PD ROM 1/PD ROM Volume I - Macintosh Software from BMUG (1988).iso/Electronic Messages/InfoMac Digests/InfoMac Vol. 6/InfoMac 6.15

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INFO-MAC Digest          Monday, 15 Feb 1988       Volume 6 : Issue 15

Today's Topics:
                Teaching with hypertext/media conference
                            MPW and Ram Disk?
                           MacKermit 09(36)b4
                              Stuffit 1.31
             searching CGI, VDI, GKS, PHIGS graphic software
                     compiler-generators on the Mac
                           LW II NT minor bug
                            IEEE488 interface
                     Plotter Driver for Zeta Plotter
                         Bugs in Absoft FORTRAN
                     Recognizing clipboard under MF
                  Mac-to-Mac file transfer over phone.


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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 88 17:37:39 EST
From: [e-mail] (Elli Mylonas)
Subject: Teaching with hypertext/media conference


CALL FOR PAPERS



Conference:  "Teaching with Hypertext," August 8-9, Bowdoin College,
Brunswick, Maine.



It has long been predicted that the advent of hypermedia will have a
dramatic impact on education.  Now, particularly since the introduction of
Apple's Hypercard in August, 1987, hypermedia is becoming widely
available to educators for the first time.  What effect is hypertext having
on pedagogy?  "Teaching with Hypertext" will bring together teachers from
a wide variety of disciplines, both within and outside of academia, to
consider how easily available, cheap hypermedia is influencing them and
their students.



Desirable topics for papers include examples of applications of hypertext
in both formal classroom settings, and independent or less structured
learning environments;  sound and video applications with hypertext;  the
impact of hypermedia on form and pace of curriculum; and the relationship
between traditional hard-copy learning resources and hypermedia.



Please send a 500 word abstract by Friday, March 15 to:



Neel Smith

Department of Classics

Bowdoin College

Brunswick ME 04011



or



[e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 88 17:53:28 PST
From: Mark Richer <[e-mail]>
Subject: MPW and Ram Disk?

We've used both LS C and MPW C and clearly there are tradeoffs -- I'd
have to agree with those people that said MPW compile and link takes
a lot longer than LS. But there are advantages to using MPW for large
multi-person programming projects.  I'm planning to get a 1mb upgrade on 2
macs so they will have a total of 2mb memory.  Has anyone experimented
using a RAM disk to speed MPW's compiling and linkin up?  How about
a large RAM Cache (e.g., 512K)?  Any suggested sizes for a cache on a 2mb
system without running MultiFinder?

I have heard that some people have used RAM disk with the Microsoft C
compiler with a lot of success. Like MPW, MS C for the pcs is a versatile
compiler but not particularly fast.  It can be configured though to
create temporary files on a RAM disk, etc.  I wonder what would be a
good strategy with MPW?  I've wondered if you could copy everything to
the RAM disk including the compiler tool and save a copy of edited sources on
the real disk as well as the RAM disk.  Who needs copies of the other
files anyhow -- they might as well be written to a RAM disk if you have
the room. THe only drag is that if you crash -- you'd have to re-install
things back on the RAM disk when you re-boot.  But MPW would sure be
a lot better if it was a lot faster.

Of course I've simplified the matter more because I didn't point out that
if you do "lose" a compiled file on the RAM disk you'd have to compile as
well as link the next time, but at least you wouldn't lose any source
code if you saved that to real disk first.

Any and all comments appreciated,
Mark

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 88 10:03 CST
From: <[e-mail]> (Michael W. Wheeler)
Subject: MacKermit 09(36)b4

I downloaded MacKermit 09(36)b4 and everything seems really great except
that mouse freezes when I quit the application.  So I thought no problem
I'll just download the defrost-mouse-fkey located in the archives and install
in on my kermit system disk.  I don't have an fkey installer utility so I
just used the resource editor (10d5) in the archives to install it.  But when
I invoke it I get a bomb 03 which I think is some kind of damaged system
error.  But everything else seems to be in order.

I am using a 512K Mac with 64K ROMS and internal and external 400K apple
drives. I am running Finger 5.3 and System 3.2 with nothing installed
on it besides 1 non apple DA (grep) and one or two other FKEYS which work
fine.  Can someone shed some light on my problem.  I've not had any trouble
installing fkeys with resedit before but I would gladly use an fkey installer
if one where available in the archives.  Is the mouse-defroster fkey
supposed to work with the old ROMS and MFS?  Does this problem with this
version of MacKermit exist on all Systems? (surely not or would not have
been released...)  Can this problem with MacKermit be corrected and the
re-uploaded to the archives again?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

================================================================
Michael W. Wheeler  ( Bitnet address: [e-mail] )
Systems Programmer (10 VAX/VMS Systems, 2 VAX/Ultrix Systems)
Tennessee Technological University
Box 5071
Cookeville, TN  38505
[phone]

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

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 88 10:33 CST
From: <[e-mail]> (Michael W. Wheeler)
Subject: Stuffit 1.31

I just want to say that I LOVE this utility!  It is exactly what the
Macintosh has needed for a long time.  I think this program is worth
its' weight in gold.  Someone commented in an earlier posting that
they thought the interface gave too much information.  I want it to
be known that I disagree with that completely.  I want to know exactly
what it's doing with my files and I love the progess report.  If this
is a concern with a great many users I would rather see this information
be optional that done away with entirely.  This program is well worth
his asking price.  PLEASE PLEASE send in your money if you use it to
archive your files.  I only have 400K drives so my use is limited but
for those that have hard drives I'm sure it's a must have.  It's a big
bonus also for the inf-mac archives since it can do such a good job of
reducing the storage requirements.  I am definately going to send in
my money even if I don't use it to archive files because of my small
drives because I want his work on the program to continue.  I might
even send him some extra (I really like this program!)

I did notice some problems in version 1.20 but I don't know if they still
exist in version 1.31.  I have a 512K Mac with 64K ROMS running Finder
5.3 and System 3.2.  The problems I was experiencing were that it did not
notice a disk insert at certain portions of the program and that it would
apparently garbage the header of an archive under certain conditions.  I
am going to try the same operations again with this version and if the
problems still exist I will post a message about exactly how and when
this problems show up.  It has been a while since I encounter those
problems and I want to refresh my memory about these problems -
that is why I'm being so vague right now.  But I can tell you that these
problems occured in situations that people with large drives would
probably not ever encounter.


================================================================
Michael W. Wheeler  ( Bitnet address: [e-mail] )
Systems Programmer (10 VAX/VMS Systems, 2 VAX/Ultrix Systems)
Tennessee Technological University
Box 5071
Cookeville, TN  38505
[phone]

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

Date: Tue, 09 Feb 88 11:15:38 MET
From: Theo Schouten <[e-mail]>
Subject: searching CGI, VDI, GKS, PHIGS graphic software

We are looking for implementations of CGI, VDI, GKS and PHIGS graphic
software on the MAC II, to be used for educational purposes. Please mail
information on such implementation to Theo Schouten, mail address:
[e-mail]        Thanks

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

Date: 9 Feb 88 11:08 -0100
From: Hanspeter Moessenboeck <[e-mail]>
Subject: compiler-generators on the Mac

I would like to answer to a question about the Unix-tools Lex and Yacc.

I have not heard from Lex or Yacc being available on the Mac. But
there are other compiler-generating Mac-tools doing almost the same as Lex
and Yacc and even in a more readable way.

"Alex" is a scanner generator producing a lexical analyzer from regular
expressions written in EBNF. The input to Alex is much more concise than
it is for Lex. For example you only have to specify
  17 = letter {letter | digit}.
to cause all identifiers to be returned as tokens with a token code of 17
and a pointer to their text string. Alex can handle right context of
tokens and even nested comments which cannot be described with Lex.

"Coco" is a compiler generator producing a parser and a semantic evaluator
from an attribute grammar. Attribute grammars are extensions to context-free
grammars and allow specification of translation actions which are to be
applied to the underlying language. The generated parser is a table-driven
topdown-parser. Semantic analysis is done on the fly during parsing and
requires no explicit syntax tree. Syntax error handling is fully automated and
grammar-independent. It results in good error messages and an automatic
recovery after the error has been flagged.

Both programs have been implemented in MacMETH-Modula-2 on the Mac and generate
compilers in Modula-2. For universities the tools are available. We only
charge 400.- Austrian shillings for handling and shipping expenses.
Contact
  Heinz Dobler
  University of Linz
  Institut fuer Informatik (Software)
  Altenbergerstrasse 69
  A-4040 Linz
  Austria / Europe
  EMail(EARN): K331673@AEARN

Companies may get the tools as well as a cheap demo version from
  A.+L. Meier-Vogt
  Im Spaeten 23
  CH-8906 Bonstetten / ZH
  Switzerland / Europe

Literature:

  Moessenboeck H.: Alex - A Simple and Efficient Scanner Generator.
    SIGPLAN Notices, May 1986

  Rechenberg P, Moessenboeck H.: Ein Compiler-Generator fuer Microcomputer.
    Hanser-Verlag Munich, 1985 (in German)

Best Greetings

  Hanspeter Moessenboeck
  University of Zurich, IFI
  Winterthurerstr. 190
  CH-8057 Zurich
  EMail: [e-mail]

  (I am not on the mailing list!!!)

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

Date: Tue, 09 Feb 88 16:04:42 SET
From: Norbert Mueller <[e-mail]>
Subject: LW II NT minor bug

We were lucky to get one of the first new LaserWriters in this country(Austria)
It's really faster (especially with many fonts in one document) than the old
LW plus and "black is black".

I just noticed a minor bug that may reside in the driver or in the ROM (hope-
fully the former is true). The paper out light which is also used to prompt
single sheet feeding does not go off again if you switch back to normal auto-
matic feeding after a single sheet. If you pull out the paper tray and push it
back again, everything's back to normal. Note that the printing operation is
not affected by this behavior - just an annoying red light.
(We're using the german driver 5.1 delivered with the printer)
Well, we can live with this for now, but Apple should do something about
it.
 (By the way the german system software is full of over lengthy translations
that makes most messages slow to read and ugly line breaks in alerts)

best regards

N. Mueller
Institute of Chemistry
Johannes Kepler University
A-4040 Linz
Austria

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

Date: Tue, 09 Feb 88 10:56:40 -0800
From: Dau-Tsuong Lu <[e-mail]>
Subject: IEEE488 interface

        Does any one on the net knows the name and address of the company
that makes IEEE488 bus interface for the Macintosh SE or ][?  Any
infomation is greatly appreciated.

                                                George

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

Date: Tue, 09 Feb 88 14:21:18 EST
From: "Collins, Herman" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Plotter Driver for Zeta Plotter


     I am looking for a plotter driver for some Macs, but I have some
very specific requirements.  The plotter is a Zeta 6300 attached to our
IBM mainframe rather than directly to a Mac.  Ideally, I want to be able
select the plotter from chooser, start up any normal Mac application
(e.g., MacDraw), pull down Print, and have the driver build a disk file
containing the Zeta plotting commands (they call it GML).  Then I can
use Kermit or Telnet to upload the file to the mainframe and send it on
to the plotter.

     Is there any commercial or non-commercial package that does this?
If not, I'll have to write it myself.  Is there any public domain code
for a plotter driver that I could plagiarize?  I've written DAs, but not
drivers, in Turbo Pascal.  Are there any drivers written in Turbo Pascal
that I could plagiarize?  I've seen Earle Horton's article in MacTutor;
are there any other "how-to" articles I could look at?

     Thanks for any information you can provide.

                                    Herman Collins
                                    SYSHERM@UKCC   (BITNET)

"The man who doesn't read great books has no advantage over the man who
can't read them."  Mark Twain

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

Date: Tue,  9 Feb 88 14:55:10 -0500 (EST)
From: John Salmento <[e-mail]>
Subject: Bugs in Absoft FORTRAN


Some notes and bugs for users pf Absoft's MacFortran 77/020

NOTES
        Do not forget to initialize all variables.
        Subroutines called by other subroutines need to be in the same
           physical file, otherwise the overlay manager will not find it.
        COMMON statements used anywhere in the program need to be declared in
           the MAIN program.
        The SAVE statement must be used to retain the changes in
           COMMON variables.
BUGS
        Implied DO loops in read and write statements are not executed
          correctly.  These lead to a Disk, Serial Port, Clock Specific error
          # 86 "Time written did not verify" do not send your disk back!
        DO loops ending on an executable statement do not function properly.
        Multiple nested DO loops using the same statement label as
           "end marker" seem not to function reliably.
        The DEBUGGER sometimes uses double Precision representation of
           variables when they have been declared single precision.
        The DEBUGGER does not retain the CHARACTER variable information with
           fidelity.  This may lead to long hours searchnig for none existant
           bugs.
        The use of ":" within the open statement as a means of access to files
           in other directories/folders leads to an indocumented error
           message #120!
        If a program crashes, OPEN files are not closed.  You need to close
           these manually or on the next run you'll encounter error # 49.
        The stack allocation may not be able to handle large applications.
           In these cases it is neccessary to use the toolbox.  The following
           is an example of the code that should be appended to the begining
           of your Main program.

      PARAMETER (APPLLIMIT = z'00000130')
C By default, applications running on the Mac II are allocated a stack of
C 24k. A Fortran program which uses a significant amount of local memory
C (ie. declares large arrays as local variables) will exceed this limit. The
C following lines show one way of increasing the amount of stack available.


        newlimit = LONG(appllimit)            ! get the current limit
        newlimit = newlimit-256000            ! allocate 256k stack
        call toolbx(SETAPPLLIMIT,newlimit)     ! set the new application limit

[e-mail]
John Salmento
Engineering and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon
Pgh PA  15213

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

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 88 16:01 EST
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Recognizing clipboard under MF


I know this has been asked, but I don't recall ever
having seen an answer.  I have a DA that writes and
reads to and from the ClipBoard.  Evidently, however,
there is a trick to this in making the DA make the
clip contents available to an application under
MultiFinder.  If you open the DA in the application
layer, (by holding the option key down), all works
as anticipated.  If you open the DA in the DA
handler layer, its modifications of the clipboard are
unknown to the application.

There must be a technical note somewhere dealing with
this...or is it in IM Vol 5 (which I don't have)

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Jim Clark
The University of Tennessee at Martin

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

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 88 23:15:42 CST
From: "Mark Turner" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mac-to-Mac file transfer over phone.

I want to be able to transfer files from one Mac
to another over the phone.  Each Mac has a moden and its own
phone line.  Can anyone tell me what software I need, and
how to rig it?
Thank you.
Mark Turner [e-mail]

[
VersaTerm and VersaTerm PRO are now able to do remote file transfers to each
other.  Unattended, no less!  A truly great program!

Jon
]

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

End of INFO-MAC Digest
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