Pebblesoft

Welcome!

Here you'll find some free cross-platform computer programs.

In the fun department, there are a couple of online games (some thinking required) and a program that determines the best way to distribute gifts in a gift exchange.

In the useful department, there's a program that music therapists and other musicians can use to organize songs by category. There's also a text-formatting tool that comes in both online and downloadable versions, and a tool for easily renaming multiple files at once.

Finally, there are a number of useful classes for Java programmers, and there's a toolkit that JavaScript programmers can use to create desktop applications written in pure JavaScript.

All software is offered as is, with no liability assumed by Pebblesoft or the author of the program.

Online Programs

Pebbles is a puzzle‑like game with three levels of difficulty.

Here's the link to Pebbles:

Pebbles

WordRecall is a matching game that uses words. You can be creative in thinking of associations to help you remember which words are where.

Here's the link to WordRecall:

WordRecall

PebbleWrap is a very useful tool for wrapping (or unwrapping and then rewrapping) lines of text, attractively indenting paragraphs and lists, and making great-looking tables from delimited text.

Here's the link to PebbleWrap:

PebbleWrap

Downloadable Programs

These are free Java-based applications that have been tested on Linux, Mac OS X 10.7, Windows XP, and Windows 7 (and they probably run fine on other platforms as well). They require only that Java (version 1.6 or later) be installed on your system.

To use any of these free applications, just unpack the appropriate Zip file to a convenient location. An "application bundle" is provided for Mac OS X users. On Linux and Windows systems with Java 1.6 ("Java 6") or later installed, you can run the program by double-clicking the JAR file (for example, cage.jar), or you can create a shortcut to that file.

Computer-Aided Gift Exchange calculates which distribution of gifts, out of all the possible arrangements, maximizes the joy of the group overall without requiring too great a sacrifice from any individual participant. The program takes as input each participant's rankings for the gifts and then determines how best to distribute the gifts among the participants.

To download Computer-Aided Gift Exchange (CAGE), click the appropriate link:

CAGE for Linux

CAGE for Mac OS X

CAGE for Windows

Song Indexer is a desktop application that enables you to manage one or more collections of songs organized in categories. Each song can be in more than one category. For a given collection ("song index"), the application generates a document on demand that lists all the songs both alphabetically and by category.

Song Indexer is particularly suitable for music therapists, individual musicians, and groups who perform or present different types of songs depending on the client, audience, or occasion.

To download Song Indexer, click the appropriate link:

Song Indexer for Linux and Windows

Song Indexer for Mac OS X

WrapTools is a desktop version of PebbleWrap (without the plain-text tables feature). You can use WrapTools to wrap or unwrap the text in a file or in the system clipboard.

To download WrapTools, click the appropriate link:

WrapTools for Linux and Windows

WrapTools for Mac OS X

SJFileRenamer (Simple Java-Based File Renamer) is a graphical application that you can use to rename multiple files at once within a specified directory or directory tree.

To download SJFileRenamer, click the appropriate link:

SJFileRenamer for Linux and Windows

SJFileRenamer for Mac OS X

Java Libraries

(for Java programmers)

DesktopUi (in the bfitch.gui package) renders and manages the GUI forms for a Java desktop application, where the forms are described by XML files.

Json (in the bfitch package) provides methods for parsing, generating, and formatting JSON text strings.

XsvReader, XsvWriter, and the rest of the bfitch.xsv package provide complete facilities for reading and writing data in CSV and related formats.

IniSettings (in the bfitch.ini package) encapsulates the settings stored in an INI file. The class provides methods for storing data to and retrieving data from the INI file passed to the constructor.

CalendarDay (in the bfitch package) represents a calendar day as a plain date with no associated time or time-zone information.

ProgramDir (in the bfitch package) is an abstract class designed to be inherited by a static member class such as ThisProgramDir nested within the main class of an application. The class provides a single method, getPath(), that returns the full path to the directory containing the running program (even if the program is running from a JAR file).

SimulatedAnnealing (in the bfitch.annealing package) provides a single public method, anneal(), that optimizes a list of numbers according to a specified cost function.

You can download the bfitch, bfitch.gui, bfitch.xsv, bfitch.ini, and bfitch.annealing packages within a single Zip file:

Java Packages

The Zip file contains source files as well as generated documentation and class files.

JavaScript Development

(for JavaScript programmers)

DeskRhino is a toolkit for creating desktop applications using the JavaScript programming language. The toolkit targets the Rhino JavaScript interpreter (version 1.7R4 or later). Rhino is easy to bundle with deployed applications and requires only that Java be installed on the end user's system. The DeskRhino modules require Java version 1.6 or later.

While Rhino gives you the option of using any part of the Java standard library in your Rhino scripts, the DeskRhino modules provide essential desktop and command-line application functionality and more through pure-JavaScript interfaces so that familiarity with Java is not required.

You can download DeskRhino here:

DeskRhino.zip