🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3v4f9m$1bja@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>,
scocca@gibbs.oit.unc.edu (D. A. Scocca) wrote:

>PD and Shareware:
>
>Stuffit Expander (hard to get anything else without it)
>Graphic Converter (if you do graphics)
>TechTool (PRAM-zapper, desktop rebuilder)
>Folder Icon Maker (makes your windows prettier, though slower)
>CRLF (converts quickly between DOS, Mac, and Unix text files)
>Desktop Strip (shareware version of control strip, works on all Macs)
>
>and an editor (I like Alpha--there's also BBEdit Lite (freeware), 
>BBEdit (payware or shareware, I forget which), and a bunch of others)
>
>For Payware, I couldn't live without Now Utilities and Norton 
>Utilities.

This is a fair list, and the best so far.

But the essential question is: what do you *need to do* ???

I find that I do several things on my mac:

*	email and net access
* web browsing/authoring
* scripting
* writing
* maintenance

To support these I use utilities in several categories:

* internet applications
* text editors
* scripting utilities
* disk utilities
* miscellaneous widgets to make life easier

The internet applications available in the public domain or as shareware are,
for the most part, better than the commercial ones. The exceptions to this
are NewsHopper (probably the best Mac offline usenet newsreader -- commercial,
for about US $60/ UK #40),  and Eudora 2.11 (best mail reader).

Noteworthy point: I've tried CyberFinder and don't like it -- the aliases
are very space-inefficient. Far better to use Clay Basket (from the
Aretha site, mentioned below) to make your Netscape hotlist truly
hierarchical.

Text editors are a moot point. You _can_ assemble a shareware wordprocessor
of ferocious power: just get hold of Alpha (the best programmer's editor
for the Mac, now with an excellent LaTeX mode), Excalibur (a LaTeX aware
spell-checker that inter-operates with Alpha), and OzTeX (TeX for the Mac).
If you don't have a postscript printer you might want to add MacGS (a 
postscript interpreter that can drive quickdraw devices). The registration
fees on that little lot run to something like $75 -- way less than virtually
any commercial word processor -- and although it's not WYSIWYG, it's 
extremely powerful and fairly well integrated.

You can also use Alpha's fairly hefty HTML mode to prepare your web site, or ...

Scripting: RUN, DON'T WALK, to http://www.hotwired.com/Staff/userland/, and
grab a copy of Aretha. Aretha is the first public freeware release of 
Userland Frontier, the first Mac scripting product. It's arguably better
than applescript, has a really cool built-in outline processor, and looks
like the bee's knees. Grab the AutoWeb package that's part of the Frontier
site and you'll be able to build a fairly useful WWW site without even
needing to learn HTML.

For serious programming/text mangling work I use MacPerl. I'm a Perl
freak -- I do it for a living on UNIX -- so it should come as no surprise
to learn that I prefer it to languages like C or Pascal for dicing and
slicing data forks in files. MacPerl integrates with Alpha (although when
the OSA component comes out that should be really cool with Aretha's
outlining script editor.)

Disk utilities are a moot point. The best are commercial-only. I've used
Norton 3.1 and MacTools Pro, and I _think_ MacTools have the edge for 
fixing bad filesystems. FWB's HDT toolkit seems to take the field where it comes to managing low level SCSI stuff.

I cannot live without RAMDoubler on a machine with less than 20Mb of 
physical RAM. I also strongly recommended Norton DiskDoubler Pro, which
includes AutoDoubler and CopyDoubler. Doubtless if I was running a PowerPC
I'd also need a copy of SpeedDoubler, as soon as it comes out ...

Which leaves the miscellaneous life-improvers.

If you don't have a huge screen, you may well want to use a virtual desktop,
like one of the Motif or Windows ones, to make live easier. The best I've 
found so far is Virtual 1.1.2, though the AWOL utilities virtual desktop
uses a radically different paradigm and seems to be a little more stable
(albeit less friendly to my way of working).

Snitch 2.0 has become indispensible. This utility expands finder Get Info
dialogs and lets you do things like modify a file's TYPE and CREATOR
attributes interactively.

You can't do _anything_ without a copy of stuffit expander and/or dropstuff.

There's an extremely useful shareware Fax package out there; ValueFax
compares well with FaxSTF, and is a lot cheaper if you need to buy it in
a hurry.

For file organization, I like Greg's Browser. It's cool, it reminds me of
the NeXT, it has anti-aliased text, and if I had a bigger monitor I'd use
it all the time -- as it is, I can only see three levels of folders on
screen. Alternatively, there's DisKeeper -- a really useful file finder
and maintenance tool (no longer maintained, unfortunately) that helps you
clean up your disk.


-- Charlie