Meteorologist

It would seem that, yet again, we're in an unfortunate situation with Meteorologist. The weather where I live hasn't changed for a while now, so I hadn't noticed that Meteorologist had broken again until just now. I've read a number of posts here indicating that problem involves bad addresses. So, I opened up the project and took a look, finding that assessment to be entirely correct. After changing the addresses, Meteorologist seems to work perfectly fine. I was tempted to take that build, upload it somewhere, and let everyone know that it was available. But I've been thinking for a while that more should be done.

Apparently, Meteorologist hasn't received much love from its creator in a while. The version info in its Info.plist file (at least, the one provided with the source code) hasn't been changed since something like version 1.4.0b2. Also, the Xcode project in the source package is quite old and really ought to be redone to make it easier to perform Universal builds and otherwise clear out all of the dust. Perhaps most important, though, is to make Meteorologist self-updating so these updates aren't so painful.

Once my final exams are over (after May 8), I plan to begin improving our situation. Although I'd prefer not to adopt someone else's child without their blessing (and it's still not too late for that), it seems like the right thing to do--it really belongs to we, the devoted users and community. In the meantime, you can download the new build (Universal, of course) which should fix everything for now (I haven't had time to test it thorougly, so use is at your own risk). It's located at
http://www.cs.ttu.edu/~brennema/Meteorologist%201.4.5.dmg

Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting the fix. It appears to work fine for me.

Marcus, You rock!

Yay! Works great on MacBook Pro 10.4.9. Many thx for taking up the torch!

I was able to update the project to "native" with Xcode and build it, using the Universal version of CURLHandle that I found over in http://www.bleepsoft.com/developers but I wasn't entirely successful at replacing the weather.xml file that is needed for city searching to work. Since I'm very new to Mac OS X programming, I'm not surprised I couldn't get it all to work, either. I noticed there were a lot of commented out bits about using weatherunderground so that might be something to add in the future.

Does your Universal build include the updated weather.xml file?

DDA

Universal build works great using 10.4.9 on an iMac G3.

Marcus,

I would love some help with Meteorologist. I started to update the build process for universal a few months ago -- it is basically working. I have committed most of the changes to the projects cvs repository. The version in the repository doesn't work, AFAIK, because it hasn't had the latest updates to weather.xml.

It's important to understand that I took over this project a few years ago. It was originally written by a prolific Mac developer who, unfortunately, had very different design mentality then myself. As a result, I worked to patch Meteorologist 1.4 whenever it stopped working. In the mean time, I began working on a 2.0 release. This release is fairly mature... Meteorologist just dropped low on my priority list as I applied to and subsequently enrolled in graduate school. This 2.0 version has several improvements that make it much easier to use.
1) The weather parsing is done with regular expressions. This is much more flexible.
2) There is design support for multiple weather servers (the most sought-after user feature).
3) New unified interface.
4) Better support for internationalization.

I have in the past openly asked for developer support. Meteo is a first for me in many aspects -- XCode, Cocoa, Objective-C. I also had to make all of the design decisions on my own. If you start working on the project, I would love to start working on it again, too. I could share the experience I have with the project. If anyone else wants to work, too, please let me know.

Here's what I purpose. This weekend, I will try to release a 1.4.x update with the changes you have incorporated. I will add credit where credit is due.

I also have a final exam coming up, so I can't devote a large chunk of time to the project until after Monday.

Joe

sorry... 1.4.5 don't work with panther on g5 :((

I'd just like to say bravo to both Joe and Marcus - I think I speak for the whole user community in saying it would be excellent if you could work together on future versions. I fully understand how life can get in the way of things at times, and being able to "load balance" as it were might relieve some of the pressure.

Thanks again!

DOESN'T WORK IN JAGUAR :(

We can probably put together a separate build for Jaguar. Stay tuned...

Thks for all the effort, past and present. One of the few apps that is nearly as durable as the iBook itself. ;)

Works fine under 10.4.9 here.

G4 Mac Sawtooth, 1.4 GHz Gigadesigns. Works perfect. Donation will be forwarded. I urge everyone who loves Meteo as much as I do to SEND MONEY. I've paid for software that I hardly ever use, and it only seems right to pay for something I use Every Day.
Joe and Marcus, thanks for caring, and good luck in all your endeavors.
Bill G (not Gates)

Let me just add my heartfelt thanks and admiration for Joe and Marcus and undoubtedly others whom I am overlooking. I eagerly await 2.0. When I realized this afternoon that Meteo had "stopped" working I immediately checked the web forum and found the "fix meteo 1.1" which did the trick. I tried the terminal approach but got cold feet when the (local?)hosts file appeared with only a few lines, preceded by the admonition to not change the file. I'm going to have to get comfortable with terminal one of these days, but not today.

Thanks for all the suggestions, though.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
Yes Meteorologist belongs to the Fixers.
1.4.5 works great on a iMac G5—using: 10.4.8
All the Best

Yep it (1.4.5) works just fine. Remember to trash 1.4.4.

Doesn't work on 1.5Ghz Digital Audio running 10.3.9.

Thanks for trying. Hope you can get back to this sometime soon.

thank you! thank you! thank you!

:) I added a city. Thank you!

KC

As a very non programmer who, likewise, has become accustomed to using this very elegant piece of software so regularly that I rely on it I would like to say thanks as well. Is working on a 21 inch iMac G4 all latest updates. I am assuming the donate icon up the top donates to the right person/people?

Very comforting to know that 1.4.5 is here!
But 1.4.4 (with patches) is working perfectly on my PPC eMac, so I won't mess with it right now.
Over the years, Meteo has become indispensable to me!

Message From France.. Fine, it works again ... Try
But we have a lot of worries with Meteorologist now..
Very capricious.. Thanks a lot

Thanks for fixing it.

Doesn't work on PowerBook G4 running 10.4.9. Dang!

I was too scared to do the "Terminal" thing...thanks for making it easy for a non-tech guy like me.

All best,

Writerdog