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State of the Executor Address: 3/1/92
Dear Folks,
Executor-MSW V1.1 has been shipped to everyone (with the
exception of an overseas order of 20 which will be going out Monday)
that has previously purchased Executor-MSW V1.0. [you may want to
check out Jiro Nakamura's review in comp.sys.next.announce]. The big
addition to V1.1 is printing. However, in V1.1, bitmap fonts are
used on the screen and even though the Adobe fonts are used when
printing, the bitmap "metrics" are still being used so text that is
"right justified" doesn't line up correctly. This will be fixed in
V1.2 which you will also get for free.
The sad news is that Executor-MSW has been short-changing our
friends across the puddle because it has not properly handled
diacritical marks. The good news is that we have fixed the problem.
The sad news is that the fix came after 1.1 was released. The good
news is there's a new release, V1.1.1, which is what will be shipped
to anyone that purchases Executor-MSW from this point on. If you
need diacritical support (nothing else has been changed), then we're
willing to send you a copy of V1.1.1 for free. Please don't ask
unless you really need it. The fix will be in V1.2 and you'll get
that automatically just like you got (or will get shortly) V1.1.
We still haven't made much progress listing what runs and
doesn't run, since we've been working without sleep to get V1.1 and
more importantly V1.2 out the door. V1.1 doesn't help other
applications run, however by the time V1.2 comes out I want the
commonly used file utilities to work correctly (notably stuffit and
compactorpro) as well as a couple of small programs that people have
been asking for: "Quicken" and "MacInTax".
I believe we can use unmvax.cs.unm.edu for ftp'able material.
I've sent a letter to the appropriate authorities to make clarify
that, but unless they say no, I'll put a few things out there for
general consumption:
setcreatortype.c discussed below
Documentation/Executor-MSW the current manuals for people who
haven't yet purchased Executor-MSW
to peruse
ReleaseNotes1.1.rtf the 1.1 release notes for
non-purchasers
Work on Excel support is going well, a major breakthrough was
made this weekend and we hope to be shipping copies to beta-testers
within a couple of weeks.
--Cliff
FOR POWER USERS/PROGRAMMERS ONLY:
There has been some confusion about "Apple Double" format and
"resource forks". The problem is that there are programs like
FloppyWorks and kermit that will cheerfully copy the "resource fork"
of a Macintosh file if you ask for it, but then when you prepend a
"%" to the fork and try to use it with Executor, you don't get
anywhere. This is because the files that Executor (and HFS_XFer)
use/create that begin with "%" actually contain more than just the
resource fork. They contain other information that's needed as well.
Still, there are some reasons why you may find yourself with a
resource fork and want to turn it into something that Executor can
use, so I wrote a quick hack of a program, called "setcreatortype"
that will allow you to do just that. The file "type" and "creator"
are two important things that get thrown away when you use a program
like FloppyWorks to copy data between a Mac and a UNIX system. An
example use of "setcreatortype" is:
% setcreatortype "PNC1" "APPL" < Norton_Util > %Norton_Util
That is the command that I used to check to make sure that
setcreatortype works (I don't have any need for it, because I use
HFS_XFer to push my stuff across). The first argument, "PNC1", is
what's known in the Macintosh community as the file "creator"; it is
a special tag that identifies programs and data files written by
programs. I found out the proper creator for Norton Utilities by
using the "ResEdit" program. The second argument, "APPL", tells what
type of data is in the file that we're using. "APPL" stands for
application. Another common type is "TEXT". If you know what all
these are then you may want to pick up the setcreatortype program
from unmvax.cs.unm.edu (I can mail it to you if you don't have ftp
access). It is a real hack of a program but some of you have been
clamoring for it.