Tag: cross-platform

Using a Windows Keyboard with Mac OS X

If you've got OS X 10.7 this should be easy:

  1. Plug the keyboard in
  2. Open System Preferences – Language and Text – Input Sources
  3. Behold, in the list of input sources, alpabetically below British, one called "British - PC"
  4. Choose it.

Done. What could be easier? If you keep the ordinary British one ticked as well (e.g. you have a laptop and second keyboard) then you'll want to tick the 'Show input menu in menu bar' option so you can easily switch between them. I like have keyboard viewer in the input list too, so I can see what layout the computer thinks I've got.

If you're on an older OS X and don't have British PC layout in your list, this post includes a link to download a British Windows Keyboard Layout for Mac.

The windows key should work as your command key, and control and alt should work as expected. If, in addition, you go to System Preferences - Keyboard - Keyboard, you should also see a button called Modifier Keys, which allows you to swap around the ctrl/command/alt keys.
I do wish Apple would make up their mind about calling the alt key 'option'. On my MacBook, the key is labelled 'alt' but in the Modifer Keys dialog box it's called 'option'

Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard, Leopard : Download BootCamp Drivers

updated October 2012. Go to the newer http://www.cafe-encounter.net/p682/download-bootcamp-drivers.

See BootCampESD.pkg download instructions for the DIY instructions on how to work out these links yourself.

Older download links for Windows drivers for Mac models to 2011

Use these instructions if BootCamp Assistant fails to download the drivers for you.

  1. Find your model in the table below. Click the link to get the download package. Be patient as they are 600MB to over 1GB.
    • Q: How do you find out your Mac's Model Identifier?
      A: Open System Information, and look in the Hardware Overview section.
      In other words: Click Apple menu -> About this Mac -> More Info… -> System Report -> Hardware. Now, read down list in the Hardware Overview panel, looking for Model Identifier
  2. Once your pkg is downloaded, double click it and install to a folder on your hard drive so you know where to find it.
  3. The folder contains a nest of folders, the last of which contains a dmg disk image file. Double click to open. Voila. Here are your Windows installer files.
  4. Copy them to a usb drive, or a burnable CD. NB, it's 600MB or even over 1GB. A CD is usually max 800MB.
  5. Done. You can now proceed with Boot Camp assistant Windows installation.

BootCamp Drivers Download Links for Macs running OS X Lion and Snow Leopard

Models

Drivers Download link

MacBookPro9,1
MacBookPro9,2

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/11/05/041-0925/g27es04pw9re5ggrfp3vuf8ew6r53asfz8/BootCampESD.pkg

iMac12,1
iMac12,2 MacBookPro8,1 MacBookPro8,2 MacBookPro8,3

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/53/34/041-4776/TpFRDjFyRJjSvtyj2vFsPyx2bH2NSYvwN9/BootCampESD.pkg

MacBookPro10,1
MacBookAir5,1 MacBookAir5,2

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/55/51/041-3891/se4uhpqng48t842cdsosqh28lft54fmswl/BootCampESD.pkg

MacBookAir3,1
MacBookAir3,2

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/32/15/041-4775/hgMfrNHd9W8W7d8n4JyqSFLksk5TYr2HXN/BootCampESD.pkg

MacBookAir4,1
MacBookAir4,2 Macmini5,1 Macmini5,2 Macmini5,3

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/32/33/041-2303/W5jKtsQhhMgMXs3TKhPDqLXrpXyY2HdXMN/BootCampESD.pkg

MacBook2,1
MacBook3,1 MacBook4,1 MacBook5,1 MacBook5,2 MacBook5,3 MacBook6,1 MacBook7,1
MacBookAir1,1 MacBookAir2,1 MacBookAir3,1 MacBookAir3,2 MacBookPro2,1
MacBookPro2,2 MacBookPro3,1 MacBookPro4,1 MacBookPro5,1 MacBookPro5,2
MacBookPro5,3 MacBookPro5,4 MacBookPro5,5 MacBookPro6,1 MacBookPro6,2
MacBookPro7,1 MacBookPro8,1 MacBookPro8,2 MacBookPro8,3 MacPro1,1 MacPro2,1
MacPro3,1 MacPro4,1 MacPro5,1 Macmini2,1 Macmini3,1 Macmini4,1 iMac5,1
iMac6,1 iMac7,1 iMac8,1 iMac9,1 iMac10,1 iMac11,1 iMac11,2 iMac11,3 iMac12,1
iMac12,2

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/33/54/041-2011/pRtCDYcWShMLxFggy3TzFzmfnnWQNFQBfJ/BootCampESD.pkg

F# on Mac and Linux

is not, in 2012, in a great state. There are 2 not-great options and I add here a third, also not-great option. It has the advantage of working, and not requiring you to learn emacs. (Jump straight to F# with Sublime)

F# on MonoDevelop

The F# language bindings for MonoDevelop broke after version 2.4. You can get MonoDevelop version 2.4 by consulting the wayback machine for the MonoDevelop Download page at July 2011. You can then use the fsharpbindings and instructions from http://functional-variations.net/monodevelop/.
Personally I fould MonoDeveloper before 2.6 more prone to crashing, and I couldn't get 2.4 working with FSharp.

F# on Aquamacs

If you're an emacs fan, then you won't need my help to find and install the f# mode for it.
For emacs newbies on the Mac with a day to burn on the learning curve, a couple of the answers on stackover gives you some clue as to how to get fsharp working:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1210125/is-there-any-f-ide-that-works-over-mono
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2120533/how-to-setup-aquamacs-for-clojure-development

F# with Sublime Text 2 (Quick and Dirty)


This was the best I could do in 2 hours:

  1. Get Sublime Text 2
  2. In the Sublime text menu : Tools - Build System - New Build System 
    {
	"cmd": ["/usr/bin/fsharpcandrun", "$file"]
}

    and save as fsharp.sublime-build .

  3. At a terminal command line, use your favourite editor to save this file as /usr/bin/fsharpcandrun : 
    #!/bin/bash
fsharpc "$1" && nameafterquote=${1#\"} && exe=${nameafterquote%.*}.exe && mono "$exe" && echo done
  4. Make it executable, again from a terminal command line: 
    sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/fsharpcandrun

    The password that sudo asks your for is your login password.

  5. If your new favourite editor is in fact Sublime, you can save files in directories requiring sudo-ed permissions by putting a command line alias for sublime in your ~/.bash_profile script: 
    alias edit='open -a /Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Sublime\ Text\ 2'

    and typing edit foo.txt to open Sublime

  6. Choose Tool -- build system -- fsharp in Sublime
  7. Now, <f7> your file. It should compile and run. At least, it did for me.
  8. Get some kind of syntax colouring by creating a .fs file, and then choosing View -- Syntax -- Open all with current extension as ... OCaml. This is because F# is near enough to OCaml for the colouring to be pretty good.

I wouldn't call this great, but it will do for the moment. It only "builds" a single file, which is hardly a build system. But it does give you syntax colouring and compile-and-run for learning F#.

The next step forwards might be to modify the bash script to fsharpc a list of files, or all files in the directory of the file to be run.