Fix for OSX High Sierra breaking menubar for non English languages on Jaikoz and Songkong

In August we reported that Apples beta version of their High Sierra operating system was broken for all Java applications because it did not display the menubar properly.

Update Nov 15th 2017, Apple have eventually fixed this with the OSX 13.1 release, and we have reverted the now unnecessary fix in SongKong 4.13, we will do the same thing with the next Jaikoz release.


On Sunday 25th September High Sierra was officially released and the problem appeared to be resolved. However it only works if OSX preferred language is set to English otherwise the menubar does not work.

Hopefully Apple will fix this soon but in the meantime we have a workaround for both Jaikoz and SongKong with only a minor side effect: 

• Within Finder in Applications right-click on Jaikoz or SongKong and select Show Package Contents
• Select Contents
• Open Info.plist for editing
• Find the line that says CFBundleAllowMixedLocalizations and change the line below it from true to false
• Save the changes

Now start Jaikoz or SongKong, this should resolve the issue. 

Update

Since we don't know when Apple will fix this we have now uploaded new versions of Jaikoz 9.2.0, SongKong 4.12 and SongKong for Melco 4.12 for mac users with the above workaround in place. So if you now just download Jaikoz or SongKong from http://www.jthink.net the Menu bar will continue to work. 

The version number has not changed so if you already had the latest version you will not get prompted to update. But we have updated the build date of these replacement versions to 27th of September 2017 - and you can see this in the About window.

Effects

There is one negative side effect meaning that in the main Jaikoz/SongKong menu and folder dialogs used by Jaikoz/SongKong will now show as English when they should be in your preferred language


Below is an example showing SongKong in German with and without fix.

Without Fix

Menu is incorrect, but when I click on Wähle Ordner to open folder buttons are still in German

With Fix

Menu now works properly, but menu items under the SongKong menu are incorrectly in English and buttons in folder dialog are also in English. But other options in SongKong will correctly be displayed in German.

Jaikoz Apple Mac Customers, fix for iTunes Updating issue

After releasing Jaikoz 9.2.0 a few Apple customers reported they were no longer able to update iTunes, getting the following error reported
 

But despite testing against exactly the same version of iTunes I was unable to reproduce the error. But then after upgrading my secondary Mac (Mac mini connected to my TV) to OSX 10.12 Sierra I did start getting the error. The previous version (Jaikoz 9.1.0) was continuing to work indicating there was indeed an error with Jaikoz 9.2.0

This stumped me for a while since I had already double checked that I had made no code changes to the iTunes part of the code base. I delved further and realized that the error message was misleading the problem was not particular to creating a playlist folder, it was larger than that: Jaikoz could not find the Applescript Engine.

I then remembered I had modified the build script, and in doing so had inadvertently dropped the required AppleScriptEngine.jar from being part of the final release. Its always the 'minor' changes that cause the problems.

This file is installed as standard as part of the legacy Apple Java 6 version so my development machine continued to work but the file was not on my second machine, it came with Jaikoz 9.1.0 but not not with Jaikoz 9.2.0.

So I hope some of you found that explanation diverting, and we have now fixed the problem.
 
If you simply download from Jaikoz for OSX and install then this issue will be resolved. I have not done a full release for this as this introduces further complexities. Jaikoz is still version 9.2.0 but if you go to Jaikoz:About and look at the Build Date it should now say 31 August 2017 rather than 31 July 2017

 

Please read:Jaikoz and SongKong currently incompatible with Apple High Sierra Beta

This affects all Mac users of Jaikoz and SongKong, Apple have recently released the beta of their latest mac operating system High Sierra. Unfortunately this update currently has a bug that means that the main toolbar will not display for any Java based application.

Here is one such example

Hopefully this will be resolved soon. But not currently clear whether has to be resolved by Apple or Oracle, we had similar issue with Windows recently that required a change to be made by Oracle

So please be advised that if you depend on Jaikoz or SongKong please do not install High Sierra at this time.

How to move the SongKong database to a different disk on your Mac

For the most part SongKong does matching on a folder by folder basis and because it is only working on a few folders at any instant in time this means it can usually fix thousands and thousands of songs without using that much of your computers memory.

But it does need to store your file metadata details and details of the progress it is making and this is stored on your disk drive in a database. Compared to memory disk space is cheap and plentiful, a typically computer may have 8GB of memory but 500 GB of disk space.

On OSX the database is always stored in  ~Library:Preferences:SongKong and the Library folder is usually on your local hard drive. If you have a small or full internal hard drive this can present a problem because SongKong does not give you an option to store the database somewhere else.

Empty Database

If the database has just grown too large over time use File:Empty Database to clear it out. Remember that the database is where SongKong stores the modiifed metadata allowing it to Undo Changes, so once you've done emptied it you cannot undo any previous changes.

Move Database

If you simply do not have space on your main drive for the SongKong database using symbolic links as follows:

1. Close SongKong if running
2. Run Application:Utilities:Terminal
3. Enter commands to create new database folder in your chosen location, then remove the old database folder and create a symbolic link file with the same name point to the new location.

If your new location is an external drive then it should be listed under the /Volumes directory, do not use a network directory that will be too slow. In the screenshot below I have given full example for linking to a new Database on a usb stick mounted on OSX as /Volumes/UUI, you just need to change the references to UUI to the correct location for your drive, everything else should be the same.

4. Now start SongKong, it should say its creating a new database.
5. If you like you can check it is done in the right place by running this command from the Terminal, remembering to replace UUI  with the correct path for your system

SongKong 3.10 Bug Fix release

This release fixes a number of bugs, fixes one regression and adds one improvement:

OSX:SongKong has encountered an error trying to build model of iTunes library

If SongKong is configured to update iTunes then SongKong has to create a model of the iTunes library on start up so that it knows what songs are already under iTunes control. On OSX SongKong has to use Applescript to communicate with iTunes, and the iTunes library is large it can take a while to rebuild it, but the default timeout used by Applescript is not always large enough for large iTunes library. The timeout has been increased in this release.
 

OSX:Not always showing all options on first tab on small screen

On my own Mac with 17" monitor with native resolution at 1920 x1200 resolution I had never seen this error  but reducing the display to 1280 x 800 and the first tab of the Fix Songs dialog no longer has room to show all the options. This kind of resolution could be used by smaller laptops such as a 13" screen version, and unfortunately SongKong gives no visual indication that there are any other options. The problem persisted on Windows as well, but a Windows is able to fit in more on a smaller resolution than OSX.

The problem is now fixed, a vertical scrollbar is displayed as neccessary.

Treat track names like 'Track 1' as blank

SongKong uses existing metadata to match songs and to validate acoustid matches, but sometimes existing metadata should not be used. The most common culprit is track names of the form Track 1, Track 2, Track 3 ectera , whilst these can be valid track names they normally are not so now if existing metadata contains such names we just treat as if the song currently has no title.

Regression:Discogs matching Thread prematurely ending

This regression was introduced in SongKong  3.9 by the change to match multi-folders groupings to Discogs after a failed MusicBrainz match before attempting matching sub folders. Unfortunately this change could cause Discogs matching to stop prematurely, it is now fixed in this new release. 

Full list of fixes and improvements can be found here

Zap App Nap

Last night I ran SongKong overnight on a large collection of songs on my MacbookPro and I was surprised to find it hadn't finished, in fact it had got less through less than 10% of the songs !

Investigation of the logs files showed that SongKong had stopped doing anything 15 minutes after leaving it, and only restarted when i touch the keyboard in the morning.

Now in Preferences:Energy Saver I have the Mac configured to power off the screen after 15 minutes yet this shouldn't preventing processing, and it certainly used to work.

Turns out the problem is a new feature in OSX Mavericks called App Nap. Intending to save power it can slow down or halt applications it doesnt think are being actively used, and this seems to be the case once the Mac has gone into screen saver mode.

Thankfully it is easy enough to disable AppNap for any application.

Simply use the Get Info window for a particular application. Locate the application for which you’d like to prevent the App Nap feature from monitoring, right-click (Command-click) on its icon, and select “Get Info.” You can also highlight the app in Finder and press Command-I. The Get Info window will appear and you’ll notice a new option in the General section: “Prevent App Nap.” Check this box and your selected app will run at full power in the background.

Unfortunately this setting doesn't seem to be preserved when you reboot your Mac.

In the next version of SongKong and Jaikoz I expect to have a permanent solution.

Jaikoz changing its spots, becoming more Leopard Like.

One drawback of Java on the Mac platform is that it isn't easy to get applications to look really Mac like. Since Jaikoz started I've been using Quaqua to get round some of the issues, but OSX Leopard has made some radical changes to the UI which cannot yet be replicated in Quaqua. Luckily a new library is being developed rapidy called MacWidgets that goes a long way to getting that native look. Take a look at this screenshot of what Ive done so far.