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Subject:  Delphi Mac Digest V3 #18

Delphi Mac Digest     Sunday, March 22, 1987         Volume 3 : Issue 18

Today's Topics:
     RE: LW FONTS & FONDS (7 messages)
     RE: Mac SE first Impressions (7 messages)
     RE: Asynchron I/O (seriel) (2 messages)
     RE: Microsoft/Absoft Fortran Pitfalls-"execute" and extra chars.
     RE: BUGS
     Benchmarking, not just feature lists (2 messages)
     Re: Re: New Managers as Defined in Insid
     Re: System 4.0 questions
     Re: Blitter and graphics performance
     Re: Font/DA/FKEY INIT
     RE: Mac II monitor questions
     More Word_3.0_Bugs (5 messages)
     RE: Word 3.0 bugs
     Random number seed (2 messages)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: TSTEIN
Subject: RE: LW FONTS & FONDS (Re: Msg 18213)
Date: 15-MAR 10:20 Creative Pursuits

If I make a brand new font (a Mac screen font), how do I specify that
such-and-such a LW font should be used when that Mac font is used in a
document. How do the Adobe downloadable fonts work, for example?

------------------------------

From: DSACHS
Subject: RE: LW FONTS & FONDS (Re: Msg 18238)
Date: 15-MAR 14:49 Creative Pursuits

The information is contained in the FOND resource for your font.  Screen
font makers do NOT put the proper information in the FOND.  You have to
use a program like Fontographer to generate Laser Fonts.  Fontographer
can generate composite fonts that reference existing LaserWriter Fonts.
I do not know of any PRESENTLY COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE program that
handles fonts with multiple aspects.

------------------------------

From: TSTEIN
Subject: RE: LW FONTS & FONDS (Re: Msg 18246)
Date: 15-MAR 16:24 Creative Pursuits

Ok. But I have a Laser Font. That is, I have a postscript file that
describes and installs a new font on the LW. Can I either:
  1.  Modify something in the FOND info for an existing screen
      font that tells the LW to use my new font--call it NewFont--
      whenever I use that screen font. I know that the correspondance
      between the way the screen looks and the way the LW will print
      will be screwy, but that is OK for my application now. or
  2.  Make a new screen font by copying an old font and modifying it
      with Fontastic to get a new ID. Then chnage the FOND info by
      hand (e.g., with ResEdit or FEdit) to specify that NewFont be
      used on the LW for this font. In either case, can I make NewFont
      autodownload?

Is there an easy way to find this all out?
  Tim Stein

------------------------------

From: DSACHS
Subject: RE: LW FONTS & FONDS (Re: Msg 18248)
Date: 17-MAR 20:16 Creative Pursuits

The tables in the FOND for Laser Fonts are very complicated.  Even IM
volume 4 does not cover everything.  Best of luck.  There are at least 2
commercial products that will generate a proper FOND, but they are
expensive, and I believe that both have (expletive deleted).

------------------------------

From: TSTEIN
Subject: RE: LW FONTS & FONDS (Re: Msg 18317)
Date: 19-MAR 11:07 Creative Pursuits

Here's what I've done and what I've found out. I made a screen font
called IBMmono with Fontastic, using Courier as a base. Then, by hacking
around with a copy of Courier's FOND resource, I was able to get the
LaserWriter to use my manually-down-loaded font when I used IBMmono on
the screen. Even then, there are two problems:
  1. On the LW, an encoding array sets up the correspondence between each
     character code from the Mac and the name of the character-drawing
     procedure for that character. The PostScript file I have for the
     font definition contains its own encoding array. Unfortunately, Apple
     has somehow made a different encoding array that applies to all
     fonts on the LW, even those not in ROM. I couldn't figure out a way
     to disable this override, so I changed the names of all the characters
     in my PostScript file.

  2. Even then, the font doesn't work. The problem is that some characters
     codes from the Mac cause, when sent to the LW, PostScript code to
     change the font to Symbol. For example, code 186 normally generates
     an integral sign in all fonts. It does this by sending a font change
     to Symbol before it sends the character code. In my font, code 186
     should be a double vertical bar, and is specified that way in the
     font I downloaded. Unfortunately, that code never makes it to
     my font and so the character is inaccessible.

There must be some way to defeat these actions, but I don't know it.

  Tim Stein


------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: LW FONTS & FONDS (Re: Msg 18368)
Date: 19-MAR 12:40 Creative Pursuits

Have you looked in the LaserPrep file?  Use cmd-K when initiating a
print to the LW and you'll get a legible copy of it.  Somewhere in there
you'll probably find the code that does the Symbol hack and you should
be able to modify it.

peter

------------------------------

From: TSTEIN
Subject: RE: LW FONTS & FONDS (Re: Msg 18371)
Date: 19-MAR 21:09 Creative Pursuits

I have looked at the LaserPrep file and in fact found the procedures
that are used in the document's PostScript file. I think, though, that
the translation from the document (in this case from Word) to PostScript
is done in the driver. I believe that the driver is generating the
PostScript that the procedures in LaserPrep execute once it gets to the
LW.
  Will keep you informed of this saga if it looks like I'm making any
progress.

------------------------------

From: MACINTOUCH
Subject: RE: Mac SE first Impressions (Re: Msg 18227)
Date: 15-MAR 11:44 Hardware & Peripherals

After thinking about this some more, I realized that the problems are
more likely due to driver software than to controller incompatibility.
The XP40, Rodime, and FX/20 all use different controllers.  Both the
FX/20 and the Magic and the Apple HD20SC use Seagate ST225N's - yet the
FX doesn't work while the Magic does (and the Apple presumably will!).

Some disks, such as the Northern Telecom, boot from the SE even with
System 3.2 software.  Others, like the Peripheral Land, won't boot
unless System 4.0 is present.

.. Ric

------------------------------

From: EEE
Subject: RE: Mac SE first Impressions (Re: Msg 18239)
Date: 15-MAR 14:15 Hardware & Peripherals

SuperMac has released v 2.2 of their Initializer for the DataFrame. (
Though I don't know if it cures the problems with the SE ).

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: Mac SE first Impressions (Re: Msg 18227)
Date: 15-MAR 19:05 Hardware & Peripherals

I read recently that the DataFrmae XP40 depends on the 128K ROM for
formatting at least.

peter

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: Mac SE first Impressions (Re: Msg 18266)
Date: 16-MAR 11:49 Hardware & Peripherals

Hmmm ... too bad they don't look before they jump!  With a little
one-time CRC calculation, the driver could be 99.44% sure of what it was
jumping to before doing so, and use the 'slow' way if it didn't like
what it saw.

peter

------------------------------

From: MACINTOUCH
Subject: RE: Mac SE first Impressions (Re: Msg 18277)
Date: 16-MAR 15:12 Hardware & Peripherals

Jon reports that FX Manager version 2.15 is supposed to fix the problem
with the Mac SE.  GCC is shipping it and we'll have the results shortly.

The LoDOWN LD-155 hard disk boots on the Mac SE/20 only via the
following convolution:  run the Mount program over and over from floppy
to get the LoDOWN recognized by the Mac SE.  Now go into Chooser, and
Set Startup Device to the LD-155.  After that, it seems to book OK.


Ric Ford

------------------------------

From: MACINTOUCH
Subject: RE: Mac SE first Impressions (Re: Msg 18279)
Date: 16-MAR 18:09 Hardware & Peripherals

I just finished running an extensive set of benchmark tests of hard
disks and the Mac SE.  I also ran Steve Brecher's DiskTimer II, along
with our own "real world" MacInTouch tests.  Here are a few of the
conclusions:

- DiskTimer II is a valid test of disk performance, accurately
predicting the results of "real world" tests such as opening and saving
files and duplicating files in the Finder.  The only caveat with
DiskTimer is that the results should not be interpreted too literally.
It's annoying to see ads in the magazines claiming a disk is "n times
faster" than competitors because the DiskTimer II number is n times
lower.  Of course, this is what Steve has disclaimed all along, and I
doubt he's had much to do with the marketing hype.

- The Mac SE is definitely faster than the Mac Plus.  The SE falls
between a Mac Plus and a HyperDrive 2000 in performance, and it is
approximately the same amount faster than a Plus that a Plus is faster
than an old 512K.

- Read and Write times are surprisingly fast on the Mac SE's internal
20MB hard disk.  Duplicating a file in the Finder takes very little
time, although opening and closing applications doesn't happen any
faster than with other 20MB disks.

- Testing showed no performance differences between System 3.2 and
System 4.0.


Ric Ford "MacInTouch" newsletter

------------------------------

From: BRECHER
Subject: RE: Mac SE first Impressions (Re: Msg 18277)
Date: 17-MAR 05:22 Hardware & Peripherals

No CRC calculation is necessary.  The word at (ROMBase)+8 tells you what
you've got.  The chance that the required code will be at the same
location in an unknown ROM as it was in a previous ROM is small enough
to be ignored.

The SCSI software I run here (once destined to be part of a product, but
currently mere "homebrew") checks the ROM at boot time, and loads either
a SCSI Manager bypass driver or a "vanilla" driver, depending on whether
the hardware is that which is assumed by the bypass driver.  In my case
it's not a matter of using ROM code, but of knowing where the SCSI host
adapter registers are. (DataFrame's 2.1 driver JSRs to a ROM subroutine
which loads CPU registers with the SCSI hardware addresses.)  BTW, the
256K ROMs contain the SCSI hardware base address in a system global.

------------------------------

From: INTECO
Subject: RE: Asynchron I/O (seriel) (Re: Msg 1343)
Date: 15-MAR 12:18 Programming Techniques

I found meanwhile one of my errors - I simply forgo that interrupts are
turnd off and I had a loop with TickCount in it wait for some time (75
baud output). But my system stops working after I close the program
although I do a KillIo... I am back to polling but I think I need my own
driver (CCITT level 2 protocol). Do we have here a MacApp Guru
online...? How does MacApp handles serial input. Apple promised me t
send documentaion but .. Uwe

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: Asynchron I/O (seriel) (Re: Msg 1347)
Date: 15-MAR 18:46 Programming Techniques

Have you figured out how to do split baud rate???  (Or even how to get
75 bps at all?  I don't have the Z8530 data sheet handy and so I don't
know if the 10 bit count field is a software or a hardware limitation).

Is it possible that you still have the input buffer allocated somewhere
in the application heap, and actively connected?  IF so, received
characters will kill whatever program is unlucky enough to be in the
way.

peter

------------------------------

From: DDUNHAM
Subject: RE: Microsoft/Absoft Fortran Pitfalls-"execute" and extra chars.
Date: 15-MAR 22:24 Network Digests

 >From: [e-mail] (Wiley Sanders)
 >Subject: Microsoft/Absoft Fortran Pitfalls-"execute" and extra chars.
 As a first step, I'd advise staying away from editors which insert
funny characters so freely.  I use QUED (rather than MDS Edit) and
miniWRITER (which I wrote [it's available as shareware] instead of
MockWrite -- miniWRITER has Undo also).

------------------------------

From: MRCUTTERMAN
Subject: RE: BUGS (Re: Msg 18128)
Date: 15-MAR 23:44 Bugs & Features

I AM RUNNING A 512K NOT ENHANCED. I AM NOT USING EXTRA RAM OR A RAM DISK
BUT I JUST MIGHT HAVE UNCOVERED MY PROBLEM. I HAD LOADED A D/A PROGRAM
CALLED WINDOWS INTO TO FILEMAKER+ APPLICATION WITH FONT/DA MOVER. I
THINK THAT IT COULD HAVE CORRUPTED THE APPLICATION. I HAVE SINCE, REMOVE
THIS D/A AND REINSTALLED IT INTO THE SYSTEM. I HAVN'T EXPERIENCED ANY
CRASHES SINCE. WHEN I LOOKED AT THE FILE MAP WITH FEDIT, IT WAS
FRAGMENTED SO THIS MIGHT ALSO HAVE BEEN THE CULPRET. TIME WILL
TELL..THANKS FOR THE INFO.

------------------------------

From: DDUNHAM
Subject: Benchmarking, not just feature lists
Date: 16-MAR 00:18 Mousing Around

I recently had a discussion with a friend, in which I mentioned that, in
benchmarks I'd performed, Acta could scroll through a large ThinkTank
document in half the time of MORE.  He, being a speed freak (he's got a
12MHz 68000 in his Mac) was surprised that none of the reviews mentioned
this.  This got me to thinking, I've never seen _any_ benchmarks
involving time, except of languages and disk drives.  With all the
comparison of the new word processors, I'd like to know which really is
the fastest.  A good benchmark article could probably be sold to a
magazine, too...

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: Benchmarking, not just feature lists (Re: Msg 18265)
Date: 16-MAR 22:21 Mousing Around

I was trying to think of why I'm not very surprised at the rarity of
benchmarks for word processors.  It seems to me that in the case of
disks, it's obvious that quantitative factors like speed and capacity
predominate, but qualitative factors like (what?  noise level?  color of
the case?  whether it fits on your desk?  whether you can easily carry
it around?) are secondary.  Similarly, for languages, the benchmarks on
compilation time and performance of the code predominate except in
certain conspicuous cases such as LightspeedC and Pascal where there is
an important difference in the kind of development environment (Steve B:
 I know, MPW has its adherents too :-).

So in the case of spreadsheets for example, if you were habitually doing
very lengthy recalculations, you might look first at the speed of the
computation as being important.  But in many of the other applications,
like word processing or page layout, it isn't the speed of the
underlying mechanism which is most important, it is the way the
application works.  Even when people used to compare PageMaker with
ReadySetGo version 1.0 and MacPublisher I, and say that PageMaker was
faster, it wasn't the speed of the graphics or disk access they were
talking about, it was the fact that PM could do things with fewer steps
than the early versions of those other programs.

It is the difference between efficiency and effectiveness that counts.

For example, I use MacTerminal because it is the best fit to my needs,
not because it is faster at scrolling or can keep up with a higher speed
line. I've tried a bunch of other terminal programs and they don't do
what I need even though they have more features which I'd probably take
advantage of if I could. (By the way, MacTerminal *is* faster than Red
Ryder 9.4 at doing VT-100 emulation, and maybe Just Plain Scrolling.)

To give another somewhat archaic example, I used to use WordStar on the
IBM PC. WordStar is not as fast as some other word processors, but it
has two features which were invaluable to me:  document size not limited
by the size of main memory and ability to edit formatted documents as
well as straight ASCII text. I can't tell you how many other WP programs
I passed over because they didn't have those two features, among them
some of the most popular WP programs on the IBM PC.

peter

------------------------------

From: BRECHER
Subject: Re: Re: New Managers as Defined in Insid
Date: 16-MAR 01:27 MUGS Online

>To: [e-mail] (Eric Ivancich)
>Subject: Re: Re: New Managers as Defined in Inside Macintosh Volume V

> Do the SE ROMs have anything that the II ROMs don't?

The Mac II supports a proper superset of the traps implemented in the
SE.  The SE ROMs have more unused space than the Mac II ROMs.  There are
differences, of course, in hardware-related portions of the code, but
from the programmer's point of view the Mac II has everything the SE
has, plus more.

------------------------------

From: BRECHER
Subject: Re: System 4.0 questions
Date: 16-MAR 01:28 MUGS Online

>To: [e-mail] (Bob Heiney)
>Subject: Re: System 4.0 questions

> If I make an application the start-up application and reboot the Mac,
> when you try to run Chooser or the Control Panel (from the start up
> application), it doesn't work (files not available ... ) [with System 4.0]

It may be that Chooser and Control Panel are relying on the value in the
system variable BootDrive.  Usually, BootDrive contains a WDRefNum for
the System folder; but if the startup application is not in the system
folder, BootDrive will contain instead a WDRefNum for the startup
application until another application, such as Finder or PowerStation,
fixes up BootDrive.

If my diagnosis is correct, this would be a bug in Chooser and Control
Panel, which should not be relying upon the value in BootDrive.  Or, one
might say it's a bug in the ROM startup code, which should put the
System folder's WDRefNum in BootDrive regardless of where the startup
application is.

[The reference to PowerStation is a plug for my forthcoming shell
product.]

------------------------------

From: BRECHER
Subject: Re: Blitter and graphics performance
Date: 16-MAR 01:29 MUGS Online

>To: [e-mail] (Mitsuharu Hadeishi)
>Subject: Re: Blitter and graphics performance

> Can individual [Mac II] video cards have blitters?

Yes.  The software to drive the graphics support hardware would need to
intercept QuickDraw at the so-called "bottleneck" hooks.

------------------------------

From: BRECHER
Subject: Re: Font/DA/FKEY INIT
Date: 16-MAR 01:31 MUGS Online

>To: [e-mail] (peter saeta)
>Subject: Re: Font/DA/FKEY INIT

> Would it not be possible to write an INIT resource to open [separate files
> for fonts, DAs, and FKEYs] at boot time making the resources available from
> then on?

Look for Da Mob(tm), coming soon to the shareware INIT shelf of your
neighborhood supermarket.  Da Mob will open a Font/DA mover file (or
files, if the "file" is a folder) in the system folder at startup and
make all the DAs therein available in the Apple menu, along with those
in the System file.  A special facility for opening a DA more easily
than by scrolling a long menu will also be provided, although the usual
menu usage will still work.  I may do the same thing for fonts, but Da
Mob will be first. FKEY aficionados already have some impressive
facilities, I hear -- FKEY Manager, Pop-Keys.

------------------------------

From: BRECHER
Subject: RE: Mac II monitor questions (Re: Msg 18211)
Date: 16-MAR 01:32 Hardware & Peripherals

The monitor power connector is on the back of the II box, so they power
down together.

------------------------------

From: INC
Subject: More Word_3.0_Bugs
Date: 16-MAR 10:59 Business Mac

Have gotten the ID=84 bomb a couple of times now in word 3.0...

Once when just hitting command-s and the other time upon entering
MockTerm.  The strange thing is that when I hit click on the button to
restart, the drive does something, parking I guess (hard drive) so that
upon restarting, it doesn't take a few minutes but restarts as if I had
done a proper shut-down.  Is this a feature of the new system or Word...
 I'd have to guess the former.

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: More Word_3.0_Bugs (Re: Msg 18276)
Date: 16-MAR 11:55 Business Mac

ID=84 means a menu got marked purgeable and was purged.  You might want
to take a look at your System file and the Word application with ResEdit
and see if any menus have the Purgeable bit set.  This would be an
intermittent bug because it would then to happen only if Word got tight
on memory.

peter

------------------------------

From: PDNNOG
Subject: RE: More Word_3.0_Bugs (Re: Msg 18276)
Date: 16-MAR 18:40 Business Mac

The new feature on a bomb is part of system 4.x. There is also an INIT
file here that will preserve the clipboard thru a bomb.

------------------------------

From: RWIGGINS
Subject: RE: More Word_3.0_Bugs (Re: Msg 18276)
Date: 16-MAR 19:17 Business Mac

The purged menu bomb (84) is probably due to use of DA Installer Plus
from Dreams of the Phoenix. Do what Peabo said, and be careful to always
check when using DAI+.

-- Robert

------------------------------

From: INC
Subject: RE: More Word_3.0_Bugs (Re: Msg 18310)
Date: 17-MAR 12:00 Business Mac

One really nice feature I've found in Word 3.0 is their dictionary and
it's suggest-a-word feature.  Being an avid mispeller (sic) it seems to
find the correct word more than 90% of the time.

------------------------------

From: CHUQ
Subject: RE: Word 3.0 bugs (Re: Msg 18256)
Date: 17-MAR 00:03 SIG Business

I've got a nasty one that I consider a bug.  Print something to the
laserwriter. Switch to manual feed, so you can do letterhead.  Next time
you print (and until you switch it back again) it STAYS on manual feed.
This is the ONLY application that doesn't default back to tray feed
after a print job, and this is wrong, wrong, wrong!

Also, there does not seem to be a way to store landscape mode printing
wiht a style or glossary entry, so you can't just load in an envelope
template and print -- you have to cycle through page setup.  I've also
noticed that Word doesn't remember the setup, so you have to keep turing
on landscape mode.

sigh.  I'm underwhelmed.  I'm especially underwhelmed considering all
the hype everyone has given it in the press.  It isn't bad, by any
means, and I wouldn't THINK of going back to 1.05 or (whimper) macwrite,
but I think everyone is writing about 3.05, not 3.0.  When they finish
tweaking this, it will be a hell of a word processor, but now, it's real
average.

chuq

------------------------------

From: JWENDEL
Subject: Random number seed
Date: 17-MAR 00:03 Programming

Using Turbo Pascal on the Mac I want to be able to change the seed for
the built-in random-number generator.  According to Inside Mac the seed
is located at -126(A5).  I tried the Inline equivalent of move.l
#$FFFFFF82,d5; move.l $020c,$00(A5,D5.l); which puts -126 (dec.) into
D5, then moves the TIME global variable at $020c to the desired spot;
this gives the code Inline $2a3c,$ffff, $ff82,$2bb8,$020c,$5800,
according to TMON.  But when incorporated into the Pascal program it
doesn't work.  There's no change at all in the sequence of random
numbers.  What am I doing wrong?  Thanks for suggestions.

------------------------------

From: BRECHER
Subject: RE: Random number seed (Re: Msg 18290)
Date: 17-MAR 05:23 Programming

A5 does not contain the base address of the QD globals; it contains a
pointer to the base address of the QD globals.  Your interpretation of
Inside Mac ("located at -126(A5)") is incorrect.

        Move.L  (A5),A0                 ;note not the same as Move.L A5,A0
        Move.L  Time,RandSeed(A0)       ;Move.L $20C,$FF82(A0)

However, there should be no need for inline machine code.  The QuickDraw
unit contains declarations of the QuickDraw globals.  Just as you use
the QuickDraw global thePort in your program, you can also refer to
RandSeed in your program:

 const Time = $20C;
 var LongPtr: ^longint;

        LongPtr := Pointer(Time);
        RandSeed := LongPtr^;


------------------------------

End of Delphi Mac Digest
************************