MarcEdit Workstreams: MacOS and Windows/Linux

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had some interesting questions that have been leading me to going back and relooking at how a handful of things work within MarcEdit.  To that end, I’m hoping to complete the following two workstreams this weekend.

MacOS

Two of the features most often asked for at this point deal with accessibility options and plugin support.  The creation of the AddPinyin plugin for windows (https://library.princeton.edu/eastasian/addpinyin-plugin-marcedit) has got people asking if this will show up for Mac Users as well.  My guess is that it could, but in order for that to happen, I need to implement plugin support in the Mac.  The challenge is figuring out how, since the process I used with Windows and Linux simply won’t work with the Mac UI thread model.  So, I’ve been thinking on this, and this weekend, I’ll be including the first parts of code that should allow me to start making this happen.  Ideally, I’ll start by migrating some of the current MarcEdit plugins, probably the Internet Archive 2 HathiTrust Packager first; and then go from there.

The other change that I’m working on that will show up in this update is the ability to control the application font and font sizes.  You can see the start of this work here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k00OL7QVcI4  Like the windows version, I’ll eventually add language support, which will enable the use of language files to set the text in the application.  But for now, I’ll be enabling the ability to modify the application font and change the size of the fonts within the application and editor.

Windows/Linux

The interest in the plugins have made me take another look at how they are managed.  Currently it is clunky, users get no notification when they change, and updating them takes multiple steps.  That will change.  I’ve been restructuring how plugins are managed, so that they will now automatically notify users when they have changed, as well as offer the ability to download the update.  Additionally, I’ve extended the plugin manager so that it can manage access to plugins outside of the MarcEdit website, so I’ll be including links to the AddPinyin plugin, and be able to include this plugin in the automated management (i.e., update notification).  Overall, I believe that this will make plugins easier to use, and much, much easier to manage.

–tr