Xcode is usually included somewhere when you buy a new Mac. Either a disc image hiding somewhere on the hard drive or on the DVD that came with your machine. If all those things fail, or you don’t want to look around, it’s also available at the ADC site for free. You simply must register for free ADC “Online Membership.” The advantage of downloading is that you will get the latest version. Be advised to make sure you’re getting a version of Xcode that works on your version of OS X.

The latest Xcode runs on the latest OS X, so today that means that Xcode 3.1 works on Leopard only. You should be able to find an older version for Tiger.

At the web site, look for Developer Tools and then Xcode 3.1.

The only real trick after downloading them and installing them is to customize the install, and I only do this to save disk space. But unless you’re going to develop a real Mac OS X app, you don’t need all the documentation and examples. It’ll save you about half a gigabyte. You want to uncheck “Core Reference Library” and be sure that the “UNIX Development Support” is checked.

Update The Intel installer is available here – Download IRAF 2.14 for Intel Macs .pkg installer (57MB). My prescribed update method is simple. Change to the IRAF user and do:

  % cd /
  % mv iraf iraf_old

Run the installer and then:

  % mv /iraf_old/extern /iraf/extern/

That should preserve all your external packages. You will most likely want to copy over the extern.pkg from your old install.

  % cd /iraf_old/iraf/unix/hlib
  % cp extern.pkg /iraf/iraf/unix/hlib/extern.pkg

That should work. Let me know if there are any problems – it worked ok for me. I’d keep /iraf_old around for a while just to be safe. And remember any installer errors are probably permission issues but be sure to check the log first before emailing me with any problems.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve posted source and binaries on Xdarwin.org for Xquartz 1.2a7. Since 1.2a6, the following issues have been resolved:

• JIS (Japanese) keyboards are now correctly detected by X11.
• Xvfb and Xnest now compile cleanly; I have not tested them, but binaries are available at http://people.freedesktop.org/~bbyer/x11app/
• The “offset-pointer”/”ghost window” bug with Spaces has been resolved correctly (this is my second attempt). This means you can now use the F8 function to zoom out and drag a window from one Space to another with your mouse. Unfortunately, due to a known issue in Spaces itself, you can not drag X11 windows to the edge of the screen to move them to the next screen.
• A focus problem was fixed — previously, clicking on an X11 window that was behind an Aqua window would not always bring the X11 window to the foreground (but clicking on any other X11 window usually would.) I’m sure I’ll be proven wrong, but at the moment I have fixed all of the focus problems that I know about.

…. Ben Byer CoreOS / BSD Technology Group, XDarwin maintainer.

For more details, see the full posting at the X11 users list from Ben.

Also this forum at macosxhints contains a summary of a lot of recent developments that have been peculating on the mailing list.

So, here’s the quasi-official word from Ben Byer, one of Apple’s x11 developers on Apple’s x11-users list.

Biggest architectural change in Leopard for X11: Switched from XFree86 codebase (based on, IIRC, X11R6.8) to X.org codebase (X11R7.2)

Biggest user-visible change: launchd support for X11. The only situation where you should need to manually start X11.app is if you are only running remote X11 applications.

The way that this is accomplished is by some slight-of-hand with the $DISPLAY variable — if you look, it should be something like “/tmp/ launch-vbXRyu/:0″. If an X client connects to this, it will actually connect to launchd, which will start Xquartz if needed and pass the client’s socket to the server.

All of that should be invisible to you; the X client library (libX11.dylib) was modified to support this, and all X11 applications link against this library. “DISPLAY=:0″ would still work if X11.app is already running, but it will not trigger X11 to launch.

Two biggest bugs:

• Fullscreen support is broken. I know many of you will hate me for this — it stopped working when we switched codebases, and I was unable to get it working again. I’m hoping that some of you developers may be able to help me us fix this. Until then, those of you who need this functionality should be able to use the X11 package from Tiger instead. (Yes, I know you can’t officially download that from www.apple.com — I would like to see that change and am working on making that happen; no ETA. You may be able to find a copy of it lying around somewhere.)

• Do not start X11.app from the Dock. It will do strange things — you’ll get two icons. This is due to the aforementioned “launcher” in /Applications/Utilities/X11.app not being the same as the real server, which is now located at /usr/X11/X11.app.

I should also note that the DISPLAY variable mojo doesn’t seem to play nice with darwin ds9, since it looks like the ds9 launch script is checking the DISPLAY variable for something it likes.

You can use Tiger’s X11 on Leopard, and instructions for that have been written up here. Not too complicated but you’ll need a Tiger DVD of some kind.

Obviously, these are matters of personal preference – but I wonder how many Mac users use Firefox because they have heard how much better it is than Internet Explorer. And while it is certainly true that Windows users should use Firefox, on the Mac I personally don’t see the point. Safari is a much better and more Mac-like browser, in my opinion – and if you need a Mozilla browser, Camino is vastly more Mac-like in its behavior. I haven’t noticed that Firefox is any faster than Safari. For a while Firefox had better HTTP proxy support, but this is no longer true in Tiger.

As far as Keynote goes, there is seems to be a growing belief that Keynote is just better at producing higher quality presentations than Powerpoint.

My theory on Powerpoint is this – in the Microsoft Office hegemony in which we live, most people – even many Mac users – associate “presentation” with “Powerpoint” and aren’t aware of alternatives. Also, many universities and or businesses have site licenses for Office so many people just use what they have.

Hence, my latest highly unscientific poll – of the people who visit this site – are those who use Powerpoint doing so because they prefer it or because they haven’t tried Keynote? We’ll see what the results show.

My personal reasons for using Keynote (and also Pages for posters)? It supports vector PDF graphics. Powerpoint will take an EPS or PDF file and rasterize it – Keynote just keeps it in its glorious resolution-free state. That alone is reason enough for me.

UPDATE : I will go ahead and concede that if you have browsing issues with Safari it’s perfectly ok to try another browser. BUT, might I suggest the much more Mac-like Camino, which uses the same Gecko rendering engine as Firefox but isn’t a multi-platform UNIX-like program. Camino uses Mac-specfic features like the address book, the keychain, has spell-checking in text fields, etc. I can see how those coming from other platforms would … not miss a program that ignores these Mac specific abilities, but to me – a Mac application should act like it belongs on a Mac; not behave like a Linux program.

Update II Ok, ok. I get it. Extensions. I never use Firefox or Firefox extensions so I guess I just don’t know what I’m missing. I personally find Firefox so un-Mac-like I just don’t even consider it an option. However, the buzz is they are trying to make it behave more like a Mac like application (ala Camino) so we’ll see how it evolves.

p>So, we now have an official word on upcoming changes to IRAF support. The leaked news of changes to IRAF certainly generated some discussion, and some emails. Several questions remain, for me, however in light of this news from NOAO.

<

p>It’s certainly understandable that NOAO has in mind to take data reduction at its facilities in new directions, i.e. this new pipeline, data flow system, whatever they want to call it. IRAF, is after all, a rather old software package. However, that said IRAF is extremely important to a large number of users, and far more research is done with IRAF than on NOAO telescopes themselves. IRAF is important to a large portion of the entire astronomical community, not just as a means to reduce data from NOAO facilities.

<

p>With the announcement, however, several questions remain.

<

p>Why did it take a leak to generate a discussion in the community?

<

p>It took leaked memos, and emails to NOAO to generate their response. Previously, they were simply going to announce support changes in September. I don’t understand why NOAO can’t solicit opinion directly from the astronomical community before making huge changes that effect all of us.

<

p>How much does supporting IRAF really cost?

<

p>It’s my understanding the support costs for support IRAF are relatively low. How many emails can they possibly get about IRAF support get every day? I only get one every week at that; I’m sure they get more but it can’t be overwhelming, maybe a few a day?

<

p>Does NOAO not understand how important IRAF is to the community at large?

<

p>IRAF is not just for reducing data from NOAO telescopes. IRAF is responsible for about 10 times more referreed publications as NOAO telescopes. NOAO’s new data-flow system is great, but it is not in any way a replacement for IRAF. Are we all supposed to use IDL? It seems like IRAF is a bargain for all the science it helps produce.

<

p>IRAF support should be mantained at the current level

<

p>IRAF is as important to the astronomical community as any telescope run by NOAO. As such, it should be treated as a precious resource, not some archaic system who’s value can be downplayed. NOAO should continue to maintain support for IRAF as it is today. The email help line iraf@noao.edu should be kept, and updates and bug fixes to IRAF should not be given any less priority than they are today.

<

p>I understand that NOAO has limited resources. IRAF is an instance where the reward is far greater than the expense. IRAF is used by astronomers all over the country and world. It’s also used for educational purposes in college and sometimes even high school classrooms over the country. I know this from direct emails from teachers and students over the years.

<

p>The expertise of those who helped created and maintain IRAF does not exist outside NOAO, as far as I know. I have no idea how to fix a bug, how to check source code. All I’ve been able to do the last few years is help Macintosh users get through a few UNIX hoops they have to do in order to get IRAF. If the community at large is supposed to somehow help each other through a bulletin board, I don’t see how this can be a replacement for the IRAF email desk, since the announcement indicdates that DPP staff itself won’t answer questions.

<

p>Furthermore, there’s no reason why the development of IRAF should end just because NOAO says it should. IRAF is an excellent facility for reducing and analyizing data, even if it is old. Relatively recent developements such as the GUIAPPS, the new enhanced CL that is on the IRAF web site today – these should all be encouraged and continued, not cast aside. What exactly is the goal of de-emphasizing IRAF with no alternative planned for the future?

<

p>This entire incident has hurt NOAO’s reputation. It would appear that they do understand the deep reliance on IRAF that exists in the astronomical community. IRAF should be enhanced and celebrated – not lowered to some second-tier support level. To me, it seems like that’s just the first step on the road to retirement.

   PATH=/usr/local/bin:~/bin:$PATH

My friend and bash fan Colby gave me this tidbit. Something all bash users probably know. (bash is a very linux thing, by the way.)