What the hell!? Adobe, as a professional software company you should be able to do make your software installable on a case-sensitive file system. It’s really not a lot to ask and every other Mac software developer is able to do it. Honestly, it is assumed that software written for a Unix-based OS will run on a case-sensitive file system so much that it does not even occur to people that there is a possibility that it won’t work.

The grammar of the error message is also eye catching. I know we can’t be perfect but I set the bar higher for companies like Adobe who charge a lot of money for their software. So Adobe, in case you didn’t notice your comma is hanging out between two spaces and there should be an “a” between have and non.

I cut Adobe some slack last year when they dropped the ball on CS3. Leopard is the first release of OS X to support a case-sensitive file systems and the release date of CS3 was close to the release date of Leopard. However, a year later with the release of CS4 you opted to add in an error message instead of just fixing the problem? Even after tons of people complained on the Adobe blog about it? Unbelievable.

According to Samuel Sidler, Team Coordinator of the Camino Project, the money came from the generosity of various people. First of all, kudos to the various people. I really respect people who donate to open source projects, but is advertising really what Camino needs?

Camino certainly deserves more attention. Camino is currently my favorite web browser on OS X and I would like to see it be more widely adopted. Firefox 2 is slow and fugly and Safari does not have some of the features I demand like quick searches. I’m expecting Firefox 3 to give Camino a good run at being my default browser on OS X. I would certainly love to go back to using extensions without having to open another browser.

I remember when Firefox was making a big push to build up their user base. They did a great job of getting their users to promote Firefox in a zillion different ways including homemade commercials, a crop circle, and a New York Times ad. The Firefox marketing team always got their users involved and never “just bought ad space” to my knowledge. Why isn’t Camino doing the same?

That also means I’ve been using TextMate as my primary editor for a year which has also been great. I can’t say that I like its functionality that any more than ViM’s but it sure does look better.

I’ve been using OS X’s default fixed width font Monaco up till now which is gorgeous but its been a year now and I’m ready to see what else is out there.

For reference this is a look at what TextMate looks like using Monaco. I’m using the Twilight theme.

The font I ultimately decided on is Inconsolata. It looks great at 14pt.

Note! I did a poor job with the screenshots and its hard to notice a difference but it’s there! Try switching your own terminal to Inconsolata 14pt to see the difference more clearly.

The way Monaco letters are very close together feels a little sloppy in places and while thats certainly part of its appeal, I’m ready to try something a little more defined. Inconsolata feels great so far. I’ve also switched Terminal.app to use Inconsolata and it looks great there as well.

I also tried a couple other fonts. Two of them were decent and worth considering. The first is Bitstream Vera Sans Mono which is my second choice after Inconsolata.

LuxiMono also caught my eye but it feels a little too old school for my Mac.

For a list of other fixed width fonts that have been said to work well with TextMate check out the Alternative Fonts page on the TextMate wiki.

Screenshot

Here are my straightforward, no nonsense instructions for setting up password-less ssh remote login.

Note: In these instructions I refer to a local computer and a remote computer. The local computer is your personal computer or the computer your are running ssh from and the remote computer is the computer you are connecting to. If you are connecting to a server that is the remote computer.

Begin by running ssh-keygen -t dsa on your local computer. The output will look something like this. When it asks for a passphrase enter something but remember what it is as you will have to enter it again. Later we will find out how to save the passphrase using keychain so we do not have to enter it every time.

$ ssh-keygen -t dsa
Generating public/private dsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/rob/.ssh/id_dsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /Users/rob/.ssh/id_dsa.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/rob/.ssh/id_dsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
e1:9c:c3:55:9a:ab:5f:7d:db:0c:bf:02:67:cd:ac:ce rob@athena.local

This will create two files, ~/.ssh/id_dsa and ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub. Next we need to append id_dsa.pub to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 on the remote computer

cat .ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh remote_computer_ip "cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys2"

Insert the IP address of the remote computer and run the command (it is all one line). Once that is done the ssh keys are now setup. Test it by connecting to the remote computer.

% ssh username@remote-computer
Enter passphrase for key '/home/rob/.ssh/id_dsa':

After entering the correct passphrase the remote computer will finish the login process.

At this point we are no better off then we were before. Entering a phasephrase is often more work than a password. To save us the work of entering our passphrase each time we can use Keychain programs. There are keychain programs for OS X and Linux.

Keychain on Mac OS X: OS X 10.5 will store ssh passphrases in the OS X Keychain the first time you attempt to login.

Keychain on Linux: On linux we need to install a program similarly named ‘keychain’. Seek out and install keychain from your distribution’s repositories. After it is installed we need to add the following lines to ~/.bash_profile.

keychain id_dsa
source ~/.keychain/$HOSTNAME-sh

Now test it by reopening terminal and keychain should run. Once your passphrase is stored in keychain you will be able to login to the remote computer without being prompted for a passphrase.

Note about RSA: You may have seen RSA keys used instead of DSA keys. RSA encryption is used by version 1 of the ssh protocol whereas DSA is used by version 2. OpenSSH is capable of using both DSA and RSA keys so you may use whichever you like.

You can read a full write up of the instructions to get Photoshop working here http://imaginationunbound.blogspot.com/2007/12/adobe-photoshop-cs3-on-mac-os-x-case.html

Update 01/10/2008: Updated the link to the Photoshop fix.
Update 04/25/2009: Hosting PhotoshopCS3CaseFixer.sh on this blog since the original blog is no longer maintained.

digg story

I use the script by first selecting the files I want to transfer and then invoke Quicksilver run “quickscp”. The script grabs the files I have selected in Finder and SCPes each one to the destination specified in the script. For this to work I first had to setup ssh keys on my desktop so scp can log in without prompting me for my password, this is essential for the transfer process to be seamless.

For non Quicksilver users I also created an Automator workflow which can be saved as a Finder plugin and then invoked by right clicking on the file -> More -> Automator -> ‘name of plugin’.

Before using either script you have to change the destination variable to the ip address or hostname of the computer you want the files to be transfered to.

And thus I cooked up this alternative Automator action. One is scripted in Ruby and the other is done in Applescript. They do the same thing I am just providing both is case anyone has a preference. Each script takes the following actions:

1. Check is VLC is running
2. If VLC is running close it and sleep for 1 second
3. Check the path of the file, if it starts with “/Volumes” then change the caching preference to 5000 ms, otherwise set it to the default 300 ms.
4. Sleep for another second.
5. Launch VLC and play the video.

According to MaxOSXHints, the pauses are necessary to allow VLC to write out to the vlcrc file before we make our changes. To use the workflow, open it Automator then select File -> Save as Plugin. Make sure Finder plugin is selected and give it a name like “Open in VLC and change cache”. Finally open finder, right click on a video and select More -> Automator -> Open in VLC and change cache.

I wrote the script twice, once using Ruby and once using Applescript.  Both do exactly the same thing so just pick one and use it. I am making both available in case someone wants to look at them. I tested the scripts in OS X 10.5 but they should work with 10.4 as well.