If you are a Mac user using the beta release of the EGW CRE 2008 software (Ellen G. White Writings, Comprehensive Research Edition 2008), you may be interested in this little app I wrote. What it does is allow you to launch multiple instances of the EGW CRE 2008 app simultaneously. This was requested in the comment thread for “EGW CD-ROM via Darwine on OS X“.

Being able to have multiple windows at once is possibly handy for heavy users of the app, but not officially supported (the main concern is that if you save settings from more than one open window, the settings from one could overwrite the other, meaning some of your settings won’t be saved). [Update: One user reported that changing settings in one instance, locked the settings in other instances so they could not be saved. Another user reported that all settings were saved in each instance, but that the instances had to be quit and relaunched to get the settings to sync. YMMV. Since I have not personally used things like notes, highlighter, etc., this has not been a problem for me. If you use those things, you just need to use them in a single instance at a time, or else do some testing to be sure your changes will be saved.]

This is version 1.5 of my “New Instance” app. This one is a little smarter: it tries to find the EGW app if you moved it from the Applications folder, it should report errors to Console, and finally it has a new fancy-pants icon (the icon is based on the official icon created by the EGW Estate). It requires that you already have the beta version (or later) installed. It requires Leopard (10.5) or Snow Leopard (10.6). You can download from here:

Download EGW-CRE-2008-New-Instance-1.5.zip

Usage:

1. You must have the EGW CRE 2008 software already installed (beta version is OK)
2. Download and unzip EGW-CRE-2008-New-Instance-1.5.zip; place it in your Applications folder or wherever you like
3. Run EGW CRE 2008 New Instance; each time you run it, it will start a new instance (a new window) of the EGW software
4. To quit a single window, click File > Exit (if you want to save settings), or the keystroke Cmd-W (won’t save settings) … if you want to quit all windows without saving, Cmd-Q

Hope you like it!

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For the technically-inclined: This program is pretty simple, but it is also my most complex app written as a shell script for Bash to date. I learned quite a bit from the process. The script uses Spotlight for some of its work, which I think is pretty cool.