Cool Mac Gear

I've been doing some of my production work in OS X this week, partly to test some hardware for review, and also to check out some of the keyboard shortcut workarounds for scrolling and selecting text, etc., that several readers have suggested recently.

However, while these modes have helped eliminate some mouse clicking and holding, which I have a physical disability problem with, I still find working in X significantly slower and more cumbersome than working in OS 9 with hand and foot mice in tandem, which OS X does not support. Let me explain in more detail.

One job I spend several hours on every weekday is writing, and editing, and marking up news briefs and columns for Applelinks. I work in Tex Edit Plus and NotePad Deluxe mainly, and much of the operation involves selecting and dragging blocks of text from one document to another or within the same document; a lot of cutting and pasting; scrolling up and down through the article after it's pasted into any HTML template to insert section dividers, blockquotes, text colors, dates, titles, and highlighting URLs to apply HTML anchors with an AppleScript. This takes a ton of mouse work, and it goes very slickly in OS 9.x using the two-mouse method.

For example, to highlight a URL, I scroll to find it (and with the Scrollability add-on in OS 9, I don't even need to touch the mouse button, and the faster scrolling in the old OS gets me there quickly). I stop the cursor at the beginning of the URL, step on the foot mouse button, drag over the selection with a slight flick of the wrist, then hit an F-Key with my other hand to toggle the HTML anchor AppleScript. Zap! It takes a shorter time then it does to say it. Clicking and shift-clicking to scroll, find, and select involves a lot more body-English, and takes 2 - 3 times as long. Multiply that by dozens of times a session, and perhaps you can better understand my preference for doing production work in in OS 9.

Another example: A couple of times a week, I send out a syndicated newspaper column to a couple of dozen editors. This job involves creating an email message template; than personalizing each mailing by copying and posting each editor's name and address from a database into the salutation; then selecting, copying, and pasting the email address into the email message header. With the two-mouse method in OS 9, this goes very quickly. Just hold the foot most button down and drag over the address in the database; unclick, then click again with the foot and drag the address into the email message. Then click and drag to highlight the email address and option-drag it into the email header. This method is much faster than any single-mouse workaround in OS X.

In fact, having discovered it by necessity, I would use the two-mouse method by choice for these shores, even if my mousinng pain problems were not an issue. It is inherently faster and more efficient for repetitive tasks.

For other jobs, I've found the three-button, programmable, Logitech and Wacom cordless mice I've been testing for the past few weeks a satisfactory workaround, with the right button configured for click and hold. This works very nicely for dragging and dropping icons on the desktop, and is superior for editing graphics. However, if I try using the right button as a highlighting and dragging substitute for my two-mouse method in text editing, my wrist goes numb and painful pretty quickly. For me, OS X's non-support of simultaneous input from two pointing devices is a show-stopping roadblock I hope they fix it soon.

Yesterday, colleagues John Farr brought my attention to a CNET article on how "Mouse Gestures" -- the "flick of the wrist" school of interface improvements is gaining adherents.

CNET's Evan Hansen reports on how Norway's Opera Software is trying to redefine how people interact with their PCs.

"The idea is to allow people to execute commands with a simple flick of the wrist, rather than navigate through complicated point-and-click toolbars and drop-down menus. In Opera's Web browser, for example, a person who wants to return to a previous page can simply hold down a button and slide the mouse to the left, rather than moving the cursor to the top of the screen and hitting the "back" button."

I don't think this works with the Mac version of Opera, but I invite correction if I'm mistaken.

Hansen also notes that:

"Programmers associated with the Mozilla open-source team plan to release an upgrade Thursday to a mouse-gestures project known as Optimoz. The effort is one of several to expand the reach of a kinetic, rather than a graphical, user interface (UI) in the browser and beyond. At least one developer is seeking to add gesture functions in popular Windows applications....

"Mouse gestures are just one of the latest attempts to improve the PC user interface, which has coalesced around a series of conventions first hammered out by engineers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s and subsequently commercialized by Apple Computer to wide imitation...

"Increasingly, shortcuts have focused on the mouse, with manufacturers such as Logitech adding new, programmable buttons to simplify common commands with a single click, including the "back" command in Web browsing. Indeed, mouse gestures have been incorporated into some advanced 3D CAD (computer-aided design) programs, but they are now being extended to ordinary computer tasks....

"Logitech said it is in talks with developers working on mouse gestures technology, although it is not yet ready to disclose potential partners."

TE+ and Applescript

From John Konopka

Charles ,

I can only amplify what the others have said about TE+ and Applescript and OS X. With this combination you feel there is little you cannot tackle. I am now starting to look at AppleScript Studio. This could be a new golden era for the Mac.

I have setup Tex-Edit Plus to automatically load when I login to my my G4. It is the tool I use the most.

I would concur with you other writer that the other tool like this is GraphicConverter. This is an amazing tool that I use for numerous tasks. Virtually anytime I put an image on my Mac I use GraphicConverter to view it or modify it.

Regards,
John Konopka

Hi John;

Yes, TE+ is really a proverbial Swiss Army Knife application.

I like Graphic Converter too, although I'm addicted to Color It! (there is an OS X native version on the way), which only costs $15 more and has may PhotoShop like features at a fraction of the cost. Photoshop plugins even work.

It's not really an either/or comparison, as GraphicConverter dan do many things Color It! can't and vice versa.

Charles

Tex Edit Plus

From Bill Mather

Hello mr. Moore,

I am writing you as you have written some great articles about text edit plus. I agree with you about this great program. It is very good. My only problem with it after I set it the margins and fonts and I quit and do a save as, I have to redo them all over again. Have you ever had this problem and if so, what did you do to fix it? I hope you can help on this. Keep up the the great editorials.

Best,

Bill

Hi Bill;

I rarely format anything beyond left justified text in a single font and point size, which is one reason why I like text editors. However, Tex Edit Plus is a styled text editor that supports quite extensive formatting.

After receiving your note, I made a test document with a bunch of different fonts and font sizes and some paragraph formatting. I then saved the document and closed it. When I reopened it, the formatting was all intact.

Does this sound like what your are doing?

Charles

Tex-Edit and OSX use

From Jonathan Kurtzman

Longtime (paid-up) user of Tex-Edit. I use it instead of Word, Nisus, WordPerfect - which I have (and have Word X). Great program.

John Kubie's letter mentions application launching and app killing. Those are, unfortunately, two longtime Windows traits and I'm glad they're finally available on the Mac.

What I've noticed in use of X is simple things like the window controls lighting up when you hit them. No more confusion about which window is being shut. I do wish the edge of a window near the scroll bar were a little more distinct. I overshoot it too often. One beauty of X is the system retains its essential transparency to the user, meaning for example that I don't have to take on the near impossible chore of editing the Registry when an application has a problem and can instead toss the preferences and let the app rebuild them.

Apple has done a decent job of creating utilities, like Process Viewer, that package UNIX commands (like top). But they need to take the next step and make that material more accessible than merely sticking stuff in the Utilities folder. This is especially important with maintenance tasks. Most people don't leave their computer on all night and don't know enough to download MacJanitor (freeware) that lets them run these tasks at the click of a button.

Jonathan Kurtzman

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore