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Unsanity has really done it this time!

MacNN Troubleshooting 50 posts Jan 3, 2003 to Apr 13, 2003
Who would have ever guessed that Silk, a haxie that started life as a way to blur type in Explorer until M$ could get it together to release an update would blossom into the holy grail of OSX theming? They call it an alpha2 release, but I call it a miracle! Those guys can do anything! http://unsanity.org/



Just don't do the mimimum font size or custom theme font boxes or Chimera won't work!
Quote:
Originally posted by mrtew:
Yeah, the fonts! The fonts are changed! They figured out a way to change the fonts in OSX! Finally! The fonts!


You say it's Alpha2 - but the version on the site is 1.1... are you using a prerelease internal beta version or can we expect this neat font stuff with 1.1? I'm very excited (man, I hate Lucida Grand)...
Quote:
Originally posted by bbxstudio:
You say it's Alpha2 - but the version on the site is 1.1... are you using a prerelease internal beta version or can we expect this neat font stuff with 1.1? I'm very excited (man, I hate Lucida Grand)...


I installed 1.1 and about the only thing it does is control font smoothing. I must have this system-level font control! Bwahahahahaha! So what's the deal? Any indication as to when Unsanity will release this most excellent haxie?
Quote:
Originally posted by bbxstudio:
I installed 1.1 and about the only thing it does is control font smoothing. I must have this system-level font control! Bwahahahahaha! So what's the deal? Any indication as to when Unsanity will release this most excellent haxie?


I got it by following his link
Quote:
Originally posted by Dace:
I got it by following his link


Yeah, that's what I put the link for.... I guess I should have made it more clear!
That's the correct direct download link....
http://www.unsanity.org/rosyna/silk...warning.dmg.sit

I finally got my favorite font in the system like I had in OS9 with a hack called AppearanceHopper. It's called Century Gothic. I had to copy it over from my OS9 System/Fonts/ folder into my ~/Library/Fonts folder to make OSX see it. I love this stuff. See!


I think it's a great that Unsanity has figured out font subsititution. That is one of the holy grails of customization that people have been trying to find since the beginning.

However, I'm not particularly interested in switching to the Silk theme to get this functionality. Am I completely missing the boat here? I downloaded the installer, but to me it seems like I'm about to install the Silk theme. I'm way too in lust with Watercolor to change over to Silk.

However, I want to be able to change my System Fonts in the worst possible way. I hate the System Font that Apple forces us to use.

Before I install anything here, does anyone here know if you can continue using the theme of *MY* choice, but still get the font subsititution functionality?

Thanks!

--
tojo
Quote:
Originally posted by abbie1:
i downloaded it but i still dont know how to change the main system font.
any help would be greatly appreciated.


Silk is not a theme, it's a prefence pane to control fonts. You can use it with any theme.

Go to the Silk pref pane and to the third tab, and set the 'Original Font' to Lucida Grande and the 'Replace With Font' to whatever font you'd like to see. Don't start checking those two little boxes below or some apps won't work.... expecially Chimera.
Then you have to restart the each app to see the font in the menubar and the app, or just restart the whole computer. And I think you have to have Unsanity's .ape thing installed too, but probably most people that are messing around with this already do.
what he ment to say is change lucida grande with the font called florida(if you dont have it message me at mpinbwzrd and i will send it to you) cause that font kicks all other fonts ass's's's's!?!
The only problem is that it spits a bunch of crap into console. It gets really annoying when I have turned of that logging option. I hope the final doesn't do this.
I really dig this!
It makes me like OSX much more without having to use Lucida Grande. But it messes up kerning in some instances and some apps( Widget.app ) dont use English anymore!! ??
Not enough to make me go back to Lucida though.
This haxie is great. I replaced Lucida Grande with Erik Spiekerman's great font: Meta.
As warned, this release is rather buggy though, i hope they release the final version soon, since i'm not at all planing to go back to Lucida.

I hope that in the final version the app name in the menu bar would be rendered in bold as it's done with Lucida Grande by default.
I think it's great that Unsanity adds features that should have been there from the beginning. Although I could not get Silk to work that well, it would not replace the fonts in System Preferences for example. But the Finder was totally changed. Am I doing something wrong..?
Quote:
Originally posted by bOOzo:
I think it's great that Unsanity adds features that should have been there from the beginning. Although I could not get Silk to work that well, it would not replace the fonts in System Preferences for example. But the Finder was totally changed. Am I doing something wrong..?


I hope that this is just associated with it being a beta still, system prefs font wouldnt change for me either.
Quote:
Originally posted by swiz:
I hope that this is just associated with it being a beta still, system prefs font wouldnt change for me either.



You guys are getting ahead of yourselves! It's not a beta yet! It's an alpha! I think it works pretty well considering that so I have HIGH hopes for the final!
Quote:
Originally posted by swiz:
I hope that this is just associated with it being a beta still, system prefs font wouldnt change for me either.
Carbon and Cocoa. I guess they just don't have it working in Cocoa fully.
Just to clear up the slight bit of confusion that seems to exist,
  • Silk is an Unsanity Haxie.
  • It requires APE and a reboot to run.
  • It is still alpha quality, meaning that it is not yet feature complete and is sure to have bugs.
  • Rosyna's post describing Alpha 1 is here.
  • Her post describing Alpha 2 is here.
  • These two posts detail the known problems.
  • This program is already really, really cool!
Quote:
Originally posted by Rosyna:
Ya'll should email me with your problems (and screenshots help!) And also, please read the read me for known problems.


Wow! Glad to see you on this forum Rosyna!!!!! How's it going with the Silk! Any idea when it will be ready for a final release? Or at least beta? What's your email address anyway for the bug reports?
rosyna at unsanity.com

....

Quote:
Originally posted by mrtew:
Wow! Glad to see you on this forum Rosyna!!!!! How's it going with the Silk! Any idea when it will be ready for a final release? Or at least beta? What's your email address anyway for the bug reports?
I just had an idea - would it be possible to make Silk allow you to change the colors system wide???? If they can change the fonts, it should not be to hard to make it also change text colors...? This would allow people to make black themes!!
Quote:
Originally posted by bOOzo:
I just had an idea - would it be possible to make Silk allow you to change the colors system wide???? If they can change the fonts, it should not be to hard to make it also change text colors...? This would allow people to make black themes!!



That's brilliant! Although people can make black themes just fine now! You just can't read some of the type on a few of the windows, that's all! :-]
Quote:
Originally posted by mrtew:
That's brilliant! Although people can make black themes just fine now! You just can't read some of the type on a few of the windows, that's all! :-]


Yes, and that's the problem! For themes such as DSX it would be great. But I just realized that it would be even better if it was possible to change text color for only tabs, for example. But I'm guessing that would not be possible, because the way Silk works (I'm only guessing though) is that it "redirects" apps from lucida grande to a user specifided font. But I still think changing the textcolor globally would be such a great improvement!
Just thought I'd post again to show off a new font I've started using for my system with the newest alpha build of Silk. It's called Identity and I found it by searching Yahoo for Famout Fonts. It's from some Sci-Fi show I think. It finally fits my need for a small, clear, readable, yet freaky and futuritic font. I love the way it looks undecipherable at first until you actually try to read it and then realize that it's perfectly legible. What do you think?

Quote:
Originally posted by mrtew:
Just thought I'd post again to show off a new font I've started using for my system with the newest alpha build of Silk. It's called Identity and I found it by searching Yahoo for Famout Fonts. It's from some Sci-Fi show I think. It finally fits my need for a small, clear, readable, yet freaky and futuritic font. I love the way it looks undecipherable at first until you actually try to read it and then realize that it's perfectly legible. What do you think?



You call that readable?
I use it and I like it. I replaced Lucida Grande with Tahoma as I think Tahoma is an excellent font for on-screen text. It is IMHO better readable at smaller text sizes which is cool for list and column view in Finder, and since it isn't as wide as Lucida Grande at the same size, PB's menu items don't collide with menu extras any more.

A slight annoyance is that text input fields (e.g. browser address fields) show Tahoma while typing and Lucida Grande when clicking outside them.
Quote:
Originally posted by neo_2510:
Can someone please post a working download link...
Thanks a lot



You have to write to the author, Rosyna <rosyna@unsanity.com> to get the link for downloading the beta.
Quote:
Originally posted by fisherKing:
ot, but which theme is that? looks like the brushed theme, which i just installed...but with translucent black menus...nice.



Yeah, it's brushed, but I've customized it a little. I love those black menus.... I found them in some old purple 'remix' of the DSX theme and now I put them in all my themes. Thanks! Here's what my new theme looks like with them....


Quote:
Originally posted by fisherKing:
details, mr tew, details...
(i want those black menus...)
or uploads.
or something!



Well, if you want to try my theme you can get the Extras.rsrc here and drop it into your system folder in the right place, or swap it into the Brushed.dtla if you want to install it with ThemeChanger. Or if you just want the menus you can grab them out and put them in your theme with ThemePark.

http://homepage.mac.com/mrtew/.cv/m...rc.sit-link.sit
Quote:
Originally posted by Rosyna:
Is this a FULLY working theme file (can I replace my Extras.rsrc with this to make it work?)



Rosyna, the little stick-poking emoticon at the end of your question makes me think you are pulling my chain or something especially along with the capitalized FULLY, but, if you are, I don't get it, so I'll answer your question as if it's totally sincere and innocent.

It's not a complete theme as we know them today, but it is a working theme file so yes you can use it fine, as-is. It's not completely done though, meaning that the buttons and tabs and progressbars still look kindof like aqua, (but without the blue, thank god) but they look fine. If you want to make it look kind-of OK I'd install Max's Brushed theme first, and then use my Extras.rsrc until I get the rest of my theme all done someday.

Why do you ask???
mp.ls