Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus/TricksOfTheMacGameProgrammingGurus.iso/More Source/Libraries/VideoToolbox 95.04.18/Advice

Text File | 1995-04-18 | 46.2 KB | 956 lines | [TEXT/R*ch]

VideoToolbox:Advice
April 11, 1995

The entire VideoToolbox (with a few inconsequential exceptions) now runs native
on the PowerPC. We're very happy with the PowerMac 6100 (about $2,000, academic,
with an AV card and CD-ROM drive) and the Metrowerks CodeWarrior Gold C compiler
($99 academic). (To run CodeWarrior you'll need a CD-ROM drive, and you'll want
to have at least 16 MB memory and 300 MB disk.) The compiler and your code both
run native and fast! I see little point in spending more money for the faster
PowerPC's since the increased cost is in excess of the speed increase, and a
30-50% speed increase is hard to notice. And it seems silly to invest in NuBus
slots since the future clearly belongs to PCI slots. Our 68k Macs now seem
unbearably slow.

Advice to beginners,

If you want to do vision experiments on your Macintosh computer, and haven’t
programmed a Mac before, there are various things you should get for yourself.
I’ve listed what I consider essential. The stuff I use. There are lots of baby
books that hold your hand while you learn, but the ones that I’ve looked at
weren’t helpful for setting up vision experiments. They’re oriented towards
producing Mac-like applications with the right look and feel, which is
unimportant when the experimenter is the only person that will ever run the
program. Be warned that the bible, Inside Macintosh, is intimidating at first.
The classic comment about Inside Mac is that you have to have read the rest to
understand any part. Fortunately, the second edition is much more readily
assimilable. Mac programming is tough going at first, but I’ve come to like it,
as the Apple routines are generally intelligent solutions to complicated
problems. Anyway, by looking at the sources for the various demos in the
VideoToolbox you should be able to get going much more quickly than I did. Good
luck. -Denis Pelli, [e-mail]

NOTE: the archive addresses that appear throughout this document, e.g.
"ftp://...", are in a standard format called "URL" (Uniform Resource Locator)
that most internet programs now prefer. To retrieve files from a URL, I recommend
Anarchie, which you can download from here:
 ftp://ftp.utexas.edu/pub/mac/tcpip/anarchie-140.hqx
TidBITS magazine says, "URLs constitute the most common and efficient method of
telling people where to find objects available via FTP, the World-Wide Web, and
other Internet services. You can specify URLs not only for files and Web pages,
but also for stranger things, such as email addresses, Telnet sessions, and
Usenet news postings."

ESSENTIAL BOOKS AND SOFTWARE:

The C Programming Language, Second Edition
by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, Prentice Hall, 1988
This book describes the new Standard C, which most commercial compilers conform to.

Metrowerks CodeWarrior C Compiler on CD-ROM
The CodeWarrior C compiler, first released in January '94, is now at version 5.5
(March '95), and deservedly gets rave reviews. It's very popular. The Gold
version supports both 680x0 and PowerPC. They copied most of what Symantec THINK
C did right, and then added their own improvements. There are two flavors: Bronze
$99 generates 680x0 code only; Gold $399, $99 academic, generates both 680x0 and
PowerPC code. The not-yet-available Platinum ($499, $99 academic) will generate
680x0, PowerPC, and Intel x86/Pentium code. (The academic price is a great deal:
$99!). New versions are issued 3 times a year; the purchase price includes one
year of updates. (Major updates are published as CD-ROMs; minor updates are
distributed only by email, and posted on the internet.)
     Metrowerks has been very responsive in accepting bug reports (issuing bug
numbers and promises to fix) and suggestions (which they forward to engineering
with no promises). Each subsequent release has fixed most of the bugs I'd
reported, and incorporated many of my suggestions. Unfortunately Metrowerks
doesn't publish a bug list. (I've suggested it several times, to no avail.)
     My current (version CW5.5) complaints are minor. The PowerPC debugger is
incompatible with the current version (1.5.1) of RAMDoubler, but is expected to
be compatible with the next version. On PowerPC the long double type is supposed
to be 16-byte, but is actually implemented as 8-byte (i.e. a double), making it
incompatible with the long double math library (Bug No. BR4547). The debugger
does not allow access to video RAM, giving a bus error (Bug No. BR4705).
CodeWarrior does not recognize the "%#s" printf format used by MPW and THINK C
to print pascal strings, so you have to convert your string to C style before
printing it.
     The following bugs that I found in prior versions were fixed in CW5.5. The
CW5 console had a status line that you couldn't entirely get rid of. The
predefined compiler macro __option(fourbyteints) didn't work (Bug No. BR4702).
     The following bugs that I found in prior versions were fixed in CW5.
Assignment of structs larger than 32 KB didn't work (Bug No. BR4516). The
built-in console printed both linefeed and return as linefeed (Bug No. T509).
When the program asked for input from stdin, the user had to manually select the
console window if it wasn't already frontmost. iscntrl(0) returned 0 (Bug No.
BR4415). I was also happy to find several of my suggestions incorporated in CW5:
more console options, automatic re-precompilation (via .pch files), and checking
that the current compiler settings are consistent with those of the pre-compiled
header.
     The following bugs that I found in prior versions were fixed in version
CW4.5. The compiler generated bad code for the assignment a[i][j][k][!m]=1 (Bug
No. BR4183). Enum char arguments failed to be promoted (to int) when the
corresponding parameter was untyped (e.g. in printf) (Bug No. T517). In the
2-byte-int version of the Standard C library, the functions memset and calloc
crashed if asked to zero more than 64KB (Reference Nos. ES7266 and ES7268). The
console failed to print characters with ascii codes higher than 127 (Bug No.
T467), and crashed if asked to backspace '/b' beyond the left margin (Bug No.
T513).
Metrowerks Inc.
1(800)377-5416
1(800)340-2120 canada
1(419)281-1802
1(419)281-6883 fax
[e-mail]
1-800-377-5416 for academic discount in US
[e-mail]
Distributed in the United Kingdom by Full Moon Software
0727 844232 and 0628 660242
0727 856139 fax
[e-mail]
Updates to CodeWarrior are posted on:
ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/dev/
http://www.iquest.com/~fairgate/cw/cw.html
Active discussion of CodeWarrior:
news://comp.sys.mac.programming.codewarrior

Power Macintosh Programming Starter Kit
by Tom Thompson, Hayden Books, 1994
(I haven't seen this book, but the following review seems promising. dgp) "A
good introduction to MetroWerk's CodeWarrior, the other best programming
environment for the mac, the only one to use if you're building PPC code, and my
current favorite. The enclosed CD has a limited version of CodeWarrior (you can
only work on the projects included in the disc - can't create new ones), and
example code. Covers a lot of toolbox issues that are not explored in other
introductory books and the PPC architecture in detail. Assumes working knowledge
of C, and the toolbox." (Book review posted on [e-mail] by
[e-mail]).

Macintosh Programmer's Toolbox Assistant
$89.95 from APDA or Addison-Wesley. An online reference manual summarizing most
of the information in the Inside Mac books. Similar to THINK Reference but newer
and therefore more up to date. Requires 25 MB disk space. Even if you have the
Inside Mac books (paper or CD-ROM) you'll still want this or THINK Reference to
quickly look up details while you're programming. (It's included in the Apple
Developer Mailing, below.) Highly recommended.

THINK Reference 2
$129 from Symantec. An online reference manual summarizing most of the
information in the Inside Mac books, volumes I-VI. Requires 8 MB disk space.
ftp://devtools.symantec.com/DTS Server Drive /ftp/Macintosh/Updates/DevTools/THINK-Ref-2.0.1-Updater.sit

Numerical Recipes In C Set for Macintosh, 2nd ed.
(textbook, example book, and disk) $90
Useful book and mathematical library in source form. You can read the code,
understand what’s going on, and modify it if necessary. From:
Cambridge University Press
40 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10010-4211
(800)-431-1580
914-937-9600

Inside Macintosh, 2nd edition: Imaging with QuickDraw, Advanced Color Imaging, ...
Inside Macintosh CD-ROM $89.95 (includes 25 books in electronic form).
Designing Cards and Drivers, 3rd edition
(OBSOLETE: Inside Macintosh, 1st ed.: Volumes I to VI)
From Addison-Wesley or APDA (addresses at end of this file).
You’ll need these books, especially "Imaging with QuickDraw" and "Advanced Color
Imaging". The 2nd edition of Inside Macintosh is significantly easier to read
than the first (which is now obsolete) and includes examples in C, not just
Pascal. (As of December '94, a draft of "Advanced Color Imaging" has appeared on
the Developer CD, but hasn't yet appeared in printed form.) The CD-ROM is a good
deal, offering a cheap way to have all the books on hand.

Symantec THINK C 8
I used THINK C until mid 1994, but I no longer recommend it. Unsupported software
isn't appropriate for serious work. THINK C 8 is a C compiler and programming
environment (combined editor, linker, librarian, loader) for 68k Macintoshes
only. It was very good, but it seems that Symantec has stopped supporting it in
favor of their C++.  For more money you can get Symantec C++ for Macintosh or
Power PC, both of which include THINK C 8 and Apple's universal headers as part
of the package. THINK C is only for 68k Macs. Symantec C++ for PowerPC includes a
new C compiler for PowerPC, apparently called Symantec C, which seems to be
unrelated to the THINK C compiler. Thus it appears that Symantec's C compilers
for 68k and ppc have different heritages, which seems very undesirable since I
would have very little confidence that the compiled code would run identically.
(In my lab we routinely produce fat applications and run them on whichever
computer is available.) VideoToolbox is pure C, and makes no use of C++. The
upgrade (see below) from THINK C 6 to 8 is free, but doesn't include the
universal headers.
     Version 8 of THINK C is hardly changed from version 6. Version 7 slightly
enhanced the user interface of the Symantec Project Manager, and fixed a few bugs
in the THINK C compiler. Version 8 is unchanged from Version 7. (There are a few
extra things--AppleScript support and Apple's Universal Headers--that are useful
to THINK C users, but which you'll get only if you pay for the full Symantec C++
8 package.) In a pinch, you can use THINK C 5, but the upgrade from 5 to 8 is
inexpensive and improves the user interface significantly. It appears that
Symantec is basically dropping THINK C, since it hasn't changed (significantly)
since version 5, and since they haven't announced any plans to port it to the
PowerPC. (I've also heard that none of the authors work for them any longer.)
Symantec is concentrating on C++ (which is based on Zortech C++, not THINK C).
     Trying to give Symantec bug reports about THINK C is futile. In THINK C
7.04, if you evaluate exp(log(0.5)) you get INF, not 0.5 as you'd expect.
(CodeWarrior gives the right answer.) In 1994 I submitted this bug report several
times, waiting a week each time for a reply, but Symantec never acknowledged that
it is a bug, hasn't fixed it, and apparently never will.
THINK C 6 $299
Symantec C++ 7 for Macintosh $499
Symantec C++ 8 for Power Macintosh $499
Upgrade to C++ 8 $149.95 for registered users of Symantec C++ 7,THINK C,or THINK Pascal.
Symantec Corporation
10201 Torre Ave
Cupertino, CA 95014
[phone] fax
[phone]
You can get Symantec's THINK C updates from:
ftp://devtools.symantec.com/DTS Server Drive /ftp/Macintosh/Updates/DevTools/ v7.0.Patch.READ.ME
ftp://devtools.symantec.com/DTS Server Drive /ftp/Macintosh/Updates/DevTools/SymThCv6.0->v7full.sea.Hqx
ftp://devtools.symantec.com/DTS Server Drive /ftp/Macintosh/Updates/DevTools/SC++_EDS_7.0.4.sea.hqx
ftp://grind.isca.uiowa.edu/mac/infomac/dev/think-c-70-patch-readme.txt
ftp://grind.isca.uiowa.edu/mac/infomac/dev/think-c-60-to-70-full-updt.sea
ftp://grind.isca.uiowa.edu:mac/infomac/dev/symantec-eds-704-updt.sit
ftp://grind.isca.uiowa.edu:mac/infomac/dev/symantec-tpm-80-updt.sit
The "7.0.4 update contains patches to the THINK Project Manager and THINK
Debugger for System 7.5 compatibility, but is otherwise identical to the 7.0.3
update released on June 22." EDS (Essential Development tool Set) includes "the
THINK Project Manager, THINK Debugger, and the compilers." The THINK C upgrade
from 7.04 to 8.0 changes only the version number. Support questions can be sent
to Symantec at:
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

MPW Pro
(Macintosh Programmer's Workbench, Professional Edition)
$495  ($295 to upgrade from MPW) from APDA (address at end of this document).
This is a new package from Apple, providing a complete development environment
(C, Pascal, and Assembler; 68k and PowerPC) on one CD-ROM. Apparently it's the
same CD-ROM that you would get by subscribing to ETO (minus Symantec C++),
without the printed manuals. Most people find MPW slow and clumsy, and prefer
CodeWarrior. (The only thing I use MPW for is CompareFiles.) However,
Apple includes pre-release tools on their ETO disks that might be handy.

Essential Tools and Objects CD-ROM (also called “ETO”)
$1,095 for first year, $400/year thereafter. ($300 credit for owners of MPW or
MPW Pro.) from APDA.
I don’t subscribe to this--it seems too expensive--but you may want to. It’s
updated 3 times a year and has the latest versions of Apple’s development tools,
MPW, C, etc. It includes MPW Pro, Symantec C++, and 21 printed manuals. Doesn't
include the Developer Mailings. (The important difference between MPW Pro and
ETO is that ETO is a subscription so they keep sending you the latest disk, 3
times a year, whereas you buy MPW Pro once, no updates.)

MAGAZINES AND CATALOGS:

MacWEEK
Customer Service Department
P.O. Box 5821
Cherry Hill, NJ 08034
(609)-428-5000
Try to get a free subscription.

MacTech Magazine
PO Box 250055
Los Angeles, CA 90025-9555
310-575-4343
310-575-0925 fax
[e-mail]
The only paper Mac magazine for programmers.

TidBITS
A free weekly email newsletter about Macintosh software and hardware published
by Adam and Tonya Engst. To subscribe, send email to [e-mail]

develop: The Apple Technical Journal
$27 in US, $47 outside US. From APDA (address at end of this document).
The develop magazine has four issues per year. It has lots of examples and
helpful in-depth explanations. I've learned a lot from the magazine. The
accompanying CD includes useful documentation: Tech Notes.

Apple Developer Mailing Subscription. Each month you receive a CD-ROM.
$250/year from APDA
These CDs are a very useful reference, including documentation and sample code,
for anyone developing Mac software. Includes Macintosh Programmer's Toolbox
Assistant.

Information Alley
(I haven't seen this yet, it may be pure hype.-Denis) Apple's free email
newsletter about Macintosh, published twice a month. To subscribe send message
"SUBSCRIBE infoalley" to [e-mail] with subject
"Information Alley". Omit the quotes.

ONLINE SERVICES:

Who can answer your Macintosh programming question? You can try posting it on
UseNet or Compuserve. Somebody knowledgeable might jump in. (Apple engineers
often participate in UseNet, occasionally in CompuServe.) If you sell a
commercial Mac product you may qualify to become an Apple Partner. For
$1,500/year, Apple engineers will answer your questions by email, provided you've
already consulted the relevant manuals.

UseNet
The comp.sys.mac.programming.codewarrior UseNet news group has knowledgeable
active discussion. Experts often jump in with helpful answers to thorny
questions. You can participate in UseNet from your your Mac using telnet (NCSA
Telnet and MacIP are both free) to log into a local unix system. Or you might
use InterNews (available by ftp from the Info-Mac archive) if you can get tcp/ip
access to a net news server.

CompuServe Information Service
P.O. Box 20212
Columbus, OH 43220
(800)-848-8199
If you can’t join UseNet, then you may want to join CompuServe, to follow the
discussions and post your seemingly insoluble Macintosh problems on the bulletin
boards, MacPro, MacDev, or Symantec:THINK C, to get free advice from experts.
Buy the program Navigator from CompuServe, as it makes CompuServe much easier to
use. You’ll need a modem.

AppleLink
eWorld
[phone]
[e-mail]
AppleLink is Apple’s original bulletin board and email system. It provides some
system software updates and technical information. Most companies that make
Macintosh products have AppleLink accounts, and you can use the online directory
to get their email addresses. You’ll need a modem. During spring 1995 AppleLink
is supposed to be phased out in favor of eWorld. I've tried eWorld, but so far
(3/95) I haven't found eWorld useful. Apple has just announced that they will
provide one-day-turnaround free customer support on eWorld, which may make it
worth subscribing.

Anyone can submit a bug report to [e-mail]. They prefer,
but don’t require, the format produced automatically by a hypercard stack
called Apple Bug Reporter, which can be downloaded from:
ftp://ftp.apple.com/dts/mac/bugs/

SOFTWARE ARCHIVES ACCESSIBLE THROUGH THE INTERNET:

FTP is a file transfer protocol used to transfer files across the Internet. FTP
programs typically have very rudimentary user interfaces. Some of the bigger ftp
servers are now also Gopher servers. Gopher (developed at University of
Minnesota, originally for a campus-wide information server)  is sort of a
superset of ftp that provides a quite good user interface and allows access to a
wide variety of Internet resources. Public ftp servers require that you log in
as “anonymous and will accept any password, but it is considered a courtesy to
supply your electronic address as the password. If for some reason you can’t use
ftp or gopher, some of the sites will help you out by allowing you to request
transmission of files to you by email.

There are two ways to use ftp from your Mac. The traditional, indirect, approach
is to remotely log into a mainframe (preferably one running unix), use its ftp
facilities to move the file to it, and then download the file from it. The
modern, direct, approach requires that your AppleTalk network have a gateway to
the Internet, so that you can run an ftp program on your Mac (provided you have
Apple’s MacTCP init, included in System 7.5). I recommend Anarchie, TurboGopher,
Mosaic, or Netscape for downloading and Fetch 2.1 for uploading. All are free
from the Info-Mac archive.

The Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh, 2nd edition, by Adam C. Engst. If you're
starting from zero, this book includes a free disk that has MacTCP and lots of
other important utilities for accessing the Internet. Published by Hayden Books.
$29.95 USA $37.95 Canada.
Hayden Books
201 West 103rd Street
Indianapolis, IN 46290 USA
800/428-5331 orders
317/581-3500 orders
800/448-3804 fax
317-581-3550 fax
[e-mail]

Info-Mac archives
ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/
gopher: Info-Mac Archives
email: send a query to [e-mail]
This is the largest collection of public domain Mac software. (The VideoToolbox
is in /info-mac/Development/SourceCode/). Unfortunately in 1994 user demand
overwhelmed the resources and it is now very difficult to access. There are many
"mirror" sites all over the world that keep more-or-less up-to-date copies of
Info-Mac and they're usually much easier to access. Here are some that you might
try:
ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/info-mac/
ftp://amug.org/pub/ftp1/info-mac/
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/mac/info-mac/
ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/mac/info-mac/
ftp://grind.isca.uiowa.edu/mac/infomac/
ftp://ftp.uu.net/archive/systems/mac/info-mac/

Commercial searching services
http://www.infoseek.com/
http://www.hotwired.com/

Search the Info-Mac archive by name, title, or keyword:
http://www.mid.net/INFO-MAC

Get1Resource is a Mac programming magazine.
http:/www.asel.udel.edu/~haynes/g1r.html

List of programs to decompress anything (e.g. file.gz) on any computer (e.g. PC):
ftp://ftp.cso.uiuc.edu/doc/pcnet/compression

Macintosh vendor directory
http://rever.nmsu.edu/~elharo/faq/vendor.html

Mac information maintained by enthusiasts (source: MacTech magazine)
http://www.astro.new.edu/lentz/mac/programming/home-prog.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~nick/
http://www.iquest.com/~fairgate
http://acacia.ens.fr:8080/home/pottier/index.html

comp.sys.mac.programmer digest
news://comp.sys.mac.digest

MacPsych archives
ftp://ftp.stolaf.edu/pub/macpsych/
gopher://gopher.stolaf.edu:70/11/Internet%20Resources/St.%20Olaf%20Sponsored%20Mailing%20Lists/MacPsych
email: send a query to [e-mail]

Alternative Collegiate Computer Association of New Mexico State University.
Contains almost all freely distributable software mentioned in the FAQ lists for
comp.sys.mac.misc, comp.sys.mac.system, and comp.sys.mac.apps.
ftp://rever.nmsu.edu/pub/macfaq/

The following Mosaic page is intended to serve as a single entry point to all
Macintosh resources on the Web.
http://rever.nmsu.edu/~elharo/faq/generalfaq.html

Apple archives: (list courtesy of TidBITS)
MacTech Magazine says the first one is particularly useful.
http://www.info.apple.com/dev/
http://www.info.apple.com/
http://www.support.apple.com/
ftp://ftp.support.apple.com/pub/Apple SW Updates/Macintosh/
gopher://ftp.support.apple.com/11/pub/
ftp://ftp.apple.com/dts/mac/
ftp://seeding.apple.com/
gopher://info.hed.apple.com/
http://www.apple.com/
ftp://ftp.austin.apple.com/Apple.Support.Area/
ftp://aux.support.apple.com/
gopher://spinaltap.micro.umn.edu/11/computer/Apple/
ftp://abs.apple.com/abs/
ftp://ftp.cambridge.apple.com/pub/
ftp://atg.apple.com/pub/

David Brainard ([e-mail]) has created interface files that
make it easy to use the VideoToolbox from within MATLAB. They're available by
anonymous ftp. Also see VideoToolboxMATLAB.c in VideoToolboxSources.
ftp://lifesci.ucsb.edu/pub/mac/brainard/Toolboxes.sea.hqx
ftp://lifesci.ucsb.edu/pub/mac/brainard/Sources.sea.hqx

University of Texas Macintosh Archive
ftp://ftp.utexas.edu/pub/mac/
http://wwwhost.ots.utexas.edu/mac/main.html

Adam Engst, the author of The Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh (above) and
editor of TidBITS also maintains a Mac archive
ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/
http://www.tidbits.com/tidbits/index.html

To search back issues of TidBITS:
http://www.wais.com/wais-dbs/macintosh-tidbits.html

List of internet mailing lists. Sort alphabetically or by category:
http://www.clark.net/pub/listserv/listserv.html

Search a database (maintained by Dartmouth College) of almost 6,000 mailing lists.
http://alpha.acast.nova.edu:80/listserv.html

Hayden books. You can search for specific books, subscribe to a service that
alerts you to new books in certain subject areas, and download software that's
bundled with some of the books. You can buy books online at a 20 percent
discount. (Source: TidBITS)
http://www.mcp.com/

MIT Press:
http://www-mitpress.mit.edu
[e-mail]

Vision research: labs,groups,conferences,newsgroups,databases,source code,etc.
 http://vision.arc.nasa.gov/VisionScience/VisionScience.html
Computer Vision groups:
 http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs/project/cil/ftp/html/v-groups.html
 http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs/project/cil/ftp/html/vision.html
Center for Vision and Image Sciences (CVIS), University of Texas at Austin
 http://www.cvis.psy.utexas.edu
Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science:
 http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/
Centre for Visual Sciences, Australian National University:
 http://cvs.anu.edu.au/
Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester:
 http://www.cvs.rochester.edu/
Stanford Vision and Imaging Science and Techology:
 http://white.stanford.edu/
Indiana University Optometry School Visual Sciences Group:
 http://research.opt.indiana.edu
NASA Vision Science and Technology Group
 http://vision.arc.nasa.gov
Brian Wandell created a list of important numbers in vision research:
 http://www.socsci.uci.edu/cogsci/vision/wandell_numbers.html
Eye movements:
gopher://gopher.spc.edu:70/00/Academics/Ugrad/Ps/Faculty/Carmody/EYEMOV-L/Query/q_ober2more.txt
Tables of contents of selected recent vision journals:
 gopher://eyesite.optometry.ohio-state.edu/
CVNet, Color and Vision Network. Also see CVNet under "EMAIL" below.
 http://vision.arc.nasa.gov/VisionScience/mail/cvnet/index.html
PsyScope:
 http://poppy.psy.cmu.edu/psyscope

If you like this file, you may also want to look at some FAQ ("frequently asked
questions") files from the Mac programming section of UseNet.
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/macintosh/programming-faq
ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/dev/info/beginning-mac-programming.txt
ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/dev/info/csm-programmer-faq.txt

PowerPC FAQ
http://www.mot.com/PowerPC/lib/ppc_faq.html

Mathematica:
ftp://mathsource.wri.com
http://www.wri.com/mathsource.html
gopher://mathsource.wri.com

List of companies and products supporting the Power Macintosh. (Maintained by
Alan Coopersmith, [e-mail])
gopher://ocf.berkeley.edu/hh/gopherspace/Computer/Systems/Macintosh/PowerMac_Products

The Providers of Commercial Internet Access (POCIA) Directory contains hundreds
of entries for Internet providers, which include addresses, telephone numbers,
email addresses, and pricing. It is indexed by area code (for the U.S. and
Canada) and by country (for the rest of the world). POCIA is available at the
following Web and FTP sites: (Courtesy TidBITS)
http://www.teleport.com/~cci/
ftp://ftp.teleport.com/vendors/cci/pocia/pocia.txt

NASA's Computer Software Management and Information Center (COSMIC) "has over 850
computer programs available internationally that were originally developed by
NASA and its contractors for the U.S. space program.  Software is available for
a number of areas of interest including:  artificial intelligence, computational
fluid dynamics, finite element structural analysis, scientific visualization,
thermal and fluid flow analysis, and many more.  Programs are priced on a
cost-recovery basis and usually include source code."
706-542-4807 fax
[e-mail]
gopher://gopher.cosmic.uga.edu
http://www.cosmic.uga.edu

AT&T phone directory for "800" numbers:
http://att.net/dir800

SOFTWARE ARCHIVES ON CD-ROM:

Info-Mac CD-ROM II (May '93) $49.95 plus shipping. A May ‘93 snapshot of the
info-mac archive on a CD-ROM containing about 600 MB. (Includes the February
1993 edition of the VideoToolbox.)
Pacific HiTech, Inc.
4760 Highland Drive, Suite 204
Salt Lake City, Utah 84124
800-765-8369 (orders only)
801-278-2042
801-278-2666 (fax)
[e-mail]

Apprentice 2nd ed. $35 (includes shipping in US and Canada) CD-ROM of 450 MB of
Mac source code and utilities. (Includes recent edition of the VideoToolbox.)
Celestin Company
1152 Hastings Avenue
Port Townsend, WA  98368
360/385-3767
360/385-3586 (fax)
[e-mail]
http://www.teleport.com/~cci/products/apprentice/apprentice.html

EMAIL:

Your email service ought to have a gateway to Internet; complain if it doesn’t.
Here’s how to send Internet mail to various commercial services when you only
know the person’s service-specific address:
America Online: “Adam Engst” becomes “[e-mail]”.
AppleLink: “DENIS” becomes “[e-mail]”.
BIX: “user” becomes “[e-mail]”.
CompuServe: “1234,567” becomes “[e-mail]”. Note: “,” becomes “.”.
GEnie: “username” becomes “[e-mail]”.
MCI: Joe Doe 123-4567 becomes “[e-mail]” or “[e-mail]”.
Prodigy: user ID “abcd12a” becomes “[e-mail]”

Eudora is a popular email program ("an electronic mail client for Internet
users") available as both free and commercial ($65) versions. I haven't tried it
but I exchange mail with other people who use it and like it. (I use QuickMail,
which costs more yet seems to be less convenient to use.)
QUALCOMM Incorporated, San Diego, California.
[e-mail]
800/2-EUDORA
619/597-5113
619/597-5058 fax
ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/quest/mac/eudora/1.5/eudora151.hqx
ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/quest/mac/eudora/1.5/eudora151fat.hqx
ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/quest/mac/eudora/documentation/Eudora_QA.hqx

CVNet is the Color and Vision Network. To join just send an email message to the
moderator, at [e-mail], explaining your interest in vision. If you're
accepted, your email address will be added to the email distribution list. CVNet
sends out about a message a day about events of interest to people doing vision
research: mostly jobs, conferences, and solicitations of advice.

PowerCity Online <[e-mail]> Email sales of 40,000+ items for
Mac/PC. Send email with Subject: Order Info
(Recommended by TidBITS.)

HARDWARE:

The Power Mac 6100 is great for vision research. Its university price is about
$2,000, and its two built-in video ports (with the optional AV board) are very
fast; as fast as the fastest Quadra. We don't need any slots. If you want slots,
you may want to wait to until summer 1995 when Power Macs with PCI slots are
scheduled to appear. The PCI bus is fast and is quickly becoming the bus of
choice for Intel-based computers, so there will soon be a huge array of cards to
choose from. (Making a PCI card compatible with both PowerPC and Intel
processors will require a bigger "plug and play" ROM, but it seems likely that
most manufacturers will take the trouble.) I suggest you get the built-in CD-ROM
(most developer information now comes only on CD-ROM disks) and get 16 MB of
memory, since it makes programming easier.

In my experience a plain old (now obsolete) Mac II is fast enough for many
things, but faster Macs can show bigger movies. So far we’ve never needed more
than 8-bit color, making the obsolete Apple Toby and TFB video cards our
favorites for NuBus, because they work perfectly (unlike Apple’s 1992 crop of
video cards--see the "Video synch" and "Video bugs" documents), and they’re
available for $125 from Shreve Systems, 800-227-3971, but, of course, they don’t
support the latest large monitors. We also like the built-in video on all of
Apple’s newer computers because you can load images into them at extremely high
speeds (try the demo TimeVideo), since they bypass the NuBus bottleneck. We use
the mouse or keyboard to collect observer responses. We’ve bought a few Data
Translation A/D boards to automate our photometry, moving the cards from machine
to machine as needed, but they are probably not the best brand.

You’ll need a modem to call CompuServe or AppleLink, and to dial in from home and
elsewhere using AppleTalk Remote Access (ARA). 28,800 bits/s modems cost several
hundred dollars. (I'm happy with the 14k b/s Global Village modem in my
PowerBook, but I'm planning to upgrade to a PowerPC PowerBook with a 28.8 kb/s
Global Village modem as soon as they're available.) Phone lines are still
expensive though, so you may want to cost-share by using a shared modem and a
single phone line, in which case you'll want to buy an AppleTalk Remote Access
server to connect the modem to your AppleTalk network.

APS Hyper DAT $1,399
APS Technologies
6131 Deramus
PO Box 4987
Kansas City, MO 642120=0087
(800)-354-1213
816-483-6100
816-483-3077 fax
My department uses a single DAT tape drive (with compression, from APS) and the
Retrospect program to backup dozens of Macs every night automatically. We’re
very happy with it. Retrospect maintains a historical backup so you can go back
to older versions of your data, many backups ago. Get a sufficiently
large-capacity tape drive so that you can do unattended incremental backups
without having to change the tape.

Chip Merchant
9285 Chesapeake Drive
San Diego, CA 92123
(619)-268-4774
(619)-268-0874 fax
At $30 per megabyte it’s worth buying enough memory to take your computer up to
at least 8 MB. (To show movies, we've taken several of our computers up to 24 or
40 MB.) This outfit has good prices.

MONITORS:

We’ve done nearly all our research using Apple’s High Resolution Monochrome
monitors, which are inexpensive and adequate, though one could wish for higher
luminance (100 cd/m^2 peak when new), better high voltage regulation, and dc
coupling instead of dc restoration. I suspect that a color monitor might be
better regulated and might be excellent used as a monochrome monitor. Use with
the ISR Video Attenuator would require that you: 1. use only the green channel,
or 2. build a video amplifier to drive all three channels from the single output
of the video attenuator, or 3. snip two of the 75 ohm termination resistors
inside the monitor and tie all three channels together.

Here's what I know about high-frame rate and bright monitors. (Fast and bright
are both interesting, separately and together.) Does anybody have anything to
add?

A company called Dotronix is supposed to be coming out with a high resolution
(150 MHz) bright (300 cd/m^2) 21" multisynch gray scale monitor (ASM2400 21"FS) for
about $1450. Dotronix [phone].

I know very little about color monitors, but people keep asking me to recommend
one. Tom Robson of Cambridge Research Systems gave me a brochure for what
appears to be a rather nice color monitor: Sony 20-inch Trinitron Multiscan
GDM-2038. Field rate of 50 to 160 Hz. Max luminance 160 cd/m^2. Costs $2,500.

"We have new Sony GDM-2038 20" Trinitron monitors available at $1599 with a one
year warranty."
Relax Technology, Inc.
3101 Whipple Rd.
Union City, Ca. 94587
Attn: Frank Gabrielli
510-471-6112 phone
510-471-6267 fax

John Troy, [e-mail], writes, "We are using a Sony Trinitron
Color Display Multiscan. The model we use is the GDM-17SE1 (a 17" monitor). There
is a sister 20" monitor (GDM-20SE1) whose properties are presumably similar.
Although ours is a color monitor we have only used it so far as a white stimulus.
(We've made accurate measurements of chromaticity.) We run the refresh rate at
153 Hz (Line rate:  82.3 kHz, Dot rate: 108 MHz); the capacity to run this fast
was what attracted us to the monitor. [John is not using a Mac--he's using a
Cambridge Research Systems VSG board in a PC.] At that rate, in our hands, the
mean luminance is 82 cd m^-2. At that luminance with a 5 mm diameter pupil we
find that the cat ganglion cells we've studied so far resolve around 70-75 Hz; if
the screen luminance were higher, we'd need a faster frame rate to satisfy the
Nyquist criterion. According to the Sony spec-sheet, at 155.30 Hz the display has
640 dots X 480 lines (82 kHz line rate). We have currently only displayed
one-dimensional patterns (e.g., sinusoidal gratings, edges). We've achieved very
good control over stimulus contrast and accurate generation of sinewave gratings.
We are very satisfied with it. It was priced quite reasonably at $999."

We bought Apple's 17" Multiscan for about $900. It's a Sony Trinitron. Peak
luminance is about 100 cd/m^2. Using the Monitors control panel, or the new
Display Manager, you can select among several resolutions.

Does anyone know what the differences are between the Sony GDM-2038 and the
GDM-20SE1? They're both 20". Apple's 17" and 20" multiscan monitors are
made by Sony. Does anyone know whether they'll run at 150 Hz, like the
Sony GDM-2038 and the GDM-20SE1?

John Troy, [e-mail], writes, "I came across a new monitor,
Optiquest 2082DC, this weekend which might be better than the Sony.  It is a 20
inch color monitor with an advertised price of $1399. It has a 90 MHz dot rate.
Like the Sony, it has a shadow mask and various energy-saving features that may
be troublesome.  I don't have much information yet. Optiqest Inc., Walnut, CA
91789. (909)-468-3750."

MacLiberty Adapter is a small 15-pin-D to 15-pin-D adapter that programs the
video sense lines to mimic any monitor, to fool your video card. (Costs ten or
twenty bucks; I forget.)
Enhance Cable Technology
730 North Ninth Street
San Jose, CA 95112
800-343-2425
408-293-2425
408-293-2468 fax
I bought my MacLiberty Adapter from Enhance Cable Technology, but apparently they
are now strictly wholesale. Tom Busey writes, "The only dealer I found is
MacMall, at 1-800-222-2808. I would advise people to be very clear about what
they are ordering. I have yet to receive a correct order from them the first
time, although they do always eventually get it right."

MacWeek (4/10/95) says, "MacFly is a $25 universal adapter that allows users to switch on the fly among all supported Mac and VGA resolutions. [It] has single switch for moving between Mac and VGA resolution families; all changes within a family are handled by the standard Monitors control panel.... works with all third-party cards that support the Mac Display Manager and the Apple Multiple Scan 20 Display."
MacAdapt, El Cerrito, 510-525-0789, 510-525-5740 fax, [e-mail]

LCD GLASSES:

Stereographics Corp. sells LCD glasses.
[phone]
[e-mail]
"CrystalEyes is a high-quality (60 frames per second per eye) product with good
transmission and blocking characteristics, and it's light-weight, too. Silicon
Graphics bundles them with their 3D workstation packages so I guess I'm not the
only one who like them."

Lafayette Instruments
Sells LCD glasses.

3d-tv
Michael Starks, President
415-479-3516
Sells a variety of different kinds of LCD glasses.

"The archive for the virtual reality newsgroup has more information on other
manufacturers. It's a bit out of date, but it still has good pointers to
equipment manufacturers."
ftp://ftp.u.washington.edu/public/virtual-worlds/faq/commercial/

"The book 'Garage Virtual Reality' has a list of sources. It's a cool book as
well."

(Source: Dan Costin, [e-mail], via MacPsych, who is quoting Rob Douglas,
[e-mail], Hisham A. Abboud, [e-mail], Tom Busey,
[e-mail], Blake Sobiloff, [e-mail], and Chris Chase,
[e-mail])

Mats Lind, [e-mail], writes, "3-D Max, a Swedish company, working with
a Korean supplier, has just started to deliver attractively priced LCD-shutter
glasses and accessories giving binocular stereo capabilities to PCs. Their
product received enormous attention at the Ce-Bit fair in Hannover last week. The
estimated retail price in the US will be less than $180 USD (including some extra
software like 3-D games) and will probably reach a high market share. 3-D Max, is
very interested in entering the Apple market segment as well, but to do so
requires the usual 120+ Hz."

Tom Busey, [e-mail], adds, "I have just finished writing code that
displays color stereo 3-d pairs for use with LCD glasses. This code uses
sequential-frame presentations synched with LCD glasses controlled via the serial
port to provide the illusion of depth. While this technology is old, what is new
is my code takes two PICT files and reduces the millions of colors to what
amounts to 4 bits per red, green and blue channel for each picture (on monitors
with millions of colors) or 2 bits per channel for monitors with thousands of
colors. I add the two pictures together and I use clut switching to switch
between them. The stereo 3-d code uses calls from (not surprisingly) the
VideoToolbox code library. As with all the code I write, this code is freely
available to anyone who wants it. I'm currently working with LCD glasses
distributors to have it distributed free to purchasers of LCD glasses (which cost
about $150). The software may be downloaded from:"
ftp://ftp.psych.indiana.edu/pub/busey/AdjustStereoPicts.sea.hqx

COLLECTING ANALOG DATA:

"We use 2 setups to get data into the Macs:

"1. National Instruments has several analog i/o boards, and these can be
programmed directly or with a high-level language "LabView". Expensive, but
good. See upcoming paper in Vision Res for motion vep measurements where this
was used :-).

"2. "MacLab": Only 8 channels, box connects to scsi so any mac can be used, very
nice strip chard and scope applications. Much cheaper than labview, works right
away. For better analysis transfer to Igor or whatever is advised."

Source (via MacPsych): [e-mail] (Michael Bach)

RECOMMENDED SOFTWARE:

(The free & shareware stuff is available from Info-Mac or CompuServe or both.
You can use Anarchie to quickly search most of the world's ftp sites. To search
Compuserve use their “GO MACFF” command.)

Anarchie - quickly find and get any file in the world's public ftp archives. Free.
 ftp://ftp.utexas.edu/pub/mac/tcpip/anarchie-140.hqx
 ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/mactcp/ftp/anarchie-140.hqx
ApplWindows - INIT helps you go quickly go to any window of any application. Free.
ARA Commander - streamlines your use of Appletalk Remote Access. Shareware.
ATM 3.81 - Adobe Type Manager, $40 from Adobe at 800-521-1976 x4400.
BBEdit 3.11 - best text editor (not word processing). $79 for owners of CW or THINK C.
 [e-mail]
 ftp://ftp.std.com/pub/bbedit/bbedit-31-demo.hqx
 ftp.std.com:pub/bbedit/bbedit-pricing-info.txt
Disinfectant - remove viruses. This is the best. Free.
DocuComp II - compare versions of a manuscript. $50?
EndNote Plus & EndLink - copy DIALOG or Grateful Med references into your paper.
Excel - massage data before plotting it.
Fetch - old, but still handy, program for downloading by ftp. Free.
 ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/fetch-212.hqx
File Buddy - flawlessly performs file and disk related chores. $25 shareware.
Gestalt Selectors - fuller documentation of  Apple's Gestalt() trap.
 ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/dev/info/gestalt-selectors-XX.hqx
 http://www.astro.nwu.edu/lentz/mac/faqs/source/gestalt.html
Grateful Med - cheaply search National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE).
 Call 800-638-8480.
Internet Config simplifies the configuration MacTCP-based programs. Free.
 ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/internet-config-10.hqx
InterNews - popular program for accessing UseNet news. Free.
 ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/inter-news-104.hqx
Kaleidagraph or DeltaGraph Pro or CricketGraph III - plot data.
Klutz - view the contents of the clut (Color Lookup Table). Free.
MacsBug - low-level debugger from Apple. Free.
Mathematica - modeling. $495 from Wolfram Research Inc.
MathType - create equations for use in any word processor, especially Word. $70?
MATLAB - analyze data and filter images (crude but fast). $$$
MODE32 - allows old Mac II computers to do 32-bit addressing. Free.
 ftp://mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/info-mac/cfg/mode32-75.hqx
Mosaic - internet browser. Free.
 ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/ncsa-mosaic-20a17-ppc.hqx
 ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/ncsa-mosaic-20a17.hqx
Netscape - internet browser. Free.
 http://home.netscape.com/
 ftp://ftp.mcom.com/netscape1.1b1/mac/netscape-1.1b1.hqx
Network Time control panel uses MacTCP to synch your Mac to a Unix time
 server every time MacTCP is opened. Shareware.
 ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/network-time-201.hqx
NIH Image - image processing. Free.
 ftp://zippy.nimh.nih.gov/pub/nih-image/nih-image157.hqx
Now Up To Date - first appointment calendar (and to-do list) that I like.
Now Utilities - includes Super Boomerang. Very helpful.
 ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/info-mac/gui/now-utilities-501-demo.hqx
PopChar - access any character in the current font. Free.
Programmer’s Key - use your keyboard’s power key to invoke the debugger. Free.
QuickDEX II - like a RoloDEX, keeps addresses and phone numbers. Lightning fast.
RAMDoubler - makes it seem that you have twice the RAM memory. Highly rec. $99
ResEdit CODE editor - free
 ftp://ftp.apple.com/dts/mac/tools/resedit/
Retrospect & Retrospect Remote 10-pack - best backup program. $139 & $139
SCSIProbe - mount and unmount SCSI disks. Free.
ShrinkWrap - easiest way to deal with Apple's disk-image files. Free
 ftp://mirror.aol.com/pub/info-mac/disk/shrink-wrap-131.hqx
SoftwareFPU - emulates 68881 floating point unit on Macs (eg PowerPC) without it.
Stuffit Expander & DropStuff - free & $30 shareware
 ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/leonardr/Aladdin/DropStuff_with_EE_3.5.1_Installer.hqx
 ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/leonardr/Aladdin/StuffIt_Expander_3.5.1_Installer.hqx
SuperClock! - time of day. Free.
Synchronize! - merge updates of folders on different computers. $30 from Qdea.
System Errors - explains all the Systems errors. Free.
TurboGopher - gopher and anonymous ftp downloading. Free.
Word - only word processor fully compatible with MathType and DocuComp.

There are two floating point emulators for the PowerPC. Native PowerPC programs
use the built-in FPU, but emulated 68K code normally cannot. These emulators
trap 68881 instructions and emulate them (rather slowly) on the PowerPC chip.
•SoftwareFPU, available free from infomac. The free version is intended for 68k
Macs, and runs very slowly on the PowerPC. However, a PowerPC-native version is
available for $20. We use this and it works fine, but a 68k+68881 program
running on the PowerPC with native-version SoftwareFPU is slower than a
recompiled 68k program (sans 68881) running on the same PowerPC. So you won't
use it for your own programs.
John Neil & Associates
P.O. Box 2156
Cupertino, CA 95015
Orders: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]
•"Itty Bitty Computers is marketing its own floating point emulator for the
Power Macintosh. Implemented in native code within the Apple emulator. $20  +
Calif. tax (Visa & M/C accepted.) 30-day money-back guarantee. Itty Bitty
Computers, PO Box 7278, Spreckels, CA 93962. E-mail to [e-mail]
or [e-mail]."

ADDRESSES:

to buy MATLAB:
The MathWorks, Inc.
24 Prime Park Way
Natick, MA  01760
Phone: [phone]
FAX: [phone]
[e-mail] - Sales, pricing, and general information

Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
1 Jacob Way
Reading, MA 01867
(617)-944-3700
(800)-447-2226

APDA
Apple Programmers and Developers Association
Apple Computer, Inc.
20525 Mariani Avenue, M/S 33G
Cupertino, CA 95014-6299
1-800-282-2732 (US)
1-800-637-0029 (Canada)
716-871-6555
716-871-6511 FAX.
[e-mail]
Get an APDA catalog, since some Apple software and documentation is ONLY
available from them.

Mathematica $495 (special offer until 5/31/95) from
Wolfram Research Inc.
100 Trade Center Crive
Champaign, IL 61820
800-441-MATH
217-398-0747 fax

Synchronize!  $29.95 plus shipping from:
Qdea
P.O. Box 19531
St. Paul, MN  55119
612-779-0955
800-933-9558 orders
[e-mail]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

David Brainard writes, "It is possible to use a Gestalt call to turn After Dark
on and off.  I have the documentation and will write the routines one of these
days.  This might be generally useful."