Ted Leung on the air
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Mon, 22 Dec 2003
Bluetooth vs PhoneValet
Today I was paging through Mac OS X Hacks and discovered that the built in Address Book in Panther can do some of what PhoneValet can do if you have a Bluetooth enabled cell phone. I have a Nokia 6310i, which I have discovered barely passes as a Bluetooth enabled cell phone. But I was able to initiate calls and SMS's from the Address Book, and have incoming calls to the cell pop up a message on the Powerbook. This is really nice functionality. It doesn't solve the voice mail problem that I mentioned yesterday, but it's a step in the right direction.

During the course of playing with this I ran into some issues / questions. If I put the Powerbook to sleep, the Bluetooth connection is severed. That makes sense. But if I want the Bluetooth connection in the Address Book to keep going, I need to remember to click the Bluetooth button in the address book when the powerbook wakes up, as well as remembering to turn bluetooth on. This sounds like a perfect application for AppleScript, but I have no idea if there is a way to execute code / scripts when the machine wakes up. Maybe that copy of the O'Reilly AppleScript book that is available on Amazon will help.

While I was writing this post, someone posted a comment on my blog. When a comment is posted, I send e-mail to myself and to my cellphone, which I use as a pager. As part of the law of unintended consequences, the SMS message from the cellphone e-mail got picked up the the Address Book bluetooth functionality. Very cool. Except that it came up on a different virtual desktop and didn't play an alert sound. Sounds like another job for AppleScript, or a customizable alert sound. There are lots of jobs around here for AppleScript (or Python masquerading as AppleScript).

[23:35] | [computers/operating_systems/macosx] | # | TB | F | G | 0 Comments | Other blogs commenting on this post
psync on Panther
As part of today's Mac OS X buildfest I built psync with the help of this tip from MacOSXHints.com which is a really good source of information.
[23:21] | [computers/operating_systems/macosx] | # | TB | F | G | 0 Comments | Other blogs commenting on this post
xchm on OS X
I got xchm to build on Mac OS X. This is an open source view for compiled HTML help (CHM) files that are mostly used on Windows. The reason that I wanted xchm is that the Python docs are available in CHM format. The advantage of CHM is that its highly searchable (and you can search when you have no network connectivity). So this is a great way to get goo d access to documentation for Python, which I still need at this point.

There's now a HOWTO and a Mac OS X version of CHMLIB. I had to get WxMac 2.5 and build it -- I seem to be building wxWindows a lot these days. I can't wait until 2.5 really comes out and xchm and Chandler are on the same version. Installing into /usr/local worked fine. Same for chmlib (I already had the fink glibtool installed). When I went to build xchm, I discovered that the chmlib install had set incorrect permissions on /usr/local/include/chm_lib.h, so I had to fix that and then xchm built fine. Running xchm out of the build directory works fine, but when I tried make install xchm wasn't responding to the keyboard or mouse, as documented in the HOWTO. I just linked from my bin directory to the executable rather than running the nasty Rez command. I'll just rebuild when wxWindows 2.5.1 comes out. Plus I don't want LaunchBar to search /usr/local/bin for programs, and I do want to be able to access xchm from LaunchBar.

[23:16] | [computers/operating_systems/macosx] | # | TB | F | G | 0 Comments | Other blogs commenting on this post


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Ted Leung FOAF Explorer

I work at the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF).
The opinions expressed here are entirely my own, not those of my employer.

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