The MacNurse
http://www.themacnurse.com Copyright © 2006 TheMacNurse
The Mac Nurse Reports...
By Mark Howson and Vincent Tavera
Introduction
Well, welcome to the summer, and welcome to the first ever issue of The Mac Nurse Reports... for macCompanion. We like to think of The Mac Nurse Reports as a magazine within a magazine, as weÕre going to have features, reviews, information and a great gift or offer each month.
Without taking up too many column inches, let me introduce myself and The Mac Nurse. So firstly, IÕm Mark Howson, and IÕm the manager and owner of The Mac Nurse. I enjoy, among other things, beta software and podcasts. YouÕll find my full biography at http://www.maccompanion.com/info/AboutUs/markhowson.html, and itÕs an interesting read if you have the time to check it out.
The Mac Nurse offers free tech and software support for Mac computers. As of the 30th July 2006, weÕre launching version 2.0, which introduces The Mac Nurse Pro, a service giving premium members early access for just $20 per year. The Mac Nurse volunteers also produce a range of articles, a selection of which will be available here first.
In this, the first episode of The Mac Nurse Reports...
- A Review of PDF Pen and PDF Pen Pro
- A Review of Mousepose 2
- A Guide to Font Management on Your Mac
- A Guide to Better DNS
- A Second Opinion for MediaCentral 2
Reviews
PDF pen (Pro and Standard Editions)
reviewed by Vincent Tavera
SmileOnMyMac PMB 281 25 NW 23rd Place, Suite 6 Portland, OR 97210-5599 510-289-4000 $95 USD; free upgrade for existing PDFpen Pro users. PDFpen 2.1 $50 USD. Both versions have a 30-day free demo. Download: http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/download.html Requirements: Mac OS X 10.2.5 or later.
Previous macCompanion Review: http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/june2005/Software /PDFpen2.htm |
Aesthetics: 10/10 - As I said earlier, the app is aesthetically pleasing, it looks and functions like an apple app, much like Safari. The interface is very straightforward and easy to look at. Ease of use: 10/10- PDFPen is very easy to use, it looks and functions much like an apple app, making it easier to use. The newest release is also compatible with more recent PDF formats. The only improvement I can think of is the ability to export to other formats if necessary. Features: 9.5/10- I really enjoy using this app and all of its features. The newest release is compatible with more versions of the PDF format making it easier to manage a workflow using pdfpen across platforms. A feature I would like is the ability to edit the pdf as it is, to remove an image placed in the InDesign file for example. I mention this because there is another app that has that feature and it is extremely useful. Weaknesses: I think this app is great, but it also has a high price tag at $95 USD for PDFPen Pro. PDFPen for $50 USD which is good for the average user, but does not have form creation facilities.
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I have to start out by saying that I am very impressed and pleased with this app. I was expecting an app similar to preview with a few extra tools, not to say that OS X's Preview app isn't good. Working in the printing and graphic industries, I use a lot of PDF's and have the need at times to edit them quickly or add things.
PDFpen is basically an app to edit and work with PDF's. You can slit, combine, edit, reorder and sign PDF's. You can also add text, shapes, images or watermarks to PDF's. PDFpen PRO also creates custom forms.
PDFpen makes many things easier. One of my favorite aspects of PDFpen is that it runs very smoothly and requires very little system resources. I am using a 450MHz G4 Cube and it opens and runs extremely smoothly on my Mac, even with large books in PDF for print.
One of my favorite features of PDFpen is the ability to drag and drop pages in a PDF in the order you want them, making pagination and reordering pages Apple/Mac easy. This feature may not be important to many other users, but if you ever work on a document with more than 1 page, it is a great feature. I also thought that something like this would move slowly on my Mac, maybe lag a little, but instead it drags seamlessly.
PDFpen is very easy to navigate, using many shortcuts I was already
used to in other apple applications. It is also built very much like an Apple
app, Even the buttons and tools in the tool bar are similar and easily
customizable with many of the same functions and buttons as apples apps.
PDFpen also comes with a script m
enu that has
many very useful scripts in it for working with PDF's. I find many of these
much easier than manually doing things in an app like Adobe Acrobat 7
Professional or manually reordering or making changes in InDesign or Quark. The
"imprint all pages with image" script is useful when adding a watermark,
the only downside is that it imprints on the whole page, and you can not move
or scale the image. Also, if you have a 2 or more page spread, it will imprint
right in the middle.
Another useful feature is palettes. PDFpen has 2 palettes, one for making shapes and another for modifying properties of your shapes. This is useful to me in that many apps hide such functions in menus, having them at your fingertips makes them easier to use.
I
have used apps like MS Word and Apples Pages to make forms of various kinds,
now, I can make great forms in PDFpen. The forms are very easy to make, 
you start with a blank document, then use the form tools to add radio
buttons or boxes with text fields next to them. You can also add images, and
places for a person to sign electronically and small sticky notes and all cross
platform as in acrobat. Note: Form creation only available in PDFpen PRO.
Lastly, I would like to point out that this app has really helped maximize speeds of working with files and work flows in these ways:
Before,
I had to use a clunky app like Word to make forms, now it's a few clicks. 
I used to have to reopen files to edit them or add small areas of
text, now I can just use PDFPen instead of reopening InDesign.
Having PDFpen Pro run at the same time as other apps uses less system
resources leaving more available for other larger apps.
Mouseposé 2
reviewed by Mark Howson
GeBE Computer & Peripherie GmbH Mozartstrasse 14a 82110 Germering Germany +49 89 84 005 333 Fax: +49 89 89 43 99 11 Fax US: 1-866-GOBOINX (toll free) http://www.boinx.com/mousepose/ Download: http://www.boinx.com/download/index.html#Mousepose Released: July 18, 2006 $15 USD Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4. Tiger or later; Graphics card with Quartz Extreme support. |
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So much software is going paid, without improvements of any kind over the previous version. I'm happy to say that this app adds extra features, now it comes with a $10 USD price tag. The previous version of Mousepose was free, but was also a very basic application, which put a spotlight around your mouse.
Mousepose 2 introduces many new features to the package, including mouse click visualization, which puts a dot or target around the mouse when it is clicked. The smooth edge adds visual flare, and makes the spotlight look more like a spot, and less like a white circle.
Advanced "hotkeys" enable you to change the size of the spot while it is in motion, and a small animated effect adds to the visual flair of the program. However, Mousepose can eat resources, especially when used at the same time as a screen capture tool.
This is one of those products where a picture is 1,000 words, so be sure to check out Ō5 minutes with MouseposeÕ on The Mac Nurse Reports website at http://www.themacnurse.com. The app gets 9/10, loosing 1 mark, because of occasional slowdown.
A second opinion for MediaCentral 2
I've recorded my views on MediaCentral 2, which you'll find on The Mac Nurse Reports website at http://www.themacnurse.com.
Font Management on your Mac
By Vincent Tavera
Part One
I'd
like to start off by saying that most Mac users do not think about font
management at all, some because they don't know, and some because they do not
need it. If you are a graphic designer or just have lots of fonts, font
management is a must. This is especially true for workflow's involving fonts as
many graphic designers may deal with. There are various approaches towards font
management since system and user fonts are activated in a hierarchical
structure that can make it difficult for some to manage fonts and identify font
conflicts. Font book is not able to efficiently handle more than the default
fonts installed with Mac OS X. Thus, third party apps are necessary for font
management if you install more fonts. The first thing is to choose an app you
are comfortable with and can trust. The two best options available in my experience
(over 10 years in the printing industry and graphic design fields), are; Suitcase by Extensis, which is a professional level font
management suite that includes Font Doctor for organizing and repairing fonts. The other option is Font
Explorer, a free app by LinoType. A third
and less used option is Font Reserve,
and if you are running OS 9, there
is ATM
deluxe by Adobe. These apps also help you
work more efficiently with fonts.
In this article, I will use hierarchical file specification (canonical for short) to show you the path of where your fonts are located. I can't tell you the exact path to fonts in your home account folder, since I do not know your user name, so here are some references to help you navigate to various font locations. Here is the file path to the Lucida Grande Font:
System/Library/Fonts/LucidaGrande.dfont
the beginning forward slash in the path above is the root folder of your startup drive named "Macintosh HD" by default.
the ~/ is always your home account folder.
Organization
Organizing your fonts is very important in many ways, one way is that it makes it easier to fond the ones that you want to activate. Fonts are in 3 different locations in OS X, the locations are as follows: Macintosh HD/Library/Fonts, Macintosh HD/ System/Library/Fonts, ~(home folder)/Library/Fonts. You can manually organize your fonts or use Font Doctor to organize them. it is important that you deactivate non system fonts in FontBook before moving them You can organize them alphabetically, by genre/style, by Font Foundry/Creator, or any other way that will make managing your fonts easier. I personally have mine organized alphabetically.
Here are fonts that you must have:
- Courier.dfont
- Geneva.dfont
- Helvetica.dfont
- Keyboard.dfont
- LastResort.dfont
- LucidaGrande.dfont
- Monaco.dfont
Starting with Tiger, you must also have AppleGothic.dfont installed.
There are also certain applications that will not launch if Helvetica is not activated or the wrong version is activated. Other apps also require Monaco and Geneva, though for general use of your mac, the minimum 8 fonts listed above should always be active. For a list of applications that will not launch without specific fonts, see the knowledge base article here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25486
There are also a few fonts installed by Mac OS X and by Microsoft apps that should be active since MS apps need them and many websites also use them and will display better if these fonts are active.
They are:
- Arial
- Arial Black
- Comic Sans MS
- Tahoma
- Trebuchet MS
- Verdana
- Webdings
Here is the prioritized order in which Mac OS X finds and opens fonts:
- ~/Library/Fonts/
- /Library/Fonts/
- /Network/Library/Fonts/ ( if you are on a network)
- /System/Library/Fonts/
- /System Folder/Fonts/ (if OS 9 is installed)
All other fonts in your system fonts folder can be removed or relocated, if you plan to remove them from your mac, I strongly recommend you back them up in case you may need them in the future.
Next month, we'll discover font formats and compatibilities, as well as what fonts are necessary to run Mac OS X.
A guide to better DNS
By Mark Howson
Introduction
If you are a Digg user, there is no doubt that you have heard of OpenDNS, a free service giving you access to a safer, faster DNS system. For those that haven't heard of it yet, IÕll take a short snippet from the OpenDNS website (http://www.opendns.com)
OpenDNS can identify and stop sites trying to phish (steal) your personal information or money. The OpenDNS phishing protection works with all operating systems and browsers, and complements any other security measures already in use, such as a firewall and anti-virus software. Most DNS servers on the Internet are slow. Your computer uses DNS every time you visit a website or send an email, so you want DNS to be blazing fast. Two things make DNS really fast: a big cache and a good network. We have both. We make corrections for common spelling mistakes, on the fly. That means when you are typing fast and type yahoo.cmo instead of yahoo.com you still get there. No annoying pop-ups or evil spyware installed because you made a typo. Things just work.
Cool, but what is DNS?
Don't worry, you're not the only person who doesnÕt know.
The domain name system (DNS) stores and associates many types of information with domain names, but most importantly, it translates domain names (computer hostnames) to IP addresses. It also lists mail exchange servers accepting e-mail for each domain. In providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection service, DNS is an essential component of contemporary Internet use. Useful for several reasons, the DNS pre-eminently makes it possible to attach easy-to-remember domain names (such as "wikipedia.org") to hard-to-remember IP addresses (such as 207.142.131.206). Humans take advantage of this when they recite URLs and e-mail addresses. In a subsidiary function, the domain name system makes it possible for people to assign authoritative names without needing to communicate with a central registrar each time.
Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system
So, how do I get OpenDNS?
Simply
head over to http://www.opendns.com/start and follow the instructions for your router, or Mac.
Extra Content on The Mac Nurse Reports website.
To access this month's video content, visit http://www.themacnurse.com/maccompanion, you'll need the code:
