Mac OS X tweaks - notes for myself

[vakkotaur]

Turn off the annoying bouncy crap:
Go to System Preferences and under "Personal" choose "Dock" and de-select: [_] Animate opening applications. Now instead of the annoying bouncing, the glowing dot beneath an icon will wink slowly - indicating a startup without being obnoxious about it.

How to get a black background:
Make a 128x128 solid black .png image.
Put it in
/Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors/
And then the "Solid Color" choices will have it, just like it should have all along.

iMouseFix almost, but not quite, fixes the rotten pointer acceleration. The default acceleration is great for the (RSI inducing - not an exaggeration: I already can feel the pre-pain signal that says "If you keep that up, you WILL be wearing a brace.") trackpad. Unfortunately it's lousy for a proper two-button trackball. The result is that the pointer moves way, way too slow when moving slow. Setting the pointer speed is not the fix, the acceleration curve is harfy.

Installed the Logitech configuration tool and found a four(!) button trackball. This solved the dopey default acceleration curve and lets me define the "extra" buttons as button 3. IT's not quite natural, but at least now I can open links in background tabs without playing silly menu games.

This entry will be appended.

To do:
1. Opera
- Upgrade to version 9.25 Done.
- Get an Opera skin that is the same as the default, except has a proper gray background for the Speed Dial page. The skin based on the unreleased Opera version 1 was a good start. Modified to use grays instead of white or "Window" and it's about what I want. I've named the modified version sanity.
- Get the ?style=mine button Got it.
- See if OS X can interpret right&left click together as middle click so opening a background tab is trackball-only. It can't. The Logitech configuration tool provides a work-around, with sufficeint hardware.
- Set Opera to view source in a text editor Done.

2. IRC client.
- Find one, get the colors sane, hopefully have python for scripting.

3. IM client
- Find one, get the colors sane

4. Smultron - text editor
(Swedish for "wild strawberry")
- Get the colors sane
- Get proper file tabs

5. Set up Time Machine with the external drive

6. Find a (free) image editor that actually works. I would have no issue using GIMP if it actually ran. Crashing it is as easy as opening a new image and trying to draw on it. That's it.

Comments

IM client

[invader-tak-1.livejournal.com]

http://www.adiumx.com/

And YEs the colors are VERY customizable

Re: IM client

[yakko.livejournal.com]

Really... Adium is the start and end of IM on MacOS X. With the proper message styles, one can make it look like anything they want!

[yakko.livejournal.com]

For image viewing, I use gqview (courtesy of Fink and X11) and Xee.

I've tried several times to use a suitable IRC client that was native to MacOS X, and have failed each time. X-Chat (X11) with perl scripting it is. X-Chat Aqua almost worked, but the perl scripting was busted, then it kept crashing. I forgot why I didn't switch last time, so maybe it's time to check in and see how they're doing again.

As far as editors go, I still use vi (MacOS X comes with VIM, even!), so can't really help when GUI editors are concerned.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I expect I'll get around to looking for an image viewer eventually. Right now I want an image editor so I have a shot at making an Opera skin that is what I desire.

Smultron seems like it will be a decent GUI editor, I just haven't gotten to it yet.

With all the fiddling around to get things the way I want, or find work-arounds for stuff that even Microsoft managed to get right (in Windows 3.0, even!) I am beginning to wonder: Is OS X ready for the desktop?

[invader-tak-1.livejournal.com]

Oh now you are just baiting us.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

image editor

Oops. Then GIMP.app is what you want. By that, I mean GIMP-Leopard-PPC or something that actually works. The usual GIMP.app doesn't work, at least not on my PPC Mac mini (which is also the box I'm testing Leopard on).

You will most likely need to install a working X11 for Leopard. This package requires the installed X11User, so you should be good there. The version included with Leopard is deficient in a few areas, and will give you all sorts of trouble.

Once I fixed X11 and downloaded a working GIMP, it all works great.

[jmaynard.livejournal.com]

I've only got one problem with your suggestion to fix X11: What happens when Apple releases a fix via Software Update?

[yakko.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen anything explicitly stating that installing the unofficial update plays nice with Software Update, but according to this, Apple's Xquartz/XDarwin maintainer says it shouldn't have problems. He's the one who's also releasing the Xquartz packages, I believe.