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Here are a couple of osx issues I found on beta 1:

Apple remote - when scrolling, the new non-continuous feature of stopping at the end of the lists isn't working. It works with the keyboard only. Enabling keyboard presses on the apple remote doesn't seem to have any effect.

Text expander app "Typinator" no longer responds when using XBMC.

Dual screens: when changing from screen 1 to screen 2, a big white window shows up.

Dock and menu bar are hidden on primary display when xbmc is on a secondary display. It's not always possible to reproduce this behavior though.

Thanks for the heads up. What is "Typinator" exactly?

From the product description at macupdate.com:

"Typinator... Have you ever experienced the tedium and frustration of having to repeatedly type your name, e-mail address, home page url, and other words or phrases again, again and again? Or do you frequently need to quickly insert images like your signature, location plan, or company logo into documents? Do you often introduce errors when retyping standard business text?
Typinator boosts your productivity and eliminates errors by automating the process of inserting frequently used text and graphics and and auto-correcting typos and misspelled words.

Configuration is easy - You just define abbreviations and their replacement text or picture.

Usage is even easier - Whenever you type one of these abbreviations in an arbitrary application, Typinator inserts the corresponding replacement.

Drag-and-drop import from Textpander, TextExpander, and TypeIt4Me makes migration to Typinator a no-brainer.

Save your time and annoyance and let Typinator type repeating texts and pictures for you.

You can use Typinator to:

quickly type greeting phrases
set up a list of standard text fragments to be used in e-mail replies
insert the current date and/or time in arbitrary formats with a few keystrokes
Auto-correct your most frequent typos in all applications system-wide
predefined sets for auto-correction, HTML, Filemaker functions
Import snippets from other typing utilities, including Textpander, TextExpander, and TypeIt4Me
"type" pictures, such as smilies or bullets
insert Unicode symbols by typing a few special regular characters (e.g., type "->" to insert an arrow symbol), define shorthands for frequently used Unix commands
quickly create templates for code fragments, if you are a programmer, and more"



http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18028/typinator

Right, and how does XBMC interfere with it? Do you have XBMC on a separate monitor (unfocused) and typinator then stops working with other apps?

Cheers,
Jonathan

jmarshall Wrote:Right, and how does XBMC interfere with it? Do you have XBMC on a separate monitor (unfocused) and typinator then stops working with other apps?

Cheers,
Jonathan

Right, XBMC is on separate monitor unfocused. So what happens is that when typing on the primary monitor, if an abreviation is typed there is no effect, typinator doesn't seem to get triggered. After quitting XBMC, typinator works fine.

Strange. Does it also happen if XBMC is just sitting in a(n unfocused) window on the same screen (or a different screen)?

Cheers,
Jonathan

Yea it happens on both screens. After some more testing I found that issue seems to be related to the XBMCHelper process. If one enables "Allow start of XBMC using the remote" XBMCHelper stays active even after quitting XBMC which interferes with Typinator.

I also found that XBCMhelper interferes with Front Row, I couldn't manipulate the Front Row interface at all, it was frozen. Both keyboard and remote weren't responding.

Also this is probably related, I can't seem to start XBMC with the remote. I'm currently on snow leopard and I also have remote buddy, there could be a conflict, not sure. I'm gonna try testing on my macbook.

migueld Wrote:Yea it happens on both screens. After some more testing I found that issue seems to be related to the XBMCHelper process. If one enables "Allow start of XBMC using the remote" XBMCHelper stays active even after quitting XBMC which interferes with Typinator.

Unfortunately this can't be worked around but by disabling XBMCHelper (for a technical description check this). Basically we need this feature (== bug? ), otherwise AppleRemote support breaks each time a password window pops up.

migueld Wrote:I also found that XBCMhelper interferes with Front Row, I couldn't manipulate the Front Row interface at all, it was frozen. Both keyboard and remote weren't responding.

Yeah, it "interferes". What it basically does is while it's running, keep _all_ other apps from using the remote. Otherwise Frontrow would pop up everytime you hit the menu button.

You might want to look into more sophisticated remote solutions for your Mac (like RemoteBuddy, SofaControl, etc). XBMCHelper is useful if you're using only XBMC, but the other solutions are exactly designed to manage multiple apps.

MaestroDD Wrote:Unfortunately this can't be worked around but by disabling XBMCHelper (for a technical description check this). Basically we need this feature (== bug? ), otherwise AppleRemote support breaks each time a password window pops up.

The thing is I haven't had this issue when using Plex.. there might be a workaround?

MaestroDD Wrote:Yeah, it "interferes". What it basically does is while it's running, keep _all_ other apps from using the remote. Otherwise Frontrow would pop up everytime you hit the menu button.

Right, but notice I mentioned that both keyboard and remote won't respond on Front Row. The remote I would understand, but why also the keyboard?

migueld Wrote:The thing is I haven't had this issue when using Plex.. there might be a workaround?

hm, hard to say, but I thought Plex uses the same backend (HIDRemote from iospirit). You mentioned you're also using RemoteBuddy, maybe PlexHelper was disabled?

migueld Wrote:Right, but notice I mentioned that both keyboard and remote won't respond on Front Row. The remote I would understand, but why also the keyboard?

oops, yeah, missed the keyboard. How can we reproduce this?

In addition to killing the keyboard on Typinator and Front Row, I'm finding out that XBMCHelper also interferes with modifier keys in Adobe Illustrator. To reproduce:

*Make any shape in illustrator
*Scale the shape from resize handles while maintaining shift pressed (shift maintains shape ratio)

When XBMCHelper is present, shift as a modifier key has no effect in Illustrator. So shape ratio isn't respected.

This is making it quite unusable for me. If anyone could address these issues before final that'd be really nice and appreciated

This is on 9.11 beta 2

MaestroDD Wrote:hm, hard to say, but I thought Plex uses the same backend (HIDRemote from iospirit). You mentioned you're also using RemoteBuddy, maybe PlexHelper was disabled?


oops, yeah, missed the keyboard. How can we reproduce this?

MaestroDD sorry for the late reply, I meant to follow up but I wanted to test on a different system for confirmation. When PlexHelper is enabled there are no keyboard conflicts AFAIK.

With regards to XBMCHelper interfering with keyboard input, one way to reproduce is as follows:

* Enable "Allow start of XBMC using the remote"
* Quit XBMC
* Launch Front Row
* Use keyboard to control Front Row

Issue: the keyboard on Front Row won't work.

Let me know if you can reproduce.

migueld Wrote:In addition to killing the keyboard on Typinator and Front Row, I'm finding out that XBMCHelper also interferes with modifier keys in Adobe Illustrator. To reproduce:

*Make any shape in illustrator
*Scale the shape from resize handles while maintaining shift pressed (shift maintains shape ratio)

When XBMCHelper is present, shift as a modifier key has no effect in Illustrator. So shape ratio isn't respected.

This is making it quite unusable for me. If anyone could address these issues before final that'd be really nice and appreciated

This is on 9.11 beta 2

Are you also running XBMC in the background or is XBMCHelper running alone ?

davilla Wrote:Are you also running XBMC in the background or is XBMCHelper running alone ?

Both cases. When I run xmbc on a secondary screen, XBMCHelper is around. When quitting XBMC, XBMCHelper stays around for remote launching.