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Domain: aetherial.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to aetherial.net.

Comments · 5

  1. Books for OSX by La+Camiseta · · Score: 1 · on Solving the Home Library Problem?

    I like to use Books for OSX found at http://books.aetherial.net/. It's open-source and tends to work out pretty nicely. It isn't as feature complete as Delicious Library or Booxter, but it tends to do the job for me.

    If you don't mind paying a bit, and it's only books that you want to read, Booxter is a good choice. A lot less than the Delicious Library.

  2. This is your best bet: "Books 2.3.1" by Domini · · Score: 1 · on OSS Library Management Solutions?

    Delicious Library is awesome value for the price, but if you only want to do Books, then look at Books for Mac OS X. It's OSS and free (for now?).

    I don't know of any other apps for books which have not already been listed here... there are even less good ones for the PC...

  3. Re:It is a fairly easy transition. by raga · · Score: 5, Informative · on Windows to Mac Migration Guide/Advice?
    Drdink's list of apps is a good start. I have a list of OS X software I made for two of my "switcher" friends, and now that you are in the same boat, here it is.

    These are all the free (as in beer) applications I use all the time:

    WireTap: Save an audio file of any sound being played on the Mac by any other application.

    DVDBackup: Great for backing up DVDs (while removing region coding, CSS encryption, and Macrovision encryption.) You'll still need Toast to burn the DVDs though.

    PixelNhance: A must-have to tinker with the color/brightness/contrast etc. of your digital pictures.

    Pixen: The best pixel-level editor on any platform.

    MorphX: Morphs one image into another.

    SnapNDrag: For screen captures (Grab is another basic screen capture utility that comes bundled with OSX).

    Galerie: Puts your photos in a nice album-type gallery of web pages for being served by a web server.

    LaTex Equation Editor and Tex Fog: The equation editors I use. Requires Tex/LaTex to be installed..

    And if you are into LaTex, you'll also want CPlot: A parametric equation plotter.

    CyberDuck: Open source S/FTP client. (Other FTP clients for OSX include osXigen, Transmit, Fetch, Fugu...).

    Onyx: A must-have system utility.

    MenuMeter: Another must-have system info utility. Excellent.

    Books: A library software (book database).

    Xnippets: A decent information organiser.

    Carbon Copy Cloner: Backup software. (Donationware)

    A few apps I have gladly paid money to use:

    ChartSmith: Wonderfull for making all kinds of charts you have ever thought of (and some you haven't).

    EvoCAM: Great app to record/play (or otherwise control) a Firewire/USB camera hooked to your Mac. Well worth the shareware price. (Also checkout their other offerings - ImageDV and VideoScope)

    Intaglio: The 2D vector drawing/CAD program of my choice for simple CAD/ technical drawings.

    Keynote: A (much better than) PowerPoint replacement from Apple. I use this all the time. (When it came out originally, I paid $$ for it; I heard Apple is bundling it with iLife now?)

    Little Snitch: Keeps tabs on any stealth connections being made to/from your Mac, Shareware.

    Intuem: Nice MIDI app with a clean interface. (GarageBand, one of Apple's iLife apps, is great for Audio/MIDI as well, but I find it limiting for my purpose because it does not do MIDI-out to my keyboard/synth.)

    cheers- raga

  4. Re:What about GNUstep? by CRCulver · · Score: 2, Informative · on Apple and Independent Developers

    What is GNUStep -- a couple old NeXTHeads (god bless em) weekend project? How long has it been it '85% complete'? 7 years?

    Most GNUstep developers nowadays never had the opportunity to use a NeXT system. They're attracted by the ease of programming with the elegant Cocoa API, but don't have a Mac. And it's no weekend project. There's work going on in the IRC channel or on the mailing list 24 hours a day.

    There have also been changing definitions of "85% complete. At first it was implementing OpenStep. That's pretty much done now. Now the "85% complete" refers to implementing Cocoa extensions, which isn't really necessary for the point of the project. GNUstep can pretty fairly be called complete.

    How many applications run on it? Five?

    Another poster has already pointed out the many programs available. However, there are two reasons why it may seem there are few GNUstep applications available. The first is that GNUstep is often used by business for internal use. The second is that some developers put together an app just to fill their own needs. For example, I am the developer of Charmap, a Unicode character map built in OpenStep. I did it because I wanted a character map that gave abundant information but didn't have the bulk or the treat-uses-like-idiots philolosophy of gucharmap. Now, the app is useful, and in fact there's nothing like it on Mac OS X, so it is being ported and advertised in some circles. But I'm not in such a hurry because the project started as something to fill a personal need.

    There's something else that needs saying: all OpenStep apps are GNUstep apps. GNUstep implements the OpenStep standard, so right away there are tens if not hundreds of OpenStep codebases that will compile with minimum effort on systems with GNUstep installed.

    How many are actually complex and competitive with GTK/QT apps? Only the Mail.app AFAICT.

    I find GWorkspace hella competitive with file managers like Nautilus. It does everything I want from a file manager, but has low memory footprint and doesn't try to cram a browser in.

    Even Cocoa developers don't use it.

    Sure they do. The developer of Books, for example, has chosen GNUstep for the non-OS X version. Developers want greater exposure for their apps, but why lose the entire codebase moving to GTK2 or QT?

  5. Re:Would be great for P2P by TrentC · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Creative Commons Includes GPL And LGPL Metadata

    You can embed a link to a webpage with the license information into an MP3 or image file. A validator would check that the page exists, and that the licensing terms match. Verify is a Mac OS X application that does exactly this.

    While this doesn't prevent fraudulent sites ("Why yes, I am Paul McCartney and I am dedicating The White Album to the public domain"), a friendly e-mail to the webmaster (or at worst, DMCA takedown letter -- wow, using the DMCA for good?) removes the fraudulent page, and the license no longer validates.

    Jay (=