Notes

DEBEMAIL and DEBFULLNAME

Note to self: Set the DEBEMAIL and DEBFULLNAME environment variables when building or rebuilding custom/personal Debian .deb packages. Like so for (ba)sh:

export DEBEMAIL="my@emailaddress.com"
export DEBFULLNAME="Full Name"

Terminal.app font in Snow Leopard

Before upgrading to Snow Leopard I used Deja Vu Sans Mono (a variant of Bitstream Vera Sans Mono) as my Terminal font. I now prefer Menlo, Apple's own variant of Vera Sans Mono, which ships with Mac OS X 10.6. I use 12 pt. Menlo in Terminal and when programming and editing code. A comparison of Menlo and Deja Vu Sans Mono is below (via Jesse Burgheimer on Typophile).

See also: Terminal.app colors in Snow Leopard

Build a binary .deb package without signing

Building a Debian (or Ubuntu) .deb package for your own use and want to skip signing, etc.? Quoth the debuild(1) man page:

The typical command line options to build only the binary package(s) without signing the .changes file (or the non-existent .dsc file):

debuild -i -us -uc -b

Change the "-b" to "-S" to build only a source package.

Terminal.app colors in Snow Leopard

I’ve had the new version of Mac OS X — 10.6 aka Snow Leopard —  installed for a while, but I’ve only just gotten around to tweaking the configuration of Terminal.app.

Previously: Backspace/Delete/Color in the Terminal from June 2008 covers the process I went through to configure Terminal.app for Mac OS X Leopard (10.5).

Background: Fixing colors in Terminal.app on 10.6 contains all the relevant information on getting SIMBL and TerminalColors installed for Terminal.app, but only if you read the entire post and the entire comment thread which tracks the various updates to SIMBL itself and the 32-bit/64-bit enabled versions of the relevant applications and bundles.

Solution: SIMBL now works on Snow Leopard with both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. The Visor bundle (“a system-wide terminal accessible via a hot-key” which started its life at blacktree.com) now contains both TerminalColors and CopyOnSelect and is under active development. And it's handy to have a shell quickly accessible when I need one.

• Download SIMBL (the latest 0.9.x version) and run the package installer.
• mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/SIMBL/Plugins
• Download Visor. Unzip Visor.
• mv Visor.bundle ~/Library/Application\ Support/SIMBL/Plugins
• Quit Terminal. Launch Terminal.
• Choose Terminal > Preferences. Click Visor. Deselect the checkbox labeled Show on Reopen. This will stop the system-wide terminal from being displayed when Terminal is brought into the foreground.

I still use this terminal theme as a starting point for my own custom color scheme.

If you just want to tweak colors sans Visor, try the version of TerminalColours timmfin released. (The download link is in the README on that page.) It includes Snow Leopard fixes, 32-bit and 64-bit support, and works with SIMBL 0.9.x.

Another option is Yoshimasa Niwa's TerminalColoreopard. The 0.2.5 beta works with Snow Leopard, 64-bit, and SIMBL 0.9.x.

Apple Publications Style Guide 2008

“The Apple Publications Style Guide provides editorial guidelines for text in Apple instructional publications, technical documentation, reference information, training programs, and the software user interface.”

Via the Mac OS X Reference Library.