Transparency control for terminal in Tinker lost
 

I lost the transparency control in Tinker, even though I did a reinstall. At first Tinker wouldn't launch, so I decided to install/update. I couldn't drag the icon to the trash to delete either, so the reinstallation rewrote. The console gives zero info.

You can change the transparancy in the terminal preferences in Jaguar.

Actually, you set transparancy in Window Settings... not Preferences... in Terminal.

:)

W H E R E ??????

I cannot find a way!!!! How?

Open Terminal, go to Window Settings in the Terminal menu, select Color from the drop-down list. Transparency is near the bottom. Make sure you click Use Settings as Default so it works in future sessions.

Cheers!

What do you mean "In Terminal Menu"???????
NoWhere is that availble to me!! What do you mean "Open Terminal"?????? It's No WHERE!

Look, I can open the terminal. I use it often, in fact. I can open "preferences". I can open anything but what is necessary! What the &^%$ are you talkin' about.... """terminal menu""""....?????

beep beep. back up the truck. i knew this thread was going to be a support nightmare from Glanz first post.

Glanz: tinker? transparency control? reinstall? install/update? reinstallation?

console gives zero info, but that's more than you provide.

your request has us all confused. so back and and fill in the gaps of what you are talking about. start with your OS version. then give us some clues about the questions above so we don't have to assume so much. how about it, huh? be a good support victim and help us help you.

Ok that's it !!! Thank you very much!!! That is it!. I was totally unaware of the terminal menu.... totally!!!! I am used to doing things from the cli and I had no idea that that OS X facilitated the task to THAT level.

Perfect!!!!

I don't know how to thank you! I have been in Linux toooooo long! I was looking for the "hard way"......

WHET THE *ELL IS A TERMINAL MENU???? THAT EXISTS Nowhere elsewhere, but in mac, thank god.

Yet, the original question was why the Tinker Tool app didn't, and does not work. All is O K. Updates and all for OS X.2. Tinker updated too! And.....???

The reason I ask is that I expected more from an OS for which I paid $220 Canadian.

PS: I had less trouble with Linux/BSD.

What, precisely, DID you expect? An OS that would make it easy for you to change an application's settings without even the slightest exploration of its menus? An OS that would read your mind? An OS that makes sure that every single third party application you want to run works perfectly?

You compare OS X to Linux--perhaps you should just use Linux?

Good luck.

David

This looks like flame territory
 

Beware fights over Linux and MacOSX. Bad juju.

:)

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/ma...21/switch.html

::gets up off the floor from laughing::

Sorry, but merv just got me with his comments. Funny stuff. Good job, Merv. :D

No I did not expect that. I did not expect to be pleasantly surprised at the presence of such a beast as "terminal preference window". I see that it is necessary for types like you though! So it is a good thing. Otherwise, you'd still be on your one-piece mac, with 100MB of total memory, that is, if you upgraded.

If you must, here's how to do it from the command line:

% defaults write com.apple.Terminal -float <n>

where <n> is a floating point number between 0.0 (completely transparent) and 1.0 (completely opaque), eg:

% defaults write com.apple.Terminal -float 0.5

makes the terminal window 50% opaque (or 50% transparent, depending on your viewpoint)

NOTE: This change will *not* take effect until you open a new terminal window, and will be in effect until you change it again, either via the menu or the command line.

Cheers!

Now that's something I can understand. I don't know how to thank you for pointing the path.

I am not a nasty guy. I am not used to facility!

yet, I am nasty too!!!!

Clearly, then, you are fairly new to the Macintosh platform. Welcome and good luck.

Not necessary, just nice to have. If you were expecting to accomplish everything on the command line in Mac OS X, without any exploration of the GUI, you might be disappointed, and this might not be the system for you. By the way, if you are so intent on using the command line, why did your original question relate to TinkerTool, a GUI utility?

I'm not sure I understand your point, but I've never owned a one-piece system.

David

david, thank you for being such a gracious member. i was hoping that this combat didn't escalate.

Glanz does seems new to this arena. okay, then.

Glanz, you have your homework cut out for you. if you post better, supportable, thorough questions, perhaps we can help better and avoid this death-spiral syndrome.

Glanz, whenever you're vexed by an app, explore the menu items. prefs are usually under the app name menu in OSX, tho sometimes under the edit menu, a holdover from pre-OSX. then, with M$ apps, all bets are off. they make up the rules as they go along.

let's keep it civil.

regards,

-mt

OK
 

....I'll be more gentle when dealing with yuppy users such as yourself.

I too wondered why, when TinkerTool went disabled on this, the original poster didn't look for a menu alternative from within Terminal, but wasn't going to say anything. "Blessed are the cheesemakers," as a great man once said. Or maybe not.

A few general points on "getting under the hood" with Mac Apps:

/Library/Preferences

is the folder (er, directory) where system-wide plists (property lists for those of you not firing on all cylinders) reside, and

~/Library/Preferences

is the folder (oops, did it again) where user/application plists reside.

These are 7-bit ASCII XML files and can be edited with any text editor such as TextEditor (free), BBEdit (commercial, but worth it) and my fave Property List Editor (free with the Developer's Tools, it also makes a great general-purpose XML editor (try it on iTunes libraries, but be prepared to wait and wait if they're big libraries. Try it on ice cream, too. Register and download it today!)

Of course, you may do it from the cli too:

% defaults domains will show you the plists available

% defaults read <domain> (piping more probably wise) the properties for a given app, e.g.:

% defaults read com.apple.Terminal

dumps the properties for ProcessViewer. (ha ha, not really. just wanted to see if you were paying attention.)

Note: do not append .plist to the "domain" especially if you're planning on writing something back. You'll just end up going into the preferences folder and deleting (for instance) com.apple.Terminal.plist.plist and starting over again.

% defaults help explains the syntax (helpful for writing things back) and is more concise than "% man defaults"

Armed with this, it is now possible to do incomprehensible amounts of damage to your system, but that's how so many of these neat hacks get discovered. In general you won't screw too much up, but it's not wise to muck about in the system settings if the meaning of the pref isn't clear. As implied by my previous post, most applications' settings changed from outside the application won't take effect until the application is restarted, or sometimes (as is the case with Terminal) a new window is opened.

As for me, we (my family) did own one of the original 1-piece Macs, with its 9" monochrome (not grayscale, monochrome - a pixel was either off or on, hence the genesis of the Chicago font) screen and no hard drive. It got damaged in a move and was tossed (can you say tragedy? these are museum pieces now). The upgrade was to 128K, not 100, BTW. Were those the days, or what?

"Or what" would be the correct answer. I will end this before I drift too much further off topic. Enjoy, play around. Have a backup handy!

...todd

Errrr
 

...yuppy users, young, urban and professional. That's me (not too young), thanks for clarifying that.

By the way, I've posted stuff about problems I've had and a google search or apple help search later and it was resolved without anybody giving direct advice. So, the motto is, post first, search some more and if you're lucky you will not need help. Works for me!! :D

...todd

Thanks for the good info! I am a Darwin user and have been using Free BSD since the early 80's. My first install was from a tape drive. *phew* I hope everyone excuses me for not understanding the facility that OS X truly presents to the unsuspecting oldfartgeek. I am continually surprised at the innovation of this OS. I simply find it hard to believe that Apple actually made BSD user friendly. I need this OS. It is a breath of fresh air for me after all those years on FreeBSD.

Now you may find this odd, but I find OS X difficult because of its alarming simplicity of use. I have been mentally trained to always seek the hard way out of problems and glitches.

After a few communications with Sao, for example, I can only say I am impressed with the competence of the posters here. I wish I knew all that you guys forgot about OS X.

Re: Errrr
 

:);) That's me too....... !!!! I'm into Genome research. [thus the necessity of BSD and OS X] I live in a gentrified neighborhood of Montreal. Amazing what can happen to an old hippy! At least Jobs still wears jeans. No one can accuse him of being a "suit".... hehehe

Errrrr + Correction
 

I am more of an OFUPY [oldfarturbanpro].

I know where you're coming from on this. I started on UNIX system (cli, amber screen) and also tend to look for the more difficult solution first, especially when it comes to Mac development. I sit here with a Linux server, a PowerMac and a Windows XP box. Each has its advantages, and the things it does best. The Linux box for instance, is the Oracle server, but now that the big 'O' is porting their DB to Mac (YAY!!!) we will migrate Oracle to an XServe machine.

The Mac by far represents the most flexible architecture. BSD, OS X, and via Virtual PC even Window$. The Darwin open source project is phenomenal, with Fink etc. perfectly happy on PowerPC. Plus it's hard to look at either Windows or Linux (though Redhat has made great strides in UI with 7.x) after using OS X.

The Windows box sits here because we sadly still have a lot of ASP crap (can I say "crap" in the forums?) that is being ported to JSP as time & money permit. Also, Media Jukebox is by far the best MP3 ripper, player available. Its library search capabilities shame everything else out there. (www.musicex.com/mediajukebox)

I am daily amazed by the amount of new material at MacOSXHints, a lot of it coming from hardcore Unix people. For instance, the recent information on how to make attached hard drives available to Windows via Samba was invaluable. No GUI there, just good old-fashioned cli.

I will grant you, a lot of the OSX GUI smacks of a certain New-Agey-ness. In fact, the whole Apple image smacks of it. But they do like to remind people that underneath it all is Unix, and that has attracted a whole different breed to the Mac, people like me who want the best of all worlds, and believe that Apple comes closer than anything else. Maybe Apple could increase their market share if they found some blond twit to jump around and promote their products? Maybe if they just dropped their prices a little bit...

Cheers!
...todd

Hmm, does that help much in your work? Do you frequently overlook the easy answer? Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

...todd
 

Well, for me that NewAgyNess works too. It's a break from the CLI routine... Like I said, I really needed this OS to get out of the continuous configuration wheel that most Linux users experience daily. I have work to do, and not OS development. The BSD, and especially OS X is superb for the research in which I am involved. Originally educated as an MD, I became a mathematician, then a Genome data base manager....... Now we're into proteins. Windows simply can't handle the data crunching required for the task, but OS X [and BSD, of course] can. And.... and the security factor is extremely important. I write IP-Tables daily.

Not meaning to put words in Glanz's mouth, but I would guess that what he means is that by today's standards, what once was the only way to do things (endless typing of cryptic, almost mystic commands at the terminal) now seems incomprehensibly difficult.

Two observations:

1. In many cases, the "hard way" still works, which is a good thing; and
2. In a lot of cases, typing is still the only way, to whit: my earlier comment regarding using Samba to mount additional drives.

But in regard to the actual subject of this thread, using the GUI to set transparency is probably the best solution, simply because it allows you to monitor your transparency in realtime and sets the current window. Using the command line is an alternative and has the advantage of being shell scriptable, if that should be your desire.

=t=

Re: ...todd
 

what a coincidence. I too manage the data aspects of a genome/protein project for a large med. company in RTP (no more details can be provided at this point). The Florida-based MD who controls a lot of the grant money is a Mac fanatic. To me, he's at least as annoying as the Mac detractors. He's also old-school Mac and prefers the way things were done in OS 9 and prior. Hates the Dock (not that I love it - I use LaunchBar www.obdev.at for opening apps but the Dock is useful for already-open apps. speaking of the Dock, has it been mentioned that a similar construct appeared in the short-lived OS/2-Warp from IBM some years ago? In fact, the object-oriented nature of OS X is quite similar to Warp, without being nearly so ugly), and OS X doesn't run so good on some of his older hardware.

Time to get back to "work"!

=t=

=t=
 

I have had my fill of fanatics too..... but they are easy to handle via BOFH techniques. LOL

Hang in there! This here OS will rule!

Meanwhile, I am on a break! Too much math in too little time! My brain is on hold.

Thank you for communicating with me on this!

Feel free to write any time via e-mail if it is possible to do so on these forums. I don't really know and I hesitate to post a professional e-mail address anywhere.

You can say it, just don't do it. :D

Crap
 

Crap

Ha ha .. how about, can I say ..., well nevermind.