BeTips.net

If you overwrite, lose, or edit a system-provided icon, there’s no obvious way to get the original back again. Here’s the solution:

1. Open the folder /boot/home/config/settings/beos_mime , then navigate to the subdirectory that matches the same supertype/type as the icon that’s messed up. For example, let’s say the icon for all of your text/plain files system-wide became corrupted somehow. You would open the folder /boot/home/config/settings/beos_mime/text and look for a file called „plain.“
2. Insert your BeOS installation CD and open the exact same path on the CD.
3. Replace the filetype in question on your hard drive with a clean version from the CD, and you’re done. The change takes effect immediately.

Note that the icons live inside the attributes of these generic-looking files. They’re not visible in Tracker or even in the FileTypes add-on, but they’re there.

If there’s something in BeOS or one of your applications that should be customizable but you can’t find a widget anywhere to tweak its settings, there’s a chance that it’s controlled by a setting lurking in a subdirectory of the /boot/home/config/settings/ directory. Even if the app does provide a widget, you may prefer to work with the settings files directly.
Some examples:

• NetPositive’s cache is stored in the NetPositive subdirectory (unfortunately, the N+ settings file here won’t let you change the default startup page, as it appears it might.
• BeMail signatures are stored as plain text files in the BeMail subdirectory.
• Printers can be removed from the list of printers you’ve added by removing their data files from the Printers subdirectory.
• Terminal color/font schemes can be stored as alternates (the active one is always called Terminal; rename your backups with meaningful names and then swap the file names when needed).

You’ll find many more files and directories inside this hierarchy — experiment!

You can „clean up“ the Workspaces window by clicking the zoom box. (The small box on the right side of the yellow title bar.) Since Workspaces always fits its content, the zoom box automatically moves the window to the lower right corner of the screen, tidying itself up for you.

This line, in /boot/home/config/boot/UserBootscript will start Workspaces up every time you boot the computer:
/boot/preferences/Workspaces &
The ampersand (&) allows the bootscript to continue on without waiting for the Workspaces „process“ to finish. That’s not exactly what happens, but it’s a good enough explanation.

BeOS does not include a full-blown command-line mail client (though you can download pine if you need it), but it does let you send off quick messages and text attachments if necessary. Try this:

mail -s "Howdy!" someone@somewhere.com
[Enter message body here]

When done with your message, tap Ctrl-D. This sends an EOF (end of file) mark, which sends the message, using the settings established in the E-mail preferences panel. If you want to send an existing text file as the message body, use:

mail -s "Howdy!" someone@somewhere.com < /path/to/file.txt

Note however that if you do this with a binary, rather than a text file, the binary will end up in the message body, not as an attachment.

Roman Filippov (rxf at alkor dot ru) adds:
The mail utility can also take two flags for setting CC: and BCC: addresses:

 -c someone@somewhere.com

and

-b someone@somewhere.com

You can also list as many recepients as you wish on the command line. (e.g.: mail -s "Hello!" first@somewhere.com second@somewhere.com third@somewhere.com) This is equivalent to entering multiple recepients in the To: field of a GUI mail client.
It’s also possible to send a binary file using mail, but it takes a bit more work, as you’ll need to convert the binary to text format with uuencode:

mail -s "Hello!" someone@somewhere.com < uuencode  /path/to/file.zip
 remote_file

where remote_file stands for the file name which will be created by the decoder on the recipient computer, and /path/to/file.zip is the path to the binary file you wish to send.
To decode the file on the recepient side type:

 uudecode < received_e-mail_file_name 

These commands, paired with attribute manipulation utilities and grep, can be used to build powerful script-based mail processing systems similar to those found in commercial mail clients.

If you need to type the new Euro symbol from within BeOS, Frédéric Roland has published a complete tutorial, which you’ll find here.
You may also find it useful to have a UK keymap that supports the Euro symbol natively.

Certain kinds of attachments, including the attached contents of returned e-mail, cannot be easily displayed by BeMail. The reason is that they use the Internet standard MIME type „message/rfc822,“ rather than the BeOS standard text/email.
You can fix the filetype of each attachment as it comes in by using the Open With / FileType dialog, but here’s how you can make the fix permanent:
Open up Preferences | FileTypes and add the MIME type rfc822 to the message group. Close FileTypes. Now navigate Tracker to /boot/beos/ apps and right-click on StyledEdit (you can’t do this from a link to StyledEdit). Choose Add-Ons | FileTypes and add the new message/ rfc822 type to its list of handled filetypes. Save and close.
Return to your BeMail message, click on the attachment link, and it’ll pop up in StyledEdit.

You’ve probably noticed the option under the Terminal Settings menus labeled „Save As Settings File.“ So you can tweak out the perfect Terminal configuration and save it as a settings file for a quick future reference. Unfortunately you can’t load Terminal settings files on the fly. However, you can load new terminal windows with different settings in two ways:
1) Let’s say you saved your settings file to /boot/home/SkyTerminal_23. Now open up the /boot/home/config/settings folder and find the file called Terminal. Rename it to Terminal.old. Then copy /boot/home/ SkyTerminal23 to /boot/home/config/settings/Terminal.
Close and restart Terminal and your settings file will be retrieved. If this is something you might want to do often, download the TermSet shell script, which will allow you to retrieve all of your alternate settings files from the command line by simply typing „termset colorname.“ It will also allow you to run multiple Terminal windows in different colors, for quick identification.
2) If you save multiple Terminal settings files in a directory, you can simply double-click the settings files to launch a Terminal with those parameters. You might want to create a link to this folder on your Desktop for easy access. Remember that you can also toggle between your open Terminal windows with Alt+G!

Ever find yourself wishing you could quickly and easily save out just a small portion — a snippet — of a particular file? BeOS actually supports file clippings natively, although applications need to take advantage of the feature in order for it to be enabled.
StyledEdit does a nice job of this with text. Select a sentence, paragraph, or any portion of a StyledEdit document and drag the selection to your desktop. You’ll end up with a new file, called „Clipping from [filename]“. ShowImage does the same thing with images. Hold down the left Ctrl key while dragging a clipping out of ShowImage and a context menu will offer to translate the clipping into any file format for which a Translator is installed.

Note: More than 5,000 icons have been ported from MacOS and Windows to BeOS format, and can be downloaded from Miami Bug. You can also download their IconChomper utility to convert your own icons over.
BeOS icons aren’t stored as separate files, as they are in Windows. Instead, they’re stored as attributes of individual files or filetypes.
To change an icon, you can either drag and drop or copy and paste from any icon well to any other icon well. Icon wells are found in filetypes panels, which live in any of these four places:

• Right-click a file and choose Add-Ons | FileType
• Launch the FileTypes preferences panel and navigate to a particular filetype
• Open an application’s FileType add-on and you can change either the app’s own icon or the icons for all the filetypes that app can handle.
• Open the Tracker in QuickRes to find „permanent“ icons for the Trash, etc.

Where this can get tricky is when a filetype is directly associated with an application. For example, if you try to change the icon for plain text files from the FileTypes preferences panel, you’ll find that your changes don’t make any difference. This is because text/plain is probably associated with StyledEdit or Pe or Eddie, etc. In that case, open the FileType add-on for that text editor, navigate through the list of the filetypes it handles, and select the one you want to change. You can then drag and drop into that icon well.
To edit icons, double-click any icon well to access Icon-o-Matic, where you can touch up the existing icon, paste in existing icons, or create new icons from scratch.
Note: If you change an icon for a global filetype, there may be no easy way to get the original back. If you get into this situation, see the tip Recover Lost Icons.