KIBI Software Recommendations
The followings are a number of softwares which I find myself using frequently. My main working environment runs macOS; consequently, most of these will be UNIXlike tools or macOS apps. Iʼve also included some fonts that I love at the end.
Applications
CD Ripping / Audio Conversion – XLD (X Lossless Decoder)
- Website
- https://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html
- Repo
- https://sourceforge.net/p/xld/code/
- License
- All rights reserved.
Very handy drag‑and‑drop program for converting audio files, and it does a good job of ripping CDs without having to open iTunes too.
File Mangement – Nimble Commander
- Website
- https://magnumbytes.com/
- Repo
- https://github.com/mikekazakov/nimble-commander
- License
- GNU General Public License, Version 3.0
A two‑pane, keyboard‑navigable file browser. I find this easier to work in for project directories with potentially lots of folders or files than Finder, and the ability to set a shortcut to open a file in a text editor instead of its default app is extremely handy. I use the free version available through the Mac App Store and have no complaints.
Keyboard Layout Customization – Ukelele
- Website
- https://software.sil.org/ukelele/
- Repo
- https://github.com/sillsdev/Ukelele
- License
- All rights reserved.
macOS has the best custom keyboard support of any operating system, but you wouldnʼt know it without downloading Ukelele, provided by SIL. Everything I type these days is written on a custom keyboard configured to my uses, and all of my custom keyboards start out being created with Ukelele.
Markdown – MacDown
- Website
- https://macdown.uranusjr.com/
- Repo
- https://github.com/MacDownApp/macdown
- License
- The MIT License
Better than Byword, and also free. Typically I just use CotEditor for Markdown editing, because it has more sophisticated support for Unicode and other character‑level operations, but having a live preview is important to you, MacDown has you covered.
Media Playback – Aural
- Website
- https://github.com/maculateConception/aural-player/releases/latest
- Repo
- https://github.com/maculateConception/aural-player
- License
- All rights reserved.
Iʼll admit that Iʼve only been using this one for a little bit so far, but it plays my music and looks better than VLC, so, like, thatʼs 90% of my requirements right there.
Update: Iʼve noticed a few bugs but nothing I canʼt live with.
Media Tagging – kid3
- Website
- https://kid3.kde.org/
- Repo
- https://invent.kde.org/kde/kid3/
- License
- GNU General Public License, Version 2.0
Tagging media metadata—titles, artist, artwork, and the like—for people who donʼt use iTunes or similar library systems. The first thing I do when I download/rip an album is open it up in kid3 and edit the tags for consistency with the rest of my music library.
RDF/OWL Ontologies – Protégé
- Website
- https://protege.stanford.edu/
- Repo
- https://github.com/protegeproject/protege
- License
- BSD 2‑Clause License
A lot of RDF/OWL tools are expensive specialist resources targeted at Big Data corporations; this is a free program targeted at University departments. Java‑based, which, I hate to admit, is (still) where all the good cross‑platform app development is happening these days.
Terminal Emulator – iTerm2
- Website
- https://www.iterm2.com/
- Repo
- https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2
- License
- GNU General Public License, Version 2.0
Ever since macOS Catalina switched the default shell to zsh, Iʼve had annoying issues with fullwidth Unicode characters in Terminal. Using iTerm2 has fixed that, so it gets my recommendation. Also, it looks just a little bit nicer than Terminal ever did.
Text Editor – CotEditor
- Website
- https://coteditor.com/
- Repo
- https://github.com/coteditor/CotEditor
- License
- Apache License, Version 2.0
The best text editor for macOS. Replaces: TextEdit, gEdit, and similar. Easily‑configurable syntax highlighting. Not an IDE; do not use if youʼre expecting something like Sublime Text or Atom. Phenomenal Unicode support, just customizable enough, simply works.
Web Browser – Firefox
- Website
- https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/
- Repo
- https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/
- License
- Mozilla Public License 2.0
Iʼve never used a web browser other than Firefox and nor have I ever had any reason to. As a web designer, it consistently gives me the best results and conforms closest to existing web standards. In my experience, WebKit implementations of features often appear rather… half‑baked, compared to Gecko ones.
Fonts
GNU Unifont
- Website
- http://www.unifoundry.com/unifont/
- Repo
- None
- License
- GNU General Public License, Version 2.0 with the GNU font embedding exception
Itʼs a bitmaplike font with (virtually) every Unicode codepoint. The tools created for the Unifont project can also be used to build your own bitmaplike fonts if you so please.
Junicode
- Website
- http://junicode.sourceforge.net/
- Repo
- https://sourceforge.net/p/junicode/junicode/
- License
- Open Font License
Probably the first font I ever fell in love with, which is a problem for me because there are very few modern fonts which have that oldstyle shape. I discovered Junicode because I needed a font which supported a wide variety of mediævalist Unicode characters, and Junicode definitely delivers.
M+ Fonts
- Website
- https://mplus-fonts.osdn.jp/
- Repo
- https://osdn.net/cvs/view/mplus-fonts/mplus_outline_fonts/
- License
-
These fonts are free software. Unlimited permission is granted to use, copy, and distribute them, with or without modification, either commercially or noncommercially. THESE FONTS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY.
The webpage for these fonts has influenced my web design perspective more than any other thing on the internet. The font themselves are definitely near the top of my favourite sans‑serifs as well.