mollivan webtech: blog

GIS on Macs

mollivan jon — Sun, 14 May 2006 03:04:00 +0000

Category: GIS; Category: Mac

Now, I'm no GIS expert. I say that upfront. I'm about as green as they come. But I see the usefulness of GIS and peer jealously over the shoulders of people using ArcGIS on Windows at work. Not too jealously, though, because the PCs in our lab keep seizing up running GIS because they're too cheap and nasty. I also haven't been impressed with the intuitiveness of the user interface of ArcGIS, despite its long list of functions (note that our work network is probably not running the latest version). All this means that I have wanted to get GIS going on my Mac for some time.

I started with ESRI’s ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education, a free program from the makers of ArcGIS. Running in Java, it allows me to open shape files and do a limited amount of manipulation to make maps. It is useful enough but is a bit clunky in its performance and user-interface. Plus, it can only export raster (pixellated) images (and even that doesn't seem to be working on OSX 10.4). If I'm building a figure for a publication, I'd really like to get a vector image out to edit further in my nemesis of unintuitiveness, Adobe Illustrator.

With all this in mind, I have started tinkering around with the monster of opensource GIS projects, GRASS on X11. So far so good, but it looks like it will take a serious committment on my part to learn enough to be proficient at it. I'm not certain yet whether I will use GRASSS frequently enough to keep all those details fresh in my head. I have a Mac mind afterall. I am supposed to be abe to push obvious buttons and see stuff just work.

I was pleased to discover earlier this week a program called QGIS (short for Quantum GIS), another opensource GIS project (qgis.org). It runs natively on OSX as well as most other operating systems, and appears to at least be the equal of ArcExplorer, from my limited playing. It can use data and layers from a wide range of formats and claims to play nicely with GRASS (I say "claims" only because I haven't had a chance to try this out).

I stumbled across QGIS after my frustration with being unable to get a vector image (or any image!) exported out of ArcExplorer. I was hopeful QGIS would allow me to do this, since QGIS includes SVG as a vector format for exporting maps (accessible in its print window). Alas, the vector lines in the resulting file were weird and chunky, like some vector version of a raster image. Maybe there is some way around this, although the online help is currently too limited to suggest anything. Still, this is not a criticism. The project has got a lot of primise. QGIS is at version 0.7.4 at the time of writing and looks like it is well worth keeping an eye on.

There's a useful review comparing QGIS with ArcExplorer Java Edition over at lordkingsquirrel.com/2006/04/12/desktop-mapping-software-qgis-v-arcexplorer-java-edition/.

A little AppleScript to automate splitting pdfs

mollivan jon — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 04:22:00 +0000

Category: LaTeX; Category: TeXShop; Category: FileMaker Pro; Category: AppleScript; Category: Mac

Summary: In which Jon surprises himself by writing a working AppleScript that takes LaTeX code from records of a FileMaker Pro database and transfers the code to TeXShop for typesetting. The outcome is a few long PDF files being automatically divided into many smaller, annotated PDF files divided at page numbers specified in the database.

I've never really figured out AppleScript, Apple's English-like scripting language. It looks so simple and easy, yet I haven't come across a simple and easy set of instructions and examples I can use to get into the language. One of these days I may have to have to break down and *buy* a book on the subject. The little example I describe here should illustrate how useful AppleScript can be, and why a little more learning on my part could save me a lot of time in the long run.

At the moment Laura and I are getting all the backissues of the journal Notornis ready for publishing online (launch due June 2006). The Ornithological Society of New Zealand has provided us with PDF files of all backissues of Notornis, one file per issue, with an underlying layer of error-ridden computer-read OCR text. One of our jobs is to get all the citation information for all the articles in all these issues (yawn). Luckily that job has been sped up somewhat by the existence of a 50-year index (although all of that computer-read text still needed proof-reading). Another job now is to split up all the issue PDF files into separate article PDF files. We are certainly not going to do all that by hand for >3,000 articles!

Here's what I've come up with, using AppleScript to combine our citation information in a FileMaker Pro database with the awesome PDF handling capabilities of the LaTeX typesetting language, specifically the package pdfpages as applied within the glorious TeXShop application. There will undoubtedly be all sorts of ways of doing this and I don't claim that my solution is the best. I tend to get something working then move on to the next thing.

The following LaTeX file, when typeset in TeXShop, creates a PDF file of the same name that contains only the selected pages of the original PDF.

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}

\usepackage[pdftex,colorlinks]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{%
pdftitle={Title of the Notornis article},
pdfauthor={Ornithological Society of New Zealand},
pdfsubject={Notornis Volume(issue) year, \copyright Ornithological Society of New Zealand},
pdfkeywords={Notornis, New Zealand, birds},
bookmarksnumbered,
pdfstartview={FitH},
urlcolor=cyan,
}%

\begin{document}

\includepdf[pages=2-4]{/Users/jon/NZES/Salisbury/OSNZpart/VOLUME_49-2002/Notornis_49_1.pdf}

\end{document}

There are a few things to note here. The pdfpages package contains the includepdf function that drives everything. The hyperref package is optional. I use it to add annotations to the pdf files (which can been seen with Document Properties in Acrobat Reader and Get Info in the OSX 10.4 version of Preview). Within the includepdf line, note that the pages to be extracted are specified and the path to the PDF file is specified. The ".pdf" extension on the end of the filename in this path is optional. It is important that there are no spaces in the path to the file. (I also found out that you need OSX 10.4 for this to handle PDF files greater than version 1.4.)

Once I had this working, the trick was to automate it for >3,000 articles, one for each record in our FileMaker Pro database of citation information. The first step was to make a field in FileMaker which will generate the above code for each record. Here is the calculation that does this, for a field I called "LaTeX".

"\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}¶
\usepackage{graphicx}¶
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}¶
¶
\usepackage[pdftex,colorlinks]{hyperref}¶
\hypersetup{%¶
pdftitle={" & title & "},¶
pdfauthor={" & authors & "},¶
pdfsubject={Notornis " & volume_issue_bracketed & ":" & first_page & "--" & last_page & " (" & publications::pub_year & ") \copyright Ornithological Society of New Zealand, Inc.},¶
pdfkeywords={" & If ( IsEmpty ( keywords ) ; "" ; Substitute ( keywords ; ";" ; "," ) ) & ", Ornithological Society of New Zealand, Notornis, Science Journal, New Zealand, birds},¶
bookmarksnumbered,¶
pdfstartview={FitH},¶
urlcolor=cyan,¶
}%¶
¶
\begin{document}¶

¶
\includepdf[pages=" & first_page & "-" & last_page & "]{/Users/jon/NZES/Salisbury/OSNZpart/" & pdf_issue_folder & "/" & pdf_issue_filename & "}¶
¶
\end{document}"

You will see that this is nothing more than the above LaTeX code with values included from the database fields. Easy.

The trick then was to automatically typeset this code for each record of the database. The following AppleScript, written in Apple's ScriptEditor, typesets the code from one record of the database.

tell application "FileMaker Pro"
set mylatex to cell "LaTeX" of current record as styled text
set filename to cell "pdf_filename_trimmed" of current record as styled text
end tell

tell application "TeXShop"
activate
make new document at beginning with properties {name:filename}
set the text of document filename to mylatex
close document filename saving in file ("Salisbury:Users:jon:NZES:Salisbury:OSNZpart:" & filename & ".tex") saving yes
open file ("Salisbury:Users:jon:NZES:Salisbury:OSNZpart:" & filename & ".tex")
typeset document (filename & ".tex")
close document (filename & ".tex") saving no
end tell

AppleScript is so cleverly close to English that this doesn't really need explaining. It works, and it's blink-of-an-eye quick, even on my old 600MHz G3 iBook.

That didn't make it easy to write though. My first head-banging session was when I tried to export the LaTeX field from FileMaker into a text file to then be opened by TeXShop. Try as I might, I couldn't get FileMaker to output a clean, simple text file with unix linebreaks that TeXShop could use. Giving up on that approach, I then realised that I could manually copy-and-paste clean code from FileMaker into TeXShop. The above AppleScript is written to do this. I then took a while to realise that "styled text" was essential for the line breaks in the LaTeX code to be retained in the copy-and-paste (really a set-and-set maneuver in AppleScript). Once I'd got over this major hurdle, it took me surprisingly, frustratingly long on Google to figure out how to save the TeXShop document I created so I could typeset it. The code is still a bit clutzy here, since I could only figure out how to save the file by closing it. The AppleScript then has to open it again to typeset it.

Running this script (e.g., via a button in FileMaker) takes the code of the current database record to TeXShop, typesets it, and closes the new TeXShop file. This produces a PDF file of the appropriate pages (with the specified annotations). Nice.

That was the hard part, which I've only just finished. Looping the database to do this for each record should be a simple little FileMaker script. I'll add that here once I've done it. But first, we have to finish the citation database.

FileMaker Relationship and Portal tips

mollivan jon — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 10:31:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 8 January 2005.

Summary: These are some notes on my first attempts to set up portals in FileMaker Pro 7. Don't treat this as gospel. I'm still playing with this stuff.

Body: Portals allow the many related records to be displayed in rows within a layout of the original table. The portal should contain fields from the related table. New records in the related table can be created in the portal if "Allow creation of records in this table via this relationship" is turned on in the relationship between the tables (in the Relationships graph of File:Define...:Database").

******************

To prevent a field from being altered in Browse mode (for example, if you want to only allow users to enter a value into the field using a script), in Layout mode, select Field:Field Behaviour... and turn off the option to enter in Browse mode. Keep the option to enter in Find mode.

In the NatureObserver (prototype name) project, I use this option to create new datasets for a datasource, inside a portal in a layout in the datasource table. This way, if the user deletes dataset 3 of 5, they are unable to renumber the remaining datasets manually. They are forced to live with a set of records with dataset numbers 1,2,4, and 5. This is essential for relationships not to be disrupted.

******************

Deleting a row from a portal (i.e., the related record in the related table is deleted) has a potentially dangerous twist. Keep the "Delete records in this table when a record is deleted in the other table" option turned off, unless you want to start a chain of related record deletions moving up the relationships.

When forming the relationships between tables in the database (and between databases), be very careful about setting the options to create and delete records in each side of the relationship from the location of the related record. You access these options when setting up a relationship, or by double-clicking on the page icon for a relationship between two tables on the Relationships graph.

I took some time to solve a mystery of why, when I deleted one dataset (of several from one datasource), I also mysteriously deleted the datasource record for that dataset and the full citation record for that datasource. This happened because FileMaker followed up a chain of selected "Delete records in this table when a record is deleted in the other table" options. It general, it is important to have this option always turned off. However, the reverse option, "Allow creation of records in this table via this relationship" can be very useful, and I am tending to turn it on by default. It is necessary for creating new records from within a portal.

******************

The following is copied from the file "ManyMany PortalScript", dated 4 January 2005

The following set of scripts moves from a portal row in Table 1 to the related record in a Join Table and then to the related record in Table 2. The next three scripts move backwards to the original portal row. Scripts applied from a description at http://dbforums.com/t349224.html.

This system of Table1-Join-Table2 is apparently the best way to set up a many-many relationship in FileMaker Pro (in effect, by fusing a many-one and one-many relationship). I'm still missing the step of how to extend this simple example (one-one-one) to the many-many situation.

These scripts are working in my trial database, PortalManyManyTest.fp7.

First
Set Field [ Table1::GlobalNumber; Get(PortalRowNumber) ]
Go to Related Record [ From table: "JoinTable"; Using layout: "JoinTable" (JoinTable) ]
Perform Script [ "Join" ]

Join
Go to Related Record [ From table: "Table2"; Using layout: "Table2" (Table2) ]
Perform Script [ "Second" ]

Second
Go to Field [ JoinTable::ID2 ]
[ Select/perform ]

And back again...

SecondReturn
Go to Related Record [ From table: "JoinTable"; Using layout: "JoinTable" (JoinTable) ]
Perform Script [ "JoinReturn" ]

JoinReturn
Go to Related Record [ From table: "Table1"; Using layout: "Table1" (Table1) ]
Perform Script [ "FirstReturn" ]

FirstReturn
Go to Portal Row [ Table1::GlobalNumber ]
[ Select; No dialog ]

******************
I have scripted the addition of new datasets in the portal in the datasource table layout, as follows.

"Add a new Dataset in same DataSource from DataSource portal"
Set Field [ DataSource::global number; 0 ]
Go to Portal Row
[ Select; Last ]
Go to Portal Row
[ Select; Previous ]
Copy [ DataSets::Dataset_number ]
[ Select ]
Paste [ DataSource::global number ]
[ Select ]
Go to Portal Row
[ Select; Last ]
Set Field [ DataSets::Dataset_number; DataSource::global number + 1 ]

Note that since I am allowing the creation of new records from within the portal, the last row is blank, for new record creation.

I didn't want the user to see the global number, so I removed the field from this layout. But then the script stopped working. It turns out that it must be on the layout of the script. So instead I changed its text to white (and no border) to disappear from view.

[In the end, this proved unsuitable, and I decided to use a unique per-record dataset ID, which is auto-entered when the user starts to enter data on the last (new) row of the portal.]

Serving a website on an old iMac

mollivan jon — Sat, 28 May 2005 09:51:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: Server, Category: Websites

Originally posted on my iBlog 8 January 2005.

Summary: I've just set up our old 300MHz slot-loading G3 iMac as a server running OSX 10.3.9 over our TelstraClear cable broadband connection as one of several computers on an AirPort wireless network. The tricky bit (less tricky when I'd figured it out) was serving several website domain names from our one static IP address. Here are my notes on how this was done. Perhaps it's of use to one of you excellent people in web land.

A clean start
I decided to start everything from scratch, since our iMac (named Rinchen Barsbold) has had a long and hard life before becoming a server. First, I erased the hard drive with DiskUtility. Panther (OSX 10.3) was reinstalled and updated to 10.3.9. BBEdit was installed as my preferred text editor. To save space on our 10GB hard drive, all printer drivers were deleted (from /Library/Printers/). Superfluous Apple applications were removed (iMovie, iPhoto, etc.). Monolingual (monolingual.sourceforge.net/) was run to remove all language files except English, Australian English, and US English. Well over a GB was saved, just like that.

Start web sharing
Making the iMac a server is dead simple in OSX. In the Sharing control panel of System Preferences, turn on Personal Web Sharing. That's it! This starts Apache, the most popular open-source web server software, which is automatically built in to OSX. While in the Sharing control panel, I also named the computer again and turned on Personal File Sharing (so I can access the iMac from inside our wireless network) and Remote Login (so I can access it from work).

I also clicked on Firewall tab in the Sharing panel and started the firewall. All ports will be shut to external traffic except those involved in the above sharing.

In System Preferences/Network, the TCP/IP computer is set to DHCP. This gets the IP address and other connection information from our AirPort Express wireless base station. My iMac got given the IP address 10.0.1.4. (We plug our broadband cable modem ethernet cable into this little gadget from Apple and our Macs can all surf the web at once. Pretty cool. We also have our stereo plugged into the Airport Express so we can play our iTunes music through our stereo wirelessly. More cool.) The IP address 10.0.1.4 just happened to be the IP address the Airport Express had dynamically given the iMac when I was setting this up. There's nothing magical about it. Just make sure the your server has the same IP address as you set in Airport Admin Utility to receive external web traffic (details on that are below). Before continuing, I switched over the Network from "Using DHCP" to "Manually", retaining the same network settings, so that if I ever had to restart the iMac or reset the Airport, this internal network IP address of 10.0.1.4 would be retained.

I also went into the Energy Saver control panel of System Preferences and changed the computer to never sleep and for the screen to dim immediately (the hard drive can still spin down when not in use). I didn't want our sever caught snoozing when someone wants to visit our website.

Set up Airport Admin Utility
Airport Admin Utility is an application in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder. I won't go through the settings for getting Airport set up in case there are security issues in making this information public. It was simple with the info from our broadband provider. The important point is that we get a single static IP address (a number of the form 123.45.67.89) which is the physical address of our network on the web.

The other trick to set up port mapping so requests from afar for normal internet ports get directed to our iMac server (and not one of our other Macs which might be on the wireless network at the time). Remember that the iMac has the IP address of 10.0.1.4 inside our wireless network. So we use the Port Mapping window to direct all web traffic through the standard internet ports to this IP address. (Note that I've masked out the numbers for safety.)

Now, typing http://123.45.67.89 (or whatever your IP address is) into Safari (or your favourite web browser) will bring up Apache's default webpage. This will happen from anywhere in the world. I was now serving a website, but I wasn't quite there yet.

Domain name registration
Of course, http://123.45.67.89 isn't much of a web address. I went to www.domains4less.co.nz and bought the domain names I wanted. I got mollivan.com, canterburynature.org, and canterburynature.org.nz. My plan was to serve two websites from the iMac, our own website (www.mollivan.com ) and a prototype for a community website on nature in the Canterbury region (which I wanted both addresses to point to).

Now here's where I got a little confused. As it's name suggests, www.domains4less.co.nz specialises in selling cheap domain names. While it allows you to direct your purchased domain name to another existing website, it doesn't allow you to set its domain name servers to point your new name to your own IP address (at least I couldn't find anywhere on its site that would allow me to do this properly). In my website dealings, I hadn't struck this before and it took me a while to figure out how to get around this. What I could do was use their URL direct settings to automatically direct anybody who typed in www.canterburynature.org.nz to www.canterburynature.org.

As a perhaps useful aside, note that some odd stuff happened before I figured out that URL redirects are not equivalent to a proper name server. For example, when I redirected www.mollivan.com to our IP address, and then typed www.mollivan.com into Safari, I would see the correct default OSX webpage. But when I tried to then navigate into a folder ("bob") that I created within the default OSX web Documents folder, by surfing to www.mollivan.com/bob/ I would get the following webpage warning:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /bob/ on this server.

It took me ages to realise that this wasn't due to faulty permissions on my folder, or the folders it was inside (this was the solution mentioned on websites I found when googling this warning). Instead, it seems to be because the iMac server didn't know what to do with http://www.mollivan.com/bob/ request. I figured out this by temporarily redirecting to the iMac another domain name I had access to from another domain name company. Unlike www.domains4less.co.nz, the website of this company (www.discountdomains.co.nz) allowed me to set my IP address in their name server. In this case, the index.html file inside Bob loaded fine without warning.

The solution I took was to go to www.everyDNS.net ("DNS for the rest of us"), which offers free use of its domain name servers (thanks!). There are several free DNS services out there. From my googling, everyDNS seemed like a good combination of ease-of-use and competence. I registered (free!) and set up both www.mollivan.com and www.canterburynature.org to point to the static IP address of our broadband cable modem (e.g., 123.45.67.89, not my real address).

My everyDNS settings for mollivan.com (real IP address replaced with 123.45.67.89) were:

*.mollivan.com A 123.45.67.89
mollivan.com A 123.45.67.89

The asterisk (*.mollivan.com) means that any other web address I set up inside mollivan.com (e.g., jon.mollivan.com) will also be directed automatically to our IP address.

I did the same for canterburynature.org.

The everyDNS.net website gives the names of their name servers (e.g., ns1.everydns.net). So I then went back to the www.domains4less.co.nz website and entered two of these name servers in as the master and slave external name servers for my domain names. Domains4less required IP addresses for the name servers as well as their names. The everyDNS.net website only gave the names. So I looked up the IP address for these name server addresses using the "whois" function of Network Utility (another useful Apple application in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder).

Then I waited. I had read on the web that it can take 24-48 hours for DNS changes to filter through the web. Indeed, it was about a day later when typing my domain names into Safari took me to my default OSX webpage.

Using virtual hosting in Apache to host several domain names from one IP address
"Virtual hosts" can be used in Apache to direct visitors of different domain names to different folders within a computer with a single IP address. This turned out to be quite simple to do. But I only figured that out after following a number of complicated false leads that dealt with using virtual hosts to allow you to type in a domain name into Safari while off-line and test out a website in development.

The solution is based on Scenario Two in the useful ONLamp.com article by Russell Dyer titled "Simplify Your Life with Apache Virtual Hosts " (www.onlamp.com/pub/a/apache/2003/07/24/vhosts.html).

Remember that Apache is the open-source application that runs the web server in OSX. Its settings are contained in the hidden file, httpd.conf, which is found in etc/httpd/ folder (i.e., in your Mac computer above your user directory). Note that this is hidden. Try to browse there in the Finder and you won't even find the "etc" folder. Macs conveniently hide a lot of these things, I guess in part to stop regular users like me from screwing things up. So what are you supposed to do?

There are several solutions. My favourite is to use BBEdit , quite possibly the best text editor in the world. You can open hidden files (File:Open Hidden...). So I use BBEdit to open httpd.conf and make the necessary changes to the settings. When opening in BBEdit, the default will be set to open All Readable Files. You might need to switch this to All Files since at least my version of BBEdit (7.1.4) does not recognize files with the extension ".conf" by default.

I changed two things in this file.

# DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
DocumentRoot "/Users/mollivan/Sites"

Here I comment out the first of these lines (search for it in the file) and add the second line below it. This switches the computer website from the folder Documents to the Sites folder inside the mollivan User. This way, if I ever set up another user on the iMac, the websites will still only be server from inside the mollivan user.

Next, I went right to the bottom of the file and added the following lines.

Listen 80
NameVirtualHost *

ServerName www.mollivan.com
DocumentRoot /Users/mollivan/Sites/mollivan

ServerName www.canterburynature.org
DocumentRoot /Users/mollivan/Sites/canterburynature

Russell Dyer's article explains well what all this code is doing. In summary, it says that when requests are received at port 80 (the usual port for website requests), the website shown will depend on which web address the user has typed in. Requests for www.mollivan.com are directed to the mollivan folder inside the Sites folder. Requests for www.canterbury.org are directed to the canterburynature folder inside the Sites folder. The homepages for each site are the index.html files inside each of these folders. (In my case with only a single IP address, the asterisk (*) in this code could be replaced by my IP address.)

Once done, save the file and restart Apache by going to System Preferences:Sharing and turning Personal Web Sharing on and off (or you can use the command sudo apachectl restart in Terminal).

If you don't have BBEdit, you can also use Terminal to make all these changes, especially if you are comfortable with UNIX. Terminal is the application in the Utilities Folder of the Applications folder that allows you to interact with the rock-solid UNIX core of OSX. In a Terminal window, type the following commands.

cd /etc/httpd/

this changes the directory to httpd (the hidden folder)

sudo emacs httpd.conf

this opens the file http.conf in the text editor emacs, included inside OSX. Sudo allows you to access places you shouldn't otherwise go (you'll need to have administrative rights on your computer and you'll have to enter your password).

Scroll down inside emacs and make the above changes. Use ctrl-x ctrl-s to save your changes and ctrl-x ctrl-c to close emacs.

Then restart Apache as above.

That's it!
When I did all that, my iMac as happily serving two different websites from the same static IP address through our home broadband connection.

My next steps are to turn on PHP and install MySQL and PHPMyAdmin to add some dynamic features to my websites. But that's a different story.

CSS not working on a .Mac homepage? Here's one solution

mollivan jon — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 10:41:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: dot Mac

Originally posted on my iBlog 8 January 2005.

Summary: Apple's .Mac service includes a bundle of web tools (email, homepage), server space (iDisk), and software, all elegantly integrated into Mac OSX. Regrettably, website hosting through .Mac is limited with no PHP or MySQL support. I also had trouble implementing CSS on a custom webpage. Here's what was going wrong (or, more accurately, a way around the problem).

Body: CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) greatly simplifies the formatting of websites (and allows the management of the formatting of multiple webpages from a single file). Homepage, the stunning easy online webpage creation software of the .Mac service, is not designed with this complexity in mind. But adding a custom webpage to my .Mac website is easy. I just write the code and save the file to the Sites folder of the iDisk. That's it.

I spent ages trying to get a CSS page to work with my jon.html page, which I have living at the root of my Sites folder in my iDisk. After a lot of wasted time, I figured out by accident that the CSS page will not work when it is in the root folder of the website. When I copied the CSS page into the Science folder inside the Sites folder, and referred to it in there, everything worked fine. Quite bizarre. I couldn't find reference to this anywhere on the Appe website or elsewhere the web. But things work fine now.

As an aside, note that it is with CSS that I format my references with a hanging indent, standard in reference lists of science papers. CSS allows for more formatting control than HTML. I'm very much still learning its tricks. This one was a good one.

Here's the line in my CSS page that sets how the references are laid out.

P.REFERENCE
{
margin-left: 10%;
margin-bottom: 0%;
text-indent: -4%;
}

CSS not working on a .Mac homepage? Here's one solution

mollivan jon — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 10:41:00 +0000

Good grief, this is useful. Connect two Macs with firewire!

mollivan jon — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 09:36:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 26 July 2004.

Summary: Connecting two Macs directly with a standard firewire cable (OSX). Nothing new here, just a summary of Mac help and a Macworld tip.

The steps summarised from Mac Help

shut down the computer to be connected; the main computer can be left on

connect the two computers with a standard firewire cable

start-up the computer to be shared, holding down the T-key until the Firewire symbol appears

a disk icon for the shared computer will pop up on the desktop of the main computer

do what you need to do (blisteringly quickly)

when finished, eject the shared computer disk icon

Push the power button to shut it down

Disconnect cable

Some more details from Macworld Weekly [11.25.02 -- 12.02.02]

Tip: FireWire Target Disk Mode
One of the most oft-neglected (and most useful) features found in modern-day Macs is FireWire Target Disk Mode -- a technique for mounting another Mac's hard drive via a FireWire connection. To employ FireWire Target Disk Mode first string a 6-pin-to-6-pin FireWire cable between two compatible Macs (the Blue & White Power Mac G3 and Power Mac G4 [PCI] are not compatible). The "target" Mac (the Mac that contains the hard drive you want to access from the host computer) must be switched off.

Switch on the target Mac and hold down the T key on its keyboard. In short order a FireWire symbol will appear on its screen and the target drive will mount on the host Mac's Desktop as a local hard drive. Once mounted you can copy files between the two Macs or troubleshoot the target drive from the host computer.

A few notes: For target disk mode to work the target drive must be an ATA hard drive set at ATA bus 0 and an Open Firmware password on the target drive must not be enabled. Also, to establish contact between certain Macs via Target Disk Mode, you may need to unplug and replug the FireWire cable when both Macs are running.

Generating frequency distributions with Excel

mollivan jon — Sat, 21 Dec 2002 10:34:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: MS Excel

Originally posted on my iBlog 21 December 2002.

I've written this down because I keep forgetting it. This is how you take one column of numbers and turn them into a table of frequencies (e.g., to make a histogram of class exam scores).

First column (Ax:Ay) is the data
Second column (Bx:Bw) are the frequency categories (e.g., 10, 20, 30, etc.)

Beginning with the uppermost cell, select the cells in the third column alongside the frequency categories (i.e., Cx:Cw). Without deselecting, type "=frequency(Ax:Ay, Bx:Bw)". Now press command-return. All of the cells in this column will fill with the frequencies.

Note to self: Periodically save compressed copies of my FileMaker databases

mollivan jon — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 10:30:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 6 January 2005.

Summary: I find out all sorts of things by accident (I'm not the manual reading kind of person). Hence tips like this one are things I stumble across and then gaze at in wonder.

Periodically save a compressed copy of the database. Then trash the original and rename the copy with the exact name of the original. After structural changes is a good time to do this. Otherwise, every few months. If the compressed copy is significantly smaller, it was time to compress. If there's little difference, then wait a bit longer before the next compression.

FileMaker Pro 7: wrestling with when File and System Date and Time Formats are different

mollivan jon — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 10:27:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 6 January 2005.

Summary: Like a lot of good software, FileMaker Pro is designed in the US. As such, it is built in a world of such wacky standards as US Letter page size and a date format that goes month/day/year. FileMaker databases seem to take on the date format of the computer on which they were built, which means US format for the default templates. As a kiwi who uses a sensible, hierarchical date format, this can cause a few problems. Here's how I get around this.

If you get a warning each time a database is opened, saying the system and file date and time formats are different, it is because the system settings on the computer at the time the database was created differ from the current settings.

For example, this has happened to me with FMPro databases I made while in the US but now use in NZ. I've discovered in FMPro7 (and it may apply to earlier versions also) that all the templates that come with the program were made in the US and so have the wacky US date system built in as their default. I get the warning every time I open such a file, which is hardly ideal! One fix, from FMPro Help, is to force the database to always adopt the System settings of the computer it is being opened on, without asking. To do this, Select File:File Options. In the Text window, there are options for Data Entry when current System settings differ from saved settings. Click to use "Always use current system settings".

Web sharing FileMaker Pro 5.5 databases

mollivan jon — Mon, 07 Oct 2002 09:25:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 7 October 2002.

Summary: Here are a few of my notes on web sharing FMPro 5.5 on OSX

1) activate the Web sharing plugin. Go to Filemaker Preferences>Application:Plugins. Activate Web Companion and click 'Configure.' Turn on web reporting to keep track of web activity (note that the web log files (in the FMP folder in Applications) can get large over time). Set the port to 591 (Filemaker's registered port for database sharing (port 80 is the default, but this doesn't work through my work system).

I think the Network protocol in Preferences>Application:General needs to be set to TCP/IP rather than Appletalk (I'm not sure if this is critical).

2) Open the database you want to share, and set passwords. File>Access Privileges>Passwords. You can set multiple passwords, giving different types of users different levels of access to the database.

3) turn on web sharing for your database. File>Sharing. Turn on Multi-user access and the web companion. (Note: turning on the Remote Access option, if the plugin is also activiated, will allow other computers on the network with FMP to open the database.) Configure the web companion. The 'Wheat' template looks nice. Set the different views to a database layout you want displayed (if you don't set a layout, you'll just get an ugly long list of fields).

4) that's it. To access the database, go to a web browser and enter the IP address of the serving machine, followed by :591 (the port) (e.g., http://123.45.67.890:591. When I had web sharing running on Leyland (my PowerBook 3400) at the same time, the web shared files were accessed through port :1100.

Line Break Problems With Files Converted To FileMaker Pro 7

mollivan jon — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 08:54:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: FileMaker Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 23 September 2004.

Summary: I upgraded from FileMaker Pro version 6 to 7 and the text in many of my text fields started to roll over to new lines in the most undignified manner, with no regard at all for word integrity. But, hold on to your towel, it's easily fixed.

Body: Tip from http://www.filemaker.com/ti/109043.html.

ISSUE:
After converting a file to FileMaker Pro 7, the text in some fields breaks to new lines in unexpected places such as in the middle of non-hyphenated words.

RESOLUTION:
To correct this, select File Options from the File menu, and from the Text tab, make sure that "Use Roman language line-breaking" is selected.

Replacing the internal battery on a G3 iMac

mollivan jon — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 08:44:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: iMac

Originally posted on my iBlog 26 September 2004.

Summary: Our iMac started forgetting the time of day and all sorts of other important settings. This was because its internal battery was flat (modern Macs don't have this system so don't get so forgetful).

The battery in question is a 3.6v half AA Lithiumionyl Chloride Cell. They are available from specialist battery stores (we got ours in Christchurch for about NZ$15).

There are excellent instructions on how to change this battery at http://www.third-perspective.co.uk/archives/000032.html. If that link doesn't work, I also have a PDF of the webpage achived here.

It's quick and easy!

A file renaming trick for iViewMedia Pro

mollivan jon — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:41:00 +0000

Category: Mac, Category: iView Media Pro

Originally posted on my iBlog 19 March 2004

Summary: How to strip things from file names in iView Media Pro (v. 1.5.6).

I had a large number of files with file names of this form: 25_1_101-150.pdf. I wanted to removed everything after the dash (in this case "150"). Yes, I could probably do it with Applescript. But there was an easier way. I did it with my favourite image cataloguing workhorse, iView Media Pro (yes, it works with pdf files). Here's how I did it.

To remove the -150 part of a large number of files of this type, even if the number of characters after the "-" varies, do the following.

iView Media Pro

Select all of the files to be altered

Use Action: Batch Rename... for the three following actions

Replace String "." with nothing

Replace String "-" with "."

(Now, the above file looks like 25_1_101.150pdf)

Convert, select Strip PC extensions

(This conveniently removes any small length of text after and including the ".")

Now, Add String ".pdf", trailing.

Voilá.

Let's see iPhoto do that!

Turning off those damned Netware "new email" pop-ups

mollivan jon — Thu, 03 Jul 2003 08:37:00 +0000

Category: MS Windows, Category: Novell Netware

Originally posted on my iBlog 3 July 2003.

Summary: When I am logged on to the Lincoln University network, I get bombarded with pop-ups, one per new email, displayed as soon as it arrives. It is an insanely annoying default feature (what was Novell thinking?!). I have figured out how to turn it off when logged on through Windows in Virtual PC (below) but I haven't figured it out in OSX. All I can do is stay unconnected to Lincoln network volumes while working.

How to turnoff Netware popup messages in Windows

Right-click (=Ctrl-click) on the red N logo on the bottom right of the Windows screen.

Select Novell Client Properties - Advanced settings - Receive Broadcast Messages. Set it to None and you will no longer get the pop-ups.

This should work for both the NT/2K/XP and the 9x client

From
http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/lev2/3/lev3/19/pid/871/qid/459098