I ran into an issue in an installation recently where I had my application built in Max run automatically on startup – by adding it to the startup items in the User Preferences. The application would make a jitter window go full screen and begin processing. Intermittently the computer, upon startup, would bring the finder window to the forefront after my application had been run. I’m not sure what in the startup routine was causing it to bring the finder to the front, but it would also bring the menubar in front of my beautiful video.

After hunting for a solution through the Max lists, I couldn’t find anything about bringing the max application to the front. A bit more searching led me to this solution.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060717092834812

For my problem, I could simply delay launching the app until the startup routine was done and then proceed. My Automator routine looked like this:

• Pause: 30 seconds
• Launch Application Indy_Pool_Blue.app

I saved the script as an app and then added it to my startup items.

The other solution described on the page above used an applescript to solve the issue. Combined with tap.applescript, I could see this solving a wide variety of issues.

delay 20
tell application "Indy_Pool_Blue" 
  launch
end tell

You could also use applescript to make the application active. After a little searching I found this gem:

tell application "iTunes" 
activate
end tell

I hope this helps somebody else out in making their installation more reliably autonomous.

I was working some earlier today on some tricky bugs in Jamoma on Windows. I never would have figured them out if I hadn’t been using a debugger. In doing this, I realized that Cycling ‘74 has posted excellent instructions on debugging using Xcode on a Mac, but there isn’t much in the way of instructions for debugging on Windows.

My development environment on Windows is the one suggested by Cycling ‘74’s SDK: Microsoft Visual Studio (Visual C++). Like the Mac, debugging cannot be done using the full Max environment—you must use the Max runtime. Also like the Mac, you should do debug builds of your externals rather than release builds. For Jamoma there is a single ‘solution’ file that includes all of the projects for the various externals, so this is quite easy.

The Max Runtime on both platforms does not use the searchpath, which can make things a little trickier for testing. On the Mac you can create an alias to your folder full of externs or whatever and that works. Making a shortcut like this on Windows doesn’t work. You need to have your externals built into the Cycling ‘74 folder somewhere.

After all of that set up, it is pretty much the same. You tell Visual C++ to start the debugger, it asks you to chose a program, and you choose the Max Runtime. Setting break-points and everything is the same, thought the interface is not quite as friendly.

Hopefully this will be useful information to have out there. I have recently heard people suggest that they didn’t know you could use the debugger on Windows. If you couldn’t, it would be very hard to fix problems like the ones I was working on today.

This is an interesting collection of screenshots that people have posted of their Max patches. Enjoy!

Things have been a little overwhelming lately, as they likely will be for the summer. I thought I would post an AppleScript that I use for compiling the Tap.Tools Max objects. It could be easily modified for others who have a lot of of externals to compile all at once.

set project_path_unix to "/Users/tap/Developer/_SVN/TapToolsMax/Max_Projects" 
set project_path to POSIX file project_path_unix as text
set project_folder_list to list folder project_path
set continue_flag to 1
try
  display dialog project_path as text
on error
  display dialog "Yo! Can't get the path for the Max Projects folder" 
  display dialog (dialog reply)
end try

tell application "Finder" 

  repeat with project_folder in project_folder_list
    if (project_folder does not contain ".svn") then
      try
        set project_file_list to list folder (project_path & ":" & project_folder)
        repeat with project_file in project_file_list
          if (project_file contains ".mcp") and (continue_flag is equal to 1) then
            tell application "CodeWarrior IDE" 
              activate
              open (project_path & ":" & project_folder & ":" & project_file) as alias
              try
                Make Project
                Close Project
              on error
                display dialog "There was an error building " & project_file & ".  
                  Try to continue?" buttons {"Yes", "No"} default button 2
                if the button returned of the result is "No" then
                  --quit
                  set continue_flag to 0
                end if

              end try

            end tell
          end if
        end repeat
      on error
        --display dialog project_folder & " is not a folder - skipping" 
      end try
    end if
  end repeat

end tell

This past week, Peter Nyboer posted a link to the Max list to a tutorial for making Aqua-style graphics in Adobe Photoshop. The tutorial is here.

I’m thrilled to have a nice step-by-step tutorial like this. I’ve done a lot of work in Photoshop the past few years, but most work by using a trial-and-error process. It’s always good to add a few items to my bag of tricks…

Paul Hertz just posted this link to the Max list: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2004/tn2124.html

It looks like a great resource that Apple published last month.

An object I haven’t used very much is the qmetro object in Max 4.5. It’s a great object though – as pointed out to me by David Zicarelli recently. Essentially it is like a metro object, but passes its bangs out only in the low-priority thread.

The benefit is when polling something that is driving the user interface. The user interface is only drawn at low-priority anyway, so the qmetro object cuts down the CPU used when compared to a patch driven my a regular old metro object. As an example, if an analysis is being used solely to drive visual feedback, then it makes sense to drive the analysis with a qmetro instead of a metro.

Nathan Wolek posted a really great link to the Max list earlier today for spatial audio information. Check it out at http://music.northwestern.edu/classes/3D/pages/sndPrmGK.html .

There is a note on the Tap.Tools ( http://electrotap.com/taptoolsmax/ ) webpage already, but I thought I would post a note here too because I’m getting a bucket load of emails about it.

The installer for Tap.Tools 1.5 assumes that you installed Max into the default location for Max version 4.3. When you install, you need to manually point the installer to your Max 4.5 folder (or go to the registered users page and download the files directly).

• TapTools.lib
• max-help/TapTools_Help

• patches/extras/TapTools_Overview.mxb

A new installer will be made for the upcoming Tap.Tools 2.0 beta.

Hope that little tidbit of info is helpful!