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I'm always delighted to report that software I test works well, but alas, sometimes that's not the case This week, I test drove a couple of new applications that did not perform satisfactorily. MaxiMice I was quite excited to hear about this little autoscrolling utility. I've been a longtime fan of Eden Sherry's wonderful Scrollability add-on for the Classic OS, and I seriously miss it in OS X (it does work in Classic Mode with Classic applications only). Basically, Scrollability allows you to scroll through documents and other open windows without touching the mouse button -- a facility that is a non-trivial blessing when you have mousing and typing pain issues to contend with. MaxiMice is an OS X native utility that promises somewhat similar fuctonality, although only in Cocoa applications. Consequently, I had high hopes that MaxiMice would restore that Scrollability function in OS X, although my main productivity application, Tex Edit Plus is not a Cocoa program. To install MaxiMice, you run the MaxiMice installer, which is a standard OS X installer. Once the install process is complete, MaxiMice is supposed to be active in your system, although I had to logout/login in order to get the MaxiMice pane to appear in the System Preferences. To configure MaxiMice, you launch System Preferences and click the MaxiMice pane. This I did, and decided that the default settings would be fine for starters. 
Unfortunately, MaxiMice didn't work. Aside from the presence of its Preference pane, I could get no indication that the system was seeing it at all, and none of the functions worked in OS X TextEdit, which is about as generic a Cocoa application as there is (and specifically listed as supported in the MaxiMice documentation). "MaxiMice will work in any application that supports Input Managers. Currently, this means it will work in all Cocoa applications. Examples of such applications include Mail, Safari, iPhoto, OmniWeb and TextEdit. Examples of applications that do not support Input Managers include Word and Eudora." Now, I have to assume that there is something about my setup (PowerBook Pismo/ OS X 10.2.4) that MaxiMice doesn't like. I presume that the program really does work in most instances, but I'm baffled as to what the problem might be in my particular case. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is successfully using this utility, and/or from others who have experienced the same non-response that I did.
You can find out more about MaxiMice at:
Little Office 1.6 Little Office is a new freeware database program aimed primarily at small or home business organization and management of customer contacts, invoiceig, to do lists, letters and articles by freelancers, etc. 
It has a lot of potential, but still needs some work. For example, after installing the program (just mount the disk image and drag it to your Applications Folder) and starting it up, I found that all of the menus remained grayed out. I was able to get it percolating by double-clicking one of the sample document files in the application folder. However, even then, the red close buttons on all of the windows remained grayed out, and the only way I could close the growing constellation of open windows was to quit the program. I can;t say whether these glitches were caused by some issue with my particular machine setup, or are endemic, but they made the program essentially unusable. Hopefully, they can be dealt with in a future version upgrade, because as I noted, this program seems to have lots of potential. To set up Little Office you open the preferences by clicking in the main-window palette. 
To insert a picture logo for your documents click "import logo picture." Specify a company name and currency. 
For freelancers, whom this program is particularly aimed at, click“Edit Article” to open the article database, where you can insert article works in progress and archives. 
To create a new customer database entry, click "Open Address”and fill out the applicable fields. 
To create an invoice to this customer click the button “New Invoice”The Invoice window will appear. The field status field represents the status of the invoice. If you select Open, this invoice will appear in the open invoice list, where you can see alls customers that have invoices outstandng. To select products to insert on the invoice, click the“Select article” button and choose an article from the list. When you press the article number, a mask will appear and you can choose the quantity of the article and press“transfer to invoice”. To print the invoice click the Printer button on the top (command “P” is not supported).To customize the print layout you can open the file invoiceprint.lit with a FileMaker Pro 5.5 version. If you don`t have FileMaker 5.5 you can download a demo copy from the website: http://www.filemaker.com. Open the file with FileMaker and select the layout mode. You can now customize the layout and to insert your pictures or logo. Could be a useful tool, but those bugs need to be squashed.
New in this version:
For more information, visit:
Easier way to empty the Trash From Michael Snider Charles, The simplest to delete stubborn items from the trash is just to drag the item(s) from the trash to your home folder, open Terminal, and type "rm filename," including the extension (if any) in the file name. If it's a folder, and not empty, type "rm -r foldername". That last can be dangerous--be sure you want to delete everything contained in the folder. It might be wise to have a folder named StubbornTrash or something in your home folder and drag stuff there instead of to the top level. In that case, after opening terminal, type "cd StubbornTrash" before executing the commands above. If the stuff is locked or otherwise protected, you may need to prefix your command with "sudo" and supply a password. No reboot, no logging off, no extra software.
Best
From: Andy Hector An even easier way to empty the trash is to open up a terminal window and type this in: sudo rm -r .Trash It will prompt you for your password, and then it will delete everything in the trash. Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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