Month: July 2025

Our new accounting software for Macintosh now runs OK on a clean older machine, but it still has a ways to go before it can run on newer Macs. Those require code signing to ensure than the app is legit. It is not an easy process. Our staff is making progress, but there are many steps. It’s still uncertain how long they will take. Mac apps are way more complicated, these days.

Looking ahead, we can just add download links on this blog and on the current website for the first release. It’s not a good long-term solution, because the current TurtleSoft website is ancient. The basic design was written in 2003: two centuries ago in web years.

People complain that our site looks old. Even worse, every page needs lots of html, css and javascript code to make it work. The text that renders each page is cluttered, and hard to maintain. Just “view page source” on any of our non-blog pages to see what a mess lurks there.

We started SmartKnives.com in 2006, after buying up many Swiss Army knives from airport confiscations. It was a fun distraction from programming, and a chance to research e-commerce. The site (and eBay) also pay the bills now that Goldenseal is reaching end of life.

We copied the first SmartKnives website from TurtleSoft.com, but gave it a complete redesign in 2015, using current best practices. The site looks good on any size of desktop, tablet or phone. Navigation is better. And best of all, the source code for each page is short and tidy. It’s so much easier to revise or expand.

Our staff will base the new TurtleSoft site on SmartKnives. Basic pages shouldn’t be too hard to set up. The real challenge will be getting a few thousand support pages moved over. That will be a tedious project that we may be able to subcontract. With luck, we can do some clever text-replacing to handle interface differences between Goldenseal and the new software. They do the same stuff, but how they get there is often a bit different.

Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com

 

 

Our staff just put the Windows version of our new accounting software onto a virgin machine, and it ran OK. We can’t use any of our regular devices for testing, because they already have too much stuff installed. The app needs many, many resource files and DLLs to run, and we may get false positives if those are already on the machine.

Right now the installer is just a zip file download and a few steps. Double-clicking on a data file does not find the app properly, but you can launch the app and then open files that way. There’s a whole ‘nother step needed to get it to behave better, with a desktop icon in the Start bar and other amenities.

Before we started the build process, our staff watched 5 or 6 YouTube videos and read a few blog posts. We decided that most tech people are really, really bad at explaining things.  It took many days to bumble through the process, and write up simpler instructions so we can do it quickly in the future. There are many command-line steps that need the exact right text to work properly. One wrong character and it doesn’t work, or worse.

Next step is building the app for Macintosh. The end result will be much nicer, with all the support files bundled inside the app. Just one icon to deal with. The build process also is mostly command-line steps. We’re looking at instructions now. It only takes one that is halfway decent, but those are rare.

Once both apps are ready, the current TurtleSoft site will get file downloads and instructions. After a long, long wait, users can finally try it our new accounting software. ETA probably a couple weeks.

Work was delayed when I caught anaplasmosis from a tick bite. A full week of fever and chills. The test for Lyme and a few other things was negative, but I still get fever and chills at times. The follow-up  test may turn up a second disease: some tick-borne stuff takes a while to spread.

I have been on the Lyme vaccine trial the past few years, but it’s 50/50 that it was only the placebo. I also suffered zero tick bites prior to 2012, despite working in woods and brush all the time. Now they lurk everywhere.

Meanwhile, our staff will have three basic tasks over the next few years: fixing bugs, building a new website, and making YouTube videos to explain how to use the new accounting app. The software will be free until it’s very reliable. Then we need to figure what to do with it. Software has changed a lot since we launched Goldenseal in 2000, and it probably will need a new approach.

Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com