Hidden OS X Gems

What?

A handpicking of 4 "hidden" OS X gems from OakInnovations' list of 10

1. Easily compare versions of a file, and cherry pick among the differences: FileMerge
   
   
2. Summarize any text: Summarize
   
   
3. Save snippets of text and images by dragging them from your web browser to the Desktop: Drag n Drop Save
   
   
4. Have folders update their content automatically based on simple rules: Smart Folders

How?

1. FileMerge - Type in FileMerge in Searchlight, or use the Finder menu Finder > FileMerge > Compare Files
   
   
2. Summarize - Select text, go to the application menu (e.g. Safari) > Services > Summarice
   
   
3. Drag n Drop Save - Just mark the text or picture you want to save, and drag it to the Desktop. (Only works in Carbon applications - yet another reason to switch to WebKit)
   
   
4. Smart Folders - In Finder, File > New Smart Folder (or just hist cmd + opt + N). A smart folder can be really simple and powerful, or complex and very powerful.
   
   (On my Desktop I have a smart folder Recent Ruby with rules Modified within last 1 day, and name ends in rb. This gives me a quick overview over all the files in all my current Ruby projects that I've worked on today.)
   

Git on OS X 10.5

What?

Git on OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Why?

Git is YARC (yet another revision control system) with some outstanding differences. You can find out for yourself just what those are, but as a hint git is written by Linus Torvalds who hates CVS and SVN - "a bad idea and its bad fix walking hand in hand."

So what does git have going for it?

• Distributed repositories - you don't need to rely on a central host
• Branching made easy - in the same spirit, code branches is a breeze
• Speed - it's just that much faster
  

How?

So you want it - now how do you get it?

Thanks Wincent.com for the seamless installation script. Just copy the text, paste it into the terminal, and stick around to watch it all happen (and type your password at sudo time.

More configuration scripts are also available, as well as an introductory tutorial.

# build expat dependency
curl -O http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/expat/expat-2.0.1.tar.gz
tar xzvf expat-2.0.1.tar.gz
cd expat-2.0.1
./configure
make
make check
sudo make install
cd ..

# build GPG for signature verification
curl -O ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gnupg/gnupg-1.4.7.tar.bz2
openssl sha1 gnupg-1.4.7.tar.bz2
tar xjvf gnupg-1.4.7.tar.bz2
cd gnupg-1.4.7
./configure
make
make check
sudo make install
cd ..

# copy GPG files from Tiger install
mkdir -m 700 ~/.gnupg
cp ${PATH_TO_TIGER_HOME_FOLDER}/.gnupg/*gpg* ~/.gnupg/

# git
curl -O http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2 \
  -O http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2.sign
gpg --verify git-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2.sign git-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2
tar xjvf git-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2
cd git-1.5.2.4
make prefix=/usr/local all
make prefix=/usr/local test
echo $?
sudo make prefix=/usr/local install
cd ..

# manpages
curl -O  http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-manpages-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2 \
  -O http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-manpages-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2.sign
gpg --verify git-manpages-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2.sign git-manpages-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2
sudo tar xjv -C /usr/local/share/man -f git-manpages-1.5.2.4.tar.bz2

Skim - Potential OS X PDF Editor (Open Source)

Looking around for a PDF viewer that lets me annotate the document and doesn't suck, I ran into Skim, an open source PDF viewer and annotator for OS X. It has some obvious shortcomings (such as not being able to edit text), but it's ahead of all other contestants.

I wish it could but it can't...

• ... edit the document text
• ... export annotations such that other PDF viewers can see them

However, it...

• Underlines
• Highlights
• Strikes-through
  

And, like Preview...

• ... makes red ovals
  
  
  
  
  
• ... creates blaring yellow comment boxes
  
  
  
  

And, somewhat unnecessarily...

• ... Green Boxes!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• ... Icon notes! (Text appears if you double click)
  
  
  
  
  
  

The verdict

Better armored than Preview, but also more cluttered. Clearly the best alternative so far - however, no cigar. It seems to me like someone could make a name for himself cracking this nut. Takers...?

Full screenshot

Review - Open Source PDF Editors

What?

There are plenty of good PDF viewers out there. Combined with the format's platform independence, it makes PDF a great format for presentation.

However, I've never gotten my hands on a good open source PDF editor.

So I took the time to look around a bit. Here's what I found:

• PDFEdit - free and open source. I couldn't get it to compile on OS X. Here's an article pointing out all its flaws, and still hailing it. That's how bad we need a good open source PDF editor.
• ReportLab Toolkit - a "mature PDF library." In fact, so mature that it took me 10 minutes of mature fighting with it before I maturely gave up trying to get its demo to work.
  
• PDFCreator - Windows only... However, my guess goes against some Microsoft groupie randomly cracking this nut.
• Skim - The only somewhat promising alternative.
  

Still no winner. If someone has one, let me know. In the meantime, check out my quick Skim review (it's worth the skim).

Mac OS X : Save PDF's of Any Document with a Click

What?

Save a PDF of any document or picture to pre-determined folders with a quick cmd+p and click (without navigating the directory structure)

How?

1. Go to /Library (Open Finder, hit Cmd+Shift+G, type /Library, hit Enter)
2. Find or create a folder named PDF Services
3. Open a new Finder window, and create the Folders you want to save PDF's to (hit Cmd+N, and hit Cmd+Shift+N to create each Folder)
   
4. Create an alias for each Folder (Select all folders, hit Cmd+L)
5. Drag all aliases to the /Library/PDF Services folder in the first window
   

Done. You will now have the selected folders appear in the save menu.

Extra Hint

You can alias other things than Folders. If you often read and highlight created PDF's in, say, Acrobat Reader, then try to alias the Acrobat Reader application and put it in /Library/PDF Services as well.

Thank you

Macworld for the great article, with this and other tips.

Riding Rails: Ruby on Rails will ship with OS X 10.5 Leopard

Riding Rails: Ruby on Rails will ship with OS X 10.5 Leopard :

"It s finally official: Ruby on Rails will ship with the next version of OS X"

This is great news - while RoR allows for incredibly fast development (I just put up a user blog webapp in 35 minutes!) the setup process is a bit of a hassle for the uninitiated (if you're up for the challenge, hit up hivelogic's tutorial).