MacOS on galvanist

macOS JavaScript for Automation (JXA) Notes

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 18:28:48 +0100

Overview

There is a macOS feature called the Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) which provides an infrastructure for intercommunication and automation of macOS software. One of the officially supported OSA languages is JavaScript and its use in this context is called “JavaScript for Automation” which is often abbreviated to “JXA”.

The idea is that instead of using AppleScript, you can program & automate macOS using a more modern language like JavaScript. This gives the programmer access to the enormous ecosystem of javascript libraries and tools in addition to all the modern optimizations and language features of ES6-ish JavaScript. JXA also provides access to a built-in Objective-C bridge that enables access to the file system and the ability to call into the Cocoa frameworks and plain C functions. JXA can basically do anything native code can. It’s a bit like node without needing to install node.

macOS Text-to-Speech World Tour

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 19:04:44 +0100

When it comes to text-to-speech, macOS supports more than 50 languages/dialects. Many of these are voices from Nuance Communications.

$ say -v '?'
Alex                en_US    # Most people recognize me by my voice.
Alice               it_IT    # Salve, mi chiamo Alice e sono una voce italiana.
Alva                sv_SE    # Hej, jag heter Alva. Jag är en svensk röst.
Amelie              fr_CA    # Bonjour, je m’appelle Amelie. Je suis une voix canadienne.
Anna                de_DE    # Hallo, ich heiße Anna und ich bin eine deutsche Stimme.
Carmit              he_IL    # שלום. קוראים לי כרמית, ואני קול בשפה העברית.
Claire              nl_NL    # Hallo, mijn naam is Claire. Ik ben een Nederlandse stem.
Damayanti           id_ID    # Halo, nama saya Damayanti. Saya berbahasa Indonesia.
Daniel              en_GB    # Hello, my name is Daniel. I am a British-English voice.
Diego               es_AR    # Hola, me llamo Diego y soy una voz española.
Ellen               nl_BE    # Hallo, mijn naam is Ellen. Ik ben een Belgische stem.
Fiona               en-scotland # Hello, my name is Fiona. I am a Scottish-English voice.
Fred                en_US    # I sure like being inside this fancy computer
Ioana               ro_RO    # Bună, mă cheamă Ioana . Sunt o voce românească.
Joana               pt_PT    # Olá, chamo-me Joana e dou voz ao português falado em Portugal.
Jorge               es_ES    # Hola, me llamo Jorge y soy una voz española.
Juan                es_MX    # Hola, me llamo Juan y soy una voz mexicana.
Kanya               th_TH    # สวัสดีค่ะ ดิฉันชื่อKanya
Karen               en_AU    # Hello, my name is Karen. I am an Australian-English voice.
Kate                en_GB    # Hello, my name is Kate. I am a British-English voice.
Kyoko               ja_JP    # こんにちは、私の名前はKyokoです。日本語の音声をお届けします。
Laura               sk_SK    # Ahoj. Volám sa Laura . Som hlas v slovenskom jazyku.
Lekha               hi_IN    # नमस्कार, मेरा नाम लेखा है. मैं हिन्दी में बोलने वाली आवाज़ हूँ.
Luca                it_IT    # Salve, mi chiamo Luca e sono una voce italiana.
Luciana             pt_BR    # Olá, o meu nome é Luciana e a minha voz corresponde ao português que é falado no Brasil
Maged               ar_SA    # مرحبًا اسمي Maged. أنا عربي من السعودية.
Mariska             hu_HU    # Üdvözlöm! Mariska vagyok. Én vagyok a magyar hang.
Mei-Jia             zh_TW    # 您好，我叫美佳。我說國語。
Melina              el_GR    # Γεια σας, ονομάζομαι Melina. Είμαι μια ελληνική φωνή.
Milena              ru_RU    # Здравствуйте, меня зовут Milena. Я – русский голос системы.
Moira               en_IE    # Hello, my name is Moira. I am an Irish-English voice.
Monica              es_ES    # Hola, me llamo Monica y soy una voz española.
Nora                nb_NO    # Hei, jeg heter Nora. Jeg er en norsk stemme.
Oliver              en_GB    # Hello, my name is Oliver. I am a British-English voice.
Paulina             es_MX    # Hola, me llamo Paulina y soy una voz mexicana.
Samantha            en_US    # Hello, my name is Samantha. I am an American-English voice.
Sara                da_DK    # Hej, jeg hedder Sara. Jeg er en dansk stemme.
Satu                fi_FI    # Hei, minun nimeni on Satu. Olen suomalainen ääni.
Serena              en_GB    # Hello, my name is Serena. I am a British-English voice.
Sin-ji              zh_HK    # 您好，我叫 Sin-ji。我講廣東話。
Tessa               en_ZA    # Hello, my name is Tessa. I am a South African-English voice.
Thomas              fr_FR    # Bonjour, je m’appelle Thomas. Je suis une voix française.
Ting-Ting           zh_CN    # 您好，我叫Ting-Ting。我讲中文普通话。
Tom                 en_US    # Hello, my name is Tom. I am an American-English voice.
Veena               en_IN    # Hello, my name is Veena. I am an Indian-English voice.
Victoria            en_US    # Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?
Xander              nl_NL    # Hallo, mijn naam is Xander. Ik ben een Nederlandse stem.
Yelda               tr_TR    # Merhaba, benim adım Yelda. Ben Türkçe bir sesim.
Yuna                ko_KR    # 안녕하세요. 제 이름은 Yuna입니다. 저는 한국어 음성입니다.
Yuri                ru_RU    # Здравствуйте, меня зовут Yuri. Я – русский голос системы.
Zosia               pl_PL    # Witaj. Mam na imię Zosia, jestem głosem kobiecym dla języka polskiego.
Zuzana              cs_CZ    # Dobrý den, jmenuji se Zuzana. Jsem český hlas.

Hear It

Try this in your macOS terminal (it currently takes about 3.5 minutes – you’ll need speakers/headphones):

Non-privileged Python Package Installs on OS X

Wed, 10 Dec 2014 04:35:00 +0000

Sometimes a virtualenv isn’t what you want. I often want my account to have a particular python package (like bpython), but I also like to keep things clean and compartmentalized. One answer is installing the package to a standard place within your user account’s home folder. Python is already setup for this, as you can see if you run python -m site.

sys.path = [
    '/Users/someuser',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python27.zip',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-darwin',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-mac',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
    '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/PyObjC',
    '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages',
]
USER_BASE: '/Users/someuser/Library/Python/2.7' (doesn't exist)
USER_SITE: '/Users/someuser/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages' (doesn't exist)
ENABLE_USER_SITE: True

You’ll see that python is looking for USER_BASE and USER_SITE directories in particular locations. Let’s create them:

Strip Time Machine ACLs

Tue, 12 Aug 2014 19:55:57 +0000

To strip ACLs from all files in the current working directory, run this:

chmod -R -N .

You might want to do this kind of thing if you’ve restored files from a Time Machine backup by hand, preserving permissions. By default Time Machine backup files have this ACL for everyone:

deny write,delete,append,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

Don’t change your Time Machine volume, just use this to strip the ACLs of files you copied from it.

Your Mac's Serial Number via the Command Line

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 23:54:40 +0000

Here’s my first (admittedly ugly) attempt:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | grep 'Serial' | sed 's/^.*\:\ //'

Here’s a better one from stack exchange:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk '/Serial/ {print $4}'

Check your warranty status:

Update: Within a year or two of this post, Apple disabled direct URL links to hardware warranty checks, so the following no-longer works.

open "https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do?sn=$(system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk '/Serial/ {print $4}')&locale=en_US&caller=sp"

Manpages in the GUI on OS X

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 01:17:55 +0000

Here’s a shell function to add to your profile that makes it easy to view man pages in OS X’s Preview.app:

pman() { man -t "$*" | open -f -a "/Applications/Preview.app"; }

OS X and the Unremovable File

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 19:34:00 +0000

I’ve been working on a Fuse filesystem project for quite some time. Now that OS X v10.9 is out, one of my major roadblocks has been removed. But I’ve still been experiencing some difficulty getting OS X to treat my filesystem like a first-class citizen. So to debug it I’ve been banging on it with Tuxera’s port of Pawel Jakub Dawidek’s POSIX file system test suite.

During this process, I made some baselines of my non-FUSE HFS+ boot volume and I came across a “fun” HFS+ surprise:

OS X Quick Look Preview on the Command-line

Mon, 18 Nov 2013 20:56:41 +0000

The qlmanage command has a -p argument which lets you create Quick Look previews on the command line. So something like this can be nice to have in your shell profile: alias ql='qlmanage -p'.

I decided I needed something a little more featurey than an alias (because qlmanage -p README is useless). So, I made a quick python implementation of ql which has special treatment for README, LICENSE, Makefile and probably eventually other extension-less file names.

/Users/Shared/adi

Thu, 07 Nov 2013 22:28:00 +0000

This is one for the search engines.

If you’re running Mac OS X ~v10.8 (or later), you’ve probably got a folder at the path /Users/Shared/adi. Like me, you might be wondering what it is. I did some googling and got nothing. I dug a little further and found (part of) the answer: It is used by the Mac App Store and the new iBooks app.

In case you’re interested, here are the steps I took to arrive at this answer:

Arduino & OS X Notes

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 23:25:46 +0000

My girlfriend and I spent last weekend building Arduino-controlled devices. Here are some random notes about working with Arduino (in an OSX environment)

splurge on a long USB device cable. also a breadboard and jumper wires
use stty to change baud & other settings on a device file - having access to the usual unix tools e.g. cat /dev/ttyUSB0 is a really nice thing
pyserial is always your friend. seriously it is fantastic.
the official Arduino docs are really good
don’t miss the docs for your specific model, for example, these are the specs for my old-timey diecimila
don’t miss the part about Arduino ints being 16-bits. Arduinos are little-endian but it rarely comes into play. the ADC produces 10-bit values.
this sparkfun article about using Arduino with relays will be useful to me soon
the OS X drivers for the FTDI chip on old Arduinos like mine are terrible. I’ve had 6 kernel panics in the last three days. i finally uninstalled them. luckily ubuntu has native support, so I currently program my old Arduino on the linux machine. My girlfriend’s Arduino uno doesn’t use this chip and working with it on OS X is fantastic.
the digital pin’s output mode high/low is enough to operate the coil in small low-voltage relays like this
this guy is doing interesting things with Arduino data acquisition
now i want one of these.

chroot jails on OS X

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 01:09:00 +0000

Recently my free time has mostly been dedicated to learning more about parallel computing. But I did take a little detour into the world of old-timey chroot(8) jails on OS X. They work, even on 10.8.4, even running a shell. The big trick on OS X is that you need to include the dynamic link editor /usr/lib/dyld in the jail.

Of course you also need to include the programs you want to run in the jail and their dependencies. The otool -L operation on OS X and the ldd command on linux are key to finding these dependencies. There are a lot, and you’ll need to recursively resolve them. Additionally on OS X, when you are recursively finding the dependencies, you’ll need to account for Mach-O’s @executable_path, @loader_path, and @rpath variables. This can get a little tricky. On Linux, the libraries are easier but things like PAM can be tricky. This is why you want software like jailkit, which can help automate the process of creating and running jails.

Task Focus The Dock

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 04:52:00 +0000

The Problem

I was just thinking about my signal-to-noise ratio during coding and I noticed that my OS X dock has lots of stuff in it. I like this stuff. I want to keep this stuff. Also I hate a dock that hides. But I thought this: it would be nice to have an icon to click on that switches the dock between “only show running apps”-mode and normal mode.

collect - a shell function

Fri, 24 May 2013 22:41:00 +0000

In OS X’s Finder, if you select some things then right-click you have an option called “New Folder with Selection”. ilikeitverymuch. So a while back, I though it would be alsonice to have something analogous in the command shell. I’ve been using just such a command for about six months now and let me assure you that it is very alsonice.

What does it do, under the hood?

PIL/PIP/Homebrew Problems

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:42:00 +0000

I have PIL installed via pip. I have libjpeg installed via homebrew. I have the system python.

I was having problems with PIL’s jpeg module. It was giving the error message: “ImportError: The _imaging C module is not installed”. It was installed, but it was broken. Telling python to import _imaging gave me the better message: “Symbol not found: _jpeg_resync_to_restart”.

So I had a look: dyldinfo -dylibs /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so and saw this: