On March 8, 2008 the Cocoa Dev House Munich will take place at equinux AG in Munich. There are already nearly 30 attendees on the list and I hope that I can write my name on that list soon, too.
Archive for January, 2008
Implementing syntax highlighting can be a painful task. Lots of regular expressions and thinking may be required to master this.
On the search for an easy way to implement a syntax highlighting mechanism for NSTextView I found an easy and fast (regarding runtime) way to do this. By using flex (a tool with its roots in the 1970’s) defining the rules of what should be highlighted makes it a lot more easier and structured.
flex is the GNU version of lex, the lexical analyzer generator (Buzzword jackpot!) developed by Eric Schmidt and Mike Lesk in 1975. By defining some rules (mainly regular expressions) it generates a C program which allows us to scan through a text and do something with the text, e.g. divide it into tokens. Tokens are chunks of characters with a special meaning (as defined in our rules). Confused? Read on, this concept will become very clear soon.
In this article I want to show you how we can use this ancient but very powerful tool to implement a basic syntax highlighting within a NSTextView.
Continue reading ‘Syntax Highlighting for NSTextView with flex’
Yes, we all know this. Don’t trust beta software. But if you do, make backups!! Well, making backups is no bad idea, anyway.
Sorry folks, but an update of ecto killed the article I was writing. Thanks to Time Machine I could restore the article but the work of two days is lost. 
I found a nice little video (45 min) at YouTube showing David Allen giving a speech about Getting Things Done at Google. If you already know GTD you won’t find anything new, but it gives a nice overview what GTD is and why it may help you getting more productive and relaxed.
I’ve been using GTD for a couple of months now, and I can tell you that it works. But it only works if you have the discipline to use it for all of your stuff. As soon as you start disregarding the usage of your trusted system the whole system may get out of control.
Also, today OmniFocus 1.0 (a GTD trusted system) was released. With over 13,000 pre-orders this is a huge success for the guys at the Omni Group. Congratulations! It’s a really great product!
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