YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – It looks like the summer season is over. And it’s been unusually cool at the end of August here in the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan. It’s only 23°C this morning. Meanwhile, school will resume on Monday, I guess. So kids must be very unhappy about it.

Well, I have been insanely productive this month. So far, I have released 8 software products. That was a new record till several days go. What I mean is that I’m releasing the 9th software title of the month today. This new release is Best Fonts 6.

Once known as ‘FontsView,’ the Best Fonts is one of my oldest software series. It’s more than 15 years old. There was even a Windows version 15 years ago. Best Fonts 6 is the 6th installment of this series, which has its focus on the SwiftUI build and the undo/redo stack. Its main focus hasn’t changed since its first release, though. The core objective is to let the user compare different font families so that they can pick the best font style for a design you are working on.

Tom Bluewater

Tom Bluewater

Best Fonts 6 shows two lists under its sidebar. System fonts refer to the fonts that are installed in the System through Font Book.app. And Best Fonts 6 lets you select its type faces (Regular, Italic, Bold…) to display styled text, given an input text string, a font size and a text color. Best Fonts 6 is also able to display styled text based on an font file that is not yet installed the System. In this case, the application has no access to the type faces of the selected custom font.

One of the major changes since the last release is support for the undo/redo stack. Whether you switch from one font family to another or change one font size to another, Best Fonts 6 has your back. You can press Command + z or Command + Shift + z to undo or redo changes.

Tom Bluewater

Tom Bluewater

Best Fonts 6 has now an independent screen for watermaking an image with a font family you select. Select an image, and the application will show a text layer at the center. You can now move this text layer anywhere over the canvas. If it’s misplaced, you can undo the last position change.

The previous version had the Overlay and Compare features separately. Now, they are put together into one as Overlay, where you can compare two or more style text layers side by side. You can move any of them with your mouse pointer. Again, if you misplace any of them, you can undo the last move.   Continue reading →

YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – The scorching heat is back. The highest temperature was 34° today. For some reason, I get very productive. Today, I have double releases. The first one to introduce is Notes2Me.

Notes2Me is a desktop application that lets you share messages with files between different devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad) with the same iCloud account of yours. Notes2Me works very well with its iOS counterpart (Notes2Me Mobile). As long as you are already logged into your iCloud account, there is no account setup or login.

Application’s main screen is divided into two parts. The Receiver side shows what you have received from other devices of yours. Under the right pane, you have a list of the records you have sent to other devices of yours.

When you send a record to your Mac from another device (Mac, iPhone, iPad), the application will not automatically fetch records. You can subscribe to record creation so that your Mac will receive a notification whenever you push a new record to the iCloud server.

In order to fetch records from iCloud, simply click on the Fetch toolbar button. And Notes2Me will only download unique records that don’t exist locally. With the click of a button, you can remove the original record the iCloud server. Similarly, you can remove all records in the iCloud server with the click of a button.

A record you have received from another Mac or an iOS device may contain one or more attachments. Regardless of the OS difference, you can save these attachments to your disk by opening the Files disclosure view and right-clicking on individual attachment names and selecting Save.   Continue reading →

YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – If you have ever submitted your software product to Apple’s App Store or Mac App Store, you probably know how difficult those reviewers are. Your submission might go through the review process under normal circumstances. But if it ends in the hands of a difficult reviewer, it might not. In a sense, it is the Russian roulette.

I know what I can do when I’m stressed. Submit more and more software titles to them. And Super Patterns 3, which I just submitted to Mac App Store, is just one of them.

Super Patterns 3 is a desktop application that lets you design a wallpaper pattern by repeating the same symbols horizontally and vertically. Super Patterns 3 is No. 3 of this series with many improvements. One major update is the full stack support of undo and redo actions. Once you navigate to the Canvas screen, whether you add a symbol to the canvas or just change its size or its background color, you can undo almost any action.

Super Patterns 3 supports two different types of patterns. You can use SF symbols to design a pattern. The SF symbol drop-down menu gives you quick access to 80 symbols. Yet, you don’t have to pick one from this drop-down. You can refer to SF Symbols.app for one by entering its name in the symbol name field. You can also repeat an image you select to make a pattern.

When you finish designing a pattern, you are just one click away from saving the entire canvas as an image to disk. Super Patterns 3 supports HEIC, JPEG, PDF, PNG, TIFF as export formats.

Super Patterns 3 lets you share your projects with different Macs sharing the same iCloud account. All you have to do is log into your iCloud account and select a project to share. Then just click on the Push button. You can then use a different Mac to fetch these projects by just clicking on the Fetch button. So you don’t have to worry about losing projects after buying a new Mac.   Continue reading →