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Moore’s MailBag - Wednesday, October 13, 2004
•MooresMailBag •Comments •Tell-a-Friend
What is my Pismo doing?
Re: Trying to find a popular app
Cocoa clipboard editor
Re: Cocoa clipboard editor + Spell Check
Outliners
TAO, MORE, outliners
Outliners on ATPM
From the Urly developer...
Re: switching keyboards
Re: Apple Store Launches QuarkXPress 6 Promo[/url]
What is my Pismo doing?
From Peter
Hi Charles,
You have written about the issue of creeping ram usage in Pismos when using 10.2. I recently upgraded my Pismo 400 to Panther hoping that one of the benefits would be for my system to lose its creepiness. This is what happened:
For about twenty minutes after each startup, my CPU usage hovers around 100% while my ram usage creeps from about 25% to 100% without having any programs running. As I use the computer over the next few hours, my CPU usage steadily declines as does my ram usage. Overall, it takes more than an hour for it to hit a manageable level. I have turned off all my startup items, but that has not effect.
Do you or any of your readers have any clues to what is going on after startup?
Thanks,
Pete
Hi Pete;
I haven't encountered anything quite ike you describe with my own Pismo. It takes a couple of days, and a lott of programs open before the RAM maxes out, and the problems of slowdowns and pageouts have been much less pronounced with Panther than they were with Jaguar.
Hopefully, someone in readerland with a better grounding in the technical issues thatpertain than I have will be able to address this.
Charles
Re: Trying to find a popular app
From Frederick Karayan
Mr. Moore,
Thank you for the suggestions. Kind of you to reply. I actually found out the app I was looking for is called "MenuMeters". Really cool app. The weather app I decided to use is called WeatherMenu. It is simple but does what I want. So thanks again for your help. I appreciate it.
Regards,
Fred Karayan
Apple Certified Portable and Desktop Technician
Hi Mr. Karayan;
Ah, yes. MenuMeters. I thought it sounded familiar.
Glad that my suggestion turned out to be helpful anyway.
Charles
Cocoa clipboard editor
From Yoram Gerschman
Greetings and happy Thanksgiving
I am looking for a Clipboard editor that will allow me to run Services on the clipboard content (such as Calcservice and Spell Checker). Any ideas?
Thanks
Yoram
Hi Yoram;
Thanks for the Thanksgiving greeting.
There are "at least" a couple of Clipboard utilities that support Services.
With CopyPaste-X, multiple clipboards are accessible via menu command, keyboard ( C and a number between 0-9) or drag and drop. The previous copy ability and the normal clipboard is still available but now instead of just one clipboard you have a Clip Set of ten; and after that further sets of ten clipboards, to a number which is finally unlimited.
CopyPaste-X combines the major Mac integration technologies the clipboard, drag&drop, contextual menus, Application Services, QuickTime and files in one application. It transparently accepts and provides the data in the most suitable form to use within and between other applications. Clipboards can be preserved through restarts, each "normal" copy is remembered in a stack, drag and drop to and from a clipboard is possible and you can edit each clipboard.
CopyPaste-X is $30 shareware.
For more information, visit:
http://www.copypaste-x.com/
iPasteboard 1.1 - Clipboard enhancer
iPasteboard lets you create an unlimited number of clipboards , easily accessible from a clean and efficient user interface. Designed and optimized exclusively for MacOS X, iPasteboard features a great-looking Aqua user interface, a service menu, a dock menu, image & text previews..
Main Features
• Allows an unlimited number of clipboards • Clipboard content stored after a restart • Keyboard shortcut for instant access to iPasteboard • Built-in preview of clipboard content
• Easily customizable with extensive preferences options • Very fast and responsive • Designed for MacOS X
• Great Aqua user interface
• Written exlusively for MacOS X
• Service Menu
• Dock Menu
• Toolbar
iPasteboard is $14.95 shareware.
For more information, visit:
http://www.brunoblondeau.com/ipasteboard/
Charles
Re: Cocoa clipboard editor + Spell Check
From Yoram Gerchman
Thanks, I will look at them. On similar subject, would you happen to know a speller that can work inside text fields in Camino (ala cocoAspell)? I find it much faster then Safari but I really need a spell checker.
Thanks again,
Yoram
Hi Yoram;
The Cadillac of freestanding MacOS spellcheckers is SpellCatcher.
Spell Catcher claims to work in just about any Mac or Windows application you can type into, so you'll no longer need different dictionaries for all your applications. Features include an as-you-type and after-the-fact spell checker on existing text selections. The Shorthand Glossary feature lets you define your own abbreviations for commonly-used phrases. Type a few letters and they can automatically expand to passages thousands of characters long.
Single user licenses for Spell Catcher are $39.95 and it is available as a free download for a 15-day trial
For more information, visit:
http://www.rainmakerinc.com/
There is also the Open Source ObjectFarmSpell Release 0.9.1 which is claimed to allow you to check spelling within almost every Cocoa application.
This software is still a work in progress and isn't considered as final until the release of version 1.0.
ObjectFarmSpell plugs into Cocoa's spell server architecture and makes spell checking for multiple languages available.
The spell service is available for download in the following packages: Mac OS X 10.0.4/10.1
Mac OS X Server 1.x
OPENSTEP
For more information, visit:
http://www.objectfarm.org/Activities/Software/ObjectFarmSpell/
You might also want to check out W.B.O.S.S., (Web Based Open Source Spell Checker)a web based Spell Check script designed to work with any text input form on any web page. It is called from a second form, opens a pop-up window, allows the user to check the text, then inserts the text back in the main window's form field. WBOSS is being used in over 15 countries (at last count), in hundreds of public and private institutions in the United States and abroad.
This program requires:
• Unix-based OS, ie: Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX
• Ispell, Aspell or CocoASpell (Mac/OSX): Ispell is probably by default installed on your system. Aspell is much improved over Ispell. This is the engine that runs the spell checking.
• IPC::Open3. Some systems only come with IPC::Open2, so you may have to install IPC::Open3 in addition.
• Users running a browser than handles JavaScript. IE5/6 or NS6 recommended.
For more information, visit:
http://www.dontpokebadgers.com/spellchecker/
Charles
Outliners
Gareth Jones
Hello, Charles
You received a question about outliners, which is a category of software that I've been looking into recently. I've found one free one-pane outliner that I could work with: My Mind. You can set a preference to get a new topic by pressing "Return," which is the behaviour I expect. You can also populate the toolbar with commands, which would be a help until you master the somewhat odd keyboard commands. If I stuck with it, I'd want to find a way to alter the keyboard commands.
The two shareware ones for OS X that I've looked into are OmniOutliner and newcomer TAO. TAO is powerful, and the developer is responsive. (He put in a command that I recommended to him).
OmniOutliner, however, is the one I'd probably go with. It's a bit cheaper and commands that I'd expect to use (Tab for indenting, option-tab for outdenting, arrow keys to move from topic to topic) work as expected.
I haven't tried Circus Ponies nor NoteTaker, so can't comment on them.
-Gareth
TAO, MORE, outliners
From Sanford L
Matt Neuburg has just reviewed TAO in the current edition of TidBITs. FWIW, MORE, the standard against all outliners are or should be measured, is a free download for those who can stand to run the app in "Classic." MORE still has more features and abilities than any currently available outliner for OSX.
Outliners on ATPM
From Stephen Dauphin
For those interested in outliners, ATPM (the online publication About This Particular Mac) has had a long running series on this topic. Use:
http://www.atpm.com/10.08/atpo.shtml
as an entry point. For those interested in the other articles, near the very end is a list of them and links.
From the Urly developer...
From zeno
Hi Charles,
I really appreciated your review about Urly ( http://www.applelinks.com/pm/more.php?id=1167_0_1_0_M )
I just wanted to tell you a couple of things:
1) Regarding the "yo-yo" effect:
I'll try to fix that in the next release, but I think it's just a matter of "getting used to": in fact, when you drag an URL from Safari to the screen edge, you shouldn't keep the mouse cursor on the edge without moving, since in any case you have to drop the URL in the drawer's table which is more than 2px away from the edge...thus, if you just quickly "hit" the hotedge with your mouse (while dragging) you won't get the yo-yo effect...you see what I mean?
2) in the article you say "It would be nice to have a Close button on the drawer, or just program it to retract automatically after 15 seconds or so". That's true, but you maybe missed a "probably-too-hidden" feature:
launch Urly, choose "Quick Help" from its Dock menu or from the Help menu. then read it 'til the end
(....while you have the Quick Help window still opened, hit the space-bar and then click with your mouse on the red zones that appear...)3) "I would also very much like to have a preferences option to locate the Urly drawer at the bottom of the screen"
Your're right, that's something that I should definitely implement in a future release...
thanks!
best regards
zeno
http://zenonez.com
Hi zeno;
Thanks for the comment and tips.
I agree that these sort of things do tend to become second nature with familiarity and usage.
The optional placement of the drawer at the bottom would be great for those of us who keep the Dock on the side, however.
Charles
Re: switching keyboards
Willem Smelik
While Mellel may be able to handle two fonts, I do not use it very often - I draft in Ulysses or NoteBook, and finalize things with LaTeX unless something is meant for the Web. It's the drafts and the webfiles for which I need to be able to switch comfortably between British and Hebrew keyboards without having to be married to Lucida Grande. I don't want Big Lucy, but Apple forces her upon me whenever I switch keyboards. How can I get a divorce?
Switching it all afterwards will not work, I am afraid, for most fonts.
Many thanks, of course, for any suggestion offered. I hope Apple is listening, too.
All the best
Willem
I hope so too.
Charles
Re: Apple Store Launches QuarkXPress 6 Promo
Joe Cabrera
Ha!
I quickly misread it as "once great publishing powerhouse." Ahem.
***
Charles W. Moore
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CM •MooresMailBag •Comments •Tell-a-Friend
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