Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mac and macosx

Really weird Snow Leopard font problem

ferdinandcc — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:51:19 -0800

I just upgraded to Snow Leopard, and since then, some of my fonts are MAJORLY screwed up in iWork '09 (Pages, Keynote and Numbers). Specifically, my entire extended family of Hoefler Text.

Here's a screenshot of what my Hoefler Text fonts look like inside Pages:
http://www.ferdinandcc.org/hoefler1.png

(The menu should read as follows: Engraved, Engraved 2, Roman, Roman Alt, Roman SC, Regular, Italic, Alt, Italic SC, Italic Swash SC, etc.)

And here's Hoefler Text in action (Hoefler Text Regular appears fine, but Italic looks screwed up):
http://www.ferdinandcc.org/hoefler2.png

The fonts worked just fine under Leopard, and also work fine in my other apps I've tested them in (TextEdit, Pagehand, Scrivener), and they also show up just fine in Font Book and Fontcase.

Here's what I've tried so far to repair the issue:

1. I reinstalled the fonts. Didn't work.
2. I used AppZapper to get rid of all traces of iWork, then reinstalled iWork off the disc. Didn't work.
3. I repaired disk permissions. Didn't work.
4. I entirely deleted ALL Hoefler Text font files out of both my user/library and my /library. This is where things got really weird. When I deleted Hoefler Text, it quit appearing in Font Book, TextEdit, etc. but in Pages, et. al it was still there!
5. I purchased FontDoctor and scanned my font folders. No problems there. However, when I copied all my Hoefler Text fonts to a folder on my desktop and then scanned that folder alone, it said the fonts were incompatible with this system (but if that's the case, then why do they work in every other application on my Mac, including Font Book?)

Note: the file type is PostScript Type 1 outline font.

These fonts are very important to me, as they're part of my organization's corporate branding guidelines and are used in all our documents and publications!

How do I select what I toggle to in OS X's pop-up windows?

helios410 — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:39:36 -0800

Mac OS X Filter: In Finder, when a pop-up menu shows up, say to empty the trash or cancel, I toggle through the buttons/options by pressing tab, but how do I actually select what I toggled to with a keyboard shortcut? '

I'm a Python, and I'm a Mac.

reductiondesign — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:41:20 -0800

Help me learn Python! On a Mac! I'd like to start getting to really know a programming language, and I've determined Python to be the best choice (it seems to be useful and able to make things and fairly intuitive—if I'm wrong, tell me!). I've got vague backgrounds in Java, a tiny bit of C, and web design.

I'd prefer to avoid the "Learn something else before Python!" speech unless you have a really good reason.

Also, I'm on a Mac. How do I write/compile/etc. in Python? Terminal? Xcode? Something else that's really cool and I'm unaware of?

Thanks so much!

Space for change

ChrisR — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:32:22 -0800

How can I reconcile Emacs, Firefox, and Cocoa controls' keyboard navigation, and still use Spaces' keyboard shortcuts? I'm trying to reconcile all of the assorted keyboard navigation shortcuts in a set of OSX applications in such a way as to permit me to use keyboard navigation in them consistenly, as well as supporting Spaces' keyboard shortcuts for navigating spaces. The three classes of apps I use, in order of frequency, are Emacs, Gecko (Firefox 3.5, Thunderbird 3.0 alphas), and cocoa controls. Here, right now, are the key mappings in place:

Emacs (Carbon Emacs, in particular):
shift-(left/right): move left/right a frame
shift-(up/down): move up/down a frame
ctrl-(left/right): move left/right a word
ctrl-(up/down): move up/down a paragraph
cmd-(left/right): move left/right a word
cmd-(up/down): move up/down a line, scrolling
opt-(left/right): Same as unmodified keys
opt-(up/down): Same as unmodified keys

Firefox/Thunderbird:
shift-(left/right): move left/right, extending selection
shift-(up/down): move up/down, excending selection
ctrl-(left/right): No effect
ctrl-(up/down): No effect
cmd-(left/right): move to the beginning/end of a line
cmd-(up/down): move to the beginning/end of a text widget's content
opt-(left/right): move left/right a word
opt-(up/down): No effect

TextEdit:
shift-(left/right): move left/right, extending selection
shift-(up/down): move up/down, excending selection
ctrl-(left/right): move to the beginning/end of a line
ctrl-(up/down): move to the beginning/end of a text widget's content
cmd-(left/right): move to the beginning/end of a line
cmd-(up/down): move to the beginning/end of a text widget's content
opt-(left/right): move left/right a word
opt-(up/down): move to the beginning/end of a line

Ideally, looking at the setup in emacs, I want to configure Spaces to use opt-(arrow-keys) to navigate, since that will have the least impact upon my regular workflow. To that end, I need to configure Firefox/Thunderbird/Cocoa controls to move left/right a word when ctrl-(left/right) is pressed; the paragraph support would be nice, but not necessary. Is this possible?

Can I play CivIV mods on the mac?

ChrisR — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:29:47 -0800

Do Civilization IV mods such as Fall From Heaven and Fall From Heaven 2 work in the Mac OSX version of Civ IV? If so, how do I install them?

Using Garmin GPS II Plus with Mac OS X

jcdill — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:07:18 -0800

It is possible to transfer waypoint data from an old Garmin GPS II Plus model to a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5? I was given this old GPS. I don't have the data cable. I want to be sure I can transfer data to my MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5 before I go in search of the data cable. The specs say the cable only works with a Windows PC with an open Comm Port. See: http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-Plus-MultiTrac8-Personal-Navigator/dp/B00000DM9D

But a lot of products *say* that but work just fine on a Mac - they just aren't "supported" on the Mac. If the Mac sees the Garmin as a drive device and can copy the .gpx file I'm good to go. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Also, the Garmin cable has a serial port connection - what connector/adapter will I need to connect it with a MacBook Pro?
Serial-to-USB?

Mac backup DVD software

jcdill — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:28:51 -0800

I need recommendations for Mac backup / archive software to make DVDs that fill each DVD to capacity with files from a group of folders. I'm using a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5. I've searched the archives, but I can't find any recent posts on this topic - most of the threads I read were 2-3 years old, or older.

I am a pro photographer, and I have 2 TBs of photos stored on external drives. Periodically I backup data from my laptop to the current external drive, and also make DVDs so I have 2 copies of all files, on 2 different media (DVD, hard drive) which I can store in 2 places (here, and offsite). I need a solution that will take a group of ~10-40 folders, and make DVDs filling up each DVD as it goes. I also need to know what files were on each DVD - a plain text index file that I can write to the first or last DVD in each burn set would suffice.

Bonus if the software is open source or free software. Compression is not important - RAW photo files don't compress very effectively.

I'm NOT interested in using online archive services such as .mac (MobileMe) or Amazon's S3. With 2 almost TBs of data, growing by many GBs every month, the monthly hosting fees for these services are not within my budget.

Back my Mac up online

c:\awesome — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 10:46:37 -0800

What's the best software for automated online backups for OSX? I have a Dreamhost account with unlimited storage and transfer, and I'd like to use that as a place to remotely backup the data on my Macbook Pro (mostly photos from iPhoto). MobileMe is a ripoff.

You'd think there'd be a nice piece of software that runs in the background and allows me to set a few directories to be synced, and any additions to those folders are automatically reflected online. True? Something that uses SSH or FTP, maybe?

I know about rsync but I'm stupid and I want a GUI.

What are my options?

How to automate FTP user creation with Pure-FTPd on Mac OS X?

lion — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:10:44 -0800

How to automate FTP user creation with Pure-FTPd on Mac OS X (running Apache) retrieving usernames and passwords from another http (linux) server? I have made for a client a website with user registration feature, hosted on a shared linux hosting.

The client of the website has an internal always turned-on Mac with XAMPP and Pure-FTPd running on OS X, connected to Internet with a static IP.

In the website, I can create a button/link which connects with phpWebFTP (a nice web FTP client) installed in htdocs on the Mac server, which connects to the FTP server (pure-FTPd) on the same machine (localhost, i.e. the Mac server); the link/button can send the username, and phpWebFTP will ask for the password. No problem on this side.

Said that, I need this: when a user registers on the website (maybe not in the very same moment, even at regular intervals is good enough), an FTP account should be created on the Mac server, with same username/password used for registration.
So I need some sort of chron job, script, reading a file from the linux server, etc... well, I don't know!

I have found the following useful page on Pure-FTPd documentation:

README.Virtual-Users

Unfortunately, I need pretty detailed and straightforward instructions on what to do on the Mac side, because:

- I am not a Mac user (but I am comfortable with terminal, command-line utils and this sort of things)

- the internal Mac server is located in a pretty distant place from me

- I have a limited amount of time to put my hands on the server, after which I have to schedule a new trip

So, for the linux shared hosting php part no details needed; for the Mac server part, something like a tutorial would be very appreciated.
Thanks, sincerely

Picture a Venn diagram with 3 circles: LaTeX, Emacs, Mac. I'd like to live in the intersection.

gleuschk — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:08:47 -0800

Mac users who write LaTeX documents in Emacs (with or without AucTeX), please tell me about your workflow. My wife and I both recently switched (back) to Macs from Windows machines. We're mathematicians, and we both live -- or used to live -- pretty much completely inside an Emacs buffer, writing LaTeX. We've had a terrible time approximating our Windows setups on the new Macs. What Emacs version do you people use? (I've tried Aquamacs and Carbon Emacs.) What PDF previewer? (Skim, Preview, something else?) Most importantly: how is everything tied together, in your .emacs or elsewhere?

Finally, please help me understand what the point of AucTeX is. Both the emacs versions I've tried come with it pre-installed. So far, all I can see is that it adds unnecesary keystrokes when I want to typeset something, and destroys all my useful muscle-memory. Do you use it? Does it make your life better/easier?

Why can't I disable root login on this Mac?

neuron — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:26:13 -0800

Mac OS 10.5: why can't I disable root login? Wife's Macbook: yesterday I did a restore from a manual backup using this method. This required me to enable and login as root (using this method), which I had never done before.

Now, I can't disable root. When I run Directory Utility, it offers me Enable Root User in the appropriate menu, but not Disable Root User, despite the fact that root login is enabled. (This is after unlocking and logging in as [wife's name] per the instructions.) I've tried it many times yesterday and today, and have restarted the machine several times. Root login is still enabled, which I know because I can still log in as root.

I'm not at all afraid to do this in Terminal if you tell me how.

Man Attempting to Move Leopard

indiewizard — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:41:38 -0800

Great MeFites, I come bearing but a humble request. I bought a MacBook Pro about six months before Leopard was released. When it finally came out, I installed it on a partition on an external drive, which I would boot from (because OS X is awesome like that, amirite?) so I could test out all my apps. Now I'm ready to commit to Leopard full-time - what's the best way to go about transplanting my Leopard partition? In my head, I would copy everything precious to the external drive, and then go into Disk Utility and select "Restore" (I'm not in front of my Mac right now, so I don't know the exact option, but it's a tab that comes up in the main pane when you select the root drive in the left-hand pane), where I would select Leopard as the source, and my internal drive as the destination. However, the internal drive is just slightly bigger than the Leopard partition - would this present a problem?

Also, what are my other options? Specifially, Carbon Copy Cloner comes to mind - is this what I need?

Also also, I would like to merge my Adium chat logs - any programs available? If this isn't possible, I'll settle for simply copying them to my Documents folder, and using Spotlight.

A thousand thank-yous in advance.

QuickLook plugin for sqlite?

avocade — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:57:11 -0800

Is there a QuickLook plugin (for Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" if you didn't follow) to browse sqlite databases? If not, wouldn't that be awesome for Rails and iPhone development!

Disassociative Networking Disorder

mkb — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:27:12 -0800

Is there a way for Leopard to bind a hosts file to a location in Network Preferences? My workplace is on some weird network transition period where I can only check my mail when connected to the parent company's VPN. If I'm not connected to the VPN, I can use the office DNS just fine and contact all the servers in the office just fine. If I AM connected to the VPN, I can't use any of the regular office DNS and instead have to look up the name in an Excel spreadsheet and add it to my hosts file. Depending on whether I am on the VPN, the servers have different IP addresses, so the hosts file will only work on the VPN!

I've already created separate locations for being on and off the VPN in order to manage proxy settings, so I was wondering if there's any way to get something like the hosts file to stick to a particular location as well. This way I don't have to comment everything out of my /etc/hosts file when I get off the VPN.

Good emulators for OS X Intel?

NucleophilicAttack — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:54:20 -0800

Please recommend good entertainment console emulators for Mac OS X Intel. I used to use zsnes, nesticle, ultraHLE, Bleem, etc. a few years ago under DOS and Wintel, but I'm no longer sure what the applications of choice are under OS X Intel.

Please suggest whatever is best from the free/open, and payware sides.

Thanks!

Unstick Me

pinto — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:21:24 -0800

I'm experiencing a strange bug on my macbook pro: with little cause (perhaps a slight mouse gesture, though I have no mouse gesture programs installed), the os will switch to the Stickies application (and sometimes iTunes, when I quit Stickies). I can't figure out what's going on. I am running Mac os x 10.4.11. It seems to be switching to the 'oldest' application to be launched--eg, stickies launches when I start up, so it's the first app to be launched in a particular session.

It's as if there is some secret apple-tab function being activated by my mouse, but I can't figure out the cause for switching.

I am running Virtue Desktops, though it happens even when I quit, and the problem predates that installation.

Help!

Take me to Mac network security school.

jeffxl — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:12:01 -0800

I noticed this morning in my system logs that I had some failed FTP and SSH login attempts from an IP in China. I thought I was going to have get all Cliff Stoll on this guy, but then looking back further I saw that this has been happening for months, from lots of different IP addresses. I'm many things, but I have never claimed to be a network guy. I know my way around the command line, for the most part, but after the basic network utilities, I'm done. Further, I've been pretty lax with network security, generally having a "wouldn't happen to me" sort of attitude about hackers. That being said, I admittedly have a very insecure setup between the outside world and my computer. My router is set with DMZ to my computer, so I can get to it easily. I have web sharing, remote desktop, ssh, ftp, and afp enabled -- and use all of them regularly. Up until about half an hour ago, I also had my software firewall disabled.

On the other hand, fortunately, my passwords are strong, and the root account isn't enabled.

After seeing the mountain of failed login attempts, I've become a little more paranoid, and would like to be more cautious. A few questions, though:

1. These people trying to break in, do you they just do pings of a range of IP addresses until one responds, and then have a program that just tries a whole lot of logins/passwords at that IP? I see lots of attempts for Administrator, root, and mysql, but there are also attempts for random ones like 'raphael'. What's the deal?

2. I have test users on my system for debug purposes, some of them with admin rights. Is there any way to disallow these users to log in with ftp and ssh? How paranoid should I be?

3. I'd still like to be able to access my computer from the outside world using the same services I have been before, but I'm thinking I should start using my firewall properly, and take off DMZ and enable port forwarding instead, right? Question is, how is this any better at preventing break in attempts? If I can get in here from the outside, they could too, right?

Any other tips, suggested readings, or words of wisdom? School me.

URL Find and Replace

nathan_teske — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:21:33 -0800

I'm working on a quick Automator workflow and need some help replacing the local hostname in a series of URLs. Here's the deal: the Automator workflow retrieves a list of return delimited URLs with random alphanumeric local hostnames (e.g., wrim881q.example.net, ghu2z.example.net, etc.). I need to pass these into a shell script and change them all to the same local hostname (e.g., foo.example.net) and then download all the URLs with curl.

Help?

Where's my 7.7 Gigs? Missing space on my Macbook.

MiG — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 22:53:48 -0800

I have a 100 GB drive in my Macbook. Formatted, it appears as as 92.7 GB according to the Leopard Disk Utility. I've used 37.7 GB, and both the Disk Utility and Finder state that I have 47.3 GB free. So where's the missing 7.7 GB? 92.7 - 37.7 = 55 GB, not 47.3 GB.

I've booted from the Leopard DVD and I've run the Disk Utility's repair on both the volume and drive. No problems were found.

Here's a screenshot of disk utility including the used and free space:

http://menino.com/temp/missing.jpg

Anyone know how I can get this 7.7 GB back?

Acting without doing SOUNDS good, but...

synecdoche — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 08:44:56 -0800

What's the deal with Quicksilver? Everywhere I go on the internet, Mac users rave about Quicksilver. I've downloaded it a couple times, and I sort of get that it COULD be really useful, but I am not sure how.

I'm an academic, and my computer is primarily used for writing, research (including, but not limited to, reading and taking notes on PDF documents, and using online databases for journal articles), e-mail, browsing the Internet, listening to music, and occasionally watching videos.

So what am I missing with Quicksilver? I see so many other people who get a lot of use out of it, and I am sure I can fit it in somewhere, too, but I just can't seem to figure it out. I download it and then promptly forget that it is there, and after a while, delete it. This cycle repeats every few months. I fully admit, though, that I don't take as much time as I should with it before I lose interest.

Help Me Morbidly Count Down the Remaining Days of My Life!

WCityMike — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:16:04 -0800

I would basically like to rip off, wholesale, some command-line script which will provide me a countdown -- only in days. No years, months, minutes, or seconds. Unfortunately, adapting an existing script is beyond my ken. This idea of Kevin Kelly's inspired me to perhaps try something similar to motivate me towards working more diligently towards long-term personal goals, but I'm not an iGoogle user. I'd like to instead set it up as the result of a shell script which I can then pipe through GeekTool onto my Mac OS X desktop.

The only problem is that there is a lot of Googlenoise out there clogging up the results, and I can't seem to find the kind of script I'm looking for. I did find a countdown script that would tell it to me in years, months, days, horus minutes, and seconds -- but I really would prefer a days-only readout, similar to that depicted on the page. And I see various Javascript to include on webpages -- but I'm looking for something to be done locally, and I can't use the Javascript and then pipe it through lynx or links, since when I bring up such a page using either, the Javascript result doesn't seem to show. (I doubt lynx or links has Javascript support, do they?)

Anyway, can anyone point me towards a shell script that will take the present date, subtract it from a future date, and tell me the number of days between then and now?

I should add that I'm an idiot savante when it comes to shell scripting and Perl ... more of a splicer than anything resembling a programmer. I can sometimes look at code and grok a little of what it's saying, but telling me to embed the Doohickie:Flippa library into the Perl output by piping it through the black hole matrix into my Bananaphone is going to make me look at you blankly.

Thanks!

.chm to .pdf conversion in Mac OS X?

Señor Pantalones — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:11:51 -0800

.chm to PDF conversion, Mac OS X. There seems to be no easy way to do it. Does anyone have an effective and trustworthy workflow they can recommend? (more inside) After recently switching to Papers for my eBook/journal librarian, I need to get rid of all these pesky .chm files. So far I've tried...

- Tubby (chm expander) to Acrobat Professional. Works, but you need to manually nest chapters and subchapters, and it throws some ugly markup artifacts into the document.

- Tubby to HTMLDoc (cli binary). Does a nice job converting to PDF, better than Acrobat, but spits it all out as one big unordered file, which needs far more reorganization.

- Chamonix -> Print. Only prints single pages as pdf, not entire document.

- chm2pdf (python). Looks promising but even after compiling for OS X it keeps failing...maybe I am doing something wrong.

Any tips would be appreciated, and if you haven't checked out Papers yet, you'll love it...

Where did it go?

The Castle — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:20:21 -0800

Mac OS X question for you, MeFi. My fiancee's 120 gig hd has 40 gigs missing. This Mac has a 120 gig hd with ~25 gigs left. If I highlight everything in the base Finder window, it is only 55 gigs worth of info. I think the missing 40 gigs are a backup file that is hiding on the HD somewhere, but I can't find it! I tried using the smart folder option in Finder to look for any file over 10 gigs, but no luck. If it is a backup file, it was made with Backup. Any ideas?

What's wrong with the colour picker?

Mikey-San — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:57:58 -0800

When I use the magnifying glass in the Mac OS X colour picker, I get a colour value darker than what I clicked on. Why? Info: Mac OS X 10.4.x, any application that uses the Mac OS X picker (for example, Photoshop with "Apple" set for the picker or Pixen)

OS X Mail - autonomous processing of email?

jaimev — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:04:52 -0800

Can Mac OS X Mail be configured to autonomously process email, and based on specific From: and Subject: lines, save the attachment(s) of that email into a specific folder? I'm a dinosaur and prefer to ssh into my Unix based ISP to read my mail. So never having used OS X Mail before, I have no idea if it can do this. I want to be able to send email to a seldom used POP account and have Mail running on my Mac at home automatically check that account and save an attachment based on From/Subject lines. Possible?