[deboerjo]

I'm trying to reduce my dependance on my PC, and I'm looking for replacements for some of my most commonly used applications. Gaming aside, I've replaced most of them, except for the following, and I could use some help:

Crimson Editor: A very flexible open-source text editor with user-definable syntax highlighting. Reminds me somewhat of Kate for KDE/Linux. Xcode's text editor doesn't cut it anything other than C/Java.

MaxPlus II: ANY kind of programmable logic development platform for Macintosh.

Eagle, OrCAD PCB Designer, and PSpice A/D: Circuit design and PCB (printed circuit board) design software

CDex: The ultimate ripping/encoding tool, an open-source application for Windows.

Real Alternative: Realmedia player without the bloat and adware. VLC and Mplayer do not appear to support realmedia.

mIRC: A very slick IRC client. There are a number of IRC clients for OS X but they all appear to be very spartan, though I've only evaluated a couple of them.

Audacity: A free sound editor for Windows

Shareaza: A filesharing client for Gnutella and eDonkey networks (simultaneously). I'm aware of Limewire, but it's bloated, slow, and only does Gnutella. Is there anything better out there?

[Forte]

I can answer one or two of these;

Audacity: A free sound editor for Windows

Audacity is actually cross-platform, and an OS X version exists. I'm sure you know where to go to get it, since you've obviously used the Windows version (here's a direct link for convenience's sake, anyways, though ^^;; http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/mac ).

As far as Realplayer goes, though I don't personally use it, it's rather widely said that the Mac OS X version isn't anywhere near as bad as the bloaty Windows version, so you might actually be fine using the official player.

Hope that at least helps a little.

[deboerjo]

Thanks, Forte, actually I didn't know much about Audacity, I've only been using it for a few months (before that I was using the crash-happy POS sound editor that was bundled with my soundcard) and it was given to me by a friend. Somehow I missed it when I was wading through Macintosh sound editors on Versiontracker. Thanks for the link.

As for Realplayer for Mac, well, *wince* I guess I'll give it a try.

Also, I've thought of one more piece of software I have to replace:
Axe: Shareware hex editor. Shouldn't be too hard but so far the only hex editor I've found for Mac is BBEdit which is freaking $200.

And I'd like some opinions on which is the better AIM client: Adium vs Fire. I like them both so far, haven't had the chance to test to see if file tranfers work with them. Anybody know how well file tranfers work with these?

-Jon

[genevish]

Originally posted by deboerjo:
Crimson Editor: A very flexible open-source text editor with user-definable syntax highlighting. Reminds me somewhat of Kate for KDE/Linux. Xcode's text editor doesn't cut it anything other than C/Java.

Check out jEdit:

http://jedit.sourceforge.net/

[Millennium]

Originally posted by deboerjo:
Crimson Editor: A very flexible open-source text editor with user-definable syntax highlighting. Reminds me somewhat of Kate for KDE/Linux. Xcode's text editor doesn't cut it anything other than C/Java.

Bare Bones' TextWrangler is good, though it's not open-source (freeware, though). If you insist on Open-Source, now may be a good time to start learning about the Unix text editors: both vi and emacs have GUI versions on OSX (gvim and Emacs for OSX, respectively), and nothing out there beats their syntax-highlighting. The GUIs are a bit rough around the edges, but they do smooth out the worst parts of the learning curve.

[macmike42]

Crimson Editor is pretty near perfect for what it is. Wish it had code completion but that would a large amount of bloat to an otherwise lean and mean editor. I'm still hunting for the ultimate GUI text editor for OS X, but there are lots of choices:

- BBEdit is almost perfect but it costs too much now. Its lite version (now called TexWrangler) is no longer free, but is extremely useful. You can still find the free BBEdit Lite 6.1.2 around the web. The lite version does not do syntax hilighting though.
- SubEthaEdit does excellent syntax hilighting, is free for personal use, and has some amazing collaboration features but lacks anything but the most basic editor features (ie line numbering, simple indent control, horizontal-only 2-pane split view, regex find.)
- jEdit is absolutely awesome and cross-platform, and relatively quick considering it is all Java/Swing, plus free as in beer and speech, but I don't use it because I need my editor to be lightning fast.
- TextMate looks very nice, but I haven't played with it too much because it has short trial period and I neglected mine.

For IRC, there are several command line clients that are terribly full-featured, but if you want a GUI client, XChat Aqua is very full-featured and well organized. I've never used it but iRC looks very good.

Here's the hex editor I use. There are some GUI hex editors, but hexcurse weighs in at 87K, so...

RealPlayer for OS X looks exactly the same as on Windows, but for some reason it actually plays nice. It's not bad, but you'll only use it for RealMedia.

Not sure about the DVD ripping and Max-Plus II is a reason to keep your PC I'm afraid.

[deboerjo]

Lots of great suggestions for a code editor, thanks guys. I was suprised to find that TextWrangler is indeed free now (it wasn't originally). The only problem with it is that the Syntax highlighting doesn't support a lot of languages, and unlike Crimson Editor there's no way to add or modify language support that I can find. Anybody know if you can add or modify languages for syntax highlighting?

jEdit is almost everything I'm looking for (it's extensible via XML files, I'm still trying to figure out how they work), but it's not very "Macintoshy" and it's dog slow on my lowly 450MHz G4.

Originally posted by macmike42:
For IRC, there are several command line clients that are terribly full-featured, but if you want a GUI client, XChat Aqua is very full-featured and well organized. I've never used it but iRC looks very good.

I'll give both a try. XChat under Linux never impressed me a whole lot but that was a couple years ago.

Here's the hex editor I use. There are some GUI hex editors, but hexcurse weighs in at 87K, so...

Link doesn't work? I'd prefer GUI anyway.

Not sure about the DVD ripping and Max-Plus II is a reason to keep your PC I'm afraid.

Yeah, what I'm really stuck on is the electrical engineering software. Not to many Mac-using EEs out there. I figured I'd have to stick with the PC for PLD programming, but I'd at least like to get ahold of some decent circuit and PCB design software for Mac.

Just to clarify, CDex isn't DVD ripping, just CD/mp3. Beats the pants off any other free ripper/encoder I've ever used.

[grobbins]

Originally posted by macmike42:
RealPlayer for OS X looks exactly the same as on Windows, but for some reason it actually plays nice. It's not bad, but you'll only use it for RealMedia.

RealPlayer 10 for Mac OS X also plays back all QuickTime-compatible files as well, including free resizable full-screen support not available from the free QuickTime Player.

[Turnpike]

from the TextWrangler site:

Develop your own TextWrangler plug-ins or syntax coloring modules now with "Codeless Language Modules"

I've seen it said that it supports some (perhaps all) of the BBEdit plug-ins, so maybe you should look at those (offical plug-in site: http://www.barebones.com/support/bbe..._library.shtml )

[macmike42]

Link for the hex editor is http://jewfish.net/description.php?title=HexCurse. Here's a good free GUI one too: http://www.ex-cinder.com/hexeditor.html

For CD/MP3 ripping, have you tried iTunes? I'm not an audiophile, but if you were, you probably wouldn't be using MP3. It's fast, simple, and sounds fine to me.

And I can't keep up with the changes in BareBones pricing structure anymore!

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by deboerjo:
Crimson Editor: A very flexible open-source text editor with user-definable syntax highlighting. Reminds me somewhat of Kate for KDE/Linux. Xcode's text editor doesn't cut it anything other than C/Java.

SubEthaEdit is an awesome text editor with tons of syntax highlighting settings. It's not open source, but it's free for non-commercial use. It's generally well-received in Mac OS X coding circles because it is very polished, lean, and has bunches of cool features (like network text editing with buddies).

Originally posted by deboerjo:
Real Alternative: Realmedia player without the bloat and adware. VLC and Mplayer do not appear to support realmedia.

As others have said, RealPlayer 10 for Mac OS X is actually not that bad. For years I was a Real-hating Mac user because of Real's bloated, ugly, buggy, slow, Mac client. With version 10 they've actually started respecting Macintosh a standardized Mac OS X preferences window and native Mac OS X widgets. It runs very well too!

Originally posted by deboerjo:
mIRC: A very slick IRC client. There are a number of IRC clients for OS X but they all appear to be very spartan, though I've only evaluated a couple of them.

This is constantly up for debate here on the boards, search and you'll find bunches of discussions on the topic. I love the command line IRC client irssi.

[osxrules]

A very flexible open-source text editor with user-definable syntax highlighting. Reminds me somewhat of Kate for KDE/Linux. Xcode's text editor doesn't cut it anything other than C/Java.

Try Smultron. http://smultron.sourceforge.net/
http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/editors.shtml

MaxPlus II: ANY kind of programmable logic development platform for Macintosh.

No idea on that.

Eagle, OrCAD PCB Designer, and PSpice A/D: Circuit design and PCB (printed circuit board) design software

or that.

CDex: The ultimate ripping/encoding tool, an open-source application for Windows.

Try mac the ripper
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22715

For cds, itunes works ok.

Real Alternative: Realmedia player without the bloat and adware. VLC and Mplayer do not appear to support realmedia.

realplayer's fine on Mac. Nothing like the Windows version.

mIRC: A very slick IRC client. There are a number of IRC clients for OS X but they all appear to be very spartan, though I've only evaluated a couple of them.

I used XChat but I don't really like irc so I don't use it anymore.

Shareaza: A filesharing client for Gnutella and eDonkey networks (simultaneously). I'm aware of Limewire, but it's bloated, slow, and only does Gnutella. Is there anything better out there? [/B]

XFactor, poisoned - work on the same engine but different GUIs. They do kazaa, gnutella, OpenFT. They are buggy but don't lose downloads and get good results.

amule, edonkey2000 for edonkey. I don't like edonkey 'cos there's too many fake files.

Acquisition is just as bloated and slow as limewire and you get a popup to register.

For a hexeditor, I like but hexeditor looks good too:

http://hexedit.sourceforge.net/

[deboerjo]

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys, I'll look into all of those.

As for a music ripping/encoding tool, iTunes is useless, a toy, completely inadequate for what I do. Here's just a partial list of what CDex can do that iTunes can't:

-Rip a partial track (or span tracks or rip any arbitrary time interval off the CD)
-Fully customizable normalization
-Encoder modules to allow using whatever encoder I like, including Ogg Vorbis
-All kinds of mp3 encoding options, including VBR settings, quality mode, stereo encoding mode, etc, etc.
-Encode from a file (either encode a wave or re-encode a compressed file)
-Option to use the CD Paranoia ripping library for consistantly good rips. It's common for iTunes rips to have pops and clicks, even with only mildly scratched or even almost blemish-free discs.

[Thinine]

My IRC client of choice is Colloquy. It's open source and is really slick. It has the WebView-enabled chat views like Adium, and also inherits other features, since both are open source. However, development seems to have slowed lately.

SubEthaEdit really is a great editor, and the collaboration features are great if you work with other Mac users. And macmike42, what more do you want from it? All of the features you mentioned would usually be considered powerful, professional ones. As well, block editing > all other editing features. Really, really useful.

For your other needs, there's likely a *NIX port that will do the job.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by deboerjo:
Thanks for all the suggestions, guys, I'll look into all of those.

As for a music ripping/encoding tool, iTunes is useless, a toy, completely inadequate for what I do. Here's just a partial list of what CDex can do that iTunes can't:

-Rip a partial track (or span tracks or rip any arbitrary time interval off the CD)
-Fully customizable normalization
-Encoder modules to allow using whatever encoder I like, including Ogg Vorbis
-All kinds of mp3 encoding options, including VBR settings, quality mode, stereo encoding mode, etc, etc.
-Encode from a file (either encode a wave or re-encode a compressed file)
-Option to use the CD Paranoia ripping library for consistantly good rips. It's common for iTunes rips to have pops and clicks, even with only mildly scratched or even almost blemish-free discs.

iTunes does have encoder modules (although not Ogg, IIRC), MP3 encoding options and encode from file.

May still not be enough for you, but check these things out - they're somewhat buried but there.

Amorya

[macmike42]

SubEthaEdit is great, and I use it frequently, but it lacks the following features:
- Function popups don't work with all the languages I use (or even all the languages in which it supports syntax highlighting)
- I would like to be able to split the window vertically (or even more than once horizontally)
- No intergated file management (or any way to reduce the number of windows required)
- No "current line highlight" (stupid I know but I'm spoiled)
- Virtual non-existent scripting/macro/plugin support (yes it does AppleScript, but just barely)

iTunes isn't bad for ripping or playing. Again, I'm not an audiophile, but try enabling the "User error correction when reading audio CDs" and "Sound check" options. If you really want more, you should seriously consider compiling LAME and using it from the shell or a script.

[PubGuy]

I can't help out with the software you're looking for, but I personally prefer MacUpdate to VersionTracker.

As for audio programs, there is Peak and Sound Studio.

[B Gallagher]

I d'led a program for VBR with iTunes on mac a while ago. I'll post a link tomorrow.

[shortcipher]

TextMate is definitely the way to go for a text editor, syntax files are easy to write and there is a whole load supplied with the program, its amazingly flexible you can write your own autocomplete routines, macros and all sorts. The developer is very open to suggestions and improvements are happening all the time, pay the 40 euros, its worth it!

TextWrangler 2 uses the same syntax highlighting system as BBEdit 8 (xml files) but they only support 3 colours, which is useless.

[deboerjo]

Lot's of great links guys, thanks. I think I've got a text editor, hex editor, IRC client, filesharing software, and sound editor taken care of. Realplayer 10 does seem to be much better behaved. Still looking for a CDex replacement and electrical engineering software.

I was not aware of iTune's extensibility, but even with a bunch of extra downloads I doubt it'll meet my needs. Any other suggestions besides iTunes? macmike42, I couldn't find any "Use error correction" options anywhere in iTunes preferences, how do I turn it on? And as for "sound check" that apepars to normalize for playback, not encoding. I did discover that iTunes can easily encode from files. I do a great deal of recording and editing for church and local bands, I really need something more powerful than iTunes. This is actually a bigger showstopper than the lack of circuit & PCB design software.

-Jon

[deboerjo]

Woohoo! I just discovered that recently Cadsoft released a MacOS X (X11) version of Eagle! That takes care of the EE software (Pspice has always had a Mac version, not sure what I was thinking when I listed it, and if I have Eagle I don't really need OrCAD)

Now I just need to find a CDex replacement. I did find the VBR option in iTunes BTW. But I still need something that can rip partial tracks and rip across tracks, and that can encode Ogg Vorbis format.

[Forte]

I did discover that iTunes can easily encode from files. I do a great deal of recording and editing for church and local bands, I really need something more powerful than iTunes. This is actually a bigger showstopper than the lack of circuit & PCB design software.

You could probably use Audacity, at least for the recording and editing parts, AFAIK.

[deboerjo]

OK, I guess there's one more thing I need besides a CDex replacement. Better filesharing software. Maybe it's just a bad night, but I am getting nothing when I search. I did a little test:

Search for "Armitage" audio files (I'm actually looking for the Armitage Dual Matrix theme)
-Shareaza (windows): 33 hits
-Limewire: 4 hits, only one even related to the Armitage movies
-Poisoned: 0 hits

Search for "Battle hymn of the Republic":
-Shareaza: 231 hits, had a half dozen different versions in 15 minutes
-Limewire: came up empty
-Poisoned: came up empty

I think the main problem with Poisoned is that it seems to be unable to connect to Gnutella or Fasttrack, just OpenFT. I don't have port forwarding set up with my router, but I don't have it set up for Shareaza either. I'll have to check my configuration and everything. In the mean time, is there other filesharing software I should try?

-Jon

[Krusty]

There is a LAME plug-in for iTunes (usable from the Scripts menu) and a program called xAct which is a GUI for Shorten and FLAC.

Poisoned may work a little differently that what you are accustomed to. It usually goes out and grabs a batch of files initially and then will only "dig deeper" if you refresh the search a few times. It seems to take a while to "flesh out" all the attached nodes. Click on the picture link to see my results in Poisoned for Battle Hymn of the Republic -- <12 minutes and it found 339 files from FastTrack, Gnutella, and Ares. My machine is completely hidden behind my router/firewall ... the only forwarded ports point to my old iMac G3 that I use as a server.

[deboerjo]

Yeah, Poisoned seems to be working a lot better now. For some reason when I was using it earlier it just couln't connect to some of it's networks, including Gnutella and Ares (in the status view it was listing no numbers for "users-files-GB"). I haven't changed any firewall settings or anything, I don't know why it wasn't working earlier. Glad to see it was just a fluke, I knew something had to be up with that.

The results are still dissapointing, however. Still looking for the Armitage soundtrack, and Poisoned is giving me 5 hits, one of them from the soundtrack. I've told it to search again 3 times now. Shareaza gave me 65 hits in <1 min, and the specific file I want is currently downloading.

I notice in Shareaza's settings, that it connects to "Gnutella1" and "Gnutella2" networks. When I break down searches by network, most of my hits are on Gnutella2 (I still get 13 hits on Gnutella1). Which one does Poisoned (and for that matter Limewire) connect to? Or both? When I look at the search results in Gnutella2, I see that everybody I'm finding files on are also using Shareaza (on Gnutella1, 4 hits are limewire, 7 hits are Bearshare, 2 are Shareaza). Is "Gnutella2" a Shareaza-proprietary network? Is there any Mac P2P app that can access it?

And what's the Ares network that Poisoned is accessing? I'm familiar with the other networks that Poisoned accesses but Ares I've never heard of. Do any other P2P clients access it? Xfactor doesn't.

-Jon

[B Gallagher]

iTunes-LAME Encoder 2.0.7 for Macintosh OS X

[Person Man]

Originally posted by deboerjo:
-Rip a partial track (or span tracks or rip any arbitrary time interval off the CD)

You can rip partial tracks and span tracks in iTunes. You can't rip any arbitrary time interval, though.

How to rip partial tracks:

1. Make sure the track you want is checked for ripping.
2. Highlight the track and choose File-->Get info (or press Command-I).
3. Click on Options at the top.
4. You can then specify start and stop times for the track.
5. Rip the track. The resulting file will contain only the partial track you specified.


How to span tracks:

1. Highlight the two (or more) tracks by holding down shift (or option for non-consecutive tracks).
2. Choose Advanced-->Join CD Tracks
3. Rip the tracks. The resulting file will contain the two (or more) tracks joined together. There will be no delay between them if there was no delay on the CD.