Using the OS X Dictionary and Thesaurus

The purest of the pure OS X apps support a full suite of OS X services, including Apple's Dictionary and Thesaurus. This includes Nisus Writer Express and Safari,
but not, surprisingly, Camino [see update re: camino] and certainly not Firefox. A TUAW comment suggests changing the kb shortuct:

...The built in dictionary is a nice app that is often useful. With most of Apple's apps you can hover over any word and press Command ^ D to get the definiton instantly.

This, however, is an odd key combination and the info goes away as soon as you release the keys.

If you set it up with a toggle key, like F12, the mini-dictioanry will stay put until you hit the toggle key again.

You can also now move the mouse to any word(s) you wish for instant access to multiple definitions...

I use opt-F12, because F12 is the default for widgets and one day I may find one I really like. This nicely improves this feature. The dialog box has a drop down icon that lets you switch to Thesaurus mode, and when the app is up you can use preferences to change the thesaurus/dictionary priority.

Update 5/8/07: Why it doesn't work in Camino

I asked Camino's developers about this. It's not enough for an application to be Cocoa, to benefit from the dictionary and integrated spell-checking the application also has to make use of OS X text rendering controls. That's not feasible for Gecko. They are looking at enabling dictionary access through other means, but there's no version for that yet.

gSyncit and SyncMyCal: not compatible with Lookout for Outlook

I'd tried SyncMyCal at home and work for gCal synchronization with Outlook, but it crashed Outlook.

I then tried gSyncIt. This time it installed, but Lookout reported that "another Outlook Plugin has installed an unofficial version of the Outlook libraries which breaks Lookout".

Sigh. Lookout may have been euthenized by Microsoft but I absolutely depend on it. I've never seen anything else half as good, including Microsoft's "replacement" windows desktop search.

I'll uninstall gSyncIt and try reinstalling Lookout. The gSyncIt install was suspiciously amateurish anyway (an installer named setup.exe?!), and I wonder if it really did install a hacked version of the Outlook libraries. Not to mention the lack of documentation.

One plus to this, I'm now reasonably sure it was a Lookout/SyncMyCal clash that crashed Outlook at work.

I'll have to wait and see what else comes up. Google's help file more or less promises a sync solution from them. I probably need to give up on Lookout (it's not compatible with 2007 anyway), but I'm not in any hurry to do so. I'd be in more of a hurry if I had more confidence that there was a great Outlook/gCal sync solution available.

Enabling Built-in Spell Check: feature or bug?

OS 10.4 has a built-in spell checker for Cocoa app text fields: Mac 101: Enabling Built-in Spell Check - (TUAW).

There's no UI for enabling or disabling it other than to bring up a context menu when a cocoa app is in focus. That's so weird I'm not sure if it's a feature or a bug.

Virtual Appliances: what the?!

This one snuck up on me. Parallels, my OS X virtualization layer, runs Virtual Appliances - whatever the heck they are.

Near as I can tell a VA is a self-contained OS/application combination that works directly with the Parallels environment. So they don't need a host OS, instead the functions of a classic operating systm are divided between a layer within the VA and the Parallels environment.

This seems a profligate use of resources (each VA must repicate a lot of OS functionality), but memory is relatively plentiful and they probably use a slim version of linux.

So you can run a Linux app on OS X without having to create a Linux environment, and, in theory, each VA is a self-contained world.

I can't think of a use yet, but I'll keep watching ...

Update 5/7/07: I've been thinking more about this. It's an interesting variation on the theme of "routing around" the immovable Monopoly. I've thought of a few applications; so far they're all either security related (robust encrypted and portable environment) or are in some way covert (breaking DRM, etc). Interesting.

Chris puts Dawn Chorus on my RAZR

My loathing for my MOTOROLA RAZR V3M dropped on iota today thanks to this comment from Chris:

Blogger: Gordon's Tech - Post a Comment

To use an .mp3 as a ring tone just drop your .mp3 into the audio folder via bluetooth and it should show up in the available ringtone list...

I used the little-known iTunes export function to convert my Dawn Chorus AAC file to an 770K MP3 (over large, but it works), mounted the RAZR using the OS X Bluetooth browser and dropped the file into /audio/.

Now my phone rings as a bird chorus. It's definitely audible, but pretty tolerable and reasonably distinctive.

Thanks Chris!

Now I'm thinking I might take Eric's advice...

... I actually love the Razr for how easily modifiable it is, compared to most cell phones. Head on over to www.hacktherazr.com if you have some spare time. The guides there were meant for the Verizon Razr, but a lot of them will work for the Sprint V3m. If it doubt, ask in the forums. One of us will answer you!

We're cutting way back on expenditures, so if I end up holding off an iPhone purchase a hacked RAZR will ease my daily suffering ...

Update 5/4/07: Patrick, writing in comments, pointed to a post that gives a more detailed tutorial and shows how iTunes can create a 30 second segment. Very nice. When I followed the 'Water only Dries' advice I ended up with a 120KB file instead of the 770KB file. The tutorial even includes screen shots showing how to convert the original to MP3.

A hex editor for OS X: 0xED

TUAW points to the free 0xED Cocoa Hex editor. The last hex editor I remember using was a DOS tool that was part of either Norton Utilities or a product called something like PCTool. I think Norton Commander might have had one built-in too.

Nice to know there's one for OS X ...

A very readable discussion of AJAX frameworks

Modern web development ("web 2.0") is about creating applications like Gmail that combine the performance of a traditional application with the advantages of distributed code and server-side data storage. This is the kind of product we were trying to create in the 1990s, when we were beat up by the death throes of client-side Java. Those were dark days, but XMLHttpRequest [1] and a slightly more stable version of JavaScript [2] have enabled 21st century vendors to produce some very interest web apps. The next step was to create collections of functional code fragments (Frameworks) to support building new products; these are called AJAX Frameworks.

Dr. Dobb's has a very nice summary of modern AJAX frameworks that can be read by anyone who's every put an HTML page together. The authors ended up choosing a free Yahoo framework, but in part this was due to some requirements that excluded Google's (also free) AJAX framework from consideration. I liked the discussion of JavaScript compression, in part because I made a minor contribution to our engineer's adoption of html compression back before that was routinely done ....

Dr. Dobb's | AJAX: Selecting the Framework that Fits | May 1, 2007

...The smaller the footprint of the framework used, the less likely performance degradation occurs. The total compressed JavaScript file sizes required by YUI (22K) and Prototype (32K) are significantly smaller than the single custom Dojo JavaScript file, which is about 200K. All three libraries performed well with a high-speed connection; however, the YUI and Prototype/Scriptaculous prototypes performed faster with 56K dial-up connections...

It's a quick read, and it's a remarkable one-stop view of commercial web development.

[1] Wikipedia: "The XMLHttpRequest concept was originally developed by Microsoft as part of Outlook Web Access 2000." It pains me to confess that Microsoft actually added value to the Internet, but I think this was in the days before Ballmer killed IE development in order to keep the Microsoft Office franchise intact.

[2] Sigh. Microsoft helped there too with ECMAScript. When they have competition they're not all bad, shame that they always kill the competition.