopped now using the button in the console.
• You can turn off anti-aliasing in the preferences window.
• Recent items are now ordered properly and organized by group: document, folder and project.
• Smart folders in the projects.
• New batch find which lets you search by folder also.
• Cocoa spelling is enabled and will only search comments or strings, not actual code.
• By turning on CFLog in the debugger preferences warnings issued from CFLog will stop execution.
• Backups! Set backup preferences then restore by selecting the version in the Editor menu or editor’s action menu in the lower toolbar. Special thank you to Richard Ward for suggesting this and giving a simple implementation idea.
• Symbol browsers remember their selection/scroll position in between changing documents.
• Compile files item in the project menu that lets you select interfaces which contain symbols you would like to appear in the project.
• 10.4/10.5 have different debugger options (-g or -gw2 -Xg) when compiling.
• Syntax themes are working again after being broken in 0.4.
• Font and background color are enabled in syntax style preferences, don’t have too much fun!
• The symbol menu now contains section headers for better readability.
• Typing helpers are re-worked and now are editable using /PascalGladiator.app/Contents/Resources/Code Sense/typing helpers.plist and regular expressions
• User notes. lines starting with @@ written to STDOUT (using writeln for example) will appear in the error console.
• Open quickly window in the project menu which lets you open any file in the project by file name.
• When browsing folders you can search their contents by file in the Edit > Find > Find in … menu.
• Project backups! PascalGladiator now uses the “rsync” utility to backup and restore projects.
• Debug in Terminal option in the Project menu. This will execute the gdb command PascalGladiator debugger uses into Terminal.app for manually debugging. This is a meant to be a “crutch” short-term solution while the graphical debugger is under development and not always working properly.
• Target paths can be selected using navigation services and auto-resolve to their relative position.
• You can kill the target application while running with the “kill” button in the console window.
• New projects templates are more complete and improved.
• Text editor improvements:
  • Macros can be assigned command-keys
  • Macros in edit menu
  • New code completion (native NSTextView feature)
  • Context sensitive spelling checking (only strings/comments are searched)
  • Regular expressions in find/replace.
  • All new Cocoa style find/replace.
  • Spelling suggestions in the contextual menu.
  • Macros can accept document text as input, offset of the cursor and text length
  • New “select” sub menu in edit menu.
  • Shifting text is improved.
  • Unlimited split views.
  • Bookmarks in the gutter.
  • Shows invisible characters.