Random Tiger Notes
Miscellaneous
- Launch Services lost all my custom application bindings when I installed Tiger.
- What kind of OS update would it be without Retrospect breaking? They promise a free update soon, with a later one to provide support for Tiger’s new filesystem features.
- Apple Help is unreliable. Sometimes, it just doesn’t open, even for Apple’s own applications. Or, sometimes it opens the main help page instead of a specific sub-page. This has happened with my applications, and with Mail.
- I like Dictionary. But not its panel.
- My Command-Control-D keyboard shortcut for comparing the two top documents in BBEdit stopped working. The solution was to tell Dictionary not to use this shortcut in the Keyboard preferences pane.
- Preview’s PDF viewing has more features, but seems slower.
- The default screen capture format is now PNG instead of PDF.
- After waking from sleep and entering my password, I get sometimes get another password dialog asking for my AirPort password. Or, sometimes, it forgets which network it was connected to and I have to re-select it.
- TextEdit (and Cocoa in general) has much better import and export facilities. You can access a lot of them using textutil.
- The Cocoa text system now supports lists and tables.
- Classic seems to be faster, and it uses less processor time when it’s idle.
Printing
- Sometimes my printer queue gets stopped for no reason.
- Apple seems to want to sell me printer supplies, but the results come up empty for all of my printers.
- Each time Mail is updated, it leaves old files behind. A couple versions ago, it left SKindex files around after switching to content_index files. With Tiger, it leaves the content_index and mbox files while duplicating the message data into the Messages folder and putting the index information in Spotlight.
- Clicking the mailbox pane in Mail doesn’t give it keyboard focus; you can only do that by tabbing into it. In fact, if it’s already focussed, clicking a second mailbox in it will make it lose focus. Still an improvement, though, since the drawer couldn’t get focus at all in Panther.
- Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End don’t work in the message list.
- When doing a search, the preview pane is hidden; it’s shown again when you click on a search result in the list. I guess this makes sense, but I find it a bit disorienting.
- Everything from downloading messages to searching is much slower. Smart mailboxes don’t always update their unread counts until I click on them.
- Sometimes Mail gets stuck and won’t display the contents of any mailboxes. Quitting and re-launching it gets it working again.
- I don’t see a way to easily go from a selected message in a smart mailbox to seeing that message in its thread in its original mailbox.
- Mail no longer has its own Script menu. Apple has effectively removed the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to Mail scripts, since the system Script menu doesn’t support them.
Tools
I tried to use Shark after installing the developer tools (with the CHUD option) and kept getting this error:
CHUDProf.kext not loaded. There may be a problem with your CHUD installation. [CHUDDataSource]
Then I manually installed CHUD.pkg, and now Shark works.
- I kind of expected that Subversion would be bundled with the developer tools. Oh well.
- A Mac-savvy rsync was, for me, one of the most anticipated features of Tiger. Unfortunately, it’s been unreliable so far. Nearly every time I use it to sync a large folder using the -E flag, it either crashes or stops with an internal error.
- The Mac-savvy tar, cp, and scp rock. So does BOMArchiveHelper.
- There are new database and plist scripting additions.
Safari
- Safari is faster.
- Safari is much smarter about how it puts Google queries onto the find pasteboard.
- It’s great that Safari now displays errors as Web pages rather than sheets.
- Sometimes it doesn’t load the stylesheet.
- Safari Web Archives are great, although I prefer iCab’s Zip-based format.
- It’s no longer possible to see the transfer rate in Safari’s Downloads window unless you make the window really wide.
- Is there any way to tell Safari not to view PDFs inline? I prefer using Preview. There doesn’t even seem to be a way to save the currently viewed PDF to disk. The only way I could save my credit card bill to disk was to use OmniWeb.
- The new Safari often loads stale pages. I have to keep resetting its cache and re-launching it to get it to notice that a page has changed.
Spotlight
- Bottom-line, it’s still much faster to search the Web than my Mac.
- I hate the Spotlight search results window.
- The first time I tried to use Spotlight, after letting it index overnight, it froze SystemUIServer for 12 minutes.
- Spotlight seems to be inconsistent about finding files that aren’t in my home folder. It finds some files in /Developer tree, but the whole ADC Reference Library seems to be excluded.
- AppleWorks files are indexed; Safari Web Archives are not
- After the initial indexing, there’s no visual indication of the indexing process. After downloading or importing messages, or copying over lots of files, it’s not clear whether I’d get more search results if I waited an hour and searched again.
- Even though I’ve declared most of my home folder off-limits to Spotlight, it still seems to be indexing everything. Its CPU use goes crazy for hours if I re-render a Web site or do a large Subversion checkout, slowing down my whole Mac, which is partly why I wanted to exclude it from those folders. The other reason is that I was hoping to improve its search speed (which is about 15 seconds now) by having it index a smaller number of files. But it seems that it indexes and searches everything, and then winnows the results.
- Why does iCal create 3500 .icalevent files each time I start it up, even though I’ve told Spotlight not to search events?
Finder
- Get Info once again opens separate windows for each selected item.
- Dragging from the Finder to Path Finder copies instead of moving, but you can hold down Command to make it move.
- I’m really disappointed in the Finder’s new Find feature. Searching by name is still slow (with several seconds of the spinning pizza), and some matching files that are in plain view simply don’t show up in the search results.
- Much better at updating views when files have changed or new files have been added.
Dock
- The items in the Trash’s contextual menu moved around, and I haven’t adjusted yet.
- It used to be that if you held down Command-Option, you could drop a Dock icon onto another Dock icon (e.g. dropping an application onto Script Debugger to view its dictionary). Now, this works if you first bring the receiving application to the front.
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Regarding PDFs and Safari. I prefer using Preview. Was it not possible to option-click the link to the PDF? That would have just downloaded it. Unless the site that was serving the PDF doesn't allow you to option-click a link through some sort of web tomfoolery.
Chris: Yes, the problem was that this site uses JavaScript and a temporary URL to open the PDF.
Jonathan: Thanks for the hint!
Erik: Command-S was the first thing I tried. I didn't work.
Thanks for the list, there are a bunch of things in there I hadn't noticed.
Where are the new database and plist scripting additions? I don't see them in Standard Additions, or in /System/Library/ScriptingAdditions/. I hadn't noticed the new dictionary browser in script editor until I went looking, though.
(I'm used to scanning through scripting dictionaries by selecting all and then using cmd-f to do a substring search across all entries. The new dictionary browser only updates to display all entries if you select suites with the mouse, while failing to update in response to command-A. Radar #4104459.)
Seems that random Tiger notes are popping up all over the place. Here are mine, if anyone cares: http://assortedgeekery.com/archives/2005/04/20/tiger.
Good to see that I'm not the only one annoyed by the change in the Trash's Dock menu.
"After the initial indexing, there's no visual indication of the indexing process."
I don't think this is correct. I noticed a white dot appear in the centre of the magnifying glass icon when it built the initial index, and I've seen it again after I mounted up a new filesystem on a removable disk.
Yes, it's hard to see but unless I need my eyes tested again, it is there.
Nat: They're actually background applications. The database stuff is in:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Database Events.app
and the plist stuff is in System Events. I read dictionaries the same way.
Mark: mdimport has been running at full speed all day, and I definitely don't see a dot. Perhaps it only appears when it builds the initial index (when it also shows a progress bar in the Spotlight menu).
Command-option-drag onto Script Debugger works for me even if it's not the frontmost app.
And I guess I didn't notice the Trash contextual menu because I have the dock vertical, anchored at the bottom right corner of my screen. Empty Trash is still just directly to the left.
No script menu in Mail sucks; my primary method of filing mail (which I don't use on the machine I have Tiger on) relies on my binding command-D to it.
I've seen the Dock dragging behavior both work and not work. I was going nuts on Friday trying to figure out why I couldn't drag scripts Command-Option drag a script from it's Dock icon to the Dock icon for Script Editor. Today, though, it works fine, even if Script Editor isn't running.
Don't have Script Debugger, so I can't check that.
Nicholas: I have the Dock vertical, too. I think what was disorienting me was that it's not in the same place relative to the top of the menu. Funny how the "muscle memory" works.
Eric: I experimented with the dragging some more this morning, and determined that the two criteria I mentioned (Command-Option and frontmost) are not always necessary *or* sufficient to make it work. But they do seem to help. Also, once I've dropped onto a particular application, it seems to be more receptive to subsequent drags, until I quit it.
Sounds like they shipped too early!
How much longer would you have let it baked? Or, what functionality would you have cut?
Another easy way to save a pdf to disk (and for that matter just about any page in any app) is to Print and then use the "save to pdf" option hidden in the weird pdf button/pulldown menu in every print dialog box.
Raul: That's often not acceptable because it creates a new PDF with different compression, unclickable links, and missing metadata.
One thing about Spotlight--it seems to do two-phase indexing. During my initial index run, it took it most of an hour to add all of the files to the Spotlight db, but it took overnight before it had actually searched the *contents* of the files. This was verified via 'mdls'--files would show up in there quite quickly, but there was no file-specific data for most files until I'd let the huge indexing process run. Running 'mdimport' manually short-circuited the process and made extra metadata show up almost immediately.
Printer jobs do stop randomly, but they did that in Panther with an HP, but this is the first time it has happened with a new HP OfficeJet, connected wirelessly via Bonjour & Airport Extreme. It seems to happen most often with MS Office apps, if I quit before it finishes printing (annoying when I pull up a file to print it quick and want to move onto other stuff).
Also: even though I use NetNewsWire, I wanted a password-protected feed for my screensaver feed, but even if Safari (and SyndicationAgent) have the password saved, it doesn't load. I also noticed that RSS feeds do not show up in the list for the screensaver until you access them once via Safari (and it adds them to the All RSS Feeds list), but that may be that I need to append feed:// manually, as that's what Safari does the first time I access it.
I am disappointed that Retrospect was not Tiger compatible. Why did they wait?
My Epson printer does not have all needed options in Tiger and Epson has no solution.
I really like Spotlight. I found stuff I didn't know I had.
Installation of Tiger was easy.
I think a lot of companies don't have their Tiger update ready because Apple didn't really announce ahead when they were going to ship. A lot of developer schedules got tossed once the shipping date was publicly announced!
It's a pity that the HIG isn't followed by the company that wrote it and that the muscle memory is disregarded in lot of current Apple implementations...
"AppleWorks files are indexed; Safari Web Archives are not"
I disagree. I have a web archive on my harddisk that is indexed...
Btw: has anyone except me a Tibook 800 Mhz and the display problem described in http://scrap.dasgenie.com/articles/2005/05/01/mac-os-x-10-4-tiger-no-more-brightness-control-on-tibook-800-mhz ?
If I understand Spotlight's indexing process correctly (which I probably don't), excluding folders from the index via the privacy pane _should_ remove them from the index right away, but apparently not always. The surefire way is to set up your exclusions, then delete the index folder in the root directory of the volume in question. The index folder is called .Spotlight-V100 Unfortunately, this will force Spotlight to reindex everything again, so don't start this when it might bother you. The mdutil command can also delete Spotlight indices, and turn it off completely for specific volumes.
Also, Spotlight normally does indexing on new or modified files as part of the disk i/o operations. This is why you don't ordinarily notice it once the initial indexing completes, but mounting an external drive or pulling a large amount of data from the web or SVN suddenly makes it go bonkers. Excluding the locations where you put such large chunks of data _should_ eliminate the indexing.
Annard: Agreed; I wasn't very happy with the Tiger seeding process. For a long time, we didn't know for sure when they would ship, and the last DVD seed was quite different from the GM.
Dominik: It's definitely not indexing the contents of my Web archives. I guess it's possible that something's messed up on my machine--just now when I tried to use Spotlight it hung SystemUIServer for the past half hour--but I've also heard other people say that Web archives aren't searchable.
Erik: Command-S was the first thing I tried. I didn't work.
Deestar: That was the second thing I tried. :-) Control-clicking caused Safari to crash.
Both work fine here.
"Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End don't work in the message list."
This was the case in Panther, as well -- these keys applied to the message body instead. The solution was to hold the Control key down when pressing the key to appy it to the message list. Does this work in Tiger? (I don't have enough messages in my Tiger inbox right now to try it ;-) )
"It used to be that if you held down Command-Option, you could drop a Dock icon onto another Dock icon (e.g. dropping an application onto Script Debugger to view its dictionary). Now, this works if you first bring the receiving application to the front."
It was actually Command-drag, not Command-Option-drag -- evidently the "Option" just didn't break it ;-) And Command-dragging still works fine for me in Tiger.
So which files in ~/Library/Mail/ are obsolete then? I have about 800 MB of mbox files - are they ready for trash?
you can assign custom keyboard shortcuts to scripts in the Script menu. how to do it is explained in Mail Help under:
Discover > Automating Mail > Using the Script Menu
xbhoff: I know that's what the help says, but I couldn't get it to work. I filed a bug on this in December, which Apple hasn't closed yet.
The way Spotlight works, if you copy files to a drive, it should be copying existing metadata. But if you create them for the first time, or copy them from a disk Spotlight hadn't seen before, it should index those files right away...
That's the same for content being decompressed.
With Mail, I've seen a tendency not to be able to actually see messages--but not only by Spotlight-- unless you Rebuild the mailbox..
Re. Mail in Tiger:
Page up and page down move through the paragraphs of a long email, as they should. Home and end don't work. Up and Down arrows move from item to item in the email. Control-page up and control-page down jump from mail item to mail item of the same thread, i.e., from the same sender.
Regarding the Dictionary I dare to disagree: I found the panel just awesome – what do you think is wrong with it: that you cannot resize the pop-up window-thingie? that it is not tolerant towards mispellings?
But: that is there and that quick and handy - that is, in my perspective, too cool.
Btw: is there a way to re-install dictionaries for other languages than the ones you have OS X installed for?
(I installed, for reasons of harddrive-capacity-issues, only the default English – can I now install some, say, german dictionary additonally?)
taktmann: I don't like the small size, the special mode, the way it disappears when I do *anything*, or the lack of keyboard navigation.
Michael: I see your points (but did you realize that mouse-scroll-wheel is supported?); but is there any other pop-up-dictionary available on os x?
But dont you have to admit: the panel does look good?!
