BeTips.net

The Terminal understands Unicode, but as of R4.5, does not display international characters properly by default. Be’s Fred Fish offers the following notes on this situation:

This is not a bug, though it might seem like one. Bash uses the readline library to process input and output. The readline variable that controls whether meta characters are output verbatim or escaped is ‚output-meta‘ and by default is set to ‚off‘. It can be set to ‚on‘ by creating a file called .inputrc in the directory that the environment variable $HOME points to [i.e. your /boot/home folder. -ed], and inserting the command set output-meta on.
Part of the reason the current default is the way it is, is that when bash starts up, it calls

 setlocale (LC_CHAR, "")

which returns „C“, so it selects to use a „portable“ locale. This means that it does not switch to „8-bit mode“ and thus the default when handling some input/output is to quote characters that are considered „meta chars“. We are considering ways to change this behavior. But for now you can use $HOME/.inputrc to get the behavior you want.
Please try also setting input-meta to „on“ and convert-meta to „off“.

BeTips.net has heard that this solution does not work in all cases. If you have additional suggestions for getting this to work, please let us know.

When you click the New button on Pe’s HTML tool palette, a new HTML document will be started with a default template. You can change this template to suit the needs of your site by altering the file /boot/home/config/settings/pe/Template.html.

Press the Esc key twice in the Terminal and the shell will ask whether you want to display all possibilities. Answer Y and and all commands in your system path will be displayed.

If you install R4.5 over a previous version, try to use a different volume name for the new installation. For instance, if your previous volume name for the partion is „Be,“ don’t use „Be“ again. Try to use something like „BeOS“ or „BeR45.“ If you use the same volume name again (e.g „Be“ in the example above),
the 4.5 installation may still see the old name and try to mount the new volume at /Be1 (to avoid a naming conflict). After installation, strange things may happen. You may see two volumes named „Be“ on the desktop, and the current Be volume on the desktop may point to the old volume. Re-formatting or resizing the partitions may not help. Re-installing the boot manager may not help. Using a different volume name is the only technique I’ve found to remedy the situation. After installation, you can rename the volume to whatever you like.
[Editor’s note: I suspect that Steven is facing some other kind of obscure error here, as I’ve installed many versions of BeOS over identical volume names without seeing anything like what he describes here. After all, the vast majority of users retain their volume names through every upgrade, but we never see this problem reported. Nevertheless, if this happens to you, this is a sensible way to correct the problem.]

The driver for the 3C905 NIC which ships on the R4.5 CD does not seem to support full-duplex mode. Trouble is, if your card is already in full-duplex mode, BeOS won’t simply run it in half-duplex. Instead, BeOS will give you a „Duplicate IP Detected“ error message. To fix this, boot into Windows and run the configuration utility that came with the card to knock it back into half-duplex mode. It will now run properly under BeOS. Hopefully BeOS will soon support full duplex mode for this card natively.

For such an incredible (and potentially complex) application, 3dmiX doesn’t seem to come with much in the way of documenation. Grep the /boot/beos/documentation folder, and you won’t find a single reference. That’s because it appears in the docs under a different name: 3dMixer. If you’re on a BeOS machine right now, this link will take you there:
file:///boot/beos/documentation/User’s%20Guide/Rel ease Notes/3DMixer/3DMixer.html
You’ll also find documentation of the app in the BeOS Bible R4.5 Update pages (see the Demos section).
Finally, BeOS Central offers a mini-site dedicated to covering the ins and outs of this remarkable tool, including a full tutorial.
Have a suggestion for a way to improve 3dmiX? Send email to ouzo@bemail.org .

If you’ve got a copy of the scripting utility hey installed, try this under R4.5:

hey media_server '_ABR'
hey media_addon_server '_ABR'

And don’t forget to stick around for the scrolling credits.

While searching through the extra stuff on the CD I found a folder at _packages_/extras/optional/sample-code/graphics/QuickPaint. If you copy that folder to the Desktop and ‚Run‘ the included .proj file from the BeIDE Project menu you’ll get a simple little paint program. Wonder why Be didn’t include this in the Demos….

Once in a blue moon, under very rare circumstances, the Tracker may „forget“ to see a file which you know it contains (i.e. you can see that the file is present by viewing the contents of the folder from the Terminal). If this happens to you, close the folder and navigate in the Terminal to a position one directory above the problematic folder. Then type:

rmattr _trk/pinfo_le foldername

Re-open the folder and you’ll be able to see the mystery file.
See also: Check filesystem integrity

If you’ve got a Diamond Rio portable MP3 player, you can mount it as a file system in R4.5, using the tools in /optional/experimental/rio.
Once mounted, it appears as a regular disk volume to the Tracker, which means you can download files directly from web or FTP sites directly into the device, without having to use a separate Rio-loading utility. In other words, it’s easier to stock your Rio in BeOS than it is Windows.