This application has been one of my must haves on my new systems for a while now. I have been unable to write anything about it on this blog because, although it's freely available, the source code has not been given. Luckily, blacktree have recently opened up the source and made it freely available on Google Code under the Apache license.
Many people describe Quicksilver as an application launcher, which is true, and it is very good as one, but it is so much more. I use it as a file browser and file launcher, iTunes controller, quick contact lookup, URL launcher and as a quick way into many other apps, e.g. to launch a blank email with a certain file attached to it with just a few keystrokes.
As I just mentioned, Quicksilver uses keystrokes and key combinations to execute different actions. You can also set up tiggers that will do a wide variety of tasks. Some simple tiggers that I have on my system are, F2 launches Firefox, F3 launches mail.app.
You can also use it to do more complex tasks without having to touch your mouse. For example you could summon quicksilver (I use double tap command key), navigate to a file, hit tab to move to the next pane, hit 'o' and then 'p', which for me brings up 'open file with...', then press tab again and start to type the name of the app you would like to open that file with. I find this a lot quicker than having to open up a finder window, navigate around then have to right click.
The best way to get into quicksilver, I believe is to download it and just start using it to launch apps and files and slowly work your way into it. A very good resource for tutorials and ideas is Merlin Mann's 43 Folders website.
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Welcome to Darwin!
I realised recently that I've neglected to publish a post about maybe the most important open source topic in OS X, Darwin. What's even more important is Darwin is part of the very lowest levels of OS X.
"Darwin includes the kernel, device drivers and driver support frameworks, a BSD personality layer, and various libraries and command-line utilities." This may not mean all that much to the regular user, who is used to using applications and lets the OS do its thing in the background, but there are some very powerful Darwin tools that you can get your hands on.
For most of us, we would access Darwin's features and programs through the Terminal application. This can, by default, be found in your applications folder, then in the Utilities sub folder. Once Terminal is opened you are now able to use the UNIX layer of OS X, which comes with many of the GNU tools which are used in the GNU operating system and many of the classic UNIX tools.
Some of my favourite tools are; the emacs text editor, ftp and the less command.
Emacs is a text editor originally built by Richard Stallman. It comes installed as default on every mac and you can access it simply by typing 'emacs' into your Terminal. Emacs is known for being highly customizable and is largely used by programmers. I use it for quickly editing a file, usually if I'm browsing my hard drive from the Terminal. If you type emacs then the file name you can quickly make some adjustments then press control-x then control-c to exit emacs. You can find out more about emacs here.
Next there's ftp. It amazed me when I used to go hunting around for the best open source ftp client when there was one already built into my mac, and a good one at that. Ok, I admit it's a bit strange to get used to coming from a GUI app as it's text based. But if you want to quickly retrieve a file from a remote server it's ideal. Simply type ftp then the address of the server into your Terminal, followed by the username, then the password and you're away. Type 'bye' to exit.
Finally there's the less command. This is great if you quickly want to view the contents of a text document. I use this a lot when I've named a lot of files incorrectly and I can't for the life of me remember which one I need. With less I can view the contents and find out. Type less followed by the file name to use this little puppy. Press 'q' to quit.
I have very much just scratched the surface here. There are many many more built in commands and software, even more available online. A good place to start would be to get to grips with some of the basic commands and view the man pages for these commands. This can be done by typing 'man' followed by the command. Another good place to find some great ported software for Darwin is Darwinports.
"Darwin includes the kernel, device drivers and driver support frameworks, a BSD personality layer, and various libraries and command-line utilities." This may not mean all that much to the regular user, who is used to using applications and lets the OS do its thing in the background, but there are some very powerful Darwin tools that you can get your hands on.
For most of us, we would access Darwin's features and programs through the Terminal application. This can, by default, be found in your applications folder, then in the Utilities sub folder. Once Terminal is opened you are now able to use the UNIX layer of OS X, which comes with many of the GNU tools which are used in the GNU operating system and many of the classic UNIX tools.
Some of my favourite tools are; the emacs text editor, ftp and the less command.
Emacs is a text editor originally built by Richard Stallman. It comes installed as default on every mac and you can access it simply by typing 'emacs' into your Terminal. Emacs is known for being highly customizable and is largely used by programmers. I use it for quickly editing a file, usually if I'm browsing my hard drive from the Terminal. If you type emacs then the file name you can quickly make some adjustments then press control-x then control-c to exit emacs. You can find out more about emacs here.
Next there's ftp. It amazed me when I used to go hunting around for the best open source ftp client when there was one already built into my mac, and a good one at that. Ok, I admit it's a bit strange to get used to coming from a GUI app as it's text based. But if you want to quickly retrieve a file from a remote server it's ideal. Simply type ftp then the address of the server into your Terminal, followed by the username, then the password and you're away. Type 'bye' to exit.
Finally there's the less command. This is great if you quickly want to view the contents of a text document. I use this a lot when I've named a lot of files incorrectly and I can't for the life of me remember which one I need. With less I can view the contents and find out. Type less followed by the file name to use this little puppy. Press 'q' to quit.
I have very much just scratched the surface here. There are many many more built in commands and software, even more available online. A good place to start would be to get to grips with some of the basic commands and view the man pages for these commands. This can be done by typing 'man' followed by the command. Another good place to find some great ported software for Darwin is Darwinports.
Monday, 13 August 2007
Adium 1.1 released
Check out all the news here. I haven't installed it yet myself but will be doing so asap.
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Aquamacs 1.0
Just a quick note to let everyone know that Aquamacs, the native mac version of emacs, has released version 1.0.
A full list of features and bug fixes can be found on the website aquamacs.org
A full list of features and bug fixes can be found on the website aquamacs.org
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
NeoOffice
After trying out the OpenOffice.org development Alpha I decided to sign up to the mailing list. After a few posts I noticed that there was a lot of talk about OpenOffice.org “vs” NeoOffice. I thought it only right that I should check out NeoOffice and report it here.
NeoOffice was started by two developers that were part of the OpenOffice.org mac port. To find out more about why they started the NeoOffice project visit the FAQ page.
Before I'd even installed NeoOffice a couple of things stood out to me that seemed slightly better than the OpenOffice.org project. For one, NeoOffice is released under the full GPL license rather than the Lesser GPL, which OpenOffice.org is under. Secondly, they don't have Sun behind them telling them which way to go and they only have one platform to worry about. Also the developers seemed to have an attitude and humour that I could related to more, see the open letter to Sun Microsystems.
After installing the software, the differences are obvious. The OpenOffice.org port is clearly an alpha preview where as NeoOffice is very much a stable release, for example I wrote this blog post in NeoOffice Writer. Also the look and feel of the app is very much more 'aqua'. The icons are nice and the menus feel like os x menus.
As for features I found everything I was looking for. I'm not really a spreadsheet or presentation user so I can't really comment on those but overall, I think if you're looking for an alternative to Word at this point in time, then NeoOffice is the clear choice.
NeoOffice was started by two developers that were part of the OpenOffice.org mac port. To find out more about why they started the NeoOffice project visit the FAQ page.
Before I'd even installed NeoOffice a couple of things stood out to me that seemed slightly better than the OpenOffice.org project. For one, NeoOffice is released under the full GPL license rather than the Lesser GPL, which OpenOffice.org is under. Secondly, they don't have Sun behind them telling them which way to go and they only have one platform to worry about. Also the developers seemed to have an attitude and humour that I could related to more, see the open letter to Sun Microsystems.
After installing the software, the differences are obvious. The OpenOffice.org port is clearly an alpha preview where as NeoOffice is very much a stable release, for example I wrote this blog post in NeoOffice Writer. Also the look and feel of the app is very much more 'aqua'. The icons are nice and the menus feel like os x menus.
As for features I found everything I was looking for. I'm not really a spreadsheet or presentation user so I can't really comment on those but overall, I think if you're looking for an alternative to Word at this point in time, then NeoOffice is the clear choice.
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
Open Office Aqua Development Preview
Today I was very excited to hear that the first alpha of the native version of Open Office for mac became available. The site is very clear that this is just a development version and should not be used for real work:
"WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY CRASH AND MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT"
There is also quite a list of issues still to be dealt with:
"You cannot print
PDF export does not properly work as thetext won't show on the page right
Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
Copy and paste does not fully work
OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
Impress will not recognise multiple monitors"
Even so I've downloaded a copy and had a quick play with it. Obviously it's quite unstable at present but I'm excited to see progress. If you would like to download the alpha version too, I suggest going to this page as I had some problems getting the torrent from the main site. You will also need a bit torrent client.
"WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY CRASH AND MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT"
There is also quite a list of issues still to be dealt with:
"You cannot print
PDF export does not properly work as thetext won't show on the page right
Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
Copy and paste does not fully work
OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
Impress will not recognise multiple monitors"
Even so I've downloaded a copy and had a quick play with it. Obviously it's quite unstable at present but I'm excited to see progress. If you would like to download the alpha version too, I suggest going to this page as I had some problems getting the torrent from the main site. You will also need a bit torrent client.
Monday, 4 June 2007
Bean
As you may have read in some previous post, the native version of Open Office for mac is not quite ready. However, if you're looking for an open source word processor then you might want to give Bean a go.
Bean has some really nice features which make it worth using over TextEdit. The main one which most users of TextEdit are annoyed by is word count. What is even nicer is that the word count is live at the bottom of the document, meaning you don't have to go routing through menus like in Word. Another nice feature set is the complete word and define word items. Define word will open up dictionary.app and complete word will try and guess the word you are typing, which can be very helpful if you're not sure how a word is spelled.
Another bonus over TextEdit is that it can open .doc files. This makes it useful even in an office environment where others may be using Word. Also, unlike Open Office at this point, it is in the native cocoa styling with all the features you might expect from a cocoa app.
Find out more and download it from the Bean site here.
Bean has some really nice features which make it worth using over TextEdit. The main one which most users of TextEdit are annoyed by is word count. What is even nicer is that the word count is live at the bottom of the document, meaning you don't have to go routing through menus like in Word. Another nice feature set is the complete word and define word items. Define word will open up dictionary.app and complete word will try and guess the word you are typing, which can be very helpful if you're not sure how a word is spelled.
Another bonus over TextEdit is that it can open .doc files. This makes it useful even in an office environment where others may be using Word. Also, unlike Open Office at this point, it is in the native cocoa styling with all the features you might expect from a cocoa app.
Find out more and download it from the Bean site here.
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