Writing documentation

I have the daunting task of writing the documentation for ReceiptWallet. While I have some as well as some knowledge base articles, the docs need an overhaul. I wrote the previous version of the docs for Apple Help by hand. This time, I was going to look for a tool to do it. I found 3 options. HelpLogic, Simple Help Editor, and Mac Help Writer. The UI on the first two makes me want to barf. They say that they're cross platform programs. For most programs, "cross platform" means "we have a crappy Mac UI in order to get it to work on Windows". This isn't true for all applications, but for many.

I tried to overlook the UI of these apps and the cost wasn't an issue, but I couldn't figure out how to use either program and HelpLogic kept saying that it couldn't save my preferences and to check permissions. Not a good start. So I gave Mac Help Writer a try. It looked like it would work even if it did require me to use the format the author of the app wanted. I could live with that. However, there were 2 major flaws with the program. First is I couldn't create ordered lists and second I couldn't insert graphics. I went ahead and bought it and figured that I'd edit the files by hand after creating them.

Right before I went to bed and after I cranked out a bunch of help, I figured it out! I would use tokens and then search and replace later. So I'd encode < as %% and > as %%%; I'd search for the latter first and everything would work out.

To make things even easier, I created a shell script (with the help of Jerry Brady of Blue Circle Technologies) that automates the process after I use Mac Help Writer to generate the help.

#!/bin/bash
path_to_script=$(cd ${0%/*} && echo $PWD/${0##*/})
path_to_script_parent=`dirname "$path_to_script"`

Backup, backup, and backup again

There are two types of computer users, those that have lost data and those that will. Yes, I know this is a profound statement, but computers are prone to fail (they are made by humans, who do, of course, make mistakes). I'm very religious about my backups as I have lost data in the past, not much data, but some. For years, I did weekly archives to CDs and then DVDs. These were good as I could go back in time and get old data, but it turns out I never did that. Last year I shredded years of old CDs and DVDs. My current strategy is to protect against hardware failure and software corrupting data. The first part is easy, just backup to an external drive every day. I do this and rotate between 3 drives; one is always offsite in my safe deposit box. I goto my safe deposit every Friday (the tellers know me I'm there so often). This is a great strategy and has served me well. I did have a hard drive failure several years back, but recovered quite easily (not quickly because my most recent backup that was a few hours old was sitting in the safe deposit box that I couldn't get to for 2 days as I dropped it off on a Saturday). Every day I use SuperDuper! to backup and I'm very pleased with this. I've added Time Machine to my mix and that has also saved me. I believe you can never have too many backups. Oh and I forgot, my virtual private server gets an archive created daily and then once a day, it is synced down to my machine and then weekly copied to a drive going to my safe deposit box. So, I'm pretty well covered.

Why did I write all this? I got a panicked email from a user that used Carbon Copy Cloner to backup his drive, erased his computer and then installed Leopard. However, he apparently didn't verify that this backup (his only one) worked. When he fired up DocumentWallet, all his documents that he had created over the last 8 months were gone and he wanted to know how to get them back. I'm not sure what the final result was, but I told the user where DocumentWallet stores his data and to search his hard drive; hopefully he'll find his documents. At any given time, I have 4 backups of my data (1 Time Machine and 3 cloned drives with SuperDuper!). Could disaster strike me? Sure, if I delete a file and discover months later that I need it, I won't have it. This has happened a few times, but it wasn't critical. With all my source code under Subversion version control, I have another layer of protection that lets me roll back to older versions of my source.

So the moral of my story is make sure you have a backup strategy and always do backups. Either use an automated system or make sure you are extremely consistent about it. (Mine is semi-automated; I have a cron job that launches SuperDuper! everyday at 5 pm and then I shove in one of my drive.)

Discounts for Apple Employees

Periodically I get inquiries from Apple employees about discounts. Sometimes I respond, "what kind of discount can you give me?", but usually I give them the line that ReceiptWallet is priced low enough that it is affordable and if it saves time, isn't it worth the cost?

I can understand educational users asking for discounts, but why should Apple employees get discounts? Do I get a discount on Apple products (yes, as a developer, I pay $500 to get 1 discounted machine a year, but that's it and arguably, the discount I get for what I want is about $500, so it is a wash).

Crappy Support Policy

Yesterday, I went to see about contacting support for VMWare Fusion to see why my el cheapo negative and slide scanner wouldn't work as no one responded to my forum post (on their forums). After poking around the site, I discovered that they only offer 30 days of complimentary email support. After that I have to pay per incident. Wow, that sure doesn't make me want to use their product. I can understand complimentary phone support for a period of time, but limiting email support, that seems ridiculous. Yes, I realize that some people abuse it, but what about the average Joe who only contacts support with an issue, more over, a bug in the software?

If someone has gotten the VuPoint Slide/Negative Scanner running under VMWare, please let me know