Osx on /usr

What's New in Emacs 24.4

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Mickey Petersen has written up an excellent round-up of the latest features of the Emacs 24.4 release.

Read the whole article at http://www.masteringemacs.org/articles/2013/12/29/whats-new-in-emacs-24-4/.

He had also written a similar article for Emacs 24.3 (current stable version), which can be found here.

New Settings that I am using

I have already setup the load-prefer-newer, cycle-spacing, and ns-use-srgb-colorspace options.

The new electric-pair-mode options also look interesting, and I have set these up (I was using skeleton-pair for the auto-pairing function till now).

Enabling Postfix on OSX as a Relay: Revisited

Sun, 22 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Postfix on OSX: Revisited

A few years back, I had written a post on enabling the Postfix MTA as a relay server on OSX, which was quite well received. The article was originally written for OS X Lion, though it remained valid for OSX Mountain Lion, and more recently on OSX Mavericks as well.

However, things have changed on the OS since the last two versions, which warrants a revisit of the instructions, and a refresh of some of the steps. While the old set of instructions still work, there are changes needed that will keep the configuration future-proof.

OS X Mountain Lion: Need to reinstall Xcode command line tools

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So I upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion yesterday. The install was pretty smooth (though had a tough time with the redeem code for the upgrade, worked on the third code that Apple sent across).

Most of the software is working fine. However, I found that my existing Xcode installation needed an upgrade (via a Xcode install from the App Store).

The problem is that any new Xcode install seems to nuke the command line development tools (think make, autoconf, etc.). The solution is pretty simple though. Once Xcode has been installed, run Xcode and then open the preferences. There is a section on downloads, which lists installing the command line tools as an option.

Enabling postfix for outbound relay via Gmail on OS X Lion (and newer OSX versions)

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Update on Oct 25, 2014: Updated For OS X Yosemite.

Update on Dec 21, 2013: I have posted an update to the launchd setup for postfix. You should still read through this post, as most of the setup remains common to both posts.

The background

Mac OSX comes with the postfix MTA, which is a fully featured SMTP server. Under normal circumstances, there is usually no need to enable or configure this software, as most email access is usually done via GUI clients such as the Mail.app - which uses the POP/IMAP and SMTP settings to connect with the email service provider.

The Missing iSync in OS X Lion (and what to do about it)

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The short answer to someone looking for a solution: just copy over iSync from your Snow Leopard installation back to the /Applications folder in Lion, and also copy the phone plugin you need back into /Library/PhonePlugins folder. Everything will be as it was. Enjoy.

The longer story requires more explanation …

The Problem

I have been looking forward to upgrading to the latest version of OSX (Lion) ever since the announcements were made in the WWDC earlier this year.

How I Learned to stop using Firefox and love the Chrome

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

One word: SPEED.

Seriously. I have been a long proponent and user of Firefox, having been lured into it by its relative elegance and the extension framework many moons back. Also, the web development support has always been far better than its competition, with Firebug and Web Developer to name just two great reasons for it being the developer’s browser of choice.

The sheer number of Firefox add-ons and extensions (about 13,000 in the last count) is staggering - and list absolute essentials such as Adblock Plus, XMarks and DownThemAll! This combined with the themes (I suggest GrApple Yummy on the Mac) has been making the web browsing experience a far better one for me than Safari.

Converting from TaskPaper to Emacs Org-Mode

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Why TaskPaper and Org-Mode?

TaskPaper is a simple and elegant task management software for the OSX platform. It combines the simplicity of a text micro-format to mark the tasks, and the elegance of a Mac UI. It also provides a quick launch time and a nice system-wide quick entry window that is accessible with a single shortcut key.

I have been a heavy user of Emacs’ Org-Mode for some years now, and love the power and flexibility it offers for tracking not just outlines and tasks, but any text based item, including notes and calendar entries. In fact Org-Mode has become one of the primary software that I use regularly, every day.

Firefox 3.6 finally allows true Fullscreen mode on Mac OSX

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Updated to Firefox 3.6 today. As usual, a very solid update, and was pleasantly surprised by the full-screen mode (finally!) that works exactly as you would want it. This was one of the few areas where Firefox on OSX was lagging behind as compared to other platforms.

There were a few plugins that claimed to enable this in prior versions, but never worked very well.

The option is available under the “View”menu and has a standard Apple-Shift-F shortcut as well.

gnuplot with AquaTerm on OSX Snow Leopard

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The gnuplot graphing utility has always had excellent support for multiple terminal types. While the X11 terminal is a satisfactory GUI view for the graphs, I prefer to use the AquaTerm terminal on OSX as it is more ‘Mac-like’ and feels more natural.

Also, I do prefer to compile gnuplot by myself on OSX rather than downloading the pre-packaged binaries - as this gives me more control over the compilation (including getting around the stupid Apple readline bug - where Apple has essentially shipped a broken readline by using libedit to emulate the non-existent libreadline).

Snow Leopard - First Impressions

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I finally bit the bullet and installed Snow Leopard over last weekend. I did a clean install (i.e., reformat and install afresh) - considering the significant under-the-hood changes that this OS revision has.

The basic steps I followed are:

Cleaned up the existing Leopard install to remove applications, preference panes and documents I did not need
Reviewed the preferences under ~/Library/Preferences as well as the application support items under ~/Library/Application Support and removed the items which were out of date or detritus from old installs
Took an image backup using SuperDuper! of the Leopard install
Took a backup of the disk using Time Machine to allow easier data restore during the installation
De-authorized my iTunes to prevent increment of the install counter after reinstall of the OS
Popped in the Snow Leopard DVD and started the install
During installation, I used the Disk Utility to reformat the Mac OS partition
I also did a custom install to prevent the printer drivers (over 2 GB) being installed. In addition, I selected the optional Rosetta and Quicktime 7 components (seriously Apple, these take less than 10 MB - why the optional tag?)
Waited for around 20 minutes to have the base image installed, and then used the migration assistant to restore data from my Time Machine backup

The install was relatively smooth, and restoring the data from my Time Machine backup also went without any issues. However, post-install, some of the glitches started appearing:

Importing contacts from OSX Addressbook to Emacs BBDB

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A major aspect of using Emacs is that it is more than a text editor - it is more of an application platform - some would call it an Operating System - that allows a host of applications to run within the same context and session - and vastly enrich the user experience. This is in fact a primary reason why many Emacs users spend their entire computer interaction via Emacs.

Replacing Mail.app with Gmail on OSX

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Off late the Mail.app email client on OSX has been acting up on me. It often stalls or displays the spinning beach ball of death till a forced quit is required. Also, it seems to have display rendering issues when a mail classified incorrectly as junk is moved back to the inbox.

I tend to use the Mail.app as a local email client for three main purposes:

Offline mode for reading my emails when there is no Internet connection available
Easy desktop search for the mails via Spotlight, and
Easy archival of important mail in my project workspaces (either in Devonthink or plain text export)

The other features (TODO and Notes) are nice, but not really useful for me as I use other tools for these items. The mail itself is served out via gmail accounts and IMAP synchronization.

Use the Capslock as a Control key on OSX for Emacs

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This is an absolute must, unless you like contorting your fingers and risk RSI. It is also an easy thing to do on OS X.

You need to bring up the System preferences → Keyboard & Mouse

and then click the “Modifier Keys” to remap the Capslock to Control.

This is available on OS X 10.4 and later versions.