In the article, it mentioned 2 ways to access this tool. Actually, there is another very handy method to launch the app: Spotlight Search. Just press Cmd+space, then type FileMerge.
The article explains well about the app's usage. Read the article.
terminal. I further make it working in Spotlight as well. Here are my notes.
- #! /usr/bin/env python3
- import webbrowser, sys, pyperclip
- sys.argv # example ['mapit.py', '870', 'Valencia', 'St.']
- address = 'Home'
- if len(sys.argv) > 1 :
- address = ' '.join(sys.argv[1:]) # ['870', 'Valencia', 'St.']
- else :
- address = pyperclip.paste()
- # https://www.google.com/maps/place/<address>
- webbrowser.open('https://www.google.com/maps/place/' + address)
terminal or Spotlight. Still there are some other steps to be done in order to run the script directly from terminal or Spotlight.python3! Another minor change is the default address value: Home. I am using Mac and the Google map knows where my home is in my local Mac account.~/Programming/py/mapit.py With script ready, I test the script in terminal:
terminal, or from Spotlight, without specifying python3. For the case of terminal, first I have to make the script executable with the following commands:PATH so that I can simply type in mapit.py anywhere in command line. This is done by adding the path in ~/.bash_profile:terminal:
Spotlight on Mac is a very convenient way to launch an app, to open a file, and to find information. However, unlike Windows Run, it not the way to direcly launch an app with arguments. Even though I set my script mapit.py as executable, I cannot run it from Spotlight. It will only open the script in Xcode!Spotlight is to change the script to .command extension. Mac OS will recognize this type of file as a runnable command..py. In UNIX or Mac, I can create an alias file of script: hard link(only hard link works in Spotlight). Here is the command to set it up:Spotlight and type in mapit.command. It will pick up the address and open Google map in my default browser.Spotlight. This is the limitation of it, and I cannot find a way to do that.pyperclip package in my script.
Spotlight launches the command and opens the map in browser, it will leave the terminal in open status. I prefer to close the terminal automatically.
App Store Only
First, I tried to set up my Security to Mac App Store only. This is the most restrictive option. With this simple setting, I could not download any apps from browser.
Identified Developers
This is the recommended option for most users: Mac App Store and Identified Developers. This means you can download apps from web, but those apps have to have authorized developer IDs. According to Apple, an developers ID certificate can be obtained from none-Apple Agents, such as Google, Microsoft.
I set up this option in my Mac. Then I can download any apps from Web. Only apps with identified developer IDs can be opened. For example, I downloaded a free app NetNewsWire.app, which is an app signed with Apple Developer ID. After downloading, the following warning message is display for the first time to run it:
Based on the information from the past WWDC, there some seminars on Mac security issues. I noticed that Apple has learned lessons in this battle. In this battle, most security focuses have been mainly on defensive side. For example, wildly used anti-virus softwares are always one step behind malware. As a result, Windows treats apps from Internet as potential malware and prompt daunting warning messages to let user to make decision to accept them or not. Apple thinks that this would be a never-win-war.
In Mountain Lion OS, Apple introduced Gatekeeper concept. This is based on a very different concept. In stead of black-kist strategy, Apple implements white-list strategy. This is very analogous to security gate in reality. Security guard will allow any one to enter as long as they have proper id card. Alarm will be on if a faulty or unauthorized id is present. As a part of Gatekeeper strategy, Apple asks all the Mac application developers to apply for Apple developer's id. Apple recomments developers to sign their applications with their ids.
Hence Mountain Lion OS introduced a big change. In order to smooth the transition to this new security practice, the new Mac OS provides three convenient options for Mac users to install apps:
A lots of rumors are focused on new iPhone or new hardware devices. What I am actually interested in is the formal release date of iOS 6. I have been waiting XCODE update with iOS 6 support this Fall. I have watched WWDC 2012 videos about iOS 6. I really like the new features in iOS 6, both in Objective-C and new UI components. My next app will use some of those new features.
I'll update this blog after all the news will be released in tomorrow's Apple special event. This will determine how I'll be back working on my apps.
Today, September 12, 2012, Apple made a long list of announcements. iPhone 5 looks gorgeous. The most interesting news for me is the iOS 6 release date. It will be available in one week time, next Wednesday, September 19, 2012, before iPhone 5 release (on September 21, 2012). Not sure when the XCODE update will be available.
I am still watching today's Keynote speech, 1 hour 53 minutes. First time in almost 2 hours. I think my internet has some problems, or the Apple site streaming may have issues. I had several times frozen during AirPlay Mirroring. When I went back to my iMac, I still has similar issue. The reason I suspect internet provider issue is that my QQ app lost connections several times. Anyway, I am going to back to the speech.
Since Lion OS, Apple introduced the similar support in Mac OS. It is a very interesting design. Here is my understanding. The scrollbars (horizontal and vertical ones) are two UI components. When they are visible, they are UI elements with two main purpose:
Today is a sad day. Steve Jobs passes away, at his age 56. I wrote a blog in my Chinese blog to remember him.
It is too sad to hear the news. Personally, I feel that Apple and Steve Jobs do change my life. Not just only a computer or device like iMac or iPad or iPhone, Steve Jobs' life and his legacy have trenmendous impact on me for everything, in addition to my pursuing my software development knowledge and skills in Mac OS and iOS.
I am so fortunate to start my journey to use Apple product while Steve Jobs was alive (in year 2007). It has been an amazing experience. I just begin my new journey, and it will continue on.
Core Building Brick of Mac OS X and iOS
When Mac OS X Snow Leopard was released on August 8, 2009, I was amazed by its great offer: to give me back hard drive space, as I made a note in my mac blog. I got 11GB space back after I updated my OS X to Snow Leopard.
I was puzzled by this result. For sure, I guess that Apple must have done tremendous work to fine-tune its core OS engine in many ways such as rewriting its OS to optimize OS frameworks. WWDC10 reveals more information on how this was done. Apple has rewritten its compiler. The Snow Leopard was built on the new compiler LLVM, and iOS on its way from GCC to LLVM. With LLVM and Clang (compiler front end for C/C++ and Objective-C), Apple said that OS X was reduced in file size by 27%.
Compiler is the fundamental tool to convert source codes are converted into a binary language that a computer machine understands. Windows or Mac OS are built by compilers. No matter what languages we use, or whatever frameworks we have a in a language, eventually they will be compiled into machine language as packages. I think that Apple is right on the key point to restructure its compiler on assembly or machine codes. It is really hard work but all the effort has tremendous water ripple effect on Mac OS and Apple's future.
According to Apple's developer web site on What's New in XCode4, LLVM compiles codes twice quickly as GCC. The new compiler generates optimized machine codes tailored to today's modern chip architecture with a set of highly optimized libraries. As a result, the compiled applications run faster than GCC's as well.
That's why I call it as Mac OS' core building brick.
XCode4
Snow Leopard OS X has been in use for about one year. It has been approved as a solid and great OS. Now it is time for Apple to move on.
XCode 3 has been used as an IDE for developing Mac and iPhone applications. WWDC10 revealed a new beta XCode4 released for paid developers. Basically XCode4 is built based on LLVM and LLDB (as debuger). The compiler has a parser part to process source codes. XCode4 utilizes the parser to provide right and accurate information about source codes with the most advanced technology and architecture built in LLVM. As a result, XCode4 provides a much better development environment and tools for developers, than the current XCode3. For me, this is a great news. I just cannot wait for its release.
Other Foundations/Frameworks
WWDC10 reveals many other new foundations/frameworks for iOS. Most of those foundations/frameworks have been available in Mac OS since the Snow Leopard release. Those foundations/frameworks provide various ways to felicitate mobile application development, some of them with lower access to Apple's hardware, and some new ones are specially for iOS such as multitasking, iAd, GameKit, and more.
Many of new features in iOS are from Mac OS X or Snow Leopard. For example, blocks are very powerful feature in Mac OX and now available in iOS. It makes multitasking much easy to implement and many other foundations/frameworks with blocks are available as they are.
EventKit.framework provides interfaces to access calendar events on devices.
The Core Motion framework (CoreMotion.framework) provides a single set of interfaces for accessing all motion-based data available on a device. The framework supports accessing both raw and processed accelerometer data using a new set of block-based interfaces.
iAd. Framework provides simple interface APIs for developers to to deliver banner-based advertisements from their applications.
Graphics and Multimedia frameworks provides APIs in either Objective-C or C level APIs to access to graphics, video and audios devices.
GameKit provides multi-player capabilities to mobile game applications with peer to peer network connectivity, using a Bluetooth connection - no pairing required. In addition to that, it provides scores and achievement rewards to users.
iOS provides over 1500 new APIs and above are just a few of them. Refer to Apple web sites for more detail information such as What's New in iOS 4.0.
Now I have watched 9 classes, one day a class during week days and two classes one day last weekend. It is really good program. I started to learn iPhone programming last year. I got iPhone SDK 2.0. I went to Apple's Dejavascript:void(0)veloper web page on iPhone. During evenings, I have read all the SDK documents and tried to use XCode to study some example applications. All those laid great foundation for me. This makes much easy for me to understand Object-C and Cocoa. I think after completion of the course, I am ready to put my hands on iPhone applications. I am really exited about this new journey!
One thing that got my attention is the command line tool: curl. In my Mac terminal, I found this one is available. That's Unix world benefit. According to the manual information of curl(man curl):
curl is a tool to transfer data from or to server, using one of the supported protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SCP, SETP, TFTP, DICT, TELNET, LDAP, or FILE). The command is designed to work without user interaction.
curl -s -X GET http://heeds.beedburner.com/Macblogz?format=xml
While I was doing coding to learn Dojo, I reached one point that I needed PHP module enabled for my Mac Apache server. By default, it is not enabled.
I found information about enabling PHP for Apache Server. The steps are very simple, however, I did not have the right to edit the file httpd.config in /private/etc/apache2. The file is owned by root user. Soon, I found a way to edit the file: logging as root user, see my Mac blog entry.
After all these settings, I made my Dojo page working with php page. Basically, Dojo web page calls the server side php page to pass information back. It is very cool. This is also my first experience with PHP web page development. One lesson I learned is that for a php page, you have to indicate it by <?php and no space between ? and php.
I have have done my software development mainly in Windows Platform, some in Unix long time ago. I have got an iMac in March this year. Since then I spend a lot of my time using it at home. I really enjoy it. Recently I have installed XCode on my Mac and watched training videos about iPhone Application Development API kit.
It is very interesting to learn Objective-C and Cocoa framework even they are very different from .Net languages and framework. iMac computer is very easy to use and very stable. From what I have seen from Apple's training materials, the Objective-C and Cocoa are also very straight forward in syntax. Objective-C for Mac applications uses MVC pattern. That's the one I have seen on Microsoft's P&P team as well. I think there are a lots similarities between both.
I'll spend some time to learn Mac application development. Maybe I'll get more and more involved in Mac software development. Enjoy the new adventure!
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