Finally I finished the first public beta of the mac version. You can download it from http://www.mekanimo.net/downloads/. This version will expire on April 1st, 2001 (no joke). You need to keep in mind that this is the first beta release. I am planning to release another public beta version prior to the commercial release.
There are several new features and bug fixes in this release. I think the most significant new feature is the XML export option. XML export was the easy part thanks to Python's xml library (specifically xml.etree.ElementTree). The difficult part was creating an XML schema editor that could enable users to customize the XML format without pulling their hair out. I think the included XML Tag and Structure Editor (under the Settings menu) does the job well. I don't think a tutorial is needed to learn how to use it but I may be wrong. If you try it please give me some feedback. Another new feature is the C++ export with Box2D version 2.1 format. Soon I will release a new Windows version and this version will include these additions as well.
There are several issues that I know of and hoping that testers will discover some other issues that I am not aware of. Since I am not a long time mac user I don't know if it feels like a native mac application. Even if you find a tiny glitch please let me know so that I can fix it. I may end up setting up a Trac account (a bug tracker) but initially you can send me emails for the bug reports. Without your feedback it cannot get better fast enough.
I use Amazon's web services (AWS) for file storage. I created a .pkg file as an installer and tried to upload it to my repository at AWS but it was being shown as a directory so I ended up with a compressed .pkg.zip file. Now users need to unzip it first then install it. I am not sure if this will create any issues with the new users. Since most of my users are developers this should not be a big deal but I would like to reduce the installation process to a one click action. If you have any suggestions about how to improve the installer please let me know.
