Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

topcat · Aug 22, 2005, 10:49 PM

I find myself doing more and more in my Mac's UNIX environment - compiling and using some third party applications, writing some PERL scripts, that sort of thing. It's mostly fairly small scientific stuff related to bioinformatics. So far I've handled it through the command line, with a few excursions into X Windows. I'd like to do more in a graphical interface, but am not really familiar with what is out there for the Mac UNIX environment. My goal is to stay in the UNIX enviroment when working on those projects that need it. Having to switch back and forth between UNIX and OS X environments gets confusing at times and I run into problems with things like incorrect end-of-fie characters, etc. My immediate needs are pretty simple: a file manager, first of all - I'm using a combination of CLI and the Finder for that now. Also a text editor - I'm using pico right now. vi and emacs seem too confusing. I know there are different options available for window managers, desktop environments, etc., but what works well?

Thanks in advance!

si_lance · Aug 23, 2005, 01:28 AM

Originally Posted by topcat

My immediate needs are pretty simple: a file manager, first of all - I'm using a combination of CLI and the Finder for that now. Also a text editor - I'm using pico right now. vi and emacs seem too confusing. I know there are different options available for window managers, desktop environments, etc., but what works well?

You could try dual-booting with Yellow Dog Linux... also, if you learn vi, you'll prolly be better off since that is almost always available on most unices... however, I prefer emacs =). Cheers.

OreoCookie · Aug 23, 2005, 02:38 AM

OS X has X11 on the CD, you have to customize the installation, though.

Do you want/need a cross-platform app?

If you need editors with a `real' GUI, take a look at SubEthaEdit (free for commercial use) or TextWrangler. If you don't need a cross-platform app, why don't you use MacOS X' GUI. Alternatively, you could write a CLI application core and then use different GUI modules.

Kvasir · Aug 23, 2005, 09:41 AM

If running X11, my personal choice is to use rxvt in place of xterm. And if you want a GUI X-Windows text editor, try NEdit (www.nedit.org) - both rxvt and NEdit are installed most easily via FINK or DarwinPorts.

topcat · Aug 23, 2005, 09:29 PM

Thanks for the suggestions everybody.

I am looking at the text editor options: SubEthaEdit, TextWrangler and NEdit. It may take me a little while to figure out which I prefer. I should have noted that I have been using Xcode for my PERL scripts. It has worked OK for that purpose with color-coding, reasonable handling of indentation, etc.

As for YDL, I'd rather not go with the dual-boot solution. But from looking over the YDL web site, it does offer some things like KDE and GNOME that I think might be helpful. They should provide a purer UNIX environmnent than OS X does. Are versions of these available for OS X? What's the best way to get and instal them?

Thanks again!

si_lance · Aug 24, 2005, 12:47 AM

YDL is not for OS X, but rather instead of... you can download iso images and burn them to CD. You may have to partition your hard drive if you want to dual boot which may have the side effect of you having to reinstall OS X. Good Luck.

Kristoff · Aug 24, 2005, 01:11 AM

This has got to be the most idiotic thread I have ever read.

WTF is the source of your confusion?

I work on OS X all the time, and I deploy apps to Solaris. I don't have any issues with OS X being any more or less "pure" (whatever that means) than Solaris.

I really don't understand what issues you have. Give some examples and maybe we can help.

Really, what does running KDE and Gnome give you over Aqua?

I just don't get it.

topcat · Aug 24, 2005, 03:51 PM

OK, I'll try to be more specific. These aren't end of the world problems. I'm just looking for ways to work more efficiently.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when starting out I had trouble with line endings. Being new to UNIX programming, I made files in Word and saved them as text files. Ran in trouble because the line endings were wrong. Found out I could use Xcode as a text editor and get around these. But Xcode has hundreds of features I don't need to write PERL scripts and edit data files. On the other hand, the traditional non-GUI UNIX editors have a pretty steep learning curve. So I'm looking for a compromise. Other replies gave me some suggestions that I'm checking out.

Re the desktop environment, I think what I want most is a GUI file manager that is more UNIX-friendly than the Finder. The Finder is OK, but it does things in a Mac-like way. For example, you can't get a quick listing of all the files in a directory that ends in '.pl' using the Finder. You can sort by kind, but it's not the same thing. Do any of the alternative environments give you that sort of option? I don't know. That's why I'm asking.

Kvasir · Aug 24, 2005, 05:33 PM

I get Kristoff's point (I work that way too, all the time), but I think I understand where topcat is coming from too.

topcat - first off - DO NOT USE WORD - it's a word processor, not an editor (a big difference). Personally, it sounds to me like you would do wise to invest in BBEdit. EOF (end-of-line characters are different - Mac's use ASCII CR, Win uses ASCII CR+LF, and UNIX uses LF) - BBEdit (maybe textwrangler too, but I don't use it) recognize and convert between all.

BBEdit also has colour context displays for programming syntax (but NEdit does too - why I suggested it as a X editor).

As to file managers, I cannot speak - I just use CLI tools and other features built into the OS X BSD core.

From what little you've said, I'd suggest spending a little time customizing an OS X X11 environment, maybe buy into something like BBEdit (which bridges both Aqua GUI and CLI - maybe textwrangler does too, for free). I mentioned rxvt in place of the default xterm, mainly because I find it more configurable for my taste. KDE or Gnome is both a waste, and a resource hog on OS X - no point to them.

wataru · Aug 25, 2005, 01:07 AM

For non-commercial use, SubEthaEdit is free. It has tons of different syntax coloring modes, can handle line endings, file encodings, and etc. It even has a command line tool so you can use it with scripts and whatnot. I've never found the need for BBEdit.

i_m_a_l_e_x · Aug 25, 2005, 01:08 AM

TextEdit should be work for you if you go into its preferences and change the default format from Rich Text to Plain Text. I also recommend TextWrangler if you want something with syntax coloring.

As for your Finder troubles I don't exactly know what functionality you need that it doesn't provide. The example you gave about listing all .pl files can be done easily if you do a search from the toolbar of a Finder window that is restricted to the current location. If you can explain other problems you have with the Finder I'll try to recommend something more.

Tyre MacAdmin · Aug 29, 2005, 04:05 PM

There used to be a way to run KDE as your OS X gui via X11. I'm not sure how easy it is to get going but you could google it...

wataru · Aug 29, 2005, 09:48 PM

Well you can run KDE, but I've never heard of replacing the default OS X interface with it.

parallax · Aug 29, 2005, 11:14 PM

I'd suggest you think again about learning vim or emacs. If you want something more GUI outside the Terminal, there's always gVim and XEmacs.

If you're going to spend a decent amount of time in the UNIX world, you'll need to know one or the other.

Graphical file management is as of yet an unsolved problem. Finder is good for browsing but doesn't naturally integrate with the theme of regular expressions and globbing in bash.

Tesseract · Aug 30, 2005, 11:48 AM

I use several editors: vim (which you ought to learn if you are going to be using UNIX much - it's really not that difficult), TextEdit (which I set up to default to plain text files), and TextMate (from macromates.com) which is a great shareware Cocoa editor. None of these give me any trouble with line endings etc.

I have not experienced any issues when switching between the Finder and cp/mv/rm et al. Especially in tiger since these utilities now respect resource forks.

As others have said, you can run KDE or GNOME or whatever (alongside Aqua), but I don't see any reason to. If you need to run the occasional X11 app, quartzwm is more than sufficient. There is no need to use X11 for editing, file management, etc. Use the right Aqua tools (not Word) and you'll be fine.

Detrius · Sep 1, 2005, 03:03 AM

Originally Posted by Tyler McAdams

There used to be a way to run KDE as your OS X gui via X11. I'm not sure how easy it is to get going but you could google it...

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...84&query=Xnest

This is my preferred method of running KDE or Gnome in OS X.

The easiest way to install either is using fink: http://fink.sourceforge.net/ .

fink install bundle-kde bundle-gnome

I do also recommend xemacs for a Unix based text editor--then you don't have to learn the funky key combinations, and you get the code coloring and indention.

fink install xemacs-sumo-pkg

Detrius · Sep 1, 2005, 03:06 AM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

OS X has X11 on the CD, you have to customize the installation, though.

On 10.3, it's on the third CD. If you have just a DVD, it's still in /System/Installation/Packages. You can install just the one package well after the initial OS install. Note, though, that some OS updates have included updates to X11, so you may want to reinstall some of the updates ( not a clue what they were, though--just check Apple's website ).