Mac 911

One thing last November’s election tells us is that the simplest matters – determining which candidate to plunk down in the Oval Office for the next four years, for example – can be confounding when one or two little things go awry. While I would have been no help in the recent political kafuffle (after all, how many Floridians would appreciate my suggestion that they rebuild their desktops on a regular basis?), I can do a little something right here and now to clear up these other simple matters: broadening the capabilities of the Appearance control panel, wirelessly synchronizing data between a Palm and a portable, curing a PowerBook’s sleep apnea, and setting new defaults in the Page Setup dialog box.

Alternate System Fonts

Speaking of elected officials, I was surprised to learn that the International Christian Fellowship Church of Japan has a minister of dance. This undoubtedly fleet-of-foot officer, Gustavo Tozzo-Jaime, is having trouble displaying a particular font in menus and dialog boxes. Mr. Tozzo-Jaime runs the North American version of OS 9 and a fair sprinkling of Japanese software on his Mac. His difficulty is that while items on his Mac’s desktop display the Osaka font correctly, the text that appears in menus and dialog boxes is garbled. Ideally, he’d like to configure the Appearance control panel so that his entire system uses Osaka, but this font fails to appear in the Appearance control panel’s pop-up menus.

There’s no way to dance around this other than to say that OS 9’s Appearance control panel has some unfortunate limitations. One such limitation is that it offers precious few choices in the System Font pull-down menus. Happily, there’s a remedy that works not only for toe-tapping ministers, but also for other Mac users.

Anyone seeking to increase the capabilities of the Appearance control panel need only download a copy of Weedhopper Press’s ( www.whpress.com ) $9 shareware utility, AppearanceHopper. With AppearanceHopper, you can assign any installed font – yes, even the Osaka font – as the large or small system font, the small heading font, or the Finder views font (see “From All Appearances”).

IM Confused about IR

Mac 911 Forum visitor Jim Calais was interested in HotSyncing his Palm IIIc to his PowerBook via the Palm’s and PowerBook’s infrared ports. He reports that a Palm representative told him it couldn’t be done, which is, as you’ll soon learn, utter hogwash.

Of course you can HotSync the two machines wirelessly. Palm has made this procedure easier with recent Palm models by including the software you need on the CD that ships with Palm devices. Unfortunately, your IIIc didn’t ship with this software. Therefore, you must:

Take a trip to Palm’s FTP site ( ftp://ftp.3com.com/pub/palm/downloads/macos ) and download the approximately 18MB extras.bin file. Once expanded, this file turns into the Palm Extras folder. Inside this folder is the IrDA folder. Inside the IrDA folder are two additional folders: one that contains files that must be downloaded to the Palm, and another containing files that must be installed on your Mac’s hard drive. Install these files, perform a soft reset of the Palm, and restart your Mac.

Next, open the Palm’s Prefs application, select Connection from the upper right menu, and choose IR To A PC/Handheld from the available configurations. If you click on Edit, you should see that the connection method is IrCOMM To PC. In the HotSync application, make sure that IR To A PC/Handheld is selected.

On the PowerBook, select Infrared (IrDA) from the Connect Via menu in the AppleTalk control panel. Close and save.

Now choose Setup from the HotSync menu. In the HotSync Software Setup window, make sure HotSync is enabled and click on the Serial Port Settings tab. In the Local Setup portion of the window, select As Fast As Possible from the Speed menu and Infrared Port from the Port menu. Cozy the infrared ports of the two devices up to each other and initiate the HotSync process on either machine. The two should sync like a couple of stones.

Sleep Depraved PowerBook

Another Mac 911 Forum visitor, Lindsey, wondered why his or her PowerBook G3 refused to issue any alert sounds after waking from sleep – although the modem continued to screech loud and clear when called upon to do so. Fortunately I was able to lend assistance (and look like a real smarty-pants in the process) by dredging up an old Macworld Daily Tip that explains how this behavior can occur when STF Technologies’ Faxstf 5.0 software is installed and switched on.

The way around this problem is to launch the Fax Browser application, select Settings from the Edit menu, click on the Fax Modem icon, and choose Never from the Answer On pop-up menu. Now put the PowerBook to sleep and, once it’s dozed off, rudely awaken it by pressing any key. Alert sounds should once again pour forth from the PowerBook.

Of course, this deprives you of the ability to receive faxes, so it’s best to take these steps only when you don’t intend to receive faxes with your PowerBook.

Page Setup Predicament

Laura Yalem, who hails from the Show-Me State, would like to be shown how to change and save default settings such as paper size, orientation, and scaling in the Page Setup dialog box. After all, if you change the paper size on one print run, invariably the paper size switches back to the default on the next.

Laura, it’s pretty easy to change this – if you know the trick. And that trick is to invoke the Page Setup command under the File menu from within your current application, make the changes you want, and then hold down the option key while clicking on the OK button. When you do so, another dialog box appears, asking “Save the current Page Setup settings as the default settings?” at which point you acknowledge your “You betcha!” by punching the Save button. When you next select Page Setup, the settings you last saved will be waiting for you.

Contributing Editor CHRISTOPHER BREEN is Macworld ‘s tip czar – a self-appointed, rather than elected, position.

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