Serving with OS X

The project of the week is setting up a true unix web/email server using OS X Leopard. (groan) Well, I have my reasons for wanting to do this. I am struggling right now but here’s what I have so far. Guides will follow for the stuff that works.

• complete dns setup using named – this was relatively simple since a good install of named already exists on your mac. what’s necessary is creating some configuration files for you domain(s) and setting it up as a service at bootup.

and… that’s it! Everything else is topsy-turvy. It seems like Leopard was put together with the intention that SQLite would handle all the database work (goodbye MySQL!) with php and apache compiled to suit. Now this is great if you’re a Ruby Rails fan or if you’ve never heard of wordpress, let alone countless web email or cms suites. But if you want to deploy a stable, standard cms you’re really out of luck.

Of course you could use OS X Server (if you have an extra US$499 lying around). But then you have to deal with de-coupling some services, like named, from their pre-configured settings and the server admin gui. As far as I can make out, the kernel isn’t any different for low-end server use from regular OS X. 

However, you do get a bunch of server applications pre installed which are a real headache to try and compile yourself. Some of these are imap, pop, apache, mysql… the list goes on. Right now it looks like OS X versus Server comes out as Headache A versus Headache B. It certainly isn’t out-of-the-box-no-IT-department-required-as-advertised.

X11 Focus settings

Gimp for os x used to come with a script to change the focus settings of windows in X11. Today, I downloaded the newest os x compilation, 2.4, and surprise- no script! A little digging revealed a quick and easy way to toggle mouse focus for X11 whenever you want.

Run in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm -bool true

to turn on mouse focus. (That’s the kind where a window focuses without licking on it if the mouse is hovering over it.) To turn it off, just run the same command with false instead of true at the end.

At the moment, I can’t recommend turning mouse focus on since it seems to cause some trouble for Gimp 2.4. But that’s just my speculation.

Well, that’s pretty stuffed

After a coordinated screwup between myself and Macupdate, the launch of the new Bookstar has been completely stuffed up. I’m not sure how long it will be until it gets released corrected. I’ve sent several emails to the supposed contact email for MacUpdate, but no one answers. What happened is that the entry for Bookstar (which was fine) was smished together with the new listing for Book Magic. So now I am down one software listing and up one completely wrong listing. Thank the maker Moviestar’s listing wasn’t trashed while they were at it.

So I keep sending the occasional email saying, hey remember me? You combined my applications into a hybrid which doesn’t even exist!! Well, they haven’t answered. The lesson here is never trust MacUpdate when you’re using a free developer account. I’m moving it all to SourceForge.

TeXShop Color Highlighting – May we have other colors please?

TeXShop, the default LaTeX editor that comes with MacTex, has some default color syntax highlighting which did not agree with me for long use. The standard red, green, and blue colors are hard to see against the white background. So, not content to just use it as is or find another program, I scoured the web for information on how it could be altered. It turns out there is a way to.

When syntax coloring turned on in the source window, comments will be colored red, commands will be colored blue, and the symbols $, {, and } will be colored dark green. A few users may wish to change these colors. Each color is determined by setting its red, green, and blue components; these components are real numbers between 0.0 and 1.0.

Suppose we wish to change the color of $, {, and } to bright green, a color with components (r, g, b) = (0.0, 1.0, 0.0). To do so, open the Terminal window and type the following commands

defaults write TeXShop markerred 0.0
defaults write TeXShop markergreen 1.0
defaults write TeXShop markerblue 0.0

The corresponding preference items for comments are commentred, commentgreen, commentblue; the items for commands are commandred, commandgreen, commandblue.

Now if only I could remember what website I got that from…

How to install Biblatex

Biblatex is a bibtex style package for Humanities and Social Science style footnotes and/or bibliography. Since most default bibtex styles are for math and science or psychology, those of us MLA users are out in the cold. I have so far used Biblatex for philosophy apers using Chicago styling, but I’m sure it can do more than that. I’m in the process of developing a setup for MLA. In the meantime, here’s how to install the Biblatex package.

Get the biblatex package here:

www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/biblatex.html> (You’ll have to click the download link on that page.)

1. Unpack the zip.

2. Inside the expanded folder (biblatex/) rename latex to biblatex.

3. Find out where you local texlive install is located. For the unix users, this is represented in the system by the variable $TEXMFLOCAL. Here are some possibilities to get you stated:

• Mac: /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/
• Linux: /usr/local/share/texmf/
• Win: c:\localtexmf\

Once you have found this folder’s path, we’re ready to proceed. We’ll be referring to it as texmf/ for short.

4. Copy the folder biblatex/biblatex into texmf/tex/latex/

5. Inside biblatex/bibtex/ you’ll find the biblatex.bst file. Copy it to texmf/bibtex/bst/.

Almost Done!

6. This is the last step. I’m afraid it is Mac/Linux only since I don’t know how to do it on a PC. For this you’ll need a command line and a root or sudo password. I’m going to assume you know or can easily find out about those. What you’re going to do is reload the local TeX database so that it will know about the files we installed. It’s called rehashing. To do it, type at the commandline prom

sudo texhash

That’s it. If that command succeeded you are good to go.