May 2008 Archives

Today I was looking for a way to use my Apple Remote as a remote control for presentations. The solution of my choice was iRed Lite, a small program, which allows to write layers to control applications. Unfortunately there was no layer for Adobe Reader, so I wrote one, which can be downloaded here.

Basically it performs the following mapping:

• next slide: >
• previous slide: <
• last slide: >>
• first slide: <<
• start/stop presentation mode: play
• zoom in: +
• zoom out: -
• zoom to fit: ++
• actual size: —

For some time now I connected my MacBook to an external display and use it in clamshell mode. Therefore I use a litte tool called synergy as a KM switch, which shares one keyboard and mouse (and your clipboard!) via network between several computers. However I had some troubles to start synergy automatically as described on its homepage.

In order to start synergy automatically when you log in, you have to use launchd for Leopard. Create a plist file for launchd with the configuration for synergy, e.g. /Library/LaunchAgents/net.sourceforge.synergy2.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>net.sourceforge.synergy2</string>
    <key>ServiceDescription</key>
    <string>Synergy Client</string>
    <key>OnDemand</key>
    <false/>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/opt/local/bin/synergyc</string>
        <string>--no-daemon</string>
        <string>--no-restart</string>
        <string>--debug</string>
        <string>WARNING</string>
        <string>--name</string>
        <string>MacBook</string>
        <string>192.168.1.1</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

After this adjust the permissions of the file:

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchAgents/net.sourceforge.synergy2.plist

and to load or unload the daemon tell launchd to load the script:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/net.sourceforge.synergy2.plist
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/net.sourceforge.synergy2.plist

Since MacPorts 1.6 on Leopard (or even earlier?) the proxy environment setting doesn’t work anymore. In order to get the latest MacPorts use the proxy, you have to set the variable explicitly before running the port command, e.g.

sudo env ftp_proxy=”http://proxy.rommel.stw.uni-erlangen.de:80” port -d -u upgrade outdated

In addition you have to tell port to honour these variabled in your macports.conf (/opt/local/etc/macports/macports.conf):

extraenv httpproxy httpsproxy ftpproxy allproxy noproxy