Roy Ratcliffe

Sorry for the lack of progress lately. I’ve been quite busy. And so haven’t found too much time for developing the next version of Watchtower Library for Mac.

I’ve been working mainly on the Asian input-method problem. Problem understates the issue: there is no Asian input. Poor users wanting to enter Chinese, Japanese or Korean search terms have to enter the text in a text editor then copy-and-paste the text into the box. That just is not good.

Unfortunately, the solution is not readily forthcoming. Wine depends on X11. X11 and Mac do not play nicely when it comes to the Apple Input Method interface. This is my work in progress.

There are other things to work on: printing and other language translations. Sander Wessel has kindly offered to do a Dutch translation. That adds another useful language. Please let me know if you want to customise the app for your own language.

Is there anything else that you can think of? I’ve been looking at the websites. A forum would be handy. I’m currently moving my sites over to Heroku and the cloud. So I hope they will become a little more ‘available’ and reliable.

Order is a good thing (1 Co 14:33).

Rachel and I have been talking recently about how users can find instructions and help for installing Watchtower Library on their Macs.

Rachel felt that if she was confronted by the weblog-style information at www.royratcliffe.me.uk, she would easily become confused and overwhelmed. Some of the pages carry more than 50 comments. Would a user want to wade through all that before finding the help they need? Simple answer is no. Hence, similar questions often reoccur; posting to the bottom is easier than reading through volumes of other questions and answers.

So we’ve been working on a special new corner of the site at wtlib4mac.royratcliffe.me.uk dedicated to simple straightforward help. It includes questions and answers in places easy to find, search facility, video walkthroughs, etc. Currently it is a work-in-progress. Still, your feedback is welcome.

Download the Disk Image. Double click the Watchtower Framework package. Follow the on-screen installation instructions.

Drag the application to your Applications folder and run as normal.

X11 for Leopard 10.5

The application requires X11. If you have upgraded to Snow Leopard, skip this part. You already have the correct version of X11 installed.

If running Leopard 10.5, download and install X11, version 2.3.3.2! See To X11 or not to X11?.

When upgrading

You may notice a pause for a minute when running for the first time, when upgrading from an older version of Watchtower Library for Mac. This is normal. It only happens once.

If you have a question about upgrading, you might find the answer here. If not please post a comment; I’ll do my best to help you.

Installing for the first time

After running Watchtower Library for Mac you need to insert an official CD-ROM. After inserting the CD, the standard setup program launches automatically. Just follow the instructions as normal.

If for some reason the setup program does not run automatically, you can open the CD directory and drag Setup.exe to the Watchtower Library for Mac dock icon.