mac-os-x

Mac text to speech voices: What do you know about Mac OS X text to speech voice capabilities, including using AppleScript to convert text to speech?

I'm goofing around currently, using the very cool Mac text to speech capability. Okay, really, what I'm doing is writing an AppleScript iTunes alarm clock program to wake me up in the morning, and in the process I started digging into this Mac text to speech stuff, using AppleScript.

Mac Java FAQ: I'm currently using Mac OS/X 10.4 with Java 1.5.x. But, for a certain application I need to use a previous version of Java, which I can see is actually installed on the hard drive. Can I use this older Java JVM on Mac OS X 10.4?

Answer: Yes, I was able to do this. The hardest part about this is finding where the previous Java version is installed. There are probably easier ways to do it, but I ended up using the Mac mdfind command, which is the command-line version of Spotlight.

Mac OS X FAQ: How can I get access to the full path of the current Finder window? That is, when I'm looking at a Finder window in a directory like /Users/Al/Foo/Bar, how can I easily put that directory path on the clipboard so I can use it in other applications?

As a Mac OS/X newbie I couldn't find a good way to do this, so I wrote an AppleScript (script) to do it for me. Here is the script:

Mac Terminal Finder tip: How to open a Mac Finder window from the current directory of a Mac Terminal window.

Cool, I just learned how to open a Mac Finder window in the current directory of a Mac Terminal window. To do it, just issue this Mac open command:

open .

(Yes, that is a decimal after the open command. The decimal is the Unix way of referring to the current directory.)