Mac OS X download and installation

  PD2 for Mac OS X comes with a complete installer in a disk image. Depending on your browser and your version of OS X, selecting the download may actually start the installation process automatically. If this is the case then there is nothing more you need to do. If selecting the download link actually performs the download then follow the steps below to complete the installation.

Please take a moment to review the notes below related to Setting the amount of memory available to the application and Initial Setup. 		 

  1. Mount the disk image named tbcpd2_x.x.x.x.dmg (where x.x.x.x = version number). Inside you will find a file named TBCPD2.mpkg.  

  2. Double click the file named TBCPD2.mpkg. This will start the installer which will take you through the rest of the installation process.  

  The PD2 is installed to your /Applications folder. To start the program, launch the file /Applications/tbcpd2/TBCPD.App. To uninstall the program simply drag the entire tbcpd2 folder from /Applications to the Trash.  

Setting the amount of memory available to the application

  The Java Runtime Environment (JRE), as do most language systems, limits the amount of memory an application can use. This is to prevent programs from running away with your computer and thereby crashing your operating system. Unlike other languages, Java allows us to tell it how much memory an application can use. This is accomplished by providing parameters to the JRE at the time the application is started. Since our program runs within the JRE these can not be set from within the program but must be specified before the program is started.
Because Java is designed to run on almost any computer, the default memory allocated to an application is rather small. PD2 is a graphical program and by its very nature is rather memory intensive. The default memory allocation will not be sufficient to make any but the smallest patterns. The shortcut created during installation changes Java memory allocation such that you can create moderately large patterns. You will probably not need to changes these entries. You will only need to modify these parameters if you are getting "out of memory" errors while creating patterns, or if your machine has less than 512Mb of physical memory.

Follow these steps if you find you need to change the amount of memory allocated to the JRE. 		 

  1. Using the Finder application locate the file named tbcpd2.app in the /Applications/tbcpd2 folder. Right-click (Control-click for single button mouse users) on the tbcpd2.app file and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up window. Open the Contents folder and right (control) click the file named info.plist. Open this file with the TextEdit.app or any other text editor of your choice.  

  2. You will find two occurrences of -Xmx512m in this file. Change the number 512 to the value indicating how much memory you want the JRE to make available to our application. This entry indicates the maximum memory our application can use and is specified in mega-bytes. As a general rule you can set this value to approximately 75% of your physical memory so if you have 2Gb (giga-bytes) of RAM then you could increase this entry to 1536. If on the other hand, you only have 256Mb of RAM you would want to change this entry to 192. This value is alway specified in mega-bytes.  

  3. Save this file to save your changes. These changes will take effect the next time you start the application.  

Initial Setup

  You must set the path to your PDF Reader application before you will be able to access the User's Guide from within the application. The steps you take to set this entry are cover in the User's Guide (TBCPDUsersGuide.pdf) which is located in the \tbcpd2\Docs folder in the section titled Setting your preferences in Lesson 10 - Customizing your application. For your convienence it is reprinted here:

Mac OS X ships with the Preview.app which is capable of reading PDF documents so this is the application that you will set into your PDF Reader preference. This program is located in your Applications folder. Click on the folder icon to the right of the PDF Reader input area. The File Open window will start in the current folder which will most probably be /Applications/tbcpd2. Click on the arrows next to the current folder list box at the top of the window and click on the Applications folder. Scroll down until you see Preview.app on the screen. Click on Preview.app to select it and click on the Choose button. The finder window will close and the full path and file name will be inserted into the PDF Reader input box.

Example: /Application/Preview.app