Entries from November 2008
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Why I won't be buying Versions
Today, Versions, a Subversion app for OS X, moved to version 1.0, marking the end of its free beta period. While many people will be shelling out the €39 (~$49) for a license, I won’t be doing the same. Having used Versions for a couple months now, it just isn’t for me.
I don’t need a fancy UI.
When I loaded Versions for the first time, I was impressed by the amount of work that went into the UI. It looked nice, and it worked pretty well too. However, I found myself working harder to accomplish simple tasks than when I used the command line. For me, it’s a lot easier to cd to the directory in the Terminal and do a svn stat rather than take the time to load up Versions and do a similar command. Even though it might be nicer to look at, Versions was just never quite as quick or intuitive as the terminal commands I had grown used to. In addition, I almost always have the Terminal open, as I’m constantly running commands during development. Having to open up another app just got in the way of my workflow.
I already use TextMate.
TextMate is the center of my coding world. It is quite simply the greatest text editor I have ever used, and it’s where I spend the vast majority of my time when I’m coding. Built into TextMate is a great SVN plugin that really makes Versions unnecessary. Without changing applications, I just hit CTRL+SHIFT+A and I’m greeted with a list of SVN commands. I tap 5, and I see a dialog where I can set my SVN commit message and choose exactly which items I want to commit from a list of changed files. Why would I need anything more sophisticated than that? If I wanted to go ahead and commit a few files with Versions, I’d have to fire up the application, locate the files I want, and hit commit. The worst part is, at least in the beta version I used, there’s no good way to select multiple files in Versions without resorting to holding the command key and clicking each file. In TextMate, it’s as simple as checking boxes.
Git is the future.
My biggest problem with spending close to $50 on a Subversion app is that I really don’t want to use SVN any more. I’ve fallen in love with Git, a distributed version control system that puts Subversion to shame. Just about every new personal project I start will be using Git, so there’s really no point in buying a program just to manage my older projects. If Versions supported Git as well, I’d definitely be considering adding it to my arsenal.
A Grain of Salt
Now, just because Versions hasn’t worked its way into my routine doesn’t mean it can’t be part of yours. I personally know several people that really enjoy Versions, and it has really improved their workflow. It’s definitely a well-made product, it just doesn’t work for me.
Also, if you’re in the market for an OS X client for SVN, definitely check out Cornerstone as well. While I haven’t used it personally, I’ve heard good things about it.
Resizing Rounded Rectangles in Photoshop
In the past, I’ve always dreaded working with rounded rectangles in Photoshop, because they’re just so annoying to resize. If you try to change the object’s height or width, it distorts the corners, making things look pretty bad. Today, I found a way to resize them using the direct selection tool, and it has already made my life a whole lot easier. Check out the screencast I put together to find out how.
Finding Related Entries Using Tags with Ruby on Rails
One of the cool features that I built into my new site is the “related” sidebar box on every entry and link. Using a not-so-sophisticated algorithm, my site automatically picks out other entries that seem to be related to the current entry, which hopefully helps readers navigate to my other content. It really wasn’t too difficult to implement, so I figured I’d go through my thought process and the code that makes it happen.
The Not So Fancy Algorithm
It took me a little while to come up with a way to determine if an entry is “related” that was both accurate and relatively efficient–I could have used some complicated tool that parses the content of my entries, but instead I decided use something that’s a little simpler: tags. To understand how it works, pretend I have three entries:
- Entry A - Tagged with: Turkey, Roast Beef, Cheese, Bread
- Entry B - Tagged with: Bread, Baking
- Entry C - Tagged with: Turkey, Cheese, Bread, Lettuce
Let’s say we’re looking for entries related to Entry A. From just looking at B and C, it’s clear that C should be closest, as they A and C both have something to do with sandwiches, whereas B only talks about bread. To rank the entriesprogramatically, I first do a query to find entries with any of the tags from Entry A. Then, once I have that list, I sort the entries by how many of Entry A’s tags are used. So, in the above example, Entry C would have 3 matched tags, and Entry B would have 2. It’s not a perfect system, but so far, it seems to be working pretty well.
The Code
So, here’s the code that’s performing all the magic:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
def related(limit=5)
@related ||=
returning self.class.find_tagged_with(tag_list, :conditions => ['posts.id != ?', self.id], :limit => limit) do |posts|
posts.sort_by do |p|
matched_tags = p.tags.find_all {|t| self.tags.include?(t)}
matched_tags.size
end.reverse
end
end
end
The real meat of the method is in the returning block, so let’s take a look at that:
returning self.class.find_tagged_with(tag_list, :conditions => ['posts.id != ?', self.id], :limit => limit) do |posts|
posts.sort_by do |p|
matched_tags = p.tags.find_all {|t| self.tags.include?(t)}
matched_tags.size
end.reverse
end
What’s happening here is I’m first searching for any entries tagged with the current entry’s tags (I’m using acts_as_taggable_on_steroids), then, with the data that’s returned, I use Ruby to sort the entries by the number of “matched” tags, which then gets returned from the method. Conventional wisdom suggests moving the matched tags part into SQL, since MySQL is more efficient than Ruby at handling data. However, I’m using relatively small sets of information, and I haven’t run into any performance issues yet.
Overall, this method’s working pretty well for me, but I’m sure as I accumulate more posts, I’ll need to refine it some. I’d really like to incorporate some sort of popularity ranking, based on number of comments and views, but that’s not something I’m too worried about at the present.