Here's a quick summary of the various software I've released to the net.
SystemFolderDiff is a utility that compares folders and shows you the differences. The unique feature of SystemFolderDiff is that you can save information about a folder in a summary document, make changes to the folder, and then compare the current folder contents against the folder summary document. This is especially useful for discovering the changes an installer made to your System Folder (hence the name).
SystemFolderDiff is Freeware and is available from my site.
Internet Config is a system for storing preferences so that they can be accessed by a variety of Macintosh Internet-related applications. The idea is that you only have to specify your email address once, in the Internet Config application, and each application can get the setting from there.
You can find out more about Internet Config from the official web site.
I've created the best Dvorak keyboard 'KCHR' for the
Macintosh, QDvorak, which is available from
my
site. I also provide some notes on how to
avoid being Dvorak keyboard
hostile in your Macintosh programs.
You might also want to check out the Dvorak web page run by D Allan Drummond. and "A Basic Course in Dvorak" run by Dan Wood.
I wrote the original Apple Guide for Peter N Lewis' Macintosh FTP client, Anarchie. You can get the source code for Anarchie Guide, which is an excellent (IMHO) example of how to do an Apple Guide the hard way. You can also read the documentation directly on the web.
For examples of doing Apple Guides the easy way, check out the Apple Guide web page. You can also subscribe to the Apple Guide mailing list by mailing to listserv@list.peter.com.au with the body text containing "subscribe apple-guide Your Real Name". Alternatively, you can use the web-based subscription page.
When you run a MacLab and you need to create 500 user accounts at the beginning of the year, you rapidly learn the deficiencies of AppleShare Admin. Our first solution was to use Virtual User to create the accounts. Next came Members Only which was a cool hack but still required us to shut down the server. Finally I bit the bullet and wrote a Users and Groups scripting addition that allows you to most of the logical operations on the server's users and groups from AppleScript. It is distributed as Freeware and you can get it from my site. You can also read the documentation directly on the web.
With the introduction of the multi-scan monitors and Display Manager it is possible to change the desktop area. This is especially useful on my Duo where I can get thousands of colours if I reduce the screen size. Unfortunaty it has the nasty side effect of scrambling the neat arrangement of the icons on my desktop. Scriptable Finder goes some way to fixing that problem but it's not perfect.
Snapshotter is the solution to this problem. It allows you to take a snapshot of a folder and, at a later date, restore the position of the icons within the folder from the snapshot. Snapshotter is also useful for when you accidentally select "Clean Up Desktop".
Snapshotter is Freeware and is available from my site.
While working at the Department of Computer Science at The University of Western Australia I was involved in a project to use a one chip microprocessor (a 68HC11 to be precise) as an external IO processor for the Macintosh. The department has kindly agreed to distribute parts of this project to the net. The read me file is available on the web and you can FTP the distribution. The file is compressed with Compact Pro and contains lots of ClarisWorks documents, so it's likely you will need access to a Mac to use it.