Scot Hacker's BeOS Software

These bash and perl scripts should work equally well under PPC and Intel, R3 and R4. Please let me know if they don't.

RipEnc v2.7

"Ripless" MP3 and OGG encoding with full support for ID3 tags and corresponding Be File System attributes. When you create MP3s with RipEnc, you get database-like control of your MP3 collection. Technically, RipEnc is a "front-end" for various command-line MP3 tools, including cdda-fs, id3ren, id3attr, and the GOGO MP3 encoder. This vesion is for BeOS 5 users only. If you're using R4.5.x, download RipEnc v2.01 instead.

Batteries not included.

Simple Gallery

Turn collections of digital images into little web sites. Thumbnails are made and placed on an index page, linking to each image on its own HTML page. "About" text is read in and inserted into index page. Long and short captions stored in attributes of JPEG images are inserted into the HTML pages. Based on work by James Garrett - I took this over June 2001 and added many new features.

TrackerBase 2.1

Extract web sites from BeOS databases, using Tracker to organize and edit attributes, and bash or perl as an extraction language. Four sample databases and scripts, detailed documentation, and a tutorial. Improvements in version 2 include: Information on generating dynamic sites (including the commented perl script that drives the BeOS Tip Server), a fix for the previously bogus MIME type I was using for TrackerBase files, and a command-line option for generating static sites faster when you only want to generate new or updated pages. Read more about the TrackerBase system here.

TermSet v2.1

Configure multiple Terminal settings files and switch between them quickly. Run multiple Terminal windows in different colors and fonts. Run with no arguments, presents a list of installed Terminal settings files. Give it a named settings file as an argument to switch to that terminal immediately. Or just double-click settings files from a Desktop folder.

cronbak

Automate regular systems backups using zip, cron, and a simple bash shell script. This isn't software -- just step-by-step documentation along with a sample script and crontab file to get you started.

uplog.sh

Invoke this script from UserShutdownScript to write the current date, time, and length of time since your last reboot to an ongoing logfile. Requires an uptime binary to be installed in your path. Details are in this script's header comments.

KeepAlive

Fully customizable ping manager for keeping PPP connections open. Evenly distribute ping requests amongst as many sites as you like. User-settable "snooze" between pings. Specify script duration from the command line. Keep your system connected for hours or days.

BookmarkPorter

A pair of shell scripts for converting Netscape bookmarks or IE "favorites" into NetPositive bookmark files. Still a little buggy, but they get the job done.

SizeAttr

BeOS attributes can be of any number or size, but their sizes go unreported by Tracker and Terminal. Thus, it's theoretically possible for the cumulative total size of attributes spread around your disk volumes to be substantial. SizeAttr is a companion to BeOS' listattr, getattr, addattr, and rmattr; it crawls directory trees and adds up cumulative attribute sizes, reporting back to stdout. This script mostly by Lars Duening, based on a seed by Scot Hacker.

MP3box v0.3

A perl-driven, web-based remote control system for working with MP3 collections. Control SoundPlay (including pitch and volume), create and/or play playlists, and burrow through directories of MP3 files, playing entire folders or individual files.... all from a web page on any machine. Heavily attribute-based so you can create custom playlists with queries, again through a web interface. Intended for use with BeOS-based home entertainment systems, but useful for local machines as well. See readme.html in the docs folder for details. This version is an alpha state -- consider it a work-in-progress. I no longer work on it because Stephen von Egmond's Be In Your Stereo does all I ever wanted to do with this and more..

PeoplePorter 0.2

Transform output from your PIM or contact database into Be People files. Requires some pre-massaging of your input text file. Also converts Be People files into Eudora 5 address book format.

CaseChangers

Two quickie shell scripts that will change all filenames in the current directory to UPPERCASE or lowercase, as need dictates. Move these to /boot/home/config/bin/.

Shade

An accomplice to the crimes of Marco Nelissen's WindowShade. Use WindowShade without having to speak hexx. Store and revive as many alternate config as you want through a menu-driven interface. Note: This version does not work with the recently released version of WindowShade , though you may be able to modify it to do so. This script is officially deprecated.


Binaries

Glimpse

Compilable source code for BeOS/x86 (and probably PowerPC as well) for the ultra-fast search/indexing system Glimpse (http://glimpse.cs.arizona.edu/). A perl interface onto Glimpse indices currently drives the search function of the BeOS Tip Server. Zeid Derhally made this port possible (I'm just hosting the source here).

id3ren

The command-line util id3ren, which renames batches of MP3 files based on ID3 tags, and lets you set or change ID3 tags from the shell or from within scripts (such as RipEnc). From the readme: "id3 Renamer is used to rename batches of mpeg3 files by reading the ID3 tag at the end of the file which contains the song name, artist, album, year, and a comment. The secondary function of id3 Renamer is a tagger, which can create, modify, or remove ID3 tags."

tidy

Takes raggedy, ill-formed HTML and cleans it up, nesting elements logically, repairing illegal constructions, etc. Works wonders. I didn't write this -- just compiled the x86 version from Dave Raggett's 17dec98 source code. Original source available at http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

net_restart

Restart networking from the command line. Useful for telnet sessions and for use from within scheduled jobs (though it will not work with cron, unless you can figure out how to pass in the right environment variables -- I can't. Try Brian Tietz' Scheduler instead). I didn't write this -- I'm hosting an updated version of a utility by John Wiggins with his permission. Source only. See the readme for compile instructions (easy).



 

And while you're here, pick up your copy of the Jean-Paul Sartre BeOS Icon Action pack!

See also: The BeOS Tip Server