This release fixes an issue where scroll bars in the clue list appear awkwardly under Lion, and also addresses a pretty nasty behavior for customers who have downloaded the new version of Across Lite’s official solving app: opening puzzle files in Black Ink fails completely.

How can the simple act of downloading another app render Black Ink useless for opening files? It has to do with Apple’s file-typing system, and an evidently relatively undefined behavior when two different applications lay claim to the same file extension, but tag it as a different type.

When I released Black Ink 1.0 a few years ago, I adopted Apple’s latest file-typing system, based around Uniform Type Identifiers (UTIs). These identifiers allow developers to provide more meaningful information to the system about what a particular file type is, what file extensions it correlates with, more basic types (like text) that it might be derivative from, etc. Developers who “own” a particular file type give it a UTI

Since Black Ink works primarily as an editor of Across Lite format files, a format that was not invented here at Red Sweater, it would have been appropriate for me to adopt the owning company’s UTI when identifying the files that Black Ink knows how to work with. The problem? Litsoft, the company that created Across Lite, had for years neglected to update their software much, and had never declared a UTI type for the file format.

So I declared my own. I did it politely, using my own domain name in the UTI: com.red-sweater.blackink.acrosslite. I did this purposefully rather than trying to make up something on Litsoft’s behalf, so that I wouldn’t be stepping on their toes when they inevitably defined their own UTI.

In the wake of Lion’s release, that’s what Litsoft finally did. Their latest update to Across Lite declares a definitive UTI type for Across Lite puzzle files, which is fantastic! The problem is, Black Ink 1.4 knows nothing about it. To make matters worse, on some users’ systems, the very act of downloading and trying Across Lite’s changed the system’s idea of what .puz files are.

So users who simply tried out another piece of software were suddenly unable to open puzzle files in Black Ink. Not a good situation.

In Black Ink 1.4.1, the Across Lite UTI for “.puz” files is now listed as an “imported file type” for Black Ink. This means that while Black Ink is not considered the authoritative app for this type (nor should it be), the system should consider it a suitable candidate for opening and working with “.puz” files, whether it thinks they are of Across Lite’s UTI, or mine.

Black Ink is great for solving puzzles on your Mac, but also a fine tool for printing supported puzzle formats in a professional-looking layout suitable for solving on paper. For Black Ink 1.4, I made major strives towards improving the printing features of the app. The major new printing feature is an option to “squeeze” everything for a puzzle onto a single sheet of paper. For larger puzzles this can create a grid and clue list font size that are quite small, but for many folks it’s a priority to get everything on one sheet for easy solving-on-the-go.

Also notable in this release is the return of user-customizable puzzle sources. I removed these in 1.3 because I thought it was more trouble than it’s worth for most users. But for those who do discover sources and are able to configure the settings in Black Ink, this is a much-missed feature.

Complete change list:

• Printing improvements
  • Support a new “fit on one sheet of paper” print option
  • Support live-updating of print preview as settings are changed
  • Fix issues with printing when clue list printing is disabled
  • Fix a bug where some clues would rarely not get printed
  • Work around a printing issue on a pre-release version of Mac OS X
• Other Fixes
  • Prevent possibility of crashes with some accidental keystrokes in puzzle view
  • Remove Houston Chronicle as it stopped publishing Mar 25, 2011
  • Prevent double-quoting titles of puzzles already in quotes
  • Further fixes for Mac OS X 10.4 functionality
  • Fix to show puzzle document names as “Black Ink Puzzle Document” in Finder
  • Restore ability to add custom puzzle sources to the default list

• New web puzzle sources
  • LA Times Daily & Sunday
  • Newsday
  • USA Today
  • Universal
• Rework the Startup preferences to be more user-friendly with reopening puzzles
• Give keyboard shortcut Cmd-K to “Check Current Letter”
• Now includes automatic crash reporter
• Fix a bug that caused Black Ink to hang when printing on rare occasions
• Fix a bug that caused puzzle timer to be placed off screen edge
• Fix a bug that could prevent puzzle solving menu items from being enabled
• Fix a bug that prevented canceling a stalled puzzle download from working

Enjoy!

The big deal in 1.3 is that I added support for a different format of puzzle that opens up Black Ink to a number of new sources for more solving fun.

Because I don’t have a strong, established beta testing group for Black Ink, I’m opening this up as a public beta to get any bugs ironed out before it goes public for the Mac App Store and direct-purchase customers. If you’d like to test out, just download and give it a spin!

Download Black Ink 1.3b1

Be sure to drop me a line if you run into any problems, but also if you are interested in being part of a more permanent Black Ink beta testing group. I’m going to try to get organized for future, private testing rounds.

A round-up of the changes to expect in this release:

Black Ink 1.3b1

• New web puzzle sources
  • LA Times Daily & Sunday
  • Newsday
  • USA Today
  • Universal
• Rework the Startup preferences to be more user-friendly with reopening puzzles
• Give keyboard shortcut Cmd-K to “Check Current Letter”
• Now includes automatic crash reporter
• Fix a bug that caused Black Ink to hang when printing on rare occasions
• Fix a bug that caused puzzle timer to be placed off screen edge
• Fix a bug that could prevent puzzle solving menu items from being enabled
• Fix a bug that prevented canceling a stalled puzzle download from working

Known Issues

• Encoding issues with Newsday 2/4/11 characters
• Documentation not updated to reflect reworked startup preferences
• Puzzle icons in startup window get smaller if window closed and reopened
• Newsday, USA Today, and Universal have generic icons for now

Enjoy!

Version 1.1.7 includes some fixes to the default puzzle source configuration, and a number of bug fixes ranging from minor to fairly significant.

Puzzle Sources

• Fix the Chronicle of Higher Education source
• Remove Syndey Morning Herald – the paper has stopped publishing new puzzles
• Fix a bug that could cause downloads to stop working until relaunching the app

Bug fixes and minor improvements

• Can now hover over a long puzzle title to see a tool tip window with the entire content
• Fix a visual bug with “Open As Unsolved” when the puzzle is already open
• Fix a bug that prevented numeric answers from being checked correctly
• Fix a bug that caused direction to change abruptly in puzzle that starts in “down” mode

Multi-character answer improvements

• When revealing a multiple character answer, make sure the “revealed” color applies to all characters
• Fix check-as-you-type for multi-character answers
• Enter Multiple Letters menu item is now called “Enter Special Letters”
• After entering multiple character answer, now jumps to next square same as when entering single
• Fix a bug that caused reveal/correct to fail on some multi-character answers

We recently lost a puzzle source, the Little Rock Daily Record, which has stopped publishing its puzzle. But the good news is we picked up a few excellent new sources to balance out the loss.

The update also includes a few minor bugs. Full details:

• New puzzle sources:
  • Chicago Reader
  • Onion AV Club
  • Chronicle of Higher Education
• Remove Little Rock Daily Record – no longer published
• Bug fixes
  • Fix a problem with opening the wrong puzzle source when a source is disabled
  • Fix an issue printing puzzles of unusual dimensions

Enjoy!

Will I release versions of these applications for the iPhone? Most certainly. Without a doubt. When? That’s a bit tougher to answer. I want to release these applications as soon as I possibly can, but no sooner. That is, I don’t think it would be fair to the public or good for my reputation to release premature applications, so I’m taking “my sweet time” to be sure I’m at least satisfied that they are good, reliable 1.0 releases before I go public with them. Stay tuned!

In The Mean Time

So what is an anxious customer to do in the mean time? I appreciate that iPhone users find it extremely frustrating to imagine what powerful aides their devices could be to them, if only they had the right software. While I do expect that, in time, there will be no better way to blog or solves crossword puzzles on this device than with my software, there is other software that is worth mentioning.

Waiting For MarsEdit

In the blogging department, WordPress users at least should have something to tide them over soon. Matt Mullenweg has announced a native WordPress client, which is apparently complete and submitted to Apple. They’re just waiting for it to go live on the store. Since we can’t try it out yet, I can’t exactly vouch for it, but I hope it will be a step up from navigating the web interface from the phone!

The folks over at Six Apart have also released a native iPhone blogging client, but unfortunately it only works with their paid TypePad service, so it won’t be of much help unless you happen to subscribe to that service.

Waiting For Black Ink

The allure of crosswords on the iPhone must be pretty obvious, because there are already two applications available for downloading and solving puzzles, and they’re pretty good! I have enjoyed buying these applications and seeing how other developers have tackled the problem of displaying a crossword puzzle while also leaving enough room for the user to type in the answers.

The first, simply called “Crosswords,” was developed by my friend Ben Gottlieb, of Standalone, Inc.

Notice how they’ve developed a completely custom keyboard, which aside form sporting a monochromatic look, is also significantly smaller than the default keyboard. This leaves more room to show the puzzle content. The high quality of the custom artwork makes the application shine, although it’s clear the puzzle rendering itself could be a bit cleaner.

The other application, called “2 Across,” comes to us from developer Eliza Block.

Notice that she uses the default keyboard, but provides an extremely zoomable puzzle display that exudes quality. The rendering is extremely sharp and the touch responsiveness is immediate. I also like how she animates the puzzle when you select a square, so that the word is as visible as possible within the confines of the display.

Back To Work

It would have been a great joy to have my applications in the App Store on day one, but looking on the bright side, it will be somewhat easier to finish developing them and to release them in a known context. It’s becoming clearer by the day what people are looking for in the store, and the wealth of applications makes it easier to experience what works and what doesn’t work on this new platform.

Black Ink 1.1

• Dramatically improved puzzle printing quality
• Improved highlighting of active clue in clue list
• Fix for crashing scenario when migrating preferences to a new Mac
• Improved reliability of puzzle downloads
• Fix some bugs with timer restarting after pausing
• Updated default puzzle sources
  • New: Boston Globe Sunday
  • New: Little Rock Daily Record
  • Removed: Washington Post Sunday

It turns out printing is one of those features you can really start to obsess on. I am very happy with the improvements that have been made for 1.1, but just getting under the hood and having my hands dirty has taught me so much about how it can be improved even more.

Exactly what has gotten better with printing? For starters, the application does a better job of remembering your printing options (selectable from the Page Setup dialog). But the real joy is in the improved quality of the paper (or PDF) printouts you generate. The output is now much sharper and closer to “typesetting quality.” Finally, the layout of the clues list has been revised to offer more readable, flowing text that fills the width of the page more naturally.

For future updates, I’m looking forward to offering further refinements. At the top of my list is a preference for “handedness,” so you can print the puzzle grid at the appropriate side of the clues for your preferred solving hand. I also hope to increase the flexibility of clue and grid sizing, so that users with better or worse vision can get the most out of the printout feature.

Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

Update: Round version numbers are boring, right? If you already downloaded 1.1 be sure to grab the 1.1.1 update which fixes a really annoying issue with the very printing improvements I’ve highlighted here. In the hubbub of getting these new features in, I neglected to notice that for users who haven’t been incrementally using my private beta builds, the printing options would have been set to unfortunate default settings, which caused a nearly blank printout page :)

Many thanks to David Brown for spotting this and letting me know in the comments below.

(Semi-interesting trivia: the transaction took place on the premises of the Leopard Tech Talk in Boston (Dedham, actually). Since the seller, Stephan Cleaves, lives up in New Hampshire, we agreed to meet at the event and complete the transaction during the lunch break.)

What a year it’s been! For one thing, it wasn’t but a month or so later that my acquisition frenzy continued with the purchase of MarsEdit from NewsGator. My work on MarsEdit last year culminated in the release of MarsEdit 2.0 in September, which has been praised by users and the media as a major step forward for the application. It even won an Eddy! I couldn’t be happier, and am busily working on further enhancements almost every day.

Thanks in part to my strangely accelerated acquisition schedule, I was asked to speak at the C4 Conference in Chicago, where I discussed many of the lessons I’ve learned in the process. This was a remarkable experience for me because it not only gave me an opportunity to challenge and overcome (or at least deal with!) my fear of public speaking, but it gave me good excuse to think about and rationalize what had actually happened over the course of the preceding several months.

Anyway, it just sort of occurred to me today that this was the one year anniversary of my taking a pretty big leap of faith, and that it was a good day to look back and judge the wisdom of it. In 2007 I went from being a full-time consultant to being a full-time indie software developer. One who does public speaking and sorta, kinda, you know, is respected and stuff.

It took money, time, and a lot of hard work, but it paid off.

It’s nice to look back and realize that many good things in your life only happened because you took a deep breath, evaluated your fears, and decided to jump into the future head first.

I wish a life-changing 2008 to all of you.

Well, this week is just getting better and better. Today, I learned that Macworld has awarded MarsEdit the prestigious Eddy Award, their annual award to products chosen for their excellence by the editorial staff.

Look at that statue closely, he’s holding a classic Mac. How cute is that?

It probably goes without saying that this kind of recognition is extremely gratifying, and will surely help to fuel another year of hard work on my part. Thanks so much, Macworld, for choosing to recognize my product.

If that wasn’t enough, MacBreak Weekly episode 70 has been released (to the iTunes feed, not updated yet on the web page), and I received some great recognition in this episode from Andy Ihnatko, a well-known and long-time Mac journalist. He is actually trying out MarsEdit himself, but reserving final judgment until he spends more time with it. But he took the opportunity to check out Black Ink, which he selected as his MacBreak Weekly “software pick of the week.” He says Black Ink is “an incredibly Mac-like app. It’s perfect for filling in crossword puzzles.” Thanks, Andy! I appreciate it very much. If you’re interested in hearing all of his comments, be sure to keep listening through 1:21:40.

MarsEdit and Black Ink are making waves this week, and I’m loving the ride!

But on a more gracious note …

MarsEdit is getting a lot of new recognition these days thanks to the hard work I’ve been putting into it, but it’s worth remembering the hard work that Brent Simmons put into the original version. The vast majority of that code is still running today and is the basis on which all of today’s excellence is built. Gus Mueller of Flying Meat also deserves a lot of credit for taking the reins for the 1.1 era of the product’s development history.

And … and … (awards ceremony music starts playing) … thanks to Bryan Bell for helping me to revitalize MarsEdit’s look with a whole new set of toolbar icons. I believe those touches were the icing on the cake for 2.0.

And thanks to all the users who offer nearly-continuous encouragement.