HeitiTC Episode #2

First of all, I am not an expert on glyphs, my observation mostly comes from my aesthetic feeling which I am still proud of. I did have good calligraphy training in my childhood, hence the aesthetic eyes are still there. Secondly, this continuous collections of how people think about new default TC font in Mac OS X 10.6 doesn't represent my opinion on the new font. Finally let's check the services from National Languages Committee, Ministry of Education, R.O.C (Taiwan): ❶ Dictionary of Chinese character variants. ❷ Learning program for stroke order of frequently used Chinese characters. Then come with the comment collections:

aquaron

究竟「俞」字頭是「人」還是「入」？另外，台灣教育部選字是否毫無爭議？

(From mjhsieh: this might be slightly political unless there is more academic references backing other than 康熙 dictionary. Or this argument is simply bashing Taiwan's previous effort to consolidating TC...)

Evadne Wu

Snow Leopard comes with Heiti TC (“STHeiti TC”, “Hei TC”), a traditional Chinese typeface that replaced LiHei Pro. It has a number of errors, inconsistencies and imbalances, voiding professional use.iPhone OS 3.× also comes with this erroneous typeface.We ask Apple to rework the typeface so that it adheres to the high standards that Apple represents.

TenThousandThings

There are two unrelated problems here. The first is that the choices are not consistent. If you're going to use 靑 for 青 as a component then you have to use it consistently throughout the font, which is not done and absolutely wrong. The second problem is actually rather interesting -- using 靑 is not wrong, it is instead dated. For example, the influential Far East C-E dictionary, originally compiled by Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋 (1903-1987) uses it throughout. In the more recent editions of the dictionary that give both simplified and traditional forms, 靑 is used for traditional forms while 青 is used for simplified.

Meow Wang

這樣看來，黑體-繁真的是個好字體，不僅清晰、一致，也與一般老百姓在馬路上看到的路牌差不多。如此親和的字型，有何理由反對呢？

(From mjhsieh: Street sign is probably not a good "standard", but if Taiwan doesn't have any consistency of typeface in people's life like she wrote, her opinion would be valid.)

Bear with me, the next time I should be able to collect enough data to draw my own conclusion.

Ps. I am avoiding further comments from simplified Chinese users, this kind of discussion is more like commenting on the other group of people, not the product they use.

A non-scientific survey on Snow Leopard's default traditional Chinese font: Aesthetically speaking

Here are some responses I got from the Internet that might be related to the aesthetics of this Heiti TC font. This collection is in chronicle order of me visiting the web for this issue.

@ingramchen

Snow Leopard 中文字型超醜，在一個以設計師為導向的平台發生這種事，無論 Apple 本身或用戶，都出了毛病。

kourge

不過注音輸入法還是一樣爛，而且預設字體反而換成更醜更不標準的字。

Izero

雪豹的新預設字體真的很醜，請抓zonble大大的TCFail改回原本10.5的字體。

zonble

字體本身也不清晰，讀起來非常吃力，而且字體中有許多字根本不是標準或是在台灣習慣的寫法，可能是來自日文漢字的寫法，或根本就是錯字。同一個部首的許多字，也往往沒有依照一套固定的造字規則

Vista

雪豹的中文果然很醜，只好趕緊請出TCFail來改造，這算美中不足之處吧，希望蘋果公司可以聽到我們的心聲…

Zooka

I have to say it honestly: the new font of Traditional Chinese sucks! It's really ugly!

lococo36

10.6 的中文字體很醜的這個問題，在很多討論區已經快要討論到爆掉，很多人都想要一人一信請願！蘋果不要亂用字體！是真的很醜，也很難看！

阿傑

不過，它有個很明顯的缺點，就是有很多筆畫是不統一的。例如它的「言」字旁最上方一筆幾乎都作橫畫，和傳統宋體相同，但「言」字單獨用時卻作斜點。它也遵照傳統印刷體設計原則，將「亠」、「宀」的一點作豎點，但是「交」、「亡」兩字卻是斜點（「亡」字左下方的直角轉折也不盡正確）。其他這類的問題不勝枚舉。...

銀牙烈虎

只能說我們這邊缺乏主導蘋果系統正體中文字型的權力，即使一人一信連署都沒什麼大用，蘋果官方頂多只是調整了標點符號的基線位置（而且沒調得很好）而已。

Maxdolphin

本來在網路上覺得字型感覺不出有多醜, 安裝後才發現真的醜到不行

toywoof

但都有唔好處，就係發覺d中文字好似無咁靚，無以前咁黑，特別係用msn／qq d中文字醜樣左！

mingfai

昨日snow leopard 已經送到家，只是一片upgrade CD，連盒也沒有。昨晚沒有甚麼時間試，最大的不同就中文字核突了許多，之後用之前看過網上教的方法而改字體。

winandmac

升級至Snow Leopard後，最令人困擾的是其中文字變得相當核突。字體變幼了，看得相當辛苦，部份中文字寫法又與正常中文字不同，網上有不少中文用家都表示感到很困擾。過往在Leopard用的粗體字，不明白為何升級後來了一個大倒退。

jameshsi

台灣的許多朋友都說改到雪豹之後字型變了，變得很難看，我昨天升級 Mac Mini 之後並無感覺 現在升級小白之後，才發現。

zhusee2

Heiti 的問題出在哪裡呢？看一下上面的比較圖就知道。最左邊的是 Lucida Grande，英文的預設字體；中間是 Heiti TC；右邊是 LiHei Pro。我覺得最明顯的問題就在 Heiti TC 太細了。Heiti TC 下面有細體跟中黑體，可是兩者粗細根本只差一點點，說真的很難看出來。

i553041

將Snow Leopard要命的預設字型換返Leopard的儷黑 Pro! 10.6 樣樣都好，就係繁中字型好得人驚，網上有軟體可以將Snow Leopard的繁中字型換返做Leopard的儷黑 Pro

Chainsaw

此外， Snow Leopard 的預設繁體中文字型由 LiHei Pro 轉為 Heiti TC 。此 Heiti TC 有人認為非常核突，也有人指出，這個字型與 Windows 的細明體一樣，是字型不協調的。例如「青」字，下方是個月字。但「請」字，月字卻轉成円字。有忿怒的網民編寫軟件 TCFail ，將 Snow Leopard 的預設字型轉回 LiHei Pro ，更呼籲用戶向蘋果投訴。

rondoyoyo

雖然安裝順利，使用順暢，可是它預設的字型真的是慘不忍「睹」

If you need more list, please comment to request.

Package things in Leopard? Meh.

Right now there are at least two type of official package registering method in Mac OS X Leopard. The old style of package registering involves a bundled directory with literally no good way to manage it. The new style of package registry is a sqlite3 database, which is potentially a nice one. However according to the manual of pkgutil:

     --forget package-id
                 Discard all receipt data about package-id, but do not touch
                 the installed files.  DO NOT use this command from an
                 installer package script to fix broken package design.

SO YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO FIX WHAT APPLE SHOULD HAVE DONE ALREADY.

Alright, I can still do a query tool, right?

Here it is.

Notes:

1. BASH is not enough. Perl and PerlObjCBridge were use read plist data.
2. It seems to be not allowed to read the database file without administration privilege, and the framework seems to be private.
3. If you know how to get the installation time from the old fashion Archive.bom/Info.plist combination, please comment. I'd love to add that into the tool.

How to f*ck your CJK input in Terminal.app.

prerequisite

You being able to type CJK in the shell window under Terminal.app.

1. Launch Terminal.app
2. Create a bash script file, say test.bash, with this content:

   #!/bin/bash
     while true 
     do 
       tput sc
       tput cup 0 60
       echo -en `date +"%H:%M:%S %F"`
       tput rc
       sleep 1
     done

3. Launch the script in the background:

   $ bash test.bash&

4. Type-in some candidate CJK words without committing it into the shell buffer.
5. Now you see your candidate buffer disappearing and showing somewhere you didn't expect.

Later I will put some screenshots to illustrate the problem.

---

Analysis

This happens when programs issue screen location instructions, and this causes an event that having the input methods dropping the input buffer all together. Different behaviors are observed on Mac OS X 10.4's Terminal.app, the location of the input buffer still shows up in the wrong place, but the buffer did not disappear!

note: useful applescript closing microsoft word

$ osascript -e 'tell application "Microsoft Word" to close documents saving yes'

Why is it so slow?

ppc 10.5.6, 12/15... (faster?)

Finished verify/repair permissions on disk disk0s3 Macintosh HD
real      6559.69
user      1548.44
sys         69.40

ppc 10.5.4, 6/30... (much slower)

2008-06-30 14:50:52 -0700: Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
2008-06-30 14:50:53 -0700:  Reading permissions database.
2008-06-30 14:50:53 -0700:  Reading the permissions database can take several minutes.
2008-06-30 15:40:49 -0700: Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r----- .
2008-06-30 17:03:00 -0700: Group differs on "private/etc/cups", should be 0, group is 26.
2008-06-30 17:05:31 -0700: Permissions repair complete
2008-06-30 17:05:31 -0700: 

ppc 10.5.3, 6/17.... (slower than previous ones!)

2008-06-17 12:05:06 -0700: Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
2008-06-17 12:05:07 -0700:  Reading permissions database.
2008-06-17 12:05:07 -0700:  Reading the permissions database can take several minutes.
2008-06-17 13:09:21 -0700: Permissions repair complete

ppc 10.5.3, 5/31/08, 12:50 PM (New one is even slower.)

2008-05-31 10:05:44 -0700: Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
2008-05-31 10:05:45 -0700:  Reading permissions database.
2008-05-31 10:05:45 -0700:  Reading the permissions database can take several minutes.
2008-05-31 10:26:53 -0700: Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r----- .
2008-05-31 11:05:40 -0700: Group differs on "private/etc/cups", should be 0, group is 26.
2008-05-31 11:05:47 -0700: ACL found but not expected on "Applications".
2008-05-31 11:05:47 -0700: ACL found but not expected on "Library".
2008-05-31 11:05:56 -0700: Permissions repair complete

ppc 10.5.2, 2/15/08, 5:14 PM

2008-02-15 16:23:14 -0800: Disk Utility started.
2008-02-15 16:23:23 -0800: Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
2008-02-15 16:40:00 -0800: Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r----- .
2008-02-15 17:12:49 -0800: ACL found but not expected on "Library".
2008-02-15 17:12:52 -0800: Permissions differ on "usr/X11/bin/Xfake", should be -rwxr-xr-x , they are -rwxrwxr-x .
2008-02-15 17:13:33 -0800: Permissions repair complete
2008-02-15 17:13:33 -0800:

在 Mac OS X 10.4 使用 Dort SSH 連接上 PTT bbs

Hi, this is mjhsieh, I am a self-appointed evangelist for Macblue Telnet project. I am also responsible the building and packaging this project's terminal emulation products Dort (a Mac OS X 10.4 version of Nally).
Nally has been the most robust terminal emulator client on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard connecting almost every terminal based internet BBS in Taiwan, or in China. The counter part of Nally on Mac OS X 10.4, Dort, though similar in many aspects, is lacking a very important feature, SSH (Secure SHell) connection. On Dec 3, 2008, we are proudly announce a very important maintenance version (version 1.1) of Dort, with SSH!

You can either go to MacblueTelnet's sourceforge page to download, or just click this. After you downloaded the file to the Desktop (the normal storing place for downloaded files), you can then double click the DMG file to open and attach the DMG storage as a removable disk drive.

Now drag the dragon ball icon of Dort program to drop and copy to any writable folding in your Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger system. Normally we put it in the Applications folder of the startup disk. Then it's safe to un-attach the virtual removable disk drive, and thus trash the dmg file.
Following are the steps on how to use the new SSH feature to connect a popular internet terminal bbs in Taiwan, PTT. First double click the Dort icon you just copied to your Applications folder to fire up the program.

Click through the location form field on the right of the plus sign icon and type-in "ssh://bbs@ptt.cc" . Hit enter/return key to submit this input.

The connection would be initiated and start to display ptt's welcome/login screen.

Of course you can click the plus sign icon to save this connection as a bookmark, the next time you want to connect to PTT, you just click the opened-book icon to select the bookmark.
That's it Folks!

Completing Nally's Terminal Emulation

This is linux's top running with Nally's terminal emulation display. So far only top/vim/man are really tested.

Tiger's bonjour, tcp wrapper, ipv6 oh mine.

After the port 22 of my iMac got flooding of connection attempts (inside a private network, but redirecting all incoming traffic to the router to this machine..), I decided to use tcpwrapper for sshd on my leopard laptop. It's easy, just add this to /etc/hosts.deny

sshd : ALL EXCEPT LOCAL

and add this to /etc/hosts.allow

sshd : 10.0.1.0/255.255.255.0

Unfortunately I didn't know there is a catch: my tiger machine cannot connect through SSH to my leopard laptop. I wasn't sure what's going on at first. This problem bothered me before and I gave it up. This time I launched the console program and started to read the error message.

11/17/08  11/17, 5:23:44 PM sshd[3041] warning: /etc/hosts.allow, line 1: host name/address mismatch: fe80::205:xxxx:fed0:xxxx != powerbook.local
11/17/08  11/17, 5:23:44 PM sshd[3041] refused connect from fe80::205:xxxx:fed0:xxxx

The laptop is saying that the hostname of the 10.4 machine does not match with a ipv6 style IP address. Okay, now I know what to do. I can just use ssh -4 to specify ipv4 connection and the problem is solved. I don't want to know why 10.4 machine is using ipv6 as primary ip for bonjour due to my laziness. At least I don't see that problem on leopard. Now I can do this without remembering my ip inside the AirPort network

rsync -e 'ssh -4 -x' -avx --delete --exclude '*.spotlightIndex' ~/Documents/Papers/ powerbook.local:Documents/Papers/

Pacman Sticker

And Speck clear MacBook cover
And ... a ZIP drive? Really? (2 MacPower external HDs)
Also Russian President uses Mac, too.

Printing Shipping Labels on USPS Website with Safari

--> EPIC FAIL

Analysis: for some reason, the printing function of safari is having trouble sending data to the printer, probably in very slow speed. The reason that I say it might be slow is that I actually got the first page of the labels after I cancelled the job and waited for a while. It might also be a problem processing later pages (#2 and 3).
Solution: Use firefox.

cricket graph

I miss cricket graph. Can anyone find any source code of this software?

Fractional Audio Volume Control

via http://thegraphicmac.com/fine-tune-your-volume-adjustments-osx.

dscacheutil -flushcache

dscacheutil -flushcache

This leopard command help you to reset corrupted DNS record that Safari refuses to forget.

lookupd -flushcache

Its equivalent command in tiger.

Carbon Emacs on Mac OS X 10.5 Easter Egg

/usr/bin/emacs was compiled with carbon support enabled:
Download EmacsDotAppBundle.tar.bz2 (25k)

Yes, zonble did it! Coverflow online album...

粽伯你好樣的。

00:22 <@fxxxxh> 為了看diggirl，大家都買mac

Shell Script in An OSX Bundle And More

Dr. Ping Yeh brought up a question about how to put a shell script in the Dock of Mac OS X. My original thought about this question is to solve it with a shell script with a file extension/type *.command and it can be run by double clicking it. Open the *.command files and the Terminal.app will launch the shell to run it. But the problem becomes the limitation of the left side of the Dock, a item has to be an "application" to sit in the left side of the Dock. (At the time we didn't work it thoroughly and forgot the right side the Dock... The thing is, you can just put the *.command file in the right side of the separator and click to launch it.)

Just put it in the right side of the Dock.

You have to wrap your shell script into an application if you want it to stay in the left side of the Dock. Luckily we can follow the procedure in this document by Artem Fishman (via google search).
Basically the bundle structure looks like this:

MyBundle.app
MyBundle.app/Contents
MyBundle.app/Contents/Info.plist
MyBundle.app/Contents/MacOS
MyBundle.app/Contents/MacOS/MyBundle
MyBundle.app/Contents/MacOS/startup.command
MyBundle.app/Contents/Resources
MyBundle.app/Contents/Resources/MyIcons.icns

(The name "MyIcons" is defined in Info.plist file.)

MyBundle.app in my Dock.

However that document only helps you run the script silently. It's not enough if you want to be able to read the output of the shell script or even interact with the shell script. A better way to do it is just simply writing your main script in a command file inside the bundle and "open" the command like this:

#!/bin/sh
#File:  MyBundle.app/Contents/MacOS/MyBundle
mypath=`dirname "$0"`
open $mypath/starup.command

With this command file:

#!/bin/sh
#File:  MyBundle.app/Contents/MacOS/startup.command
echo "this is a test"
/bin/sleep 5

This will give a terminal window with the output of "this is a test" and 5 seconds delay. Now you have a working application that can be put on the dock and also give you an opportunity to read the output!

After the command is completed, the terminal leaves a dummy window.

VMD in action, you can see there is a console window utilizing Terminal.app.

Unfortunately this new application doesn't close the terminal window automatically. You got a "Completed Command" window after the application finished and it requires you to close it manually. This had been my major quest since the first time I knew about the *.command files. I always want to improve a program called VMD, a program that shells-out a console window but leaves that window half dead after finished all the task. This time I decided to finish this quest. I started with closing the window in the front or idle window with Applescript but the side-effects are bad --- either logically bad or bugs on Terminal.app . Later I have to abandon the idea of using "open" command asking Terminal.app to open the script.

Yay! Eventually I did it.

#!/bin/sh
#File:  MyBundle.app/Contents/MacOS/MyBundle
mypath=`dirname "$0"`
osascript << EOT
tell application "System Events" to set terminalOn to (exists process "Terminal")
tell application "Terminal"
   if (terminalOn) then
        activate
        do script "\"$mypath/startup.command\"; exit"
   else
        do script "\"$mypath/startup.command\"; exit" in front window
   end if
end tell
EOT
exit 0

Time to fix the VMD.

(Update: This demo bundle is now available for download.)
(Update: It turns out that if you already have Terminal.app running, clicking the command files on right side of the dock might not be working.)
(Update: In order to make the trick work, you still need to set your terminal.app's shell preference to "close only if the shell exited cleanly".)
(Update: For processing arguments and drop actions, use the DropScript by Wilfredo Sánchez, updated source can be found through SVN repository. Also checkout his introduction.)
(Update: Some shell scripts are suitable for contextual menu items. Check the website out.)

Porting ASTROLOG to Mac OS X.

The other days I was trying to port ASTROLOG to Mac OS X, the only official option for Mac OS X is thru X11 display. However you still need to modify the Makefile to make it work.

Before you port/compile the program by yourselves, you might want to try "Baby Astrolog"

If recompiling and X11 is what you want (since X11 version does have more functions). Try to use my patch to the Makefile. This patch is based on the UNIX source v5.4 of ASTROLOG:

The patch.

Also check momizi's astrolog story

McKAY: Probably should have used a Mac.

McKAY: Unfortunately the computer froze. It was completely locked up. Probably should have used a Mac.
The Ark/Atlantis 3x16

Fwd: 如果台灣也有 iTunes Store...

by zhusee2 at flickr

This is just awesome, what a nice mock-up!
Via the #osxchat channel @freenode: