[Ham-Mac] OS X Alternative to Auto-Start for fldigi and flrig

[Richard Kriss]

Hopefully, the reflector will not strip the embedded screen shots. 

You may notice something different on the screen shot of my OS X Dock.

Next to the standard “fldigi” icon there is a new “fldigi & flrig-app” that is really an AppleScript that launches both apps. The reason for this setup is there are times I like to run fldigi in standalone mode and there are times I like to have both flrig and fldigi running at the same time.

The way Dave, W5HJK, designed fldigi to launch both apps at the same time (for Linux, Windows and OS X) is to use the fldigi Configure/Autostart panel and check the Enable box. When you launch fldigi, it auto-starts flrig. If you do not want to launch the combo, just uncheck the box. 

The above was the way I used the combo and only had to uncheck the Enable box to launch fldigi standalone.

I have been experimenting with an OS X AppleScrip to start fldigi, then start flrig and it seems to be working good.

First, I unchecked the “Enable” Auto-start in fldigi and saved the configuration file so fldigi would start in the standalone mode. BTW, I use RigCAT for rig control.

The following is the OS X AppleScript used with the Script Editor: 

tell application "fldigi-3.23.07" to launch
tell application "flrig-1.3.24" to launch

I clicked on “Run" several times to be sure the script was working correct.

I then used the AppleScript Editor’s Export option to save the .scpt file as an application and put the resulting .app file in my .fldigi/Scripts folder. Before dragging the app to the OS X Dock I made and added an icon to the Get Info box. The icon I made is not that great but it is better than the generic AppleScript icon. 

Why do it? Because I wanted to see if I could make it work. There is nothing wrong with the standard fldigi Autostart but the AppleScript may be easier for the way I use both apps. 

73 Dick AA5VU

Ps: Something tells me I may have to tweak the AppleScript when the fldigi and flrig version numbers change.