PD ROM 1/PD ROM Volume I - Macintosh Software from BMUG (1988).iso/Electronic Messages/Delphi Digests/Delphi Vol. 3/Delphi 3.43

Text File | 1988-04-08 | 25.6 KB | 626 lines | [TEXT/ttxt]

29-Sep-87 08:42:20-PDT,26770;000000000001
Date: Sun 13 Sep 87 17:01:25-GMT
From: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN@SDR>
Subject: Delphi Mac Digest V3 #43

Delphi Mac Digest     Sunday, September 13, 1987     Volume 3 : Issue 43

Today's Topics:
     Brain Dominance (4 messages)
     Scoop
     RE: A C formatter (2 messages)
     MAC SE FAN NOISE (2 messages)
     TurboMax Upgrade
     miniWRITER info -- pass it on
     HyperCard External Commands
     Need help with CDEF (3 messages)
     RE: MAC SE FAN NOISE (2 messages)
     Mac Assembler
     RE: BMUGNET ---> PHONENET (2 messages)
     long ADT cords ?
     print (3 messages)
     Re: Re:PYRO screen blanker
     Suitcase and Finder 5.5

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

From: MACENGLISH
Subject: Brain Dominance
Date: 6-SEP-15:38: Mousing Around

The following is neither Hyper, nor wild, nor stacked.  And it has
nothing to do with cards.  Aww shucks, they say.  I mean, really, we
could not possibly talk about anything else.

Have any of you read the article that appeared (that "that" was for you,
Bob) in Mouse Droppings entitled "The Apple Macintosh right brain
computer." (That's right, Bob, no caps on those words.)  I have been
wondering for some time why the Mac appeals so much to me, but computers
in general don't.  I wondered if it had anything to do with my being
left-handed or being right-brain oriented (I'm not sure about the
latter.)

He says, "Because the nerves connect the left side of the body to the
right side of the brain (and not vice versa), that means that
right-handed people tend to have logical and analytical thinking
dominant while left-handed people are more artistic and creative."
Well, I question the accuracy of his information.  I attended a workshop
given by Gabriel Rico, who has done lots of research on how the brain
functions.  She said that the idea that left-handed people are
necessarily right-brain dominant and that right-handed people are
left-brain dominant is not true.  I also read a book about left-handed
people and the author discussed the differences in left-handed people
who are left- brain dominant and those who are right-brain dominant, and
those who have mixed brain dominance.

However, Tom's Pittman's argument seems to be that the Mac is a
right-brained tool and that the changes that have been made to it
recently have been made by left-brained people (e.g. the keypad is no
longer moveable so that left-handed people can put it on the left side,
cursor control keys are on the right end of the keyboard). "Lefties put
the mouse on the left, so to shift-click you reach for the shift key
with your right hand and leave the delicate mouse control to the left.
The right shift key on the Plus is tiny and buried in among a bunch of
other keys the same size so it is hard to find.  But on the original Mac
it was big and sitting on a corner of the keyboard.  You see, on the
Plus they eliminated the option key on the right entirely, so you have
to reach across the keyboard to the left-hand side.  Definitely not a
keyboard for left-handed people.  If you don't have one of those stodgy
left-brained Plus keyboards, you might try an experiment.  Even if you
are right-handed."  He suggests trying to use the mouse with the left
hand. You are supposed to like it better.

His conclusions?

1.  "The Mac is a wholistic, visual (meaning artistic), right brained
tool.... Business people are stodgy, analytic, left-brained.  They
didn't like the Mac. Apple is now run by stodgy business people, so they
changed the Mac just ever so slightly."

2.  He implied that women would like it better because the two half of
their brains communicate more than do men, especially right-handed men.

I think the Mac may be a right-brain oriented machine.  But I think he's
confused brain dominance with right-and left-handedness.  I'm wondering
if the changes made to the Mac reflect the fact that most people are
right-handed and they don't consider left-handed people, rather than the
fact that they are necessarily left-brain dominant.  Also I am
left-handed, but I put my keypad and trackball on the right side of the
keyboard.  It feels very awkward on the left-side.  It feels similar to
trying to write with my right hand.  I'm not ambidextrous, so I don't
know what to make of that.

Okay, guys, if I haven't muddled this too much, what do you think?

Debbie

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

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: Brain Dominance (Re: Msg 22230)
Date: 6-SEP-21:49: Mousing Around

I think having a left-handed keyboard is a much better idea than having
two keyboards with different numbers of function keys, but it has been
my experience that keyboards are just about the most poorly designed,
ill-thought out components of a typical computer, and that this failing
is largely systematic throughout the computer industry.  That is, not
being able to buy a left-handed keyboard is the very least of the sins
perpetrated upon us by keyboard designers!

(Other things wrong with keyboards include not enough keys in most
portables, the infamous and extremely awkward profile of the original
Mac keyboards that forces you to bend your wrists at an impossible angle
while "resting", the placement of the control or alt keus in different
and often awkward places on various keyboards, weird ideas of where the
< and > keys should go, and to some extent just having to poke around a
bit for the second class citizens of the ASCII character set.)

I too am somewhat skeptical of the simplistic statement that Macs are
for right-brained people ...

peter

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

From: ROWLAND
Subject: RE: Brain Dominance (Re: Msg 22230)
Date: 7-SEP-10:23: Mousing Around

Debbie:

    I'm not an expert on the subject, but I have worked in the field a
little and been taught by experts - the neurophysiology on which the
right/left brain view is based (Sperry to start with) has been grossly
overpopularized. There are fascinating subjects to be explored but they
likely have little to do with such loaded adjectives as "wholistic,
visual, artistic" - obviously good qualities - and "stodgy, business,
analytic" - usually bad qualities. Books like "Drawing on the right side
of the brain" (a book teaching art and drawing) contain a very good
viewpoint and teach very well : if that needs a label then perhaps
"right-sided" is OK, but don't take that as having anything to do with
what's connected right or left side in the brain. Most of the
experiments have been done on people whose corpus coll. (where the wires
cross) has been severed for other medical purposes (epilepsy usually).
That means they already have an abnormal brain, so its a little
dangerous to draw general conclusions. Other studies have been done with
PET on normal subjects, but there are a lot of steps between
brainmetabolism of glucose and how the brain works.

As far as motor connections for the left and right side and their
relation to handedness: the connections cross over regardless of
handedness (the explanation I've seen is that if you are advancing on an
opponent - animal type- and he takes a swipe at your head and gets it,
its good if the controls for the part of your defenses facing him
weren't affected. That's a typical evolutionary argument - I doubt it,
but it sounds at least as plausible as explaining why the mac "works"
with similar explanations). Perhaps dominance of the "wholistic" means
one or the other of the motor connections would show up, but it sounds
pretty far fetched to me. One or the other eye can be dominant in a way
similar to handedness; yet it is the right (or left) side of EACH eye
that goes to the right or left side of the brain. Clearly there it
cannot be a dominance of one or the other hemisphere affecting the eye
dominance.

I didn't mean to be so long-winded, but I think its counterproductive to
look for explanations that are needed (what's good about the mac) in
areas that while fascinating are so removed from the likely level
needed. How a lisp or PASCAL program works certainly depends on whether
you have a 68020 or a 80386 "brain" in your box, but if you are trying
to figure why it doesn't
 a program doesn't work and you are looking at the connections of the
transistors in your processor chip, well ...

Mike Burns

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

From: DDUNHAM
Subject: RE: Brain Dominance (Re: Msg 22236)
Date: 7-SEP-22:53: Mousing Around

The new ADB keyboard (and the one for the //gs) suffers from stupid
arrow keys
-- the Plus had the up arrow above the down arrow (makes sense, right)? The new
keyboard has the up arrow to the right of the down arrow.  Keyboards always
have been a weak point of most computers, as you say -- why DEC dropped the
nice Selectric layout of the VT100 (ok, they did make the same arrow mistake as
the ADB keyboard) in favor of the so-called European layout (with left-shift
and return in the wrong place) for their VT2xx machines...

I would hope that the Mac engages _both_ halves of your brain -- that's what I
think is the most important (i.e. designing a program takes right brain,
implementing it takes left -- people like Bill Atkinson who can do both well I
greatly admire).

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

From: JEFFS
Subject: Scoop
Date: 6-SEP-16:04: Bugs & Features

I received Scoop (the desk-top publishing program from Target Software) on
Friday.  Today I set out to learn it.  Well, let me say that between the bugs
in the program and tutorial, MS Word 3.0 looks bug free :-(.  I'm going to try
it on my Mac II at work on Tuesday and give them a call with my 15+ item bug
list.  Stay tuned for details...

                                               Jeff

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

From: PLAMONDON
Subject: RE: A C formatter (Re: Msg 2037)
Date: 6-SEP-22:41: Tools for Developers

Senor Soccerking,

As to your C formatter, allow me to suggest the following:

If at all possible, allow the user to specify the format of the output, by
allowing him/her/it to select among a number of formats, or to speifyy a new f
mat.

I hate to be compelled to use a formatter's one, rigid format.  For example, I
was recently converted away from standard K&R format to "4+2" format.  The
differene is that in 4+2 format, all non-brace lines begin on lines indented a
multiple of four spaces (via tabs), while all braces are  a) on their own
lines, and  b) are indented an extra to spaces.  Thus, the only thing braces
line up with is other braces, and all braces line up with their mates.  As an
example, consider this for loop:
    K&R:
    for (init; cond; incr) {
            statement(s);
    }

    4+2:
    for (init; cond; incr)
      {
        statement(s);
      }

4+2 formatting adds whitespace, and greatly simplifies the matching of braces.
If your formatter enforced K&R formatting, I can guarantee that I wouldn't use
it.  Although 4+2 formatting is not (yet) widely popular, I expect that its use
will spread, so it ought to be included as a formatting option.

Thanks for the opportunity to flame on this.

PLAMONDON

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

From: DDUNHAM
Subject: RE: A C formatter (Re: Msg 2037)
Date: 7-SEP-04:24: Tools for Developers

Lew Rollins started a nice formatter, but it looks like he isn't going to be
finishing it.  It printed all the code in Courier-10 and the comments in
TimesBold-12.  One nice feature was the ability to include stuff in comments.
Frex,

 /*
 GET_WORD - Parse a word from input
 /*

Would draw a (hairline) box around the comment.  And

 /*.fo (c)1987 Maitreya Design */

puts a footer on each page.  He was also planning to put information in Acta
files and parse that (presumably one outline per project, to control global
options).

I strongly recommend Peter's Prototype Maker if you intend on changing the
indentation at all.

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

From: HVNZ
Subject: MAC SE FAN NOISE
Date: 7-SEP-19:58: SIG Business

I just sold my Mac 512e and purchased a Mac SE 20, turned it on in my VERY
QUIET office and was deafened by the fan.  I took it back to my dealer and he
assured me "the outrageous noise was normal" and he sent me on my way.  Later,
I found out that this was one of the biggest complaints about the SE.

I would appreciate any help on silencing my Mac SE.

Thank You John Lipke DELPHI NAME - HVNZ

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

From: DEDHED
Subject: RE: MAC SE FAN NOISE (Re: Msg 22249)
Date: 7-SEP-20:21: SIG Business

I've had the same complaint about the SE fan.  I found that by placing a 33
ohm, 1/2 watt resistor in series with the fan, it reduces the noise by one half
(subjectively).  Right now, I've got a 60 ohm NTC (Negative Temperature
Co-efficient) Thermistor, and it seems to be working great. When I used the 33
ohm resistor, I measured an increase in the exhaust temperature of approx. 4
degrees Celsius.  The advantage of a thermistor is that as the internal
temperature goes up, its resistance goes down, so it tends to be
self-regulating for various ambient temperatures.  So far, everything seems to
be working great.  If you decide to do something of this nature, be advised
that Apple will most likely consider your warranty voided.

Mike

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

From: BGAARDER
Subject: TurboMax Upgrade
Date: 7-SEP-21:54: Hardware & Peripherals

Does anyone have an opinion on the MacMemory TurboMax upgrade?  It sounds like
a good thing to get if you are considering the upgrade to 2.5MB with a 4MB in
the future, since it means thaat you get the extra speed for $500-600, as well
as the faster? SCSI.  This would be on a MAC+.

Thanks.

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

From: DDUNHAM
Subject: miniWRITER info -- pass it on
Date: 9-SEP-01:28: User Supported Software

David Gelphman suggested that miniWRITER allow users to choose the creator for
the text files it creates.  In fact, it does.  The 'mWRT' resource configures
this (and other options).  Use ResEdit to edit the 'mWRT' in the suitcase.

This is made easier by the 'TMPL' resource in the original miniWRITER suitcase.

Use ResEdit to Copy the TMPL, open ResEdit, and Paste.  Once you close ResEdit
(and save the changes), it'll know how to edit 'mWRT' resources, and you can
set the default font, size, and options.

Also, since I got a call today from someone who said miniWRITER didn't print,
let me remind everyone that SuperLaserSpool can't handle miniWRITER. The author
knows about the problem, and will hopefully fix it.  (SLS also won't work on
the Mac II, and a new version is supposed to handle that problem.)

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

From: PEABO
Subject: HyperCard External Commands
Date: 9-SEP-02:25: Programming

Be careful about your stack protocol when developing external commands for
HyperCard.  If you forget to declare (in C) the external function as a "pascal"
function, you will cause HyperCard to restore its registers one longword off on
the stack.  Unfortunately one of those registers is A5, and you may as well
reboot once the crash occurs (exit to shell doesn't manage to recover very
gracefully).  (You can recognize this mistake easily because HyeprCard crashes
with the PC set to zero immediately on return from your function, at least in
the case I had trouble with.)

peter

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

From: DANAMAC
Subject: Need help with CDEF
Date: 9-SEP-03:26: Programming Techniques

I am working on a Control DEFinition (CDEF) and have run into a puzzle.  The
control is to look and act very much like the volume control slider in the
Control Panel and is an indicator type of control as opposed to a simple button
type.  The closest example I have found is the scroll bar - a scroll bar with
just a thumb and no paging or arrow parts is almost what I am coding EXCEPT
that the CDEF is dragging the indicator rather than letting the Control Manager
do the default indicator dragging (dragging a gray outline of the indicator)
which is what the scroll bar does.

Everything went fine as I was coding and testing the various control
operations: drawCntl, testCntl, calcCRgns, etc. UNTIL I implemented dragCntl to
perform my own dragging of the indicator.  The symptom is this:  I have defined
a CNTL resource that uses my new CDEF, there is a DLOG that uses this CNTL
resource.  When I get a mouse event, I call IsDialogEvent which reports that,
yep, itUs a dialog event. Then I call DialogSelect (which calls TrackControl,
which calls DragControl, which calls my CDEF, which does the dragging).

The problem is that when I respond to the dragCntl request in the CDEF and
return a non-zero function value to indicate that I have handled the drag,
DialogSelect returns FALSE indicating that there was no hit in a control!  If I
back off and dummy out my dragCntl part of the CDEF and let the Control Manager
do the dragging then DialogSelect returns TRUE and the item number of my
control - as I am expecting. It appears to me, in NOSYing around in the Control
Manager, that when the CDEF returns TRUE after a dragCntl request, TrackControl
clears the part code thus returning FALSE indicating that the track failed and
so DialogSelect says no hit occurred.  However if the CDEF returns FALSE, and
lets the Control Manager do the default dragging then TrackControl returns the
part code and DialogSelect correctly indicates a hit in that part.

Ack!  Has anyone delt with this area of CDEFs, specifically doing custom
dragging of the indicator in an indicator type of control, and can shed some
light for me?  Thanks in advance for any help - I hope this message wasn't too
long (I know, it was...)

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

From: SOCCERKING
Subject: RE: Need help with CDEF (Re: Msg 2049)
Date: 9-SEP-17:01: Programming Techniques

I am no expert but I have an idea that is worth a try. Handle the dragging your
self, but tell trackcontrol you did not, hopefully(I am not sure) it will check
to see if the mouse is already up when i does the standard dragging and
therefor do nothing, but return a click(hum... it might return no click).
Something worth NOSYing is how the Control manager handle's standard dragging.
hope I was helpful, brent.

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

From: DANAMAC
Subject: RE: Need help with CDEF (Re: Msg 2051)
Date: 10-SEP 01:38 Programming Techniques

An excellent suggestion.  When I do the dragging, but tell the Control Manager
that I didn't, TrackControl does return a hit (hooray!) and standard dragging
doesn't really happen because, as you point out, the mouse is already up by
then.  This I am using as a work around but still trying to figure out how it's
really supposed to work.  Thanks for the suggestion!

I have been doing commenting (aci) while NOSYing this area of the Control
Manager and will check for your message in the NOSY forum. - Dana

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

From: BUGEYE
Subject: RE: MAC SE FAN NOISE (Re: Msg 22249)
Date: 10-SEP 20:48 SIG Business

I too have been unpleasantly surprised by the SE fan noise.  After going thru
the relevant Forum messages, I see Apple has a real problem. Have any of you
also had the problem noted in the Oct. MacUser of the SE screen bending on the
side.  It occurs when you select a group of rows in Excel and the black
selection area seems to draw in the sides of the screen.  I'm beginning to
think a Plus with hard drive attached is a better option than the problematic
SE.

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

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: MAC SE FAN NOISE (Re: Msg 22292)
Date: 11-SEP 00:43 SIG Business

I've noticed at all three of my replacement power supplies (on two Mac 512K
machines and a Mac Plus) show increased screen warping when large areas of the
screen are selected.  I don't know if all new Macs tend to have this kind of
problem beacuse of some design change or what, but on the other hand, the
original very "robust" power supplies are dead, dead, dead.

The SE supposedly has an additional complication which can result in a slightly
non-rectangular screen.  That at least may be fixable by a knowledgeable
techie.

peter

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

From: RABBIT
Subject: Mac Assembler
Date: 12-SEP 13:50 Tools for Developers

   I have need of an assembler that exists for the Mac/Amiga and ST.  I would
like to write code on the mac with conditional testing for assembly of specific
mac/amiga/st code segments.  I would like to be able to do the final assembly
and debugging on the native machine, but so far have not found an assembler
that uses the same source code format on all three machines.
   If anyone knows of one I would appreciate the information.
                                  Scott

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

From: MICMAC
Subject: RE: BMUGNET ---> PHONENET (Re: Msg 22194)
Date: 12-SEP 07:16 Hardware & Peripherals

It works OK! Thanks!
But It happens that HyperCard don't work with Tops.
Have any other Tops users that problem?

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

From: DEWI
Subject: RE: BMUGNET ---> PHONENET (Re: Msg 22321)
Date: 12-SEP 23:12 Hardware & Peripherals

Hypercard works with TOPS on a 1MB Plus, though you may need to bump the size
of the system heap up some. When I first tried it, I got a spectacular crash
with sound effects. Some probing with TMON and Nosy showed me that Hypercard
requests a chunk of memory from the system heap (in routine INITSOUN if anyone
from Apple's listening!) and doesn't check for failure.

Fedit can be used to do the necessary surgery to the boot blocks to increase
the size of the system heap - just increase it in smallish increments until
things work. I had thought that the heap increased dynamically with Sys 4.1 -
maybe I should re-read that Tech Note...

One final warning - never haul out a DA when you're in the paint tools - your
Mac will most likely crash again. Choose the browse tool first.

Best of luck, Dewi.

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

From: ROWLAND
Subject: long ADT cords ?
Date: 12-SEP 19:05 Hardware & Peripherals

What's the longest Apple Desktop Cord length thats a) recommended and b)
possible ? I've got a loft in my condo and if I could manage 25 feet I could
have a second "station" up there. Anyone know or tried ?

Mike

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

From: JIMH
Subject: print
Date: 12-SEP 19:30 Programming

I need to print out a multipage graphic which is stored in memory as data
rather than a bit  map.  now the problem is that all the example i can find of
printing work with single printed page graphics. I dont have enough memory to
build a bitmap image of the entire graphic in  memory all at once.  I can print
a single page though.  one algorithm would seem to be:
  Set up a grafport one printerpage in size
  Repeat
    draw the entire graphic which is clipped to the page bounds
    print the page
    setorigin to next page
    set clip rect to next page
  until last page printed

Is this reasonable?  It would seem to do the job, however it lacks elegance,
what with printing the entire graphic over and over.  Is there something
simple i am missing?
     jim

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

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: print (Re: Msg 22330)
Date: 12-SEP 20:46 Programming

If you're just doing this for yourself, it sounds OK.  If you are doing it for
a realistic application [:-)] then you need to clip it much more finely than
single pages.  Don't produce bitmaps more than 3K or so in size in a QD PICT.
(Non LW printing makes PICTs.)   (op cit my comment in DevSIG last week) Take a
look at the note on IM I-190 under DrawPicture.

peter

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

From: JIMH
Subject: RE: print (Re: Msg 22333)
Date: 12-SEP 22:37 Programming

Peter, i was not going to draw any pictures.  i construct the image from the
data.  why do i need to clip it more finely than thto the page?  thanks jim

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

From: BRECHER
Subject: Re: Re:PYRO screen blanker
Date: 13-SEP 16:46 MUGS Online

>To: [e-mail] (Jeff Harrow, NCSE BXB1-2/E02 DTN=293-5128)
>Subject: Re:Re:PYRO screen blanker

Thanks for your appreciation of Pyro!  As to your laments...

There is a value in the Pcfg resource in Pyro! that you can adjust to attempt
to avoid Pyro!'s triggering during Excel calculations.  The second longword in
Pcfg is a threshold interval, in 60hz ticks, between calls to GetNextEvent.
There is a TMPL resource in PyroEdit that you can copy into ResEdit if you
prefer not to edit in raw hex; the field is the second one in the TMPL.   If
this threshold is exceeded, Pyro! considers the application to be busy.  You
could try reducing the value by 1.  If you reduce it too much, you risk having
Pyro! not trigger even though the application is idle.  (The value is not
always used literally; it may be adjusted internally by Pyro! depending on the
CPU speed of your Mac.)

The next release of Pyro! will be compatible with MultiFinder -- the current
version doesn't know about MultiFinder, and will not trigger under MultiFinder
while MultiFinder-friendly applications are active (e.g., Finder,
PowerStation).

Your suggestion for making monitoring of modem port input optional is a good
one.  As long as we're at it, we should do the same with respect to the printer
port, since some people have modems on that port.

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

From: BRECHER
Subject: Suitcase and Finder 5.5
Date: 13-SEP 16:46 MUGS Online

>To: [e-mail] (Christopher Chow)
>Subject: Suitcase and Finder 5.5

> Recently, however, I added the 32nd (or was it the 31st) DA to my "DAs"
> file and I've noticed something strange:  The Finder now thinks I'm
> running off some sort of network.  For example, the File menu now has
> "Get Privileges" in it.  Does anyone know whats going on?

Finder is rather undiscriminating in deciding whether AppleShare is present.
It calls GetResource('DRVR', 41); if the resource is present, it puts "Get
Privileges" in the File menu.  A suitcase file with 30 or more DAs in it will
usually contain a DRVR 41 resource, and lead to the spurious item in the Finder
menu.  Although disconcerting, this is harmless as the menu item is dimmed
unless AppleShare is really in use.


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

End of Delphi Mac Digest
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