partofus.org Mac-Tests > System

Today I had to combine twi PDF files into one. A quick search on MacUpdate revealed the following tools:

• joinpdf (command line tool, different GUIs included in the package) and Join PDFs (Apple Script GUI):
  because of the command line interface it could also be used in scripts, can merge and split files, but also extract pages from PDFs, Java
• PDFLab:
  I couldn’t get it to run properly on OS X Leopard, the application crashed immediately after adding a PDF file, last update January 2007
• PDFsam (PDF Split and Merge)
  Java, GUI not in OS X stile, but functional, output format can be choosen from PDF version 1.5 (Acrobat 5) up to 1.7 (Acrobat
• Combine PDFs
  uses only OS X provided CoreGraphics libraries, no Java involved, typical Mac GUI, can only merge but not split PDFs

I recomend to use Combine PDFs if you only want to quickly merge files as it’s the easiest one of the above to use (drag & drop), if you also want to split documents you should use PDFsam.

Hotbox of Brian Kendall is a small background application to show any area you marked in fullscreen mode. You are not bound to static content, but can also use it to zoom into parts of running videos. The utility is controlled via a central hotkey (default: ⌥⌘1) and uses OS-X’s built-in zoom functionality.

Configuration of the tool is done via a newly installed preference pane in OS X’s system preferences:

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Sending mobile macs based on Intel chips into sleep mode sometimes takes ages depending on RAM size as the whole RAM has to be written back to disk to prevent data loss even if the battery goes down completely. With some settings you can put things right, if you don’t want to wait this time and can afford to set the additional data security aside. On the terminal the following commands can be used to configure the sleep mode (for further information refer to Stewing Over Save Sleep and Save Sleep Revisited):

• To get the current state (default is 3):

  pmset -g | grep hibernatemode

• To change the setting:

  sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

  The following values are possible:

  • 0: battery buffered RAM-only mode
  • 3: battery-buffer RAM and save RAM to disk (default setting)

  If you want to use the RAM-only setting you should issue the following command afterwards:

  sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

  This frees up additional space (= size of installed RAM) on your hard disk which was used by the sleep image. If you set back the sleep mode to the combined mode the file will be recreated when your computer goes to sleep the next time.

  The second link mentioned above describes a configuration, which sets the sleep mode depending on battery load: if the battery is low, writing the RAM to disk is automatically reactivated when the computer goes to sleep.

But that’s all plain command line hacking. There’s also a nifty solution to be integrated in the Mac’s System Settings: SmartSleep of Patrick Stein combines the terminal hacks with a nice user interface.

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Everybody using the Macs command line interface frequently can customize it with some very simple steps.

Customize Prompt

To customize the default bash prompt you have to edit the environment variable “PS1″. The standard prompt of Mac OS X looks like the following:

hermes:~ eddie$

You can use multiple further options on this prompt e.g. to show the time, command number, coloring parts of the prompt. If you want to create a prompt like

15:43:38 eddie@hermes: ~ (1) $

you have to insert the following line into ~/.bash_profile:

export PS1="\[\e[0;36m\]\t \[\e[0;32m\]\u@\h:
 \[\e[0m\]\w (\#) $ "

(Insert the above command in one line!)

You can get further infromation from the bash man page. A detailed tutorial to customize the prompt is also available. You can find an overview about the different color codes at the Bash Prompt How-To. Also you should read the complete How-To to tame bash.

colored output for “ls”

To color specific files (symbolic links, directories) you can call “ls” with the option “-G”:

hermes:~ eddie$ ls -G

You can define this command as an alias inserting the following into ~/.bash_profile to activate the colored output by default:

alias ls="ls -G"

Alternatively you can set the environment variable “CLICOLOR”:

export CLICOLOR="yes"

In the discussion about governmental surveilance, telecommunications data retention, and fighting terrorism in Germany everybody, not only citizens of Germany, should be aware of that also your email communication is affected. Not only the connection data (who correspondet with whom when) is concerned, but also, based on the so called TKÜV all providers with more than 1000 customers/accounts have to implement a special interface for government agencies to divert the contents of email communication and save it there. Even if you, like German Minister of the Interior Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, can say that you are “decent” (german: anständig), for sure nobody is pleasured knowing that potentially every single email could be saved and analyzed by strangers without his knowledge.
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At the moment there are very few viruses, trojaners or other malware out there which chose Mac OS X as their host operating system. But it’s still not a bad idea to install a virus scanner on OS X. A popular scanner on Linux/UNIX, and therefore OS X, is Clamav, a open source scanner. ClamXav provides a simple GUI to control the scanner. Included in the installation image is not only the GUI but also the complete clamav scanner engine so that no further software installation is necessary.
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Seems to be system tools day. While surfing the web I found a cool app i wished to have found earlier. AppFresh scans your installed programs for updates and offers to download an install them right out of AppFresh.

Caution: As AppFresh is only available as preview version it runs not complete without problems, e.g. it crashed during the update of EclipseRating:

A really nifty small system app which no Mac user concenrned about data integrity should miss is SMARTReporter. Julian Mayer’s app monitors the state of the lokal hard disks attached to your Mac and informs by several techniques about errors: Email, locale error dialogue or starting a user-defined program.
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(via dayforapp)

Mac OS X provides several methods to install applications. Simple apps get installed by copying the application file from the disk image to the desired folder. Others are distributed as PKG files whick are more powerful than just simply copy the app file to the applications folder, e.g. the can automatically install files into the system or user’s library. The complete installation process of those PKG files are logged by OS X in so called “receipts”. However OS X lacks the ability to use these receipts for uninstallation.To fill this gap Nicolas Zinovieff developed a small program called DesInstaller. And he did a good job. Experiments with packages of Subversion, MacGPG and NeoOffice worked without any problems.Rating:

For some reasons not further explained here I dumped my mobile phone, a new one preferably with iSync integration was to be bought. I took the Motorola L7 (german edition): synchronizing with iSync worked seemless, also file transfers worked right out of the box via Bluetooth.But, as most times with new gadgets, there is one backdraw I encountered: Apple offers the ability of sending SMS messages right out of the Address Book only for few mobile phones (mainly Sony-Ericsson’s).But David Reitter programmed a plugin to enable at least the Motorola L6 to work. Good news! Even Better news: the plugin also works with Motorola’s L7. As synchronization of Motorola’s L6/L7 is already integrated if you’re runnning a system up to date it’s sufficient to copy the folder “Address Book Plugin” from the downloaded disk image to the user’s Library (exit Address Book prior to this operation). After restarting Address Book you get a new entry “Send SMS via Bluetooth” in the context menu of the mobile phone numbers of your contacs.I say: Thank you, David! You saved me from breaking my fingers typing messages on my mobile phone.Rating: