Category: Applications Notes

System Overview: Application Packaging

A typical application in Mac OS X is not a single executable file but a package of files that includes one or more executable binaries.

I have posted a nice little applet that we have used around the office to open multiple Remote Desktop Connections. Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection was a godsend for Windows 2000 Server management, but it drove us crazy w…

[Mac OS X Hints]

2007-04-03

How odd – I would have thought that I would have posted the link.
Ahh – yes – this note came over from Movable Type back in 2003 and the link got lost.

RDC Launcher

As you know, when you double-click a document, a specific application that “owns” that file type will open. You can change the document/application relationship using Get Info, but Jaguar has a very convenient short cut. Select any document and bring up the contextual menu (control-click or right button click if you have a multi-button mouse) and you should see “Open With” that shows a list of applications that can open that type of document

From MacOSX Hints

I found this accidently a while back and use it all the time. Not sure if it is well known or not. While in the Finder with the cursor on “Desktop focus” (no window selected), you can quickly open a new window to either your home or desktop foler:

Press Command + Up Arrow to open your home directory

Press Command + Down Arrow to open desktop folder

[Editor’s note: This will not work if you’re navigating a Finder window, as command-up takes on the “up one level” definition at that point.]

Backup:

cp ~/Library/.StickiesDatabase ~/Documents/NewStuff/StickiesDatabase

Restore:

cp ~/Documents/NewStuff/StickiesDatabase ~/Library/.StickiesDatabase

Change the destination/source of ~/Documents/NewStuff/StickiesDatabase to whatever file and path that you desire.

Where is the mail kept if you are using Mail.app?

Look in ~/Library/Mail

If you use the GUI Finder you can only look down as far as a particular mailbox (a .mbox extension)

If you use the Terminal interface you can traverse the path down into the .mbox which is actually a directory and find the table of contents, mbox file, the mbox index file, and an Info.plist (property list file).

Mail attachments are kept in the mbox file, not as separate files.

A script that will open the current folder in BBedit browser

try
    tell app "Finder" to set f to (folder of the front window) as alias
on error -- no open folder windows
    set f to path to desktop folder as alias
end try

tell application "BBEdit 6.5"
    activate
    open f
end tell

localhost% bbedit directoryName

causes BBedit to open a file browser window on that directory…yeah, I like that.

For the indexor: How do I do the equivalent of an emacs “dired” on a Mac OS X folder if I am using BBedit as my primary editor

For the compatability folks: emacs dirname

Changing keyboard equivalents

The following example would set the Activity Viewer menu item of mail.app to be command+shift+A:

defaults write com.apple.Mail NSUserKeyEquivalents ‘{“Activity Viewer”=”@$A”;}’

The odd characters before the ‘A’ in the previous command, specify the modifiers:

* @ = Command * $ = Shift * ~ = Option * ^ = Control

To use other keys, such as Delete, you will have to use their Unicode codes like this:

@U0008 which would mean command+Delete.

This is really good, since it does not involve modifying the original application, and only applies to your environment, leaving that of others unchanged. I will try to make an app to handle this proceedure some time in the future.