MACinations November 03 - Tips & Tricks

Palm Desktop and 10.2.8

Installing Palm Desktop on a Mac running 10.2.8 doesn't complete the installation process, you get an error message stating "Installation did not complete successfully. Do you wish to attempt to reinstall the software or to quit?". While Palm works on fixing the problem the workaround is to install the previous version of Palm Desktop (version 4.0). Point your browser to: http://www-4.palmone.com/us/support/downloads/mac_add.html and download version 4.0. It works fine on a clean install of 10.2.8.

Create a collage

There is a very easy way to create a collage included with the budget-minded Adobe PhotoShop Elements.

It's called "Create PhotoMerge," and it's an automated action in the File menu. ("PhotoMerge" is billed as an easy tool to create panoramas, but can just as easily be used to lay down multiple pictures with nice skewing and elegant overlappings.)

It is very easy to individually manipulate the participating images, then lay them down nicely into one collage.

For those with the "full" Photoshop 7.0 here's a tip:

PhotoShop Elements is just a slimmed down version of PhotoShop, and they can share certain components. So, copy the relevant PhotoMerge files from Photoshop Elements' "Plug-ins" folders (specifically, the "Filters" had three files and the "Automate" folder had one file) into the corresponding Photoshop 7.0 folders, and it works just fine from Photoshop 7. "PhotoMerge" shows up in Photoshop's "Automate" menu.

A file called "Icon"

Ever seen a file called "Icon" in a Open or Save dialogue, and wondered what is was?

The reason you see it at all is that the programmer forgot to hide invisible files when building the list to display in the dialogue.

So what is "Icon"?

It's an invisible file used by the Finder, that stores the custom icon for a folder; at one time, that's all that it did. Now, it serves other functions, such as pointers to attached
scripts. So, even if the folder doesn't have a custom icon, it can still have this invisible file. You can safely ignore it if you ever see it.

Putting HTML in email

If you want to create email HTML for display in a recipient's email client, you should be aware that generally, only custom or specialized apps can modify the MIME headers of outgoing messages in the precise way to make the body of the email the HTML source code, rather than just contents to be reformatted into HTML colors, sizes and entities. Most people use MailPictures to add X-Faces and custom photos to their emails within Mail.app, but there is also a (new and slightly obscured) feature that allows you to send raw HTML emails, welcome for those who need to test or send out such HTML newsletters for themselves.

Here's what to do:
Install MailPictures 2.4
Open the MailPictures settings under Mail -> Preferences -> MailPictures (this may be offscreen under the »toolbar icon)
Check "Enable MailPictures" and select the Advanced tab
Check "Show Options in Compose Window"

Next time you create a new mail message, you will see three checkboxes: Add Mailpicture, Add X-Face, and Message is raw HTML.
MailPictures : http://www.nikwest.de/Software/

Computer History Museum

Established in 1996, the Computer History Museum, located in Mountain View, CA, has one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world. The website features a Timeline that explores the history of computing from 1945 to 1990; each year features illustrated descriptions of significant innovations in hardware and software technology. http://www.computerhistory.org

Desktop Trash

It appears to be impossible to make an alias of the Trash in OS X - but you can do it with a UNIX "symbolic link". This has to be done in Terminal, but it results in a folder icon appearing on your desktop and you can drag files to this folder and they will be trashed just as usual. And of course you are free to customize the folder's icon using any of the standard utilities to make it as Trash-like as you wish. The command to make the symbolic link to Trash is:
ln -s ~/.Trash Trash
where the last word ("Trash") is what will appear on the desktop - you can make this whatever you like. It won't change automatically from empty to full like a real trash can.

Alternatively
Step One: Create a new folder on your desktop.

Step Two: Make an alias of this folder and name it Trash (you can delete the original folder now).

Step Three: Press Command-I, and in the Info Window that appears, click on the button marked "Select New Original."

Step Four: Now, you're going to locate your real trash. Here's how: In the Go To field, type in /users/yourname/.trash (of course, don't type the words "yourname," instead type in your user name where "yourname" appears).

Step Five: Now press the Go button, and it will find the Trash for you (even though it will appeared grayed out in the list). The Go button then changes into the Choose button. Click the Choose button (while your grayed-out trash is still selected in the list) and you've done the hard part.

Step Six: Now all you have to do is switch the icon. Here's how: Click on the Trash icon in the Dock, which will open its window. Then press Command-I to bring up its Info window. Click once directly on the Trash Can icon, then press Command-C to copy that icon into memory.

Step Seven: Go to the Alias folder named "Trash" on your desktop, click on it, and press Command-I to bring up its Info window. Click on the folder icon to select it, then press Command-V to paste the Trash Can icon onto your folder.

There you have it...a Trash Can on your desktop.

OR, you can save the time taken dragging to the Trash, highlight the file to be trashed, type Control-Delete to move it to the Trash and then Shift-Control-Delete to delete it.

Finally you can use an AppleScript
If you open Script Editor and make the following script:

on open DroppedItems repeat with EachItem in DroppedItems tell application "Finder" delete DroppedItems end tell end repeat end open
and save on your Desktop as an application with (or without, your choice) Stay Open checked, you can then drag anything to it to have to Finder move it to the Trash. You can get it here http://www.novajo.ca/Trash.app.sit

Applications that put a trash can on the desktop include: iCan http://www.kanzu.com/ican.html, DragThing http://www.dragthing.com/ and Path Finder http://www.cocoatech.com/.

Build Your Own Slide Show

You could create your own screen saver by using an AppleScript included with Jaguar called Build slide show. This script seems to be missing from Panther. Is there another way to create custom slideshows?

This particular Jaguar script, can be found on a Jaguar startup volume by following this path: /Library/Image Capture/Scripts/Build slideshow. Just drag and drop a folder full of pictures on the script and, when you next launch System Preferences and click the Screen Effects system preference, you'll find a new entry called Recent Photos. The pictures within that dragged folder comprise this screen saver.

Your custom screen saver will be over-written when you next use the Build slide show script so to preserve your pictures, follow this path: ~/Library/ScreenSavers/ and rename the Recent Photos.slideSaver file (be sure to keep the .slideSaver appendage).

None of this helps you in Panther, of course, because the script is gone. Instead, create that folder full of pictures and name it whatever.slideSaver (replace "whatever" with something a little more descriptive, please). Confirm that you really do want to change the name. Now drag the folder (which now displays the slideSaver icon) into the ~/Library/ScreenSavers/ directory and you're good to go.

And yes, this trick works under Jaguar as well.

iCal - More Alarms

With iCal 1.5.1, you can have several alarms with one event. In the Information drawer (click "I" button in lower right) You will find an "alarm" item. Click on the alarm type, and you will get a list of options for your alarms, including email. Click on "alarm" and you will be able to add another alarm or delete the current one.

Change iCal's Email Helper

iCal has the great ability to e-mail notifications for events (great for sending reminders to your cellphone!). The only problem is that it forces you to use Apple's Mail application. Michael Zapp has posted scripts which allow you to change the e-mail application iCal uses for e-mailing notifications (currently supporting Entourage, Eudora, Mailsmith and PowerMail) http://www.zapptek.com/ical-mail/

The installer will overwrite the existing Mail scripts. If you want to retain the originals, the burden is on you to do this before running the installer. A simple name change should be sufficient (such as changing Mail.scpt to original_Mail.scpt).

There are actually two sets of scripts involved. Both sets are the same scripts stored in different locations. One set is used by iCal for notifications when iCal is running. The other set is used by a faceless helper app (iCal Helper). iCal Helper takes care of notifications when iCal is not running. The two sets of scripts (five per set) can be found in:

/Applications/iCal.app/Contents/Resources
/Applications/iCal.app/Contents/Resources/iCal Helper.app/Contents/Resources

The script names are:

Mail.scpt mailInfoScript.applescript mailScript.applescript Mail.applescript mailScriptWithAttachment.applescript
While there are actually five scripts in each location, tests indicate that iCal uses only one of the scripts (Mail.scpt). If you remove all except Mail.scpt everything appears to work just fine.

Fancy Characters

Ever wondered how to get a copyright sign ©, or Trade mark ™ in your text? In OS 9 you can use the Keycaps desk accessory under the Apple. As you press various keys in combination with Shift, Control, Option, it shows you which keys you pressed and the resulting character. you can copy and paste from the keycaps entry line. You can also change the font from the menu bar. The same keys in different fonts don't always give the same result!. Certain Fonts are composed of symbols eg Symbol, WingDings, Webdings, Zapf Dingbats.