Mac Tips

Cut/Paste Columns in Textedit and Preview- a not-well known keyboard shortcut is using COMMAND OPTION when cut/pasting sections of text. What COMMAND OPTION allows you to do is cut/paste columns of text. Cut/pasting columns of text is quite handy if you're reading a report in tabular format. Just press COMMAND OPTION and you'll not that the cursur (in Textedit only) will turn into a plus sign. Then click-drag a box around colum of text and copy/paste to another document. It is pretty slick. I tried it with the preview app, and it works too, but, the cursor doesnt' change.

Use Text Wrangler(TW) (free from the Apple Mac App Store) to edit web pages. An inexpensive tool for web coders, the TW program can adapt itself to edit specialized text files like HTML (hypertex markup language) that is used for web pages. What TW does is highlight different text elements of the HTML page so that when mistakes are made in the coding, the author will notice, and fix it. For example the statement <p align="center">DVD Titles</p> would have the following color scheme in Text Wrangler:

Blue <p
Red align="center"
Blue >
Black DVD Titles
Blue </p>

If you left the second double quote character off the end of the word center, the rest of the line would be red, alerting the coder that the quote was missing. This allows you to notice mistakes in your HTML.

The Text wrangler program is free, and available for download from the Mac App Store, for thouse of you that have upgraded to the latest version of Snow Leopard.

You can edit and view web pages on your desktop, at the same time you view the web page with Safari (or any other internet browser. For example, save a simple web page to your desktop by right clicking the link "simple web page" above, and then clicking "Save link as" and save the file "2011-02-26-example.htm" to your desktop. Open the file with Text Wrangler (FILE | OPEN | Navigate to the file on Desktop and double-click it), then open the same file with Safari by double clicking the file "2011-02-26-example.htm". Now you can make changes to this file in Text Wrangler, save the changes, and refresh Safari to see your changes.

Reunion Tips

You cn navigate through marked people in your Reunion Family File by using the left and right arrows. First mark people by clicking the little box on each persons Name Bar using the

Reunion List Presentation

The entire set of commands in Reunion's List Menu was covered in the talk about Reunion's List. Significant points covered were:

• Index was an example list with the most functionality. On it the Search box (at the top of the form with the small picture of a microscope) lets you subset who's on the list by typing in the last name, first name. If you just put in comma, first name, you are able to search first names. On the family card, a similar seach is available at the bottom of the card with a small picture of a microscope.
• On the Index, direct data entry in most fields is possible (as are mistakes)
• To allow this interactive dislay and editing requires setting 2 prefererences:
  • In Reunion, click REUNION PREFERENCES | INDEX | Click on "Update List as you type in Search Field".
  • In Reunion, click REUNION PREFERENCES | INDEX | Click on "Enable editing in Index and other lists".
• If you think the index on your file has become corrupt, click REUNION PREFERENCES | Click on "Rebuild Index".
• LIST | RELATIVES | IDENTIFY is the way to select the "Source" person, from whom all relationships on the name bars are based. It also sets the relationship source on the iPad/iPhone Reunion App.
• Interfamily marriages lists all couples who are blood-related in your family file. It's very simple to run, just click on LIST | INTERFAMILY MARRIAGES and wait a shot while for it to generate the list.
• When a list is present (like with an index) you can create quick reports by clicking on the "Report" icon in the lower right corner of the List. If you check "Include Tabs between fields", you can copy/paste date into your spreadsheet and it will recognize the tabs as column delimiters.
• In the LIST | STATISTICS List, you can click on the various entries on the list to generate a customized Find to identify detailed groups of people.
• When you create reports, the column widths are controlled by the adjustible columns on the List. If the column width on the report is not wide enought, go back to the list and widen the column, then rerun the report.