Shaun McDonald's Blog » Apple

OpenStreetMap is at Linux Expo Live in Olympia, London

smsm1986 — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:12:01 +0000

Linux Expo Live is an event being held in Olympia to showcase the latest software for Linux. This year the event has been combined with Mac Expo Live and Creative Pro.

OpenStreetMap has a stand there, so drop by and have a chat if your in London today, tomorrow or Saturday 25th October 2008. More info on the osm wiki.

Here’s some photos from setting up last night:

OOO: Possible fix for the command timed out error on Leopard

smsm1986 — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:58:00 +0000

UPDATE:Thanks to Eric Bachard, a fix very similar to this will be appearing in OpenOffice.org 2.4.2 due to be released at the end of October 2008.

—

With a change in the way that X11 works on Leopard, the X11 version of OpenOffice.org has been giving an error message on startup saying “command timed out”. With previous versions of Mac OS X, OpenOffice.org had to make sure that X11 was running first be trying to start OpenOffice.org.

The following change should work for 2.4, 2.3.1, 2.3, and possibly earlier versions. Open the file OpenOffice.org 2.4.app/Contents/Resources/Scripts/main.scpt in “Script Editor”. (You will need to control+click the application icon and choose “Show Package Contents”.)

Then replace the code block “on openSoffice(aFile)“….”end openSoffice” with the following:

on openSoffice(aFile)

 if (atLeastOSXVersion(10, 5, 0)) then

-- if we have leopard, we don't need to manually start the X server first

  set theCmd to "sh " & (quoted form of (POSIX path of getOOProgramPath() & "soffice")) & " "

  do shell script theCmd & aFile & shellTerminator()

 else

  set theDisplay to startXServer()

  if (theDisplay is equal to "error") then

   return

  end if

  set theEnv to "DISPLAY=" & theDisplay & " ; export DISPLAY; "

  set theCmd to "sh " & (quoted form of (POSIX path of getOOProgramPath() & "soffice")) & " "

  do shell script theEnv & theCmd & aFile & shellTerminator()

  -- logEvent("open CMD: " & theEnv & theCmd & aFile)

 end if

end openSoffice

Please comment on how this works for you.

Apple’s Developer Site has Crashed

smsm1986 — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:58:00 +0000

With the news that Apple has released the SDK for the iPhone, their developer site is currently unavailable. It seems to be have exceeded Apple’s expectations in terms of demand.

I’m currently wondering if there will be access to the Bluetooth in the SDK so that I can connect a bluetooth GPS and produce some nice mapping application for OpenStreetMap. With unlimited data, a fairly large (for a mobile device) touch display, it may well be an idea device to do the mapping in the field.

Hopefully I’ll earn a bit more soon, so that I can afford the mobile contract.

iLife Browser in Leopard’s open dialogs

smsm1986 — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 23:59:00 +0000

In Leopard, if the developer allows certain types of file to be opened, then you get a free iLife browser in the file open dialog. This applies to OpenOffice.org aqua on Leopard too. As the X11 version of OpenOffice.org doesn’t have a native filepicker, this won’t be available there.

Find a screenshot below.

Those who have played with the latest OpenOffice.org aqua builds, you will find that you get an open dialog like the above one, without any way to select any files. This is a known bug. You simply cancel and open the dialog again to workaround the issue, until the fix is found and integrated.

Edinburgh Leopard Tech Talk

smsm1986 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:37:00 +0000

Today I went along to the Leopard Tech Talk in Edinburgh at the posh Caledonian Hilton Hotel.

It was a very interesting event, and might just convince me to start programming in Cocoa and Objective-C 2.0. Objective-C 2.0 is far more like Java when it comes to memory management. This is where I tend to struggle in C. The event was under Apple Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), so I can’t publicly discuss anything that isn’t publicly available.

In the Cambridge Bar afterwards, one of the things that I tried to fix with the help of and Apple Tech guy was the Finder restarting when trying to change file permissions. This is mentioned in Apple support article 307128. However the instructions there don’t quite work. After some tries in the pub I was still getting the crash. Once I got home I had some tried the article again, and the second sudo dscl command seemed to wipe out the group record. In the end I did manage to get the problem fix, and I no longer get the crash.

I also got to play with an iPhone, and the reception on the O2 network is crap. The iPhone was only just, maybe thinking about getting a signal. On the other hand my Sony Ericsson k750i on the Vodafone network could get a full signal. Since I upgraded to Leopard I haven’t had my phone working as a bluetooth modem. With the help of the tutorial that I used the last time, and the GPRS network data table, I managed to get it working again.

The tutorial is now out of date of Leopard. On Leopard it is now a lot easier to setup. Once you have paired your phone, head into network preferences, and click Bluetooth in the left column. Then use the “User name” from the afore mentioned data table for the “Account Name” in Network preferences. The “Password” field uses the same name in both the data table and Network preferences. Next you need to click “Advanced…”. Select the appropriate vendor and model for your phone, and enter the appropriate APN from the data table. Hit “OK”, then “Apply” and you should be ready to connect.

At least now, the next time I go out with my laptop, and don’t want to pay for expensive wifi, I can use a little bit of data on my pay as you go phone.

Clean re-install of Mac OS X

smsm1986 — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:06:00 +0000

Today I have spent some time re-installing Mac OS X on my MacBook. It has been over a year now since I have bought the MacBook, and have only once done a clean install on it so far.

It is now a lot faster as I don’t have any junk lying around running in the background. That’s one problem of installing various bits of software to see what it does and then not using it again. Maybe I should unsubscribe from the VersionTracker daily mail of new software releases. I’ve also gained around 20GB on my internal hard drive.

Of course prior to the clean re-install, I had create a complete bootable backup of my hard drive, thus allowing me to selectively recover anything that I need.

I should now be able to use the OpenOffice.org CWS tools again as I’ll setup my local cvs server on a different port than the default port.

Petition to get Apple to support OpenDocument in iWork

smsm1986 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 15:19:00 +0000

Filip Molcan has just pointed out a new petition to get Apple to support the ISO standard 26300, otherwise known as OpenDocument in iWork 08. iWork 08 already supports the Open Office XML (OOXML) document format, which isn’t yet an ISO standard. Wasn’t Apple meant to be a supporter of open standards?

Can launch PPC apps again

smsm1986 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:18:00 +0000

Since installing the Quicktime 7.2 and iTunes 7.3.1 updates on my MacBook, I’ve been unable to launch PPC applications through Rosetta. It appears that having Java 6 installed has caused the prebinding process to crash.

Following the process documented in a comment by Darlene on a blog, I’ve been able to launch PPC applications through Rosetta again. The process is basically removing Java 6 and then force running the prebinding process. I didn’t even need a restart which is nice.

EDIT: I’ve also had to download and install Java for Mac OS X 10.4 Release 5 to get Java working again.

Safari 3.0 Beta

smsm1986 — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:54:00 +0000

I’m taking the new Safari 3.0 Beta for a test drive. I have to say, I’m quite impressed with it in many ways. For the past few months I’ve been using Camino, as it has had a few features that Safari didn’t have.

Safari is now a lot faster than before. Buttons are being custom drawn like in other browsers. A new history feature of being able to open the last closed window is quite handy.

The RSS hasn’t changed much, so I’ll just keep to Google Reader. It would be nice if there was the Camino option that allows you to open links that are meant to open in a separate window to open in a new tab instead.

Carbon Apps produce preference files without developers doing anything

smsm1986 — Fri, 18 May 2007 23:04:00 +0000

This evening I was speaking to Yvan Barthélemy (ybart on IRC) over IRC, when he pointed out something interesting about the preferences for the Aqua port.

Even so the aqua port hasn’t specifically done anything to do so, Mac OS X has created the preferences file org.openoffice.script.plist. This contains information such as the last used folder in file open dialogs, and any other Carbon components that have preferences associated with them.

The preferences filename comes from CFBundleIdentifier in the Info.plist file that is in every Application bundle. We came to the conclusion that this isn’t a good name for the aqua version. We thought that having a CFBundleIdentifier of org.openoffice would be appropriate since OpenOffice.org doesn’t have any other applications of the Mac. (Well as far as I know at the moment).