From an iChat conversation with Bill this morning, he's on the left and I'm on the right:
So, what this all means is that we're finally building nightly alphas of OmniGraffle 5, and it's going to be a long long time before anything comes remotely close to being public.
But, I thought it would be nice to distract from all the OmniFocus talk for a bit.
(oh, and OmniGraffle 4.2 beta 3 may or may not be out today or tomorrow)
OmniGraffle's got a brand new name.
At least, to the Finder it does. OmniGraffle 4.2 beta 2 (including Pro) now sport their major version number in the Finder's view. This is for the benefit of users that get notified of its existence via the software update mechanism, download the new version, and accidentally overwrite their older version of OmniGraffle 3 or OmniGraffle 2.
Other goodies abound, like the Document Settings Inspector getting a new icon and being made available for the standard version of the application, and a number of bug fixes.
This release also represents UI and documentation freeze, and it will be the version submitted to our localization teams—Expect the next release to be fully localized for our international users, we thank you all for your patience in this endeavor.
Release notes are found at the usual location.
And the download is on our scary beta page.
Happy Valentine's Day, and much love has been directed at OmniGraffle since the 4.1.2 release last August.
Shape combinations have been meticulously looked over and we've fixed the lion's share of bugs that have resulted in unexpected results, error panels, and a crash or two. There are still a small number of outstanding issues that will be addressed before the final release.
Microsoft Visio XML import and export support has gotten a good deal of attention as well, fixing rendering bugs as well as allowing objects on master canvases and text variables to export properly.
Along with hundreds of bug fixes, we've offered a few new features as well: Basic shapes can now be converted to custom polygonal/bezier shapes and vice versa; Layers can now be merged; Files can be compressed upon saving. Three's also the Document Settings Inspector—A new inspector has been added which shows document creation and change information, allows file compression, and per-document settings for saving the file as a flat file or file package. Currently this inspector resides in the Canvas: inspector group, we are considering breaking it out into its own group; feedback is greatly appreciated.
OmniGraffle 4.2 beta 1 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to run.
Please understand that this version is still under development, and due to the large number of changes and fixes in this first beta release, foreign language localizations are pretty broken. The beta 2 release will be the UI freeze, and that release will be the one released to our localization teams for that work to be done. Apologies to our international users for the inconvenience this may cause. As always, OmniGraffle 4.1.2 is still available for download.
Voluminous release notes are up for perusal, please direct your feedback to our support page or by using the Send Feedback feature in your copy of OmniGraffle.
Molly found these very very small office supplies that somehow or other came with the booth at the Macworld Expo or perhaps were secreted into our space by tiny molemen who visit us from another dimension, at this point I am completely unsure.
The set includes a small stapler, a tiny tape dispenser, and a half-pinted hole punch. Not shown are the petite post-it notes and the confusingly normal-sized paper clips and rubber bands.
Bill is of the opinion that they resemble the application icons of Panic, and I tend to agree—Cabel, if you ever decide to start making office supplies instead of awesome software, it looks like you may have a little (snicker) competition.
I'm all for miniaturization, but please, let's do so with small (another snicker) doses. Surprisingly, the word nano doesn't appear to anywhere near the small case these came in.
I typically don't enjoy waking up early in the morning, whether it's to go fishing or watch Steve give the keynote address for the Macworld Expo (in fact, seeing as we had to wake up at 4:00 am to catch our flight down here, I avoided the situation entirely by not sleeping at all, hence, no waking up).
As a result, I head on down to the exhibition floor, help set up the booth, and either watch the keynote information on someone else's website (just like those of you who can't attend), or mosey on over to the curtained-up Apple pavilion and listen to the audio of the address.
It's a relaxing and therapeutic environment for me, the floor is not nearly as crowded as when the attendees are present, exhibitors are tirelessly setting up the final preparations for their booths, vacuum cleaners running over the last little bits of debris and there's an expectant electricity in the air as the last few minutes remain until all chaos breaks loose.
Oh, and apparently it's the iPhone.
So, Rowan managed to concoct an Omni…ummm….hand sign while at WWDC. I hesitate to call it a gang sign, as we're really more of a club (cookie for the reference). Umm, actually we're not a club at all, we're a group.
Yup, that's us—- The Omni Group.
So anyways, we're all practicing really hard so we can flash this and I dunno, maybe get into a rumble with the Adobe folks.
The nice folks over at Computer Systems Odessa (they make ConceptDraw) have made available a web service to convert files from the binary .vsd file format to the Visio XML document format, .vdx.
So, if you're stuck with a bunch of native Visio documents but don't have access to Visio 2002 or Visio 2003, you can use this to convert them to the XML format.
I expect this to become a very handy thing to have at hand, thanks and kudos to the ConceptDraw folks!
Oh, OmniWeb 5.5—How shiny and final you are!
However, the recently released revision is not the point nor purpose of this post.
Yes, gentle reader—It's me again, and it's about coffee. The Omni Espresso Machine has finally been fixed. The machine's broken status (as well as its top placement on the Colbert “On Notice” board) has plagued me for far too long now.
Not that I have anything particularly against the Zoka coffee shop next door, it's just that I'm the sort to demand that I be self-reliant when it comes to caffeination, so this whole “You can't make your own coffee/NOT YOURS” routine really got me down. Heck, I even took a week off in hopes that when I returned, OmniEspresso 2.0 would have been declared final and all that.
No such luck.
Apparently the whole dealio was so dire that we had to call in Doctor Duff to save the day. Duff, who is like some sort of coffee machine witch doctor, some sort of mocha medicine man, this koffee kahuna, a layer of hands for lattes, umm, well I just ran out of synonyms so I'll just cut it out right there. Anyways…
The good Dr. appeared, spent some time examining the chi of our espresso machine, and then took off again, presumably to go get an assortment of chicken heads or ashes of baristas gone past, and returned a few days later. Deftly deconstructing its innards, like a modern-day MacGyver he mended the machine without a part left over, and I'm pretty sure the thing can make rocket fuel now as well.
So, at long last, all is well in the world, or at least my little awakened apse of it, so long as nothing else goes wrong with the machine I can go back to spending my time on OmniGraffle, apart from the occasional klatch.
What with all the engineers off in San Francisco for WWDC.
I hope they're enjoying themselves, because back up here Terry and Jane have been making the most excellent meals and claim they will continue to do so as the week progresses.
Mmmm, chili and cornbread, french dip, I bet we get toasty cheesewiches and tomato soup PLUS breakfast for lunch sometime this week.
And we're playing Mario Kart every night just to spite Andrew.
Well, the final release of OmniGraffle 4.1.2 has come and gone. I, much like Wim, feel that the 4.1 branch is now dead to me. This has been a very cautious release than ones past—From the initial 4.0 release to the rush of getting the universal binary version of 4.1 ready in time to patching up that release in 4.1.1, it was actually somewhat relaxing to take a slow approach this time.
Lots of little nit-picky issues and regressions that got introduced in the rush of 4.1 are now addressed and fixed, problems with inspectors corrected, Intel-specific problems cleaned up.
We hope you enjoy it.