JSDocToolkit is a tool like Doxygen for Javascript.

I’ve had several hours to play with Inkscape 0.46 since it was released, and despite the minor version increment, a lot has changed.

New features

• A “fill” tool, making it trivial to turn bitmaps into vectors quickly
• 3d drawing shapes (including perspective)
• A tweaking tool, making it easy to nudge/blur/soften shapes
• Several new effects (including path effects)
• Many performance improvements, including huge improvements in blur speeds
• Better gradient tools
• Dockable tool windows (nicely done too)

I’m especially excited about the “fill” tool, as it simplifies tracing scanned sketches and logo bitmaps. The tool creates vectors using a flood-fill algorithm, based on the zoom level and configurable limits (fill method, threshold, gap-closing, etc.). In my tests so far, I’ve been able to turn pencil sketches into vectors quickly¹, as well as scans of real-world-objects.²

1. Normally tracing complex sketches takes me hours ↩
2. I created the fuji logo by scanning + fill-tracing an old, decaying T-Shirt logo ↩

I found two new¹ natural-language markup tools after noticing that RestructuredText hadn’t been updated for 2 years.

The first is PanDoc, a multi-format natural-format converter. It converts to and from Markdown, Wikitext, ReST, LATeX, HTML, groff, man, RTF, and more. It’s only downside is that it’s written in Haskell, which is only a problem if you need to run it on Windows.²

The second is Texy, a PHP-based tool with a syntax that distills Wikitext, Markdown, and ReST concepts into one very complete format. It even supports formatting hints and citations for most XHML tags, in a format that surprisingly intuitive.

1. New to me, at least ↩
2. Not that Haskell isn’t available on Windows, just that it doesn’t appear to be part of Cygwin ↩

There’s a daemon available for the Apple infrared hardware built in to most newer Macs, and an example showing how to control keynote. Source code is included, for the curious.

Remember a long time ago, at the dinner table, when your kid brother mashed together a bunch of food that really should not have been mashed together – chicken, jello, gravy, condiments, corn, milk, peas, pudding, all that stuff – and proceeded to eat it? –Ryan Tomayko, The Thing About Git

Some great arguments for using Git as a backup system.

Another HTML to PDF conversion tool, this one is written in Python and is licensed under the QT license.

Ryan raves about a new HTML/XML + CSS and SVG to PDF tool from YesLogic. While it’s not cheap, it produces beautiful output compared to the Free tools I’ve used, and is free for non-commercial use. There’s even a Google techtalk about PrinceXML.

Jabber + whiteboard for Linux, Windows, and Mac.

Yet another Thin webserver. Another replacement for Mongrel, to front-end Rails apps.