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Pester Changelog

What's new in Pester 1.1 Beta 23 Build 70

Oct 2, 2017
  • Fix yet another crash on launch because the (undocumented) storage format for speech voice selections changed again in macOS Sierra (10.12). Pester now preferentially uses SPI rather than trying to parse files on disk, which may be more robust to future changes. (Apple’s documented methods for obtaining voice lists have not kept pace with changes in how voices are downloaded and activated.) Thanks to Ed Heltzel for the report.
  • Work around a bug in macOS Sierra (10.12) which broke keyboard navigation in the Read Me window.
  • Set initial keyboard focus in the Read Me window to the text pane, rather than the contents pane.
  • Fix a regression in which the width of the contents pane in the Read Me window was not constrained.
  • Update to the current version of Sparkle.
  • Support natural-language date and time entry on macOS High Sierra (10.13), by linking to Perl 5.18 on OS X 10.10–macOS 10.13.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 22 Build 67 (Oct 30, 2016)

  • Pester is now a 64-bit application.
  • Use AVFoundation, Apple’s modern framework for video, rather than “classic” QuickTime. Note that this removes support for image/PDF display and playback of some movie formats; please let me know if (and why) you rely on any of these. Because of a limitation of AVFoundation, audio from movie playback will be sent to the system sound output device, rather than the alert device selected in Preferences.
  • Fix multiple issues related to tracking and validating recent media.
  • Fix an issue introduced in 1.1b20 in which movie alerts would play their audio only, not their video.
  • Fix an issue in which the All Alarms window could be invisible if alert restoration failed.
  • Fix multiple issues with setting and re-setting the Pester system-wide keyboard equivalent.
  • Pester no longer bounces its Dock icon when it is frontmost even if you have requested it to do so, since there is no supported way to do so in a 64-bit application.
  • Support natural-language date and time entry on macOS Sierra (10.12), by linking to Perl 5.16 on OS X 10.9–macOS 10.12.
  • Update to the current version of Sparkle.
  • Code cleanups and modernization without (intended) changes in functionality; remove some code which was never used.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 21 Build 65 (Feb 15, 2016)

  • Use the current date when the Set Alarm window activates and the date isn’t currently being edited, which should prevent an old date getting “stuck” and forcing you to explicitly choose today or tomorrow.
  • Update application icon for Retina displays and modern OS X aesthetics — thanks to José Manuel Sánchez for the contribution.
  • Don’t crash on startup if your default voice is a downloadable enhanced quality (”premium”) voice — thanks to Sven-S. Porst for the report and patch.
  • Use SSL to retrieve Pester’s appcast, working around a Sparkle security vulnerability.
  • Don’t include Growl or Sparkle headers (reducing application size).

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 19 Build 58 (Nov 22, 2014)

  • Display messages in help tags in notification alerts, useful when messages are too large to fit.
  • Display singular time units (second, minute, etc.) in the popup menu as appropriate.
  • Improve speech voice handling: limit the voice pop-up menu’s contents to the voices you have enabled in System Preferences; more reliably select non-MacinTalk voices (previously, the default voice was used); do not display «unknown» in the voice pop-up menu; update the voice pop-up menu when voices are enabled or disabled.
  • Support natural-language date and time entry on OS X Yosemite (10.10), by linking to Perl 5.16 on OS X 10.9–10.10. Perl 5.12 remains in use on OS X 10.7–10.8.
  • Adjust some user interface elements to account for changes in OS X Yosemite.
  • Update Developer ID code signing for Apple’s changes to Gatekeeper in OS X 10.9.5 and 10.10.
  • Work around a bug in OS X 10.10 which initially scrolled the first alarm in the alarm list out of view.
  • Update Sparkle to 1.7.1.
  • Code cleanups and modernization without (intended) changes in functionality; remove some code which was never used.
  • Note: This version requires OS X 10.7 or later; 1.1b18 is the last version of Pester to support Mac OS X 10.6.8.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 18 Build 56 (Jan 30, 2014)

  • Work around a bug in OS X 10.8 and 10.9 which prevented speech voice changes from taking effect.
  • Fix an issue introduced in 1.1b17 which prevented changes to the sound output device in Preferences from taking effect, or the Preferences window from being displayed after changing the sound output device.
  • Improve clarity and consistency of time remaining display in Pester’s Dock icon. (Build 56: Fix a memory leak introduced by this change.)
  • Fix an issue in which the time remaining would not display in Pester’s Dock icon on OS X 10.8 and later until you toggled the option in Preferences.
  • Permit entry of midnight as “0” (previously you needed to use “00” or “24”.)
  • Update Read Me for changes in Pester 1.1.
  • Improve display of Read Me.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 17 Build 52 (Oct 7, 2013)

  • Support natural-language date and time entry on OS X Mavericks (10.9), by linking to Perl 5.12 on OS X 10.7–10.9. Perl 5.10 remains in use on Mac OS X 10.6.
  • Make alert sound preview work like alert sound playback.
  • Work around a bug in OS X 10.7, 10.8 and 10.9 which caused text in the About window to be off-center.
  • Code cleanups and modernization without (intended) changes in functionality; remove some code which was never used.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 16 Build 51 (Aug 22, 2013)

  • Added Notification Center alerts on OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) and later. Use Notifications System Preferences to customize the alert style and behavior. If you select the Alerts style, you can click the Stop Repeating button in an alert to stop a repeating alarm. Unlike Growl, Notification Center only supports one type of alert per application, so the time remaining confirmation is not displayed as an OS X alert. If you have Growl installed, it will still be used for this purpose unless you’ve turned it off. Also unlike Growl 1.x, Notification Center does not inform Pester when an alert disappears from the screen, so repeating alarms don’t wait until you’ve dismissed the alert (or it disappears) to repeat.
  • Don’t wait forever for Growl 2.0 and 2.1 before rescheduling a repeating alarm. This affects repeating alarms for which you have Notify with Growl selected but not Display message and time. More information about this issue is available here.
  • Optionally disable display of the time remaining until the next alarm in Pester’s Dock icon, in Preferences. (Thanks to Nur Monson for the contribution.)
  • Permit entry of 12-hour single-digit hour/minute times without punctuation. For example, you can now type “930a”.
  • Mark repeating alarms in the Alarms window with a curved arrow icon.
  • Remove an item from the Edit menu that didn’t do anything useful and should not have been there.
  • Add Retina calendar and volume icons.
  • Improve display of certain sound device names (such as those of AirPlay devices) so that they are consistent with the Sound menu extra.
  • Update the natural language date parser, Date::Manip (fixes for Spanish, Finnish, French, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish).
  • Fix tabbing with Full Keyboard Access enabled.
  • Improve playback of default alert sound.
  • Improve display of long alarm messages in the alarm list window and notification alerts.
  • Optionally log expired alarms to the Console. (Note that you can also view expired alarms in Growl or Notification Center, if you have the corresponding alert enabled.) This is not exposed in Pester’s user interface, but you can quit Pester, type defaults write net.sabi.Pester PesterLogAlarmTimerExpired -bool YES in Terminal and reopen Pester to enable logging; replace YES with NO to disable logging. (Thanks to Mikey Reppy for the suggestion.)
  • Fix speech previews playing through the wrong device when you change Play sound through in Preferences.
  • Greatly improve error handling when restoring alarms and alerts.
  • Offer to automatically move Pester to your Applications folder.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 15 Build 48 (Jul 25, 2012)

  • Fix rare instances where the Dock displays an inaccurate time remaining.
  • Fix Read Me losing its section navigation. (If you're viewing the Read Me on a Retina display, you may find it gains unwanted horizontal scrolling. To work around this issue, close and reopen the Read Me window.)
  • Fix natural-language date processing on OS X Mountain Lion.
  • Permit entry of single-digit hour/minute times without punctuation or an initial zero. For example, you can now type “930” for 9:30, where previously “0930” or “9:30” was required.
  • Don’t require the discrete GPU on MacBook Pro models from early 2011 and later, on OS X Lion or later. If you’re using an earlier OS X version or an older multi-GPU MacBook Pro, Apple provides no way for Pester to “opt out” of the discrete GPU. You may find gfxCardStatus helpful as a workaround.
  • Update Growl framework to 1.2.3.
  • Update Sparkle to work around a problem with update verification that only occurred after recent OS X security updates.
  • Sign with Developer ID for Gatekeeper on OS X Mountain Lion (10.8).

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 14 Build 47 (Nov 2, 2011)

  • Avoid a crash that can be triggered by dragging the volume slider quickly on OS X Lion. To ensure accurate volume preview, drag the slider more slowly (or use the keyboard if full keyboard access is enabled).
  • Fix a problem with relative date/time display where the cutoff for a larger unit was 999 hours/days; now displays smaller units up to twice the larger unit. Multiple units are still only used up to “days and hours”, not “weeks and days”.
  • Fix a few minor visual glitches on OS X Lion.
  • Update Growl framework to 1.2.2 for compatibility with Growl 1.3 (OS X Lion only).

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 13 Build 46 (Jun 23, 2011)

  • Note: This version requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later, including OS X Lion (10.7); 1.1b12 is the last version of Pester to support Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5.
  • Link to Perl 5.10 rather than 5.8, to support OS X Lion. Earlier Pester 1.1 betas are not compatible with OS X Lion.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 12 Build 41 (Oct 12, 2010)

  • Display alarm remaining time in a friendlier fashion.
  • Fix problem where Pester keyboard equivalents involving the “A” key would not be assigned.
  • Wake up the display when a message is displayed. By putting the display to sleep with ⌃⇧⏏ after setting an alarm, you can thus use Pester as an effective visual alarm. (Just make sure your Mac doesn’t go to sleep or enter a locking screen saver before the alarm expires.)

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 11 Build 39 (Aug 26, 2010)

  • Added Growl alerts. Configure Growl alert appearance and behavior from the Growl System Preferences pane. Growl is optional; install it separately if you wish to use it.
  • If Growl is installed, display an alarm’s time remaining when it is set as a confirmation. You can disable this from the Growl System Preferences pane as well.
  • Fix Preferences not displaying on Mac OS X 10.4.
  • Fix intermittent failure to play the correct speech voice.
  • Fix memory leak on speech completion on Mac OS X 10.5.
  • Make date popup fully functional for French and more functional for Italian and Swedish.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 10 Build 36 (May 31, 2010)

  • Fix regression whereby Pester would not come to the front automatically in Mac OS X 10.5.
  • Fix problems where various Pester keyboard equivalents could not be assigned; improve reliability of keyboard equivalent display.
  • Fix crash on speech voice preview.
  • Handle audio devices being connected/disconnected while Pester is running.
  • Really fix some long-standing inconsistencies between icon and Dock menu time display.

New in Pester 1.1 Beta 9 Build 35 (Apr 27, 2010)

  • If you have no snooze time set, then choose “until,” then cancel, restore the previously selected snooze duration.
  • Handle audio devices being connected/disconnected while Pester is running.
  • Allow keyboard navigation of the Read Me.
  • Expand selectable sound output device (in Preferences) to speech as well as alert sounds (Mac OS X 10.5 and later).
  • Make date popup fully functional for German and Dutch.
  • Fixed some keyboard focus issues with alerts in the Set Alarm window.
  • Make Dock bouncing significantly more reliable.
  • Wait until you stop typing or moving the mouse to bring Pester to the front (optional, in Preferences).
  • Readd “– All” (remove all recent messages) via Option-click.
  • Fix launching on machines without English as the preferred language (sorry!).
  • Don’t allow setting =, `, etc. as the Pester keyboard equivalent.

New in Pester 1.1b8 Build 31 (Mar 26, 2010)

  • Added customizable alert sounds—the most requested feature. It uses QuickTime, so you're welcome to pick a movie or even a bitmap or PDF to use as well.
  • Added selectable sound output device (in Preferences) and adjust relative volume for alert sounds. (Note: Pester doesn't yet respond to audio devices being connected/disconnected while it is running, although you should always get audio output somewhere.)
  • Baseline, ICU-based support for non-natural language dates and times is much more robust (for example, simply “20” or “8p” works to specify 8:00 PM).
  • Support natural-language dates in non-English languages via Date::Manip. I uncovered some bugs here, which the author of Date::Manip is working on fixing, but Catalan, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Polish and Russian should work fine. The date popup is limited to the days of the week, for now.
  • Optionally wait until you stop typing or moving the mouse to display a message. This is quite helpful so you don't start typing into the Snooze box when you want to be typing into another document. The feature is disabled by default; enable it in Preferences.
  • Handle time zone changes, many more time zones, and more reliably determine the time zone.
  • Autocomplete common natural-language dates.
  • Simplify tab ordering.
  • Better save and restore focus when you're working as an alarm goes off; will no longer bring unwanted windows to the front.
  • Open the Set Alarm window in the current Space when triggered with a keyboard equivalent or the Dock menu.
  • Switch to tomorrow automatically if necessary when tabbing into “on”. If you specify a time that's already passed, while the specified date is today, simply tabbing into the date field will switch the date to tomorrow.
  • Display “today” and “tomorrow” in the bottom left corner of the Set Alarm window.
  • Open the Set Alarm window in the current Space when triggered with a keyboard equivalent or the Dock menu.
  • If the Set Alarm window was visible when Pester was last active, prevent it from switching Spaces and obscuring a notification alert.
  • (Re-)added optional dock icon bouncing, which works more reliably.
  • Restored “today” item to date completion menus.
  • Fixed horizontal resizing glitches in the Alarms window.
  • Save the most recent alarm message across runs of Pester.
  • Disable the “–” button when it would do nothing.
  • Added “days” and “weeks” alarm interval units.
  • Allow specifying intervals up to 999 weeks.
  • Many more bug fixes and full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.