I’ve got a very minor update to the sde_newsletter Textpattern plug-in. v0.5 word-wraps HTML & text content in message/part bodies to 78 characters (if possible) to prevent hard wrapping at 998 characters which tends to badly break HTML content.

The sde_newsletter plug-in helps build HTML, text, or multipart email messages from Textpattern pages (although, technically, you can use any web-facing source HTML & text). It’s straightforward and very powerful when paired with newsletter/mailing list software.

Update: I discovered a minor bug parsing page title from HTML if the TITLE element contains line breaks. This has been resolved in v0.5.1.

There’s been a small addition to my collection of Mac OS X command line tools:

• swuser gives you control of Mac OS X’s Fast User Switching from the command line, including options for switching to login window, user by name, or user by ID. Unfortunately, it’s not compatible with screen.

Go download them all (clipcat, eject, swuser, and trash) or get the source code on github!

I’ve been doing a lot of early morning coding in bed, and have found that the only way I can do so without killing my eyes is to select “Use grayscale” as well as “White on Black” in the Universal Access preferences pane in System Preferences. This gives me a far more comfortable, inverted grayscale display. Unfortunately, it’s annoying and painful to initially set when my eyes are at their most sensitive.

I’ve modified a script posted on Apple Discussions to enable grayscale to also invert the display¹ and saved it as a run-only application named Invert Display.app:

tell application "System Preferences" to activate
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
	tell process "System Preferences"
		click the menu item "Universal Access" of the menu "View" of menu bar 1
		click the radio button "Seeing" of the first tab group of window "Universal Access"
		if value of (checkbox "Use grayscale" of tab group 1 of window "Universal Access") is 0 then
			click the checkbox "Use grayscale" of tab group 1 of window "Universal Access"
		end if
		-- click the radio button "White on Black" of tab group 1 of window "Universal Access"
	end tell
	key code 28 using {control down, option down, command down}
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit

Naturally, I also created another to restore the settings and named it Restore Display.app:

tell application "System Preferences" to activate
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
	tell process "System Preferences"
		click the menu item "Universal Access" of the menu "View" of menu bar 1
		click the radio button "Seeing" of the first tab group of window "Universal Access"
		if value of (checkbox "Use grayscale" of tab group 1 of window "Universal Access") is 1 then
			click the checkbox "Use grayscale" of tab group 1 of window "Universal Access"
		end if
		-- click the radio button "Black on White" of tab group 1 of window "Universal Access"
	end tell
	key code 28 using {control down, option down, command down}
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit

I just launch them from Spotlight as needed. It’s a little distracting to see System Preferences launch and do it’s thing, but far easier than doing it myself when my eyes are being seared out of their sockets.

¹ – Note that I’ve left the line for selecting the “White on Black” radio button in the script, but commented out, in case someone can catch the reason it throws an error. Since I’m in the preference pane anyway, it seems silly to use key code, plus I’d rather be able to verify it’s actually selected (like I do with the checkbox) so I’m not blindly toggling.

I’ve got a new release of my collection of Mac OS X command line tools for you, including:

• trash correctly increments filenames (à la Finder) if the same filename already exists in your Trash instead of complaining that the file already exists. It also has a teensiest bit more logic regarding trash on the boot volume vs. other volumes.
• eject now supports ejecting mounted network volumes and includes a -f option to force a stubborn volume to eject (to be used only in extreme cases).
• clipcat is a new addition, submitted by David Kendal, which allows printing & concatenating of Text Clippings!

Go ahead and download them or grab the source code on github!