Modify a Cocoa App's Interface

[the_shrubber]

A little background. I tend to leave a mutt window open at all times, so it's kind of annoying when i click on my Terminal icon in the dock expecting a new shell window to open, only to get my mutt window. Fair enough. What i thought would be a cool trick would be to create a seperate term application that would be reserved for mutt.

I did this by copying over my Terminal.app into MailTerminal.app. After some fiddling around, i've changed the executable's name, and the icons that it uses. Next, what i would really like is for this app to have its own settings, and to not identify itself as Terminal in the menu (leads to some confusion)

Is there a way to change the application's name in its menus? And is there some way i could make it look somewhere else for its user preferences? I thought there might be a bit of hope after finding this hint: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020630013626908 , but opening the nib files in InterfaceBuilder doesn't seem to do anything useful. It does not show any of the GUI bits for Terminal.

Is this even worth it? Is there a smarter way to approach the whole problem? I tried downloading GLTerm to use with mutt, but find that i don't really like it.

Thanks,

[mervTormel]

why not just open at least two shell windows in the single terminal.app, one for mutt, one for other, etc., and command-<-arrow-> between them?

[the_shrubber]

I used to do that, but for some reason that i now forget, it got annoying and i started thinking about seperating mutt from my regular shell activities.

I'll try it again for a while and remind myself why i got annoyed. Maybe i'll just get used to the arrow key sequence.

[five minutes later]

Ah... i think i remember. I also like to leave the mutt window minimised in the dock. What really gets on my nerves is when i switch to Terminal, i always have to reminimise that mutt window. I figured it would be swell to seperate mutt from my other shell activities so that calling up a shell would leave mutt minimised.


One thing is that it'd later on be nice to have a mutt window launch when i log in... but maybe i'll think up some applescript thingy.

I'll ask you all to forgive me here. I am a very very very very anal user.

Thanks.

[AKcrab]

Originally posted by the_shrubber
Ah... i think i remember. I also like to leave the mutt window minimised in the dock. What really gets on my nerves is when i switch to Terminal, i always have to reminimise that mutt window. I figured it would be swell to seperate mutt from my other shell activities so that calling up a shell would leave mutt minimised.
I don't quite understand this part. If I have three shells open, one minimized to the dock, no matter what I do, unless I choose to bring the minimized window out of the dock, it stays put.
Yours isn't behaving this way, or am I totally confused?

[mervTormel]

Originally posted by the_shrubber
...One thing is that it'd later on be nice to have a mutt window launch when i log in... but maybe i'll think up some applescript thingy...
avoid the applescript overhead...

% ls -lno mutt.command
-rwxr-xr-x 1 501 16 Jun 30 15:20 mutt.command

% cat mutt.command
#!/bin/sh

mutt

add mutt.command as a login item, instant mutt window on login. note that if you quit mutt, the window will die with [process completed] because .command files issue an exit as their last great act.

i, also, don't get minim'd windows max'd when switching to terminal, as AKcrab stated. so, confusion here, too.

you know, there's a cure for your condition. it's called "stop it" :D

[the_shrubber]

hmm... i have a really bad habit of closing my terminals or minimising them (not just the mutt window)

maybe i just need to change my habits... if it means anything, i use wmx in the non-pretty world

---

hey thanks... i forget why i had abandoned the .command thing earlier (was probably trying to do something else)

anyway, i'll do my best to implement the "stop it" solution. Maybe my habits will suddenly synch in with some insight into mac gui wisdom

sorry for overcomplicating things (as usual)

[AKcrab]

Think different. :p
edit: I can't believe I've posted in the Developer forum... That's just so wrong...