OCSmart Hacks 2.03

Overview

OCSmart Hacks is a service bundle, which considerably extends the functionality of any native, Cocoa-based Mac OS X application: among others, it supports the following services:

the main menu can be popped up anyplace, anytime;
tear-off menus;
resizing a window by any edge;
moving a window by any point inside its frame (not just by its title);
entering URL links into RTF(D) documents in TextEdit;
saving any formatted text into HTML;
even keeping a watch over the current keyboard and reporting when it changes (this is a power user feature, check the Power Users help page for details);

and much more: see please the other Help pages for details.

Basics

OCSmart Hacks add into the application menu of an application an item "OCSmart Hacks...", directly below the standard "Preferences..." one:

Click the item to open the main OCSmart Hacks window, which contains all the settings and information, along with an access to these Help pages. You can assign the menu item a key equivalent, too; currently it is a power-user feature (see please the Release Notes Help page for details of OCSHHacksPanelKeyEquivalent), in future there will be an appropriate GUI.

If the menu is not found in an application, it may be that

OCSmart Hacks are disabled in this application (see the Disabling OCSmart Hacks Help page);
the application is not a Cocoa native Mac OS X application;
the application does not use the standard 'APPL' bundle (see also the Power User Help page);
the application advertises it does not have a GUI ('LSBackgroundOnly');
or perhaps you have not registered OCSmart Hacks yet ☺

In case you don't see OCSmart Hacks in an application you would like to, open please the standard Console application and check its contents (of console.log) at the time the application of yours is launched. If no OCSmart Hacks report occurs, the application is not a native Cocoa one (or you have suppressed the reports yourself the way described in the Power User Help page). Otherwise, the report would say the exact reason why OCSmart Hacks were not loaded into the application, like in

iCal Helper[7274] # OCSmartHacks (3): disabled: LSBackgroundOnly

Licencing

You can test freely OCSmart Hacks in the Installer Application. To be able to use Hacks in any Cocoa application, you need to register it buying a registration key through KAGI (order.kagi.com/?4TK&lang=en) and entering the key and your e-mail address into the Registration panel in the Installer Application (you can use the Register... main menu item to open the panel any time).

The key has no time limit and will apply for all minor upgrades; the price is $29. One key can be used for up to three installations (to cover up the very common case of using the software both on a desktop and on a laptop, with one copy to spare). For more installations separate keys have to be bought: if you need a multilicence, contact me please at ocs@ocs.cz.

If you want to localize OCSmart Hacks into a language it does not support yet (and get thus a licence key for free), send me please an e-mail before you begin, so as I can check whether the localization for your language is not already worked on.

Known Problems

There should be more or less no problems with the final release; still, being a loadable bundle which must co-operate, let's say, quite intimately with other applications' implementations, there is always a considerable probability of some mischief and, alas, there is no way to dodge discrepancies absolutely.

If you encounter any problems, check please the OCSmart Hacks Known Problems page at the OCSoftware site for known workarounds. If there is none there, contact me please at ocs@ocs.cz and send me a detailed description of the problem, so that I can fix it in the next release. If it so happens that you cannot launch an application at all, check please also the "First Aid" paragraph of the Power User Help page.

Naturally, OCSmart Hacks work for native Cocoa applications only. Porting them into the non-object-oriented Carbon world would be on the verge of impossibility. (But of course, if you happen to be a Carbon programmer and want to try, you are welcome! For starters, please make the Carbon windows to accept

⌘-events without activation, as is customary for Cocoa ones ☺)

Contact

mailto:ocs@ocs.cz, http://www.ocs.cz.