- I noticed that the sounds in the Macintosh FTP archives tended to be all of
8-bit quality, so I thought I’d release some 16-bit CD-quality musical sounds
instead. Here’s
16-Bit Beeps
Volume 1,
Volume II
and
Volume III.
- The
AppleEvent
Utilities are a set of HyperCard externals to allow you to make low-level
calls to the AppleEvent Manager and to AppleScript. You can hand-assemble
AppleEvent descriptors (handy for experimenting). The AppleScript functions
allow for recording of scripts in HyperCard.
- Application
Menu was one of my first OSAXen (AppleScript “scripting additions”).
This one defines AppleScript commands for selecting from the first three
items in the application menu (hide frontmost application, hide
others, and show all).
- ClipStation
is a bridge between the cool new Drag Manager and the old Clipboard. You can drag
a clipping into its Clipboard window, then paste it into a non-drag-savvy
application. Or conversely, you can copy an item to the Clipboard, then drag it
out of ClipStation’s window to somewhere else.
ClipStation also displays QuickTime movies and QuickDraw GX graphics on the
Clipboard. And it supports some interesting functions via AppleScript.
Current version, released 1997 June 24:
several small improvements to dragging, zooming, and magnified/reduced views
of QuickDraw GX graphics.
- Colour
Collector is a plug-in picker for use with the Color Picker extension
included with System 7.5 and later. It lets you maintain collections of
frequently-used colours across different applications.
- ComponentGlue
is a pair of MPW tools to ease the job of building
Component Manager components and calling them from client code. Source code
is included.
- ComponentTools
are a pair of MPW tools for registering and
deregistering components with the Component Manager on the fly. This is handy
if you are developing components, as it saves rebooting your machine to
install a new version.
Modula-2 source code is included.
- CWFix is a
QuickDraw GX printing extension that fixes a problem with ClarisWorks 4.0v4.
Specifically, polygons and curves created in the Draw module do not print on
non-PostScript printers under QuickDraw GX 1.1 and later.
- Date
Calculations
is an OSAX that implements all kinds of useful calculations
on dates in AppleScript. Also available from
MacScripter.net.
- The Digital
Signature Utilities are a pair of HyperCard externals to let you use PowerTalk
digital signatures in HyperCard stacks.
- DragShape
is a quick-and-dirty demo program I wrote for an article in the August 1996 issue of
MacTech magazine. It shows off a technique,
using QuickDraw GX graphics, for letting the user drag shapes around and have
them rotate, just like real objects tend to do, to follow the drag.
- Duplex
Helper is a very simple QuickDraw GX printing extension to ease the job of
doing double-sided printing on a single-sided printer. Tell it how your printer
prints, and it automatically works out which pages to print (even/odd) and in
what order (forward/reverse), so you don’t have to shuffle any pages around.
You can also, if you want, use it to force all print jobs to come out with
the pages in reverse order, which can be convenient for some printers.
- EightyLister
is an OSAX that lets you write scripts to access the information inside the
dictionaries that contain the vocabulary defined by scriptable applications.
Updated version 2.1d2 now returns information about event results
and event direct parameters. Not sure why I left these out before. Did I forget
anything else...?
- File/Resource/Miscellaneous
Utilities is actually three separate collections of HyperCard externals:
- The File Utilities let you make low-level calls to the File Manager: get/set
info on files and folders, create and delete files, open them, read them and
write them.
- The Resource Utilities let you make low-level calls to the Resource Manager
and Memory Manager.
- The Miscellaneous Utilities provide a bunch of functions that don’t fit
nicely into any other category.
- FinderWindow
is an MPW tool to let you open and close folder
windows in the Finder from within MPW scripts.
- FindFolder
is an MPW tool to allow use of the Folder
Manager from a shell script.
- FindSymbol
is an MPW tool to search for symbols in object
files. It understands PEF shared libraries and stub libraries, and both MPW and
Metrowerks CodeWarrior object file formats.
- Fix
Icons is an experimental utility for doing various things to the desktop
database (where the Finder keeps its information about which applications own
which documents, and what icons to display for them). Primarily it lets you
update the icons for an application—for example, when you get a new version
which has new icons, but the Finder keeps displaying the old ones. It also
tries to clean up dangling entries that it finds (if you somehow managed
to delete an application—normally the Finder will clean these up
automatically). It’s not as successful as it could be, primarily because of
limitations in the calls that Apple provides for manipulating the desktop
database.
There are additional functions you can only get at via AppleScript. For
example, you can set up “impostor” entries in your desktop database, so that
the Finder starts thinking that SimpleText text files have suddenly become
BBEdit documents. This can be an easier way of opening documents that
were created with a different application from the one you normally use
(assuming the one you use can import that document type).
New version 1.1d1, released 1999 October 22: supports new AppleScript
functions manipulating custom icons and converting for pre-MacOS-8.5 compatibility.
Sample scripts included.
- FontFix
is a system extension that fixes problems trying to use QuickDraw GX
fonts in GX-unaware applications. It was written, not by me, but by Joseph
Maurer at Apple. Dave Opstad explained how it worked, and I wrote the
“about” blurb.
- GX
Desk Pattern is an AppleScriptable system extension that uses
QuickDraw GX graphics to display a pattern
on your desktop. Unlike standard system QuickDraw patterns, you are not
restricted to rectangular tilings with each side being an exact power of 2, and
you can superimpose multiple patterns to produce nonrepeating combinations.
You can apply effects like free rotations and colour shifts,
depending on how the pattern is defined (samples are included). You can also
import existing QuickDraw patterns from Texture Installer, tile your own pictures
into patterns, and change the colour of parts of a pattern.
-
GX
Font Display is a HyperCard-based utility to let you browse through
fonts under QuickDraw GX, try out variations for fonts that support them
(such as Type 1 Multiple Masters), examine uninstalled fonts, copy
individual glyphs to the Clipboard for pasting into other applications,
or create complete glyph charts that can be viewed and printed with
SimpleView or imported into
Lightning Draw.
- The GX Utilities are a set of about 200 (so far) HyperCard externals for
making direct calls to QuickDraw GX graphics functions. This is not available on
the Net in its entirety as yet, but a subset of it is included in my
GX Font Display stack.
E-mail me if you’re interested in
licensing them.
- Help
Lock is a very simple INIT (sorry, “System Extension”) that
lets you use the caps lock key to turn balloon help on and off from the
keyboard. I mean, it makes sense to use a key that locks down, rather
than one you have to keep holding down, right? Besides, I don’t use
caps lock for anything else.
- Interlace
Smoother is a Photoshop plug-in that helps you reduce the “zipper”
effect when trying to capture still images from video sources.
- Internet
Config Access is a utility I wrote to give scriptable access to the
Internet Config
database. I’ve also included source code, so you can see how little code it
took on account of the heavy use I made of my Modula-2
application framework and libraries.
- LDOLib is
the set of common libraries that I use in all my Mac programming projects. This
is an adaptation in C of my original Modula-2 libraries.
I have put this code into the public domain, for you to use as you like.
Some highlights:
- Hash lookup tables, with fully general entry formats defined by callback
routines.
- Many useful functions built on QuickDraw, the User Interface Toolbox,
OpenGL and QuickTime, including arbitrary bitmap rotation.
- File Manager routines for dealing with large volumes and large files.
- Scriptability support, aiding the writing of AppleScriptable applications
that fully implement the AppleEvent Object Model.
- My “Handler” application framework for easing the construction
of Mac applications.
- MenuStuff
is a set of MPW tools to enhance custom menus
in the MPW Shell. This includes the ability to create hierarchical custom menus.
Pascal source code is included.
- Movie
Conversion is a utility for converting between QuickTime movies, PICS
files and PICT file sequences. It is done as a HyperCard stack, which means
you can customize it to some extent if it doesn’t do quite what you want.
- MyModLib was the complete set of Modula-2 libraries that I used to use
for my programming projects, until I switched to C. This is no longer available
on-line; E-mail me if you want a
copy.
- NewPicker
is a HyperCard external that gives you access to some of the functionality of the
Color Picker extension that is included with System 7.5. You can open modeless
colour picker windows and update colours in your image in real time, as the user
makes changes. It doesn’t work quite as slickly as one might like, and it has
the potential to be incompatible with a newer version of HyperCard—both of these
are because of limitations in the Color Picker interface. Nevertheless, some
might still find it useful.
New version, released 1997 January 10, available from
Wave:
can now demonstrate colouring effect on a text field, and output the colour
specifications in the usual HTML hex format (handy for Web authoring).
- Old
Printing lets you selectively turn off QuickDraw GX printing for particular
applications, without actually having to deinstall GX. It’s better than Apple’s
QuickDraw GX Helper extension because it works with non-Apple printer drivers.
It also lets you fool GX-aware applications
whose GX printing support is unreliable (ie Microsoft Excel) into thinking that
GX is not installed. They still print through your GX driver, but with fewer
problems.
- Path to Clip
is a utility to save you typing long path names in various applications, such as
when editing AppleScript scripts, or authoring Web pages. Simply drop a file or
folder on it, and it will copy the full pathname, to the Clipboard, in one of
9 different quoting styles suitable for pasting into AppleScript scripts, URLs or
MPW commands.
- The
QuickDraw
Utilities are a set of about 200 externals for doing direct
QuickDraw drawing calls, offscreen or on-screen to any of HyperCard’s windows.
Anything you draw on-screen disappears as soon as HyperCard updates its windows,
but you could get around this using something like Update
Monitor.
This package also contains two other collections of externals:
- The Field Utilities let you perform various useful manipulations on
HyperCard text fields: get and set their contents (while preserving styles),
measure them, and draw them into a QuickDraw GrafPort.
- The Printing Utilities let you make direct calls to the Macintosh Printing
Manager from HyperCard. In combination with the drawing functions of the other
two collections, this lets you do things like lay out custom reports.
Also available from
Wave.
- The QuickTime Utilities are actually several related packages of HyperCard
externals:
- The Movie Utilities are a set of about 200 externals for making calls to the
QuickTime Movie Toolbox: you can load movies, play them, edit them, create them,
and generally munge them about.
- The Image Compression Utilities allow you to make calls to the QuickTime
Image Compression Manager. You would use these to create video tracks for movies
you put together with the Movie Utilities externals.
None of these collections is available in its entirety on the Net as yet,
however subsets of them are included with my Movie
Conversion and Hamilton Gardens Tour
stacks. E-mail me if
you’re interested in licensing them.
- ScriptKey
is an FKEY that lets you execute preselected AppleScript scripts with just a
few keystrokes.
- The Script
Manager Utilities are a set of HyperCard externals to give access to the
services of the Macintosh Script Manager. These include number-formatting
services.
- SimpleView
is a viewer for QuickDraw GX Portable Digital Documents (PDDs), as an alternative
to Apple’s SimpleText. It is fully AppleScriptable and recordable.
The current version is 0.5d4, released 1997 February 9.
Enhancements include menu options for saving pages from PDDs, and an
experimental new feature: command-clicking on URLs attached to GX graphics.
- Skin Deep is
an AppleScriptable viewer for multi-spectral images in ERMapper format. Also
in that directory is a bunch of images taken over Hamilton City and
Waikato University during February 1999. Work on Skin Deep has been funded
by Alistair Steyn-Ross of the Department of Physics
& Electronic Engineering at the University of Waikato.
- Sound
Input Control provides a pair of AppleScript scripting additions that allow
convenient switching of your sound input source between the microphone and
CD audio, on machines where this switching is necessary. You can also switch
the sound output sample rate, on machines where this is necessary to obtain
maximum CD audio quality on the one hand, and to allow speech recognition to
work on the other.
- The Sound
Utilities are a set of HyperCard externals to give low-level access to the
services of the Macintosh Sound Manager and Sound Input Manager. Features
include:
- Multi-channel 8/16-bit mono/stereo recording and playback (limited only by
the available hardware)
- Recording direct to disk
- Playback direct from disk (synchronous or asynchronous)
- Synchronized playback of multiple channels
- Control over virtually all the capabilities of your sound input hardware,
including input source selection, automatic level control, and voice-activated
recording (depending on what your sound hardware driver supports)
Also available from
Wave.
- The
Speech
Utilities are a set of HyperCard externals to give access to the services of
the Macintosh Speech Manager, beyond the limited functions built into HyperCard 2.3.
You can do fully asynchronous multi-channel speech, control all available voice
parameters (many in real-time while speech is in progress), use speech dictionaries,
and even generate sound files from the Macintalk Pro voices.
Also available from
Wave.
- SplitPath
is an MPW tool for returning various useful
information about pathname strings.
- A Tour
of Hamilton Gardens was a fun thing I threw together several years ago when
I first got my camcorder. It was also a chance to mess about with this cool new
QuickTime technology, and my VideoSpigot digitizer card.
All it is, is a collection of 85 JPEG-compressed colour pictures taken around
a small part of the Hamilton Gardens complex, together with a simple HyperCard
stack that displays the pictures in the form of an interactive “walk-through”.
Nothing technically or artistically very sophisticated, but it was one of the
first things I released on the net, so I have a kind of a soft spot for it...
- Table
Server is an application that lets you access table lookup services from
AppleScript. A table can hold any information that you desire, with each
entry identified by a key that lets you find the information again
quickly.
- TeaCuP
is an application that lets you access TCP/IP services from AppleScript.
You can write scripts that act as both clients and servers on the Internet.
You can perform functions asynchronously, and make your scripts
multithreaded.
Version 1.0d4, updated 2000 March 17: fix crashing problem with name lookups.
Source code is available
here.
- Tumbler
is a utility for generating Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) files
from QuickDraw GX Portable Digital Documents (PDDs). Under GX, you can generate
a PDD by printing from any application to the PDD Maker driver, and Tumbler lets
you turn this into a PDF file while keeping all the beautiful GX typography
intact, along with much of the graphics, too.
This is a prerelease, with some known problems (and no doubt many others I don’t
know about). I’m making it available to solicit comments on its usefulness.
Samples of Tumbler output are available
here,
and Tumbler source code is available
here.
- Update
Monitor is an experimental HyperCard external that is meant as a less
resource-hungry alternative to things like the old ColorizeHC, or the Color
Tools that come with HyperCard 2.2 and later. Instead of maintaining
fixed images in large offscreen buffers, it sends “update” events
that you can write HyperTalk handlers to deal with in any way you like. The
advantage is that it doesn’t gobble up large amounts of RAM, like those
other tools do; the disadvantage is that the results may not look quite as slick.
Update Monitor is also used in the GX Font Display
and NewPicker stacks.
- VolDrive
is an MPW tool that eases the backup of software
projects and other files onto removable media. Instead of requiring a particular
volume name, or assuming a particular drive number, you identify the volume by
the name of its driver. This allows you to use a single command (for example,
attached to a custom menu item) to backup a range of items to different media.
- WindowsMenu
is a HyperCard XCMD that adds a “Windows” menu to your menu bar. This lets you
immediately switch to any currently-open window in HyperCard just by selecting
it from the menu.
- XMover
is a tool for easy drag-and-drop installation of resources (XCMDs, XFCNs, icons,
sounds, whatever) into HyperCard stacks. It is oriented towards dealing with
resources where the names are important, not the ID numbers; to this end, it
automatically renumbers resources to avoid ID conflicts.
Also available from
Wave.
