After digging through the NEWT/0 source code again, it appeared that I could again use GetGlobalVar(), but this time with the '_ENV_ object literal, but it didn’t seem to have anything useful in it, certainly not any environment variables. So, back to the source code I went and discovered that NEWT/0 implements a custom global function GetEnv(), like the getenv() equivalent in C, accepts a string for the environment variable name and returns the value stored in said environment variable.

To get the PATH environment variable, for example:

#!/usr/bin/env newt

Print("PATH:" && GetEnv("PATH") && "\n");

Or a basic “hello world” CGI that also echoes the query string:

#!/usr/local/bin/newt

Print("Content-Type: text/plain\n\n");

Print("Hello world!\n\n");
Print("QUERY_STRING:" && GetEnv("QUERY_STRING") && "\n");

I must thank NEWT/0’s developer, Makoto Nukui, for including all this functionality!

I’ve also had NEWT/0, an open source, cross-platform NewtonScript interpreter, installed for a while. Since it can run NewtonScript scripts from the command line like any other interpreter, I decided I’d like to know if it was possible to get the command line arguments from NewtonScript so I could eventually write some local scripts to get myself familiar with the syntax & functions (therefore less of a learning curve when I finally get around to writing some actual Newton packages). After a point in the right direction from Matthias Melcher and a lot of digging through the NEWT/0 source code, I finally figured out how to do so.

Here’s a quick NewtonScript script that can be run through NEWT/0 to print out the command line arguments you pass to it:

#!/usr/bin/env newt

Print("'_ARGV_ exists? ");
if GlobalVarExists('_ARGV_) then Print("Yes.\n") else Print("No.\n");

foreach slot, value in GetGlobalVar('_ARGV_) do Print(slot && ":"
&& value && "\n");

I doubt there are many, if any, out there that are interested in doing this, but—who knows?—maybe somebody else will start scripting in NewtonScript too. (Expect to see some more NewtonScript-related news around here in the future.)

When I released v0.7 of my Twitter Statuses JavaScript Badge back in November of last year, it was right around the time that Twitter was rolling out their new ‘snowflake’ status ID generator which was going to have some implications for languages such as JavaScript. Unfortunately, I didn’t become aware of this until I started seeing random issues with status IDs a couple months later. More unfortunately, I’m only getting around to applying the minor tweak to fix this, and a minor issue with applying the ‘last’ class when there’s only one LI element, now.

Without further ado, I present v0.7.1! Please accept my apologies for sitting on this issue for so long and let me know if you have any questions, comments, or feature requests. Also, the source code is on GitHub.

FYI – I started developing a major update back in March, including a few frequently requested features. Hopefully I’ll get that polished up sometime this year.

• trash can now list trash contents across all volumes (with a disk usage total) as well as empty the trash (including a secure empty option; both emptying operations require confirmation).

Note: Obviously, the new version of trash is now destructive. I have tested and use this myself, but I cannot guarantee it won’t securely erase your entire hard drive if it encounters some odd edge case and I cannot be held responsible for that. So, use at your own risk and keep backups!

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

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.

• 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 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.

• 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!

So far my experiments are actually quite successful, and it seems that developing Newton applications with just a text editor is not that impractical. […] Some things are still missing for developing larger apps, like the ability to split the code into multiple source files, and a way to embed resources into the final package, but for simple applications (and even auto parts), we might have a way forward.

This is nowhere as ambitious as Matthias Melcher’s DyneTK project, but maybe good enough to get people interested in a bit of Newton hacking.

It’s not really far enough along for a release yet, but you can peek at the Subversion repository if you’re so inclined.

I have a PowerMac 9500 configured for Newton development purposes, among others, but it’s inconvenient at best when I’m actually inspired to do any Newton development. As Eckhart alludes to, dealing with Mac NTK’s binary files w/resource forks in version control is a major pain.

[Via NewtonTalk]

1. Support for searches as or the usual individual user’s statuses.
2. Now using John Gruber’s Improved Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs
3. More flexible adding of classes (incl. a new ‘reply’ class).
4. The examples (yes, there’s a new one for search) use purely CSS rendering (no images).

And, here’s the search example:

Drop me a line if you have any questions, comments, improvements, or feature requests. I have a few more features planned for the next release.