Keith's Personal Blog - OSX

Thunderbird Dock Counts Problem (OSX)

nospam@example.com (Keith Ward) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:55:03 +0000

OK, a fix has been released for this problem on OSX (Thunderbird showing double the number of unread mails in the Dock Icon).

If you wish you can view the technical information for this bug at: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557960.

This bug is fixed in 3.0.5, according to my systems anyways.

-Keith

OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard Download Assessment Safe Files

nospam@example.com (Keith Ward) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:09:41 +0000

OK, as everybody who has downloaded something on Snow Leopard knows, for most files you download when you try to open it after downloading, it will pop up a nice little dialog box saying that the file was recently downloaded from the internet and are u sure u want to open it.

Unfortunately this is not strictly neccessary - and is rather annoying for some file types (Especially NZB's).

The fix for this, is to create a plist file inside ~/Library/Preferences called com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist with either TextWrangler, or the Property list editor.

If you are not comfortable creating plist files by yourself, my DownloadAssessment.plist file can be located here: com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist, and you can just drop it into Library/Preferences under your Home Directory. (If you wish you can open this with something like TextWrangler, and verify that it looks exactly the same as below.).

The file should contain something similar to the following contents.

CODE:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>LSRiskCategorySafe</key> <dict> <key>LSRiskCategoryContentTypes</key> <array> <string>public.xml</string> </array> <key>LSRiskCategoryExtensions</key> <array> <string>amz</string> <string>nzb</string> </array> </dict> </dict> </plist>

NOTE: The amz extension shown above was allready marked as safe - at least on my system (you can remove this however), nzb is the one i have added.

All you need to do is add any file extensions that you don't want to be flagged as at risk, to the LSRiskCategoryExtensions section, and then add the UTI (Uniform Type Identifier) for that file extension to the ContentTypes section (FYI .nzb files are basically XML files hence the public.xml string). Note that if you are using a version of OSX < 10.5, then you can avoid listing every UTI, by simply using public.item as a string - unfortunately in 10.6 at least they changed the way UTI's are handled.

A list of UTI's can be found here: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Miscellaneous/Reference/UTIRef/Articles/System-DeclaredUniformTypeIdentifiers.html

HTH,

Keith

OSX Terminal Home & End Keys

nospam@example.com (Keith Ward) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:24:36 +0000

OK, so for anyone who uses OSX , and admins Linux machines, this can be a real headache.

For some reason the default settings for your Home and End keys that come with Terminal.App for OSX don't do what you expect - theyre Actually Swapped with Shift Home , and Shift End, but thats not all, as the escape sequence for Shift Home for example, is set to "\033[H". This seems to work fine on OSX, but unfortunately you try logging into a Linux Box with that, and on the command line it works, but try loading vi and using the Home key - and you get nothing. The same applies to the End key as well, OSX has it defined it as \033[F, however vim remotely does not like this either. (I Believe this applies to all termcap applications, allthough i can't be sure).

The Solution for both of these is to change the definitions of these keys, so theyre mapped as you expect, and get it to send the right escape sequence at the same time, I don't believe mapping OSX's [H and [F mappings in vim on the remote host, because well , when you admin 10 machines or more, it well doesn't make sense to put it mildly, so this is the only viable solution.

Before we can do this however we need to create a file, open up a Terminal window, and type the following: sudo nano /private/etc/inputrc, then enter your password (you need to be an admin user for this). Now paste in the following code:

CODE:

"\e[1~": beginning-of-line "\e[4~": end-of-line

followed by Pressing CTRL and X, then typing y, and hitting enter.
(Note: If you don't want to do this change system wide, change the command to nano ~/.inputrc, and add export INPUTRC="~/.inputrc" to your .profile)

Now we've done that we shall deal with Home/End, hit CMD I in terminal, and click Settings, followed by double clicking whichever entry is selected. In the window that appears click on the "Keyboard" tab, and find the entry for Home, click on it , and click edit. Change the action to "send string to shell:", now in the box below that, hit the following keys: "[1~" ( as in the escape key, and without the quotes) and click OK. Now do the same for End, except you type "[4~" (without the quotes).
Next find Shift Home, and edit that to change its action to: "scroll to start of buffer" then do the same for Shift End, editing that and changing its action to: "scroll to end of buffer".

Right, now Restart Terminal.

Try your home and end keys, they should work, both on command line and inside vim. Both locally and remotely. If they don't try hitting CTRL V .. it should reply with ^[[1~ .. and CTRL V should reply with ^[[4~. If it doesn't, you've gone wrong somewhere!.

Comments welcome.

Keith