Cool Mac Gear

One of the confusing aspects of OS X is libraries, of which there are at least three, all unhelpfully named "Library," and even more if you have multiple user accounts on your Mac. The libraries are

• The system Library in the OS X System Folder.
• The main Library at the first level of your hard drive or OS X partition
• A user Library in the Home Folder or folders of each user account.

There are actually more folders named "Library" such as the one in the Network domain, but the three noted above are our principal concern here.

It would have been helpful if Apple had chisen to give each library a distinctive name, say: "System Library," Main Library," and User Library," but instead thay are all named just "Library."

Library folders contain many of the support files and resources used by the system and various applications, such as preferences, fonts, Mail files, device drivers, plug-ins, extensions, application and system add-ons, scripts, logs, browser bookmarks, Desktop pictures, and such.

You can pretty much ignore the system Library, which can only be accessed by someone with an administrator account, most of the time, and even an administrator is not supposed to be able to delete files and forlders therein -- only the root acount has write permission here.

However, you will probably interact with your Home Library and the main Library fairly frequently.

The distinction is that files and resources stored in the main library can be accessed by any user account, while items stored in a Home folder's Library can only be accessed by that user's account. For folks like me who are their computer's only regular user, it's more or less a moot point. For convenience, when I'm presented with a choice, I just dump everything in my Home Folder Library.

However, if your Mac has multiple users with separate accounts, you should park anything that you want to be accessable to all users in the main Library.

It's not really that difficult to sort out, but I find some of OS X's naming conventions odd and seemingly gratuitously perverse.

About Eudora 6.0

From Jeff Mincey

I agree with some of your sentiments about Eudora 6.0, but Eudora's "Send Again" command is not unique. Let me call to your attention the presence in Mozilla's Thunderbird of the "Edit Message as New" command (it's version of "Send Again").

As for the issue of copying the header information, I, too, have occasion often to do just that, and Thunderbird does not permit this. Moreover, Thunderbird doesn't at present have window management -- to wit, if one window is beneath another, there is no way to access the background window (short of minimizing the one in the foreground). There is no "Window" menu or nested command in another menu that allows me to access other open windows.

Having said that, I'm increasingly impressed with Thunderbird even as I grow weary of Eudora's abysmal IMAP support. Eudora corrupts remote mailboxes and I get faulty dates, duplicate mail messages, etc. This happens sometimes when Eudora crashes in the middle of a session, and sometimes it happens even absent a crash -- but it should not happen at all. Other mail clients handle IMAP MUCH more elegantly -- including Apple's Mail, the Mozilla mail module, and Mozilla's stand-alone Thunderbird.

Eudora often returns errors when trying to read IMAP mailboxes -- and it is very slow in transferring mail from one mailbox to another (on a remote IMAP server). I often get "Can't compact mailbox -- encountered unexpected end-of-file" -- or something to that effect. But the same mailbox performs flawlessly in other mail clients. I often get error messages also about addresses which are malformed or too long, even though, again, other mail clients digest the same messages with no problem. And I get "Unable to fetch - error 27" messages frequently as well, even though other mail clients exhibit no such problem -- all things being equal.

The drawer is a nice addition, but its current implementation is buggy. Invoking it by means of clicking on the drawer icon in a mailbox window is a very iffy proposition. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. If I close a mailbox window in which the drawer had been opened, then the next time I open it I expect it to remember its previous state and include the drawer as well. But as often as not, the drawer does not come pre-opened. Sometimes it takes several clicks for it to appear. Sometimes it never appears and I have to invoke it from the menu command. And sometimes it is checked in the menu as if it is open when in fact it is not.

The Eudora interface in general does continue to fall short by the measure of (1) aesthetics (2) logical grouping of settings (3) ease of access to commands and ease of use, and (4) customizability.

And, finally, HTML support still is lacking. It has in the last several releases been significantly enhanced -- and I want to give credit where it is due; but still on balance there is more work yet to be done in this area.

There are a number of areas where Eudora excels and surpasses its competitors, such as in its searching capability, but it has enough shortcomings, (only some of which I detail here) that I'm definitely keeping my eyes open for alternatives (including new versions of Eudora itself).

Just some thoughts I wish to pass along for your consideration.

Jeff

Hi Jeff;

Thanks for the tip about the "Edit Message as New" command in Thunderbird. Now can you tell me where to find it? I haven't been able to.

I have never used IMAP, so I defer to your respective evaluations of IMAP performance in the two applications.

I don't use the drawer much (I have a 12.1" screen), but I experimented a bit tonight and couldn't get it to misfire opening or closing.

I rather like Eudora's aesthetics, such as they are. One of the things I like best about the program is that it doesn't have an imposing interface. I keep the toolbar turned off, and run it from its windows and menu bar. Been using it so long that I find navigation the Settings and commands second nature, and I find it configurable enough for my purposes.

I'm also not a fan of html or otherwise formatted email, and keep the send as plain text setting checked.

And as you note, the search engine is superb.

Thanks for sharing your views on Eudora.

Charles

Re:What Are Your Ten Favorite OS X Features?

From Brett Forrester

Dear Charles,

Regarding your recent Applelinks article, I do agree with your peeve about the Dock:

I still dislike the Dock. I use it parked on the extreme right of my screen mostly as a not as satisfactory substitute for the old tear-off Application Switcher menu in OS 9, but use WindowShade X's windowshading and minimize in place functions much more extensively.

I have my Dock to the right for the very same reason, and I'd be interested to know how many Mac users from before OS X do the same. I ditto your fondness for WindowShade X and would include the Labels and Xounds haxies as well (Xounds not just for the quirkiness of a chatty computer but also for the aural feedback; I liked Opera for OS 9 for the same reason: with my dial-up, I always knew when a download finished, for example, when I heard the corresponding chime across the room)

Hi Brett;

It would be interesting to know what percentages of OS X users keep their Docks where. You can even park it at the top of the screen using TinkerTool or a UNIX command in the Terminal. I find keeping it at the right suits me quite well. I used to keep the old OS 9 tear-off Application Switcher palette there.

I like audible chimes that tell me when stuff is finished, like FTP uploads/downloads, etc. Especially appreciated with OS X multitasking.

Charles

Re WindowShade 3

From Richard Dalziel-Sharpe

Hi Charles,

I was interested to read your note about Eudora 6 and WindowShade 3's Minimise in Place feature. A similar bug occurred in MYOB AccountEdge 3. In MYOB, if any window of the app. was minimised any other MYOB window would not accept any input from the keyboard. I reported this bug to both MYOB and Unsanity, informing them both that these were the only applications that I was having problems with. MYOB replied that they did not test any of their software with OS hacks. Unsanity replied with a very polite thank you for the bug report and within a few days released WindowShade 3.01 which fixed it.

I know that the Mac market share is small and that to MYOB we are very small fish, but still the brush off did seem a bit peremptory as the bug MAY have been theirs and not in WindowShade.

Kind regards,
from Richard Dalziel-Sharpe in Australia

Hi Richard;

Very interesting. As I noted, the bug only showed up with Eudora when I upgraded to WindowShade X 3.1. All was well in 3.0.

I expect we have to say that this is a Windowshade X bug, although it affects only a few applications. Some sort of conflict. I anticipate that they will fix it.

Charles

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

CM

Charles W. Moore