Author Archives: Kenji Yoshino

About Kenji Yoshino

Twitter: @tidgubi

Logitech N305 on a Mac

I love my Logitech VX Nano mouse for it’s size, weight, battery life, tracking, and scrolling. I wanted to unobtrusively add a number pad into my computing setup, but figured I’d only use it occasionally. I’d decided to “upgrade” to a Logitech Anywhere MX and a Logitech N305 since I could use them with a single Unifying Receiver. The only problem is I’m trying to use these with a Mac…

The Logitech Anywhere MX works great. I love the convenience of the on/off slider and tracking on glass is neat, but the extra weight and reduced battery life make it about equal to the VX Nano in my opinion.

I ran into a number of problems with the Logitech N305. The product page says it only works with Windows, but I figured “Hey it’s a keyboard, of course it will work.” Well, I was wrong. Logitech Control Center for Mac doesn’t know about the N305. Ok, I pulled my Unifying Receiver, plugged it into a Windows 7 box with Logitech Control Center, and paired my N305 with the receiver. With the receiver back in my Mac, it was time to see if there was any key mapping issues. Everything looked good typing a bit in TextWrangler, and everything look good. Then I tried to do some accounting in Excel and that’s when the problems started.

For some reason the N305 seems to send a backspace after a pause in typing. If I typed “1”, a “1” would appear and then disappear. If I typed “12”, I would get “12” and then “1”. Typing “12“, would get “12” and I would be editing the next cell. I avoided using the number pad with Excel for a while, but that’s the primary use for a number pad, so I broke down and installed KeyRemap. To install, I had to change my installer permissions. You do have to restart after installing KeyRemap.

Once I restarted, getting everything working was as easy as clicking the new square, key icon in my menu bar, selecting “Open KeyRemap4MacBook Preferences…”, searching for “N305” and checking the “Logitech N305 hack”. Now everything works as expected on my N305 numberpad.

Installing Unsigned Software on a Mac

I’ve been starting to find more useful software that isn’t necessarily produced by a big software company or installed though the Mac App Store. I was a little surprised when I first received the following dialog:
Unsigned_Installer

It’s nice that Apple is adding restrictions that will help prevent the accidental installation of potentially untrusted software, but how do I install this software when I’m sure I want to install software that’s not signed.

It’s actually pretty simple. Open “System Preferences” and select the “Security & Privacy” Preferences. Select the “General” tab and click the lock to allow changes (you’re not doing your daily computing with an Administrator account). Authenticate with an admin account.

You should see the following:
Allowed_Installers

Under “Allow applications downloaded from:”, select “Anywhere”. MacOS will warn you with the following message:
Allow_Anywhere_Installation

Click “Allow from anywhere” and install your “untrusted” software. Make sure you change your settings back to “Mac App Store and identified developers” or if you want to be really secure set it to “Mac App Store” only. Then whenever you download software to install, you’ll have to consciously change this setting.

Simple Print to PDF

It’s surprising that as of Windows 8, Microsoft hasn’t added a native print to PDF function. In searching for a free solution, I looked at CutePDF Writer, doPDF Free PDF Converter, and PrimoPDF. I thought this would be a straightforward comparison, there ended up being no clear winner.

I printed (using program defaults) one page from the Wikipedia PDF page and compared the output. On Windows 7 Home Premium, I used Google Chrome‘s (version 25.0.1364.172 m), Firefox (version 8.0.1), and Internet Explorer (version 9.0.8112.16421) 64-bit Edition. I also compared the output of these PDF printers to Chrome’s and MacOS’s built in PDF printers.

CutePDF

Link: http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp
Version: 3.0

CutePDF-Save

Pros

  • High Quality Images: I could not discern a degradation of the image compressed by CutePDF.
  • Clean Interface: CutePDF does nor present the user with options. When you click “Print”, it asks you where you’d like to save the file.

Cons

  • Slow initialization: 2 seconds or more from clicking “Print” to when the save dialog appears
  • The save dialog doesn’t grab focus. After clicking “Print” and waiting a few seconds, I had to click on the browser window to get the save dialog to appear.
  • Large Files: the PDFs generated by CutePDF were between 79KB and 84KB
  • Old Save Dialg: CutePDF uses Windows save dialog that does not display the Navigation Pane.
  • Installer tried to install two foistware that I had to opt-out of. Make sure you opt out of these, but install ps2pdf which is required.

doPDF Free PDF Converter

Link: http://www.dopdf.com/
Version: 7.3.388

doPDF-Settings

Pros

  • The installation was straightfoward with no surprises.
  • Small files: the PDFs generated by doPDF were between 17KB and 27KB

Cons

  • Errors: Clicking cancel when printing from IE resulted in IE thinking there was an error printing. Also, saving to my E: drive, doPDF gave me permission errors, and I haven’t been able to figure out why.
  • Low quality images: There is noticeable blurring of the PDF icon even without zooming in.

PrimoPDF

Link: http://www.primopdf.com/
Version: 5.1.0.2

PrimoPDF-Settings

Pros

  • The installation was straightfoward with no surprises.
  • Lots of options, but tested with the default of saving files for viewing on a Screen.

Cons

  • Low quality images: There is noticeable blurring of the PDF icon even without zooming in.
  • Large files: the files generated by PrimoPDF were between 69KB and 82KB.

PDFCreator

Link: http://www.pdfforge.org/download
Version 1.6.2

Be careful while downloading, because the download page has ads that include “Download” links along with links to download other PDFForge programs.

Also while installing, make sure you uncheck the extra software. I don’t think you need to install “PDF Architect” or “COM samples”.
PDFCreator-Install

After installing (assuming you live in the US and want to print to letter sized paper), perform the following steps (in Windows 7) to change the default paper size:

  1. Open the Start menu
  2. Click “Devices and Pinters”
  3. Right click on “PDFCreator” and select “Printing preferences”
  4. Click the “Advanced…” button
  5. Use the “Paper Size:” drop down menu to select a new default paper size
  6. Click “OK”, “OK”, and close

Thanks thundt for the tip on PDFCreator’s default paper size.

Settings Dialog:
PDFCreator-Settings

Pros

  • Quick, accurate PDF creation.
  • Straightforward, no settings.
  • Quality: The icon on the page shows minor blurring when zooming in but does not show visible artifacts.
  • Uses the standard Windows save dialog
  • Allows the user to set a few properties in the PDF without complicating the creation process.

Cons

  • Attempts to install extra unnecessary software.
  • Large files, the sample was comparable to MacOS and CutePDF.

Reference Implementations

Chrome’s built in PDF function saved a sharp image, but generated a 110KB file.

MacOS PDF printer (used from Safari) saved a sharp image and generated a 82KB file.

Conclusion

For a simple straightforward print to PDF solution that you don’t have to worry about, I think PDFCreator is the best. It is quick, is very straightforward once configured, and produces quality PDFs. CutePDF is second, because of its quirks (the save dialog). Nowadays, space is cheap, so I’d rather make sure I’m saving what I’m seeing instead of saving some space.

The other options aren’t bad, and can probably produce comparable results, but I think printing to PDF should be a process that doesn’t require thought.

Files

Fonts

This isn’t exactly new news, but Adobe has release two fonts under the SIL Open Font License version 1.1.

The one I really like is SourceCodePro. It is a mono-space font that is good for programming and the other is a sans-serif font. I really like SourceCode for programming and most mono-space font usage. I believe they accomplished their goal of every character being distinct.

The other font is SourceSansPro. It is a nice sans-serif font, but I don’t see a significant difference from existing fonts like Calibri.