Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X (no actual ABC content)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 18:10:51 +0100 Once again, apologies for replying to a thread over a week late. :-| From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Phil Taylor) Did you read the first post of this thread? Three hours spent fighting with Unix to do something exceedingly simple and straightforward, resulting in failure. Twenty seconds on MacOS 9 allowed me to fix it. Yes, Unix is supremely flexible and powerful. But if its learning curve is sufficiently steep to terrify me (I've been using computers for thirty years) how is the average user expected to cope? A friend of mine once described UNIX as a brain surgery interface. You can do anything you want if you know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, you can cause a lot of damage without accomplishing anything useful. That same friend described the earlier versions of MacOS as a hockey glove interface. The gloves severely limit what you can do, but it's just about impossible to hurt yourself. MacOS 10 could therefore be described as doing brain surgery in hockey gloves. Jeff To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 01:42:20 +0100, Jack Campin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] You might also want to change your shell to something less squirmily haveanicedayish than tcsh. chsh is the command to do the change; bash is pretty reasonable though my fave back when I was using Unix a lot was ksh (which just does what you tell it without trying to get creative). Did you ever try zsh? -- Ken ar c'hentañ | ** Breizh ha Linux atav! ** | http://moinejf.free.fr/ Pépé Jef| mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X
I. Oppenheim writes: | On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Jack Campin wrote: | |PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin |export PATH | | No Jack, that's bourne shell syntax!!! | A day ago I gave the correct solution for tcsh in a | separate posting. ... | At the moment, bash is the de facto standard in the | UNIX community. You can change to it with the following | command: I think that's really only true for linux, though of course bash is readily available for other systems. Vendors and repackagers can install whatever shell they like as the default, and a lot of them do. For OSX, and most of the *BSD clones it's csh or tcsh. For Sun, I think it's still ksh, though I haven't used a Solaris box for a while, and they could have switched to bash by now. One of the fun aspects of working on unixoid systems is the variety of command languages that you have available, each with its own flock of partisans. ;-) Of course, in the long run this is to our advantage. Had the original unix back in the 70's had a builtin command language, we would still be stuck with it, with no way to improve it (at least until linux came along). But since people could implement their own, we have several that are greatly improved over what the original designers provided. This is much of why unix users haven't generally switched over to full-time GUI use. Pretty pictures are fun and flashy, but if you actually want to accomplish something without constantly gritting your teeth about the idiocy of the user interface, you need a command language that you can type and that can remember things for you. On another list, there was a recent UI discussion, about the various keyboards that are available on accordions. We got into a fairly funny (if short) thread triggered by someone contemplating augmenting the accordion with a mouse. After all, keyboards are keyboards, and if a mouse is such a marvelous addition to a computer keyboard, just imagine how it could help an accordion (or piano) player. My main contribution was something I plagiarized from someone else whose name I don't recall: The modern computer GUI, with its keyboard and mouse, is very well designed - for a user with three hands. The real problem is how slow users have been to make the necessary hardware upgrades to take advantage of this clever design. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X
On Fri, Jul 25, 2003 at 01:29:11PM +, John Chambers wrote: This is much of why unix users haven't generally switched over to full-time GUI use. Pretty pictures are fun and flashy, but if you actually want to accomplish something without constantly gritting your teeth about the idiocy of the user interface, you need a command language that you can type and that can remember things for you. Well, yes. But it does depend what sort of things you're doing. I'm terrifyingly geeky, according to most of my friends (though not, of course, to a _real_ geek), but I'd _hate_ to, eg, edit .wav files via a cli. But _full-time_ GUI use, of course not. Stick with the best of both worlds. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X
[attempting to housetrain a Unix system] So I type PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin echo $PATH and it says /bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin: No good. Try PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin export PATH You might also want to change your shell to something less squirmily haveanicedayish than tcsh. chsh is the command to do the change; bash is pretty reasonable though my fave back when I was using Unix a lot was ksh (which just does what you tell it without trying to get creative). - Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack * food intolerance data recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM Embro, Embro. -- off-list mail to j-c rather than abc at this site, please -- To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Jack Campin wrote: Try PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin export PATH No Jack, that's bourne shell syntax!!! A day ago I gave the correct solution for tcsh in a separate posting. You might also want to change your shell to something less squirmily haveanicedayish than tcsh. chsh is the command to do the change; bash is pretty reasonable At the moment, bash is the de facto standard in the UNIX community. You can change to it with the following command: chsh `which bash` Note the back quotes. The settings file of bash is called .bash_profile and resides in your home directory. You can use the Bourne shell syntax described above to add a path to your .bash_profile: export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin or you can add alias abcm2ps='/usr/local/bin/abcm2ps' Groeten, Irwin Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~* Chazzanut Online: http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X
A little light entertainment... I thought it was time I installed abcm2ps on my Macs. I already have it on a PC, but I don't often use that machine, and it would be much nicer to have it where I work. Downloaded it and double-clicked the .pkg file, went through the installer without any trouble. Started up Terminal and typed abcm2ps -h and got Command not found. OK. So where has the installer put it? Did a search with the Finder's Find command. Not found. Did the search again, this time allowing it to search invisible folders. OK. There it is, in /usr/local/bin Try typing /usr/local/bin/abcm2ps -h and lo and behold it works. So far so good. I don't want to type all that every time I use it, so I need to change the search path to include that location. Can't remember how to do that, so I dig out the unix book. Unix for the Impatient by Abrahams and Larson. Well, not very impatient as it's 824 pages long. Also quite battered now from having been thrown against the wall in blind fury several times (well, it's better than throwing the computer). After about half an hour with the book I remember that there's a variable called PATH (or is that $PATH - the book seems to use them interchangeably). And there's another one called path, which is not the same. All this somewhat complicated by the fact that the book covers four different unix shells, including csh, but not tcsh, which is what I have. They can't be that different can they? After all I'm not trying to do anything complicated or difficult here. Following the book I type echo $PATH and get /bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin: So it's looking in four different places, none of which is where the program is located, and I need to change that to /bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin The book says You can set PATH to any search sequence you wish using the facilities in your shell for assigning values to variables; see for example section 6.15.6. Section 6.15.6 says You can assign values to one or more variables with an assignment (single or multiple) of the form: variable=value[variable=value...] and gives as examples: CAT=tabby GOAT='the chomper' Couldn't be easier. So I type PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin echo $PATH and it says /bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin: No good. So I try: PATH='/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin' $PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin $PATH='/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin' with no more luck. Then in desperation I try the same things with path, even though I've figured out by now that that's a shell variable and changing it will only affect the current session. Still no good. Go make a cup of coffee and think for a bit out of punching range of the computer. Remember that there's a command called setenv (oh yes, I've been here before you know, it's just that it's been a while and you forget these things). Back at the computer I type man setenv to see what comes up. What comes up is the entire manual for the tcsh shell, hundreds of little 24-line pages, and after hitting the space bar enough times to risk RSI without seeing anything about setenv I give up. The book says just enter setenv name val without any equals sign, so I try it. And try it again in all the combinations I tried before. No go. OK. I admit defeat I cannot change the search path, but I've had another idea. Why dont I alias abcm2ps to /usr/local/bin/abcm2ps to save the typing? Ought to work. To cut a long story short, that didn't work either. No error messages; just didn't work. Finally (I'll give you one more chance, you silicon moron!) I try plan C. If the program doesn't work in it's present location I'll move it to one of the directories which _is_ on the search path. I can't move it using the Finder, because the top level folder of the file path is invisible. So I type mv /usr/local/bin/abcm2ps /usr/bin/abcm2ps muttering Do as your F** told or I'll reboot you in OS 9! and it says Permission Denied. Now what do I do? I can't log in as root because Apple in their infinite wisdom have disabled that. I could try screwing around with chmod, but it would take me another hour to figure out the magical incantation necessary to make that work (I've been there before too). So I reboot in OS 9, use ResEdit to make the usr folder visible and move the file using the Finder. Takes about 20 seconds max. Reboot in OS X and now typing abcm2ps in the Terminal works fine. So, you guys who choose to work in unix, what do you do when faced with a task where you know exactly what you are trying to do, but nothing works, over and over? Apart from reboot in a different operating system, that is? (And newer Macs can't even do that for God's sake.) Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X
On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Phil Taylor wrote: So, you guys who choose to work in unix, what do you do when faced with a task where you know exactly what you are trying to do, but nothing works, over and over? Then you ask one of your friends on the internet for a little guidance! So hear it comes. 1/ Go to your home directory (type cd enter) 2/ open the file .tchrc in your favourite editor, create it if it does not yet exist. 3/ Add to the END of this file one of the following lines: set path = ( $path /usr/local/bin )# to extend your path alias abcm2ps '/usr/local/bin/abcm2ps' # to create an alias 4/ save the file 5/ open a NEW terminal window. This will make sure that the new settings are actually loaded. 6/ everything should now be fine... Groeten, Irwin Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~* Chazzanut Online: http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X
I. Oppenheim wrote: On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Phil Taylor wrote: So, you guys who choose to work in unix, what do you do when faced with a task where you know exactly what you are trying to do, but nothing works, over and over? Then you ask one of your friends on the internet for a little guidance! So hear it comes. snip Thank you, Irwin. I'm feeling a little calmer now. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
