Cool Mac Gear

OS X, the operating system, has been wonderfully stable in my experience over the year that I have been using it, albeit part-time. I have had just one kernel panic, and that was while using a piece of alpha software for which kernel panics were a known issue. Generally, it has been rock solid.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for all OS X native software. This week, I have been using OS X pretty much full-time for production, and an unanticipated aggravation that I've run into is that I have lost more data over the past three days, then I probably have in the past three months from occasional crashes in the Classic OS wiping unsaved data. (And I've been able to recover important stuff in those rare occasions with MacsBug).

In the past 24 hours, I lost some unsaved work when an application unexpectedly quit. Losing unsaved work is my fault, but more perplexing, I lost a whole bunch of stuff from a database program that did not quit or crash, and most of what disappeared in that instance had been saved -- some of it several days ago. I didn't think this was possible, but the data is gone. All I had done was to close the database file. When I reopened it, some of the files were blank.

I'm not going to mention the two programs by name, but I will say that they are both final releases -- not betas, and I have used them both extensively for years in their Classic OS versions, and have found them very stable in that context.

Another weird thing that happened the other day, was that a file I had saved in OS X simply disappeared when I restarted in OS 9. The computer was shut down and restarted properly. I searched for it with Sherlock by name, but came up with nothing.

Has anyone else experienced anomalous data loss similar to what I have described here?

Inkwell & Menu Bar

From Eirik Paulsen

Hi, Mr. Moore.

Did you ever get Inkwell working on your laptop? I downloaded the latest Wacom beta and did the install thing and, magically, Inkwell worked for me.

Having played with it, I have to say that it's not floating my boat. Yes, the character recognition or whatever is fantastic. It's much easier just to scribble away and watch the notepad or TextEdit or AppleWorks magically reproduce (most of) what I scribbled. Inkwell definitely makes Graffiti look dumb.

Yet...I cannot imagine trying to write this email using Inkwell, let alone a paper or anything long.

Trying to write smoothly across the 4x5" area on my pad was impossible; so, I found myself writing one word, pausing to watch it come up correctly (or not, mostly due to my atrocious penmanship), and then writing the next word.

On second thought, don't try to get Inkwell working on your machine: you already find OS X slow enough. <grin>

Basically, it's a cool technology, and I suppose Apple will floor us with some cool hardware that makes it useful. Eventually.

On a totally different topic, you mention/review a lot of Apple Menu-replacment/dock launcher apps. I tried one once, but deleted it because it was too much of a hack (I know some are good).

Anyway, MacSurfer included a link to a site called Mac In Tune yesterday --
http://pages.prodigy.net/macintune/current/favappmenu.html -- where the "How To" tip was simply to use X's Favorites menu (under "Go" in the menu bar).

I'd never heard of this before, and had long since removed the stupid Heart icon from my windows because it made no sense. Well, it's staying removed because it still makes no sense to me, BUT using the Favorites menu as a new Apple Menu is actually very cool.

Eirik

Hi Eirik;

Nope; still can't get InkWell to work. I too downloaded the latest Wacom driver beta, but it didn't help. In fact after installing the 10.2.1 update, I'm getting less response than I did previously.

However, my brief experimentation with it when Inkwell was working a little bit led me to a similar conclusion to yours. I doublt if I would use it for anything more than a novelty. I do draft a lot of stuff longhand, but pen and paper are much more comfortable.

I do check out a lot of Finder hacks, but my orientation is to use only ones I really need to get what I want done. WindowShade X is one I couldn't get along without (at least happily). I like TigerLaunch, and I need TypeIt4Me. Aside from that, I'm using Jaguar pretty much stock for other than testing software.

Charles

Changing default from Textedit to something else

From Jonathan Tyzack

Hi Charles,

in response to Duane DeVries the simplest thing to do would be to change the TextEdit preferences to make new documents Plain text. For any files that open as RTF, simply press command-shift-T to convert between RTF and plain text. Alternatively, if Duane is using Mail to send his e-mails, he can alter the Preferences to use Plain text as the default in place of RTF and also customise the message composer toolbar to include buttons for converting to plain or RTF text:

Alternatively, although I am unsure if this will work the same way as it does for .pdf (to get Acrobat Reader to open all downloaded .pdf files instead of Preview), he can highlight a .txt or .rtf file and change the default application for opening said files to that which he desires and then choose Change All.

Speaking of .pdf, isn't it typical that as soon as I had written to you about the tip for altering the filename to allow Graphic Converter to open .pdf files than Thorsten Lemke releases an update that can open .pdf natively anyway!

Cheers,
Jonathan

Thanks for the tips, Jonathan.

I didn't think it would be long before Mr. Lemke rose to the occasion.

Charles

TextEdit default

From Darren Varner

A reader was perplexed with TextEdit opening everything in rtf format. He can go to TextEdit preferences and have it open everything in text instead of rtf. I think he can also have it ignore any rtf items.

If he doesn't want to have TextEdit open all the readme's or other .txt documents, he can right click (control click) on one of these docs, click on get info or open with and have it always open with another app of his choice.

Darren Varner

Thanks Darren. Just checked the TextEdit prefs, and your suggestion should work.

Charles

TextEdit question

From George Saronto Stamas

Charles

I think one way to avoid opening text documents with Apple's TextEdit is to select any TextEdit document and 'get info' then select 'open application' from the drop down menu and then click and hold down the mouse over the icon next to the TextEdit name and pick another app...

I think..

Regards
George

Hi George;

That should work too. That Get Info window in Jaguar is a powerful little puppy, isn't it?

Charles

Plain Text in TextEdit

From Peter Gøthgen

Hi Charles,

In the "Format" menu, there is an item called "Convert to Plain Text" which becomes "Convert to Rich Text" if the document is plain text. It's just a toggling switch. The key combo is command-shift-t.

Oh, one more thing,

Changing the application a program will open in is infinitely easier in X than it ever was before.

You have a few options:
1) A contextual menu allows you to choose which program to open the document in at that moment
2) Even better, select the item, choose "Get Info." There is an "open with" panel which allows you to specify the application for a specific file, and to set that as default for all files of that type.

Just another one of those little things that keep me from ever being able to go back to 9.

Peter Andreas Gøthgen

Hi Peter;

This ability is indeed cool. I'll just set it to open most things in Tex Edit Plus. :-)

Charles

Top tip for screenshots and pop-up folders

From Jonathan Tyzack

Hi Charles,

I learnt this tip just yesterday - if you use Graphic Converter X, you'll have experienced the same frustration as I have that it is unable to open the default .pdf screenshots that Jaguar creates. Instead you have to first export as a TIFF or other format them from Preview, right? Well, I'm very happy to say - wrong!! This is a little bizarre, but if you simply add .tiff or .jpg to the end of the "Picture X" name of the screenshot (then reply in the positive to the query asking whether you want to change the extension), you can then open the file in GC without any problems. I don't know about other graphics apps, but I guess that it could work for them too. I assume an AppleScript or Folder Action could be generated to rename the screenshots automatically (I'm a complete novice at AS, so I don't really know).

Also, you might like to take a look at the shareware Drop Drawers X which gives you back pop-up folders and a button-like launcher amongst other goodies (it can also be used to auto-input text clippings etc). I personally don't use it as I get on very well with the Dock, but it seems just the ticket for yourself on the basis of your Odyssey 192 article. The application has a few demo drawers for you to get the gist of how it works and to show how flexible it is. I used to use it back when I was stuck in OS 7.5.5 and was envious of 8.x users' pop-up folders!

Cheers,
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan;

Thanks for the tip about the extension change kludge. Just tried it with my workaday graphics app., Color It! 4.1, (Classic mode) and it did not work. I expect than Graphics Converter's conversion engine is much more powerful than Color It's.

I'm familiar with Drop Drawers. A nice program. However, the only thing I really miss about the popup folders is my little app. launcher, and Tiger Launch is a very acceptable substitute. :-)

Charles

Pop-up folders

From Jonathan Boyd

I too mourned to passing of pop-up folders and resorted to Dock work around until I discovered that Drag Thing allows its docks to be kept as drawers, which are effectively pop-up folders that can be placed on any side of the screen. I now have 3 drawers at the bottom of my screen (Internet apps, other apps and games), One on the left (compression/decompression stuff) and on the left (commonly accessed folders). They take up very little space and pop open when you move the mouse over, keeping your current app in the foreground if you so desire. Very slick. For my needs (launching apps and dragging docs into apps/folders) I find that they're actually an improvement on classic pop-ups. Much better looking too :^)

Jonathan Boyd

Hi Jonathan

Like Drop Drawers, Drag Thing is another good alternative that I hear many enthusiastic testimonials about. There are others as well, such as LaunchBar.

So far, Tiger Launch is doing the job for me with very little system overhead (it's only about 136k!), but I shall continue to check out others.

Charles

PDFCompress

From Noel McRae

I downloaded the program PDFCompress <http://www.metaobject.com> and gave it a try. I have a Word X document that I have created a picture album on using table. the pictures are max 3 inches in any direction, 300 dpi, and optimized with PhotoShop saved for web feature. Still when Word creates its pdf document in Preview it comes out to 98.9 megs. Whew.

Using PDFCompress it was reduced to 3.9 megs. Why can't Apple figure that process out and make a good pdf engine?

I am seriously looking at getting what so far seems like a very good program.

Hi Noel;

Thanks for the report. That;s an impressive difference. I wonder of other word processors make as humongous PDF files, or is this typical Microsoft bloat?

Charles

Cocoa Gestures

From Gurminder

Hello Charles,

I don't know if this has been reviewed in your regular columns, I recently found this cool little "enabler" to allow mouse gestures in OSX:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021028011514691

MacOSX Hints is a fabulous site with excellent hints on a daily basis. Every week, the site admin spotlights a new program or enabler for OSX. Cocoa Gestures only works on Cocoa programmed apps, like Mail/Chimera/Text Edit/System Preferences/iChat etc.

It has changed the way I use the Mac fundamentally. I'm sure you'd find it useful to ease your overall mouse use.

Gurminder

Hi Gurminder

Sounds good. I'll have to check it out.

Charles

Tigerlaunch

From Darren Varner

You might even try using Favorites under the Go Menu.

Darren Varner

Certainly an option, but more hassle to configure and it's a submenu thing. TigerLaunch is very slick.

Charles

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

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear