MacOSX for Unix geeks?!?

[btoneill]

Q: What can NeoOffice do?

Launch. Let you draw some cubes. Let you open some OpenOffice.org or Word documents. And, with the flaming yeti build, print too. Then maybe crash and burn. Maybe not. It's a proof of concept...that doesn't mean it runs well


Q: Will NeoOffice be updated in the future?

NeoOffice will only be updated according to its purpose: prototyping technologies for use in OpenOffice.org. This doesn't mean a new binary every week; all work goes on in CVS. We may fix bugs, we may not. NeoOffice is not meant to be a quality office suite for general use. So...download the source code! Build it ! Check it out!

That sure sounds like a robust solution to me, it might even allow me to open and save an existing word doc without corrupting it! How sweet is that!!!


Brian

[stefmit]

Originally Posted by dktrickey

Developer tools:
I don't know what they're including with iBooks, but I thought that they were including XTools (the new name for the OS X developer tools) with the rest of the operating system. It's on its own disk. if you continue to have problems, you might want to use your 90 day free tech support and get them to find it for you.

I did not want to reply before double-triple checking the content of the
CD package I received with my iBook (as a Mac newbie, I was afraid I was
overlooking something) - and the answer is "no" - it was not among the
deliverables (I had 5 CDs of applications "restore", then another set for
the Mac OSX itself, one CD for the Worldbook 2003, and one for hardware
tests). BUT I did not mind, as I registered and downloaded the group of files making
Xtools, from the developer site (as I stated earlier). The problem is that
- when running the last file of that group (which seems to be the
equivalent of the unrar/unzip/uncompress recursively ... I think you guys
call this "unstuffing"?!?) in the downloaded set - the one that seems to
be actually the "head of the compressed pack" - I get an error about the
first file not found. I even "unstuffed"/uncompressed each individual file
downloaded (though I truly believe that this should be the result of a
recursive process, starting from the first), then ran each one of them, in
the hope that I was missing the concept here ... still to no avail.

I am thinking of taking next (I ran out of time last night) all the
manually uncompressed files, "cat" them into one, and see if that
runs/installs ... hacking like in the good old days of first Linux
kernelsIf you have other ideas, I would appreciate hearing about them.

... and a THANK YOU ALL to those who responded to my query so fast - my first
attempt at Mac, the first forum I stumbled across, the first posting, and
such an overwhelming response ... I'm [still] feeling lucky, as Google says

Stef

P.S. For one of the other responses - I was not confusing X11 and Mac's X - I
was just not sure if Mac's X was in fact a "flavor" of X11 - but it looks like it isn't
so I will have to go after XFree86's site, probably, and get a Mac version
from there ... nothing difficult, though - done that a million times on the Linux
side - thanks again for the clarifications. But for that to happen I would need gcc,
thus Xtools, thus ... see above

[cfleck]

apples X11 IS a flavor of the xfree86 product. in fact it is IMHO much better. it takes advantage of apple hardware, and as you will find out, apple does a darned good job of making their stuff work. if you are having problems getting your X11 apps running there are plenty of us here with experience so just ask.

but really, apples x11 is the ticket. i think you may have come across some bad info if you think otherwise.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/download/

[stefmit]

Originally Posted by cfleck

apples X11 IS a flavor of the xfree86 product. in fact it is IMHO much better. it takes advantage of apple hardware, and as you will find out, apple does a darned good job of making their stuff work. if you are having problems getting your X11 apps running there are plenty of us here with experience so just ask.

but really, apples x11 is the ticket. i think you may have come across some bad info if you think otherwise.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/download/

Thank you for the kind offer. I may have to take you up on this, as I really want to use as much "apple-made" as possible

But now I reached a dead end. Based on the error message I get, and on what I found on the 'net about it, things look "grey" ;( Just for the kick of it, I tried another dmg file from a friend of mine, and got the same problem (and this is so much Mac-related that I really have no clue on where to start debugging it). Here is the error:
"The following disk images failed to mount"
<file-name>.dmg error=536870208

and what I found about it:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...com%26rnum%3D1

Any ideas?!?

[stefmit]

Originally Posted by stefmit

Based on the error message I get, ...

Now I realized I may not have been clear enough: I meant "based on the error message I get when trying to install the XTools out of the downloaded files" ... "as well as when trying to install any other dmg file, for that matter"

Sorry for any confusion ...

[ex2bot]

Ouch. Sounds like that obscure bug I read about a few weeks ago with the newest Mac hardware.

I'll see if I can find the solution. . . Try searching Apple's support for "mount .dmg" or something. ** Go here --> http://www.info.apple.com/ **

Be sure to look at www.macosxhints.com, another excellent Mac site. I may get in trouble for recommending it (as a moderator), but I don't think it's really competition for MacOSX.com. I read both regularly.

Doug

EDIT: By the way, what version of Panther do you have? 10.3 or 10.3.1? You can find out by clicking on the Apple menu>About This Mac.

[stefmit]

Originally Posted by dktrickey

Ouch. Sounds like that obscure bug I read about a few weeks ago with the newest Mac hardware.

I'll see if I can find the solution. . . Try searching Apple's support for "mount .dmg" or something. ** Go here --> http://www.info.apple.com/ **

Be sure to look at www.macosxhints.com, another excellent Mac site. I may get in trouble for recommending it (as a moderator), but I don't think it's really competition for MacOSX.com. I read both regularly.

Doug

EDIT: By the way, what version of Panther do you have? 10.3 or 10.3.1? You can find out by clicking on the Apple menu>About This Mac.

Thank you for following up on this I have 10.3.1, with whatever recent updates applied.

I have good news: I figured out the problem! No .dmg file would install if using either the "normal" process, or by double-clicking the files from the desktop ... but poking around the finder, I have found an installer "folder'?!?, where some files show up with icons similar with the RPM ones (for lack of a better description). When running the appropriate files from inside that "installer" folder, I got everything working.

Thanks again to all - now I have XTools, fink and finkcomannder installed, and I am doing an X11 installation with the latter, as I am writing this.

Stef

[ex2bot]

stefmit,

Glad you found a solution. I'd urge you to use Apple's version of X11 instead of the one available through Fink (unless they're pointing to Apple's X11).

Apple's has Open GL acceleration, integration with Aqua, etc. It's FASTER! Go to -> http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/download/ (thanks to cfleck).

Doug