PD ROM 1/PD ROM Volume I - Macintosh Software from BMUG (1988).iso/Electronic Messages/USEnet Digests/USEnet Vol. 3/USEnet 3.068

Text File | 1988-04-08 | 26.2 KB | 668 lines | [TEXT/ttxt]

29-Sep-87 10:23:22-PDT,27463;000000000001
Date: Sat 12 Sep 87 11:07:54-EDT
From: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN@SDR>
Subject: Usenet Mac Digest V3 #68

Usenet Mac Digest     Friday, September 11, 1987     Volume 3 : Issue 68

Today's Topics:
     MacVision = problems on SE
     Digitize vs Scan?
     SASI disk to Mac (Help Wanted)
     HyperCard dialing # and *, debug command
     Re: Changes to the MacBinary standard
     A Surefire Way to Become Rich (using Hypercard)
     Re: MenuBar in HyperCard
     SuperSpool 4.0 for the Imagewriter
     Ticking Mac
     generic printer driver testers wanted
     Re: FEdit corrections for the BatteryPak Calendar DA
     Disable SE internal harddisk
     VLSI tools on Mac-2's?
     MPW C 2.0 interfaces into ColorQuickDraw
     Scientific graphics desperately wanted
     Re: Rotation Algorithm wanted
     Re: VLSI tools on Mac-2's?

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

From: [e-mail] (Patrick van Kleef)
Subject: MacVision = problems on SE
Date: 8 Sep 87 00:26:02 GMT
Organization: V.U. Informatica, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

How I love those cheap offers... Just bought myself a MacVision
video-digitizer for the Mac and decided to capture some of my favorite
video images (myself being on the top of the list ;).

I figured I might run into some trouble, as the MacVision was designed
for the 'skinny' Mac, relying on a DB-9 connector, providing the device
with 9 and 12 V. power. But this was only a temporary problem as I made
my own power adapter (and DB-9 to Din-8 connector).

Eureka, it worked! That is to say: the picture came on screen, but any
attempt to move my mouse, touch a key (like the manual suggested)
resulted in a formidable system-hangup. MacVision doesn't agree with ADB
style user input (or so it seems).

Does any1 out there have a more recent than 1.0 version of MacVision?
Please E-mail it to me (pretty please?). Is there any patch? Would be
much appreciated, since I plan to use digitized images for the _main_
computer exhibition in Holland (oh well, Holland... ;)

Paul

BTW: Bill Atkinson is the man who wrote the MacVision software. He must
have plenty of time now HyperCard is finished.. he might update his
MacVision software :-))


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

From: [e-mail] (H. Moskovitz)
Subject: Digitize vs Scan?
Date: 8 Sep 87 12:52:41 GMT
Organization: The Second Door on the Right

I am getting ready to put down some $$$ toward an image input device.
Question is, should I go for a scanner (the Thunderscan in particular)
or a video digitizer. I feel that the digitizer will give me greater
flexibility; the question is at what cost to image quality.

I would like to hear from folks who have experience with both so that I
can get an educated opinion as to the pro's and con's of each. Also, if
anyone out there knows of an article either comparing scanner vs
digitizer, or comparing the available digitizers (such as Koala
MacVision or the MacMagic) please point me to the magazine and issue I
can find it (them) in.

Thanks in advance.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
        Howard Moskovitz
    AT&T Bell Labs @ Liberty Corner, NJ
        ihnp4!io!howard


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

From: [e-mail] (henq)
Subject: SASI disk to Mac (Help Wanted)
Date: 8 Sep 87 12:39:25 GMT

We connected an old  Xebex S1410 SASI controller and a CMI CM5619 19MB
(unformatted) hard disk to an Macintosh SE HD. (we configured the drive
as number 1).

Then we used the SF&I program of mister Vishniac to format the disk. It
actually worked !. We made our own Mode Select Command to set up drive
parameters as nr of cylinders and nr of heads.

After quitting the programming the drive was mounted and an icon showed
up on the desktop of the finder.  We copied files to it and everything
seemed to work just fine.

But... when we tried Apple utility 'Apple HD SC Setup' it didn't
recognize the drive, and when we rebooted the Mac, the drive would not
mount. The disk seems to be recognized only directly after formatting
with SF&I.

Some additional remarks:

* We tried both the driver of mr Vishniac (made for Rodime 652 disks)
and  the driver from Apple as supplied in the 'Vanilla' resources. No
differences noted.

* We know there are some known problems with short scsi-reset timing,
but what can you do about it.

* SASI <> SCSI, we know. For example we did not connect the ATN
(Attention?) line from the Mac scsi-bus to the Xebex controller. Should
it be connected ?

* We plan to use the drives (that we can get for free...) with our 512e
mac,  with a Dove SCSI controller installed. Does this make any
difference with connecting the drive to an SE ?

* When the Mac fires up (we use sys4.1/finder5.5) the harddisk
frontpanel-light lights up. When running the Apple HD SC Setup, it
lights only short and very dimmed (very short pulse, we assume).



So here's where we're stuck. We surely don't want to reformat the drive
every time we boot :^)   so anyone knows of a solution ?  We appriciate
any hints or tips or drivers software (either binary or c-source ). We
do have both 'electrical mac' articals of MacTutor.


Thanks in advance,

-Henk van Tijen   {mcvax!}hvt@tnosel
        & -Marcel Blonk


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

From: [e-mail] (Dan Winkler)
Subject: HyperCard dialing # and *, debug command
Date: 8 Sep 87 17:16:55 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, USA

The dial command in HyperCard 1.0.1 ignores # and *.  This is a bug
which we have already fixed in our internal version and which will be
fixed in the next rev of the product.  Until then, the only way around
the problem is to use an XCMD.

The debug command in HyperCard 1.0.1 does nothing at all.  It is for
development use only and is enabled by compile time flags when we build
internal versions.  Note that because of the way inheritance works in
HyperCard, you are free to make your own handlers or XCMD's of this same
name or the name of any other built in command if you want.  Thus you
will never have a name conflict between one of your own routines and a
built in command you didn't know about nor will we ever break existing
scripts by adding new built in commands.

Dan.


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

From: [e-mail] (Brown)
Subject: Re: Changes to the MacBinary standard
Date: 8 Sep 87 13:16:34 GMT
Organization: The little blue rock next to that twinkly star.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Dave Platt) writes:
>The following text describes some proposed enhancements to the
>MacBinary file-transmission standard; ...
>The format of the header for MacBinary II is as follows:
>  Offset 000-Byte, old version number, must be kept at zero for compatibility
>[discussion of how to infer version with 0 version number]

  You perhaps misunderstand the meaning/use of a version number.  Back
in the days of the ARPANET and the Project MAC, they were invented to
provide a transparent means of allowing programs to evolve.

  If there is only one version number (the common case), it is
incremented to indicate to an old program that this is a new-format file
(or packet!) and that it needs to execute its "exceptional case" code.
Often this meant is was to complain to a human and, in the case of
translators, refrain from translating things into broken bits.  If the
version number is not incremented, the program can process the
file/packet, ***ignoring** present-but-unimplemented fields and still
produce a valid packet/file.
  If there is a two-part version number (rare) or there is a negotiation
procedure (common on ARPANET/in Kermit) the program can use the
additional information to read and interpret present-but-unimplemented
fields, since it has just been "told" which ones are in use.

  Please do not publish a standard which does not have a mechanism for
evolution and change.  The world will insist on changing...
  In the case of MacBinary, you may want to release a standard and a
suite of programs which:
  1) ignore present-but-unimplemented fields
  2) provides a few for extension
  3) has and uses version number of 0, but...
  4) defines version 1 and can read all version 1 files
  5) does not send version 1 until 1 january 19XX, then switches
     automagically.

  Please feel free to contact me by mail, I will be glad to lend a hand
(outside of working hours (:-})) at helping you improve the standard
without breaking existing software.

 --dave (notice the quote below) c-b
--
 David Collier-Brown.                 {mnetor|yetti|utgpu}!geac!daveb
 Geac Computers International Inc.,   |  Computer Science loses its
 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, |  memory (if not its mind)
 CANADA, L3R 1B3 [phone] x3279 |  every 6 months.


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

From: [e-mail] (Jon Forrest)
Subject: A Surefire Way to Become Rich (using Hypercard)
Date: 8 Sep 87 21:32:05 GMT
Organization: Britton Lee, Berkeley, CA

It's your lucky day. I'm going to tell you how to get rich. The first
thing I thought of after having seen Hypercard was that it is the
perfect way to computerize the Scott's stamp collectors catalogs. You
could have a stack for each country. Each card would have a picture of
the stamp along with its catalog number, price information, and quantity
in collection. The graphics possibilities would make this very
attractive to serious stamp collectors, although to do this right you'd
have to work with Scott to get permission to digitize the pictures of
the stamps. In fact, you'd want to work with Scott for other reasons.

Being basically lazy, plus not knowing a thing about Macs, I'm not going
to do this. I'll probably be sorry.

Jon Forrest

ucbvax!mtxinu!blia!forrest {pyramid|voder}!blia!forrest


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

From: [e-mail] (Scott Storkel)
Subject: Re: MenuBar in HyperCard
Date: 8 Sep 87 18:53:01 GMT
Organization: Rice University - ICSA

Currently, I know of no way to alter the menu bar directly from
Hypertalk. It SHOULD, however, be possible to do this by writing and
external command or function (see discussion of XCMD and XCFN
resources). The external code would have to change the menu bar, handle
processing of commands, and return a result to the Hypertalk script.

I'm not sure what kind of ramifications would be involved with disabling
the normal Hypercard menus, so be careful. It would also seem that
making a stack menu driven would be a pain in the neck, if there isn't a
way to pass events on to Hypercard for processing. Example: If you're
not in the menu processing code, then the menu does nothing. If you are,
then card buttons get ignored by your menu routine. I don't have any
docs for XCMD's and XCFN's yet, so I'm not sure if this is a problem or
not.

Scott Storkel Rice University Macintosh Software Development Team
([e-mail])

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

From: [e-mail] (J. Collymore)
Subject: SuperSpool 4.0 for the Imagewriter
Date: 8 Sep 87 18:51:23 GMT
Organization: AT&T CSEd/CET, Piscataway, N.J.

If you get the new 4.0 upgrade for the SuperSpool print spooler utility
from SuperMac be careful when you try to move the printer queue to the
Desk Accessories.

The problem is this:

Although when you click open the disk you will see a file there called:
Printer Queue 4.0), when you actually try moving it with the Font/DA
mover you will see (upon opening it) the file name "SuperSpool"!  The
programmers thought it would be a "good" idea to call the Printer Queue
4.0 file by the same name as the master program when you are using the
Font/DA mover.  Do not panic!  Just move the file over anyway, you
"shouldn't" damage anything (although you might be confused)!  I called
SuperMac (the makers of SuperSpool), and chided them for this gross
breach of good human factors rules (i.e. don't use redundant naming
schemes in your programs).  They told me that nothing could be done
about changing the naming problem in the software since hundreds of
copies have already been made.  I then asked why they didn't put in a
warning or notice about this in the release notes attached with the
upgrade?  They said, that they would try to see if they could get all of
those reprinted with a caveat to users on this naming confusion.


Anyway, be aware of this situation.  I hope I've saved you some grief.

                        Jim Collymore


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

From: [e-mail] (Don Chitwood)
Subject: Ticking Mac
Date: 9 Sep 87 00:01:59 GMT
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.


My personal Mac at home has developed a rhythmic ticking, roughly a 1
second cycle.  I opened the case yesterday and used a plastic
stethoscope to home in on the sound.  It was coming from the transformer
on the power supply board (the one mounted fairly low, and probably the
main supply transformer.) Up close, I could discern the ticking to be
more complex than I thought. It was like a 1 sec and a 1.2 second cycle
superimposed on each other.  They would  phase in and out of synch in a
repeatable manner.  I also discovered the sound  was carried by the
speaker (earphones made that real clear), but was primarily coming from
the tranny.

All solder joints on the board looked great, no signs of overheating
anywhere.

Anyone know if this is a problem of concern, i.e. is a power-board
imolation imminent?  If so, can I get a replacement transformer from
apple?  If not, where is a replacement available?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Don Chitwood Tektronix, Inc.


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

From: [e-mail] (Earle R. Horton)
Subject: generic printer driver testers wanted
Date: 8 Sep 87 15:50:03 GMT
Organization: disorganized

I have finally managed to create a working "Printer Resource File" so
that I can print directly from WriteNow to either my Tandy DMP-110 or my
Silver-Reed Penman Deluxe typewriter-printer.  It should work with any
printer which satisfies certain minimal requirements which I will give
below.  It should also work with any properly written Macintosh
application which prints text.  I am looking for adventurous types who
want to test it for me.  First, the requirements your printer must
satisfy.  Second, the conditions for distribution.

This is a fully formed "Printer Resource File" according to the
specifications in the PhoneBook version of IM and Technical Note 95.  It
interacts with applications via the standard "Page Setup" and "Print..."
dialogs.  In addition, when installing the driver using "Chooser" a
dialog box is available to set baud rate and control strings for the
printer.  When you use the Chooser, you can tell the driver what the
printer uses for linefeed, formfeed, initialization, beginning of page,
and end of file.  You can also tell it to use either CTS or Xon/Xoff
flow control.  It should work with your printer if all of the following
are true:

    a)  An ASCII character sequence is used to advance the paper by
        one line.
    b)  A page can be ejected, either by ASCII sequence or by you
        cranking out the page by hand.
    c)  The printer is capable of either CTS or Xon-Xoff flow control
        or a low baud rate.
    d)  The printer can be configured to print ASCII characters as
        sent (i.e. Printer receives 'A', prints 'A' on the paper.)

The printing code assumes a non-proportional font, and six lines per
inch. In the "Page Setup" dialog you specify 10, 12, or 15 characters
per inch, and the driver communicates this to the Font Manager, so that
word processors know roughly how many characters they can print on a
line.  Best results are obtained when the entire document is formatted
in one mono-spaced font, no stylistic variations, although the output is
certainly readable otherwise.  I can obtain letter quality results from
WriteNow using my Silver-Reed, but have not tested it extensively with
other word processors.  Margins can be changed from within the word
processor, within limits.  The printing code uses a standard 'PREC'
resource to determine page size, so if you are really adventurous you
can tinker with this using a resource editor.

The printer driver works with my 1 Meg "512ke" running System 4.1.  I
have not tested it on any other machines.  It requires about 30k of
memory for the printing code's use, since it buffers up a page in RAM
before sending it to the printer.  It hasn't given me "la bombe" in at
least two days.

The conditions for distribution are simple.  You send me email
requesting a copy.  I send you a binhex of the printer driver.  After a
month, you send me by email a report of your experiences, including a
summary of  what programs you used it with, what kind of printer you
have, and what (if any) bugs you would care to report.  Those who send
interesting or valuable reports will receive the debugged, enhanced, or
whatever "final" version.  Since I would like to have all the reports in
by Christmas, this offer expires November 15.
--
*********************************************************************
*Earle R. Horton, H.B. 8000, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755   *
*********************************************************************


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

From: [e-mail] (Evan Gross [Sys Des])
Subject: Re: FEdit corrections for the BatteryPak Calendar DA
Date: 9 Sep 87 03:48:41 GMT
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario


Thanks for posting the patch to the net. For those with a sector editor
other than FEdit, the patch summarizes to the following:

Search for: 2D40 FFD6 and change it to: 2D48 FFD6

and then search for: 2D40 FFDA and change it to: 2D48 FFDA.

Use FEdit or some other sector editor to accomplish this. Use Font/DA
Mover to create a new file and move JUST the Calendar desk accessory
into it. Perform the changes on that file, then re-install.

And yes, it is true, there will finally be a major update to the
BatteryPak package. It will be renamed and re-packaged, and will ship
October 23rd. The new name of the package is "DiskTools Plus", and is
named as such to highlight the totally new version of the DiskTools DA
(called DiskTools II)}i. This new version does all that DiskTop does and
much more, and is far faster and easier to use. All the other DAs have
been re-vamped as well.

Hope this info helps,

Evan Gross (Author of BatteryPak & DiskTools Plus)


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

From: [e-mail] (Patrick van Kleef)
Subject: Disable SE internal harddisk
Date: 9 Sep 87 10:02:09 GMT
Organization: V.U. Informatica, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

I tried just about anything, but I can't seem to find the
key-combination to make the internal harddisk 'invisible' at startup.

Believe it was something like command-shift-control-delete..

Anyone?


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

From: [e-mail] (Carl Mccrosky)
Subject: VLSI tools on Mac-2's?
Date: 4 Sep 87 14:49:14 GMT
Organization: University of Saskatchewan


Has anyone ported any of the widespread VLSI layout tools to Mac-2's?

                        carl mccrosky
                        [e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (Marc Hannah)
Subject: MPW C 2.0 interfaces into ColorQuickDraw
Date: 9 Sep 87 06:57:43 GMT
Organization: Stanford University


   I have run into problems trying to use the two new Color QuickDraw
(WM)
   calls GetNewCWindow and CopyPix. I recall recently reading that these
   calls have been eliminated or renamed. This is believable since the
   linker cannot resolve references to these calls. I seem to recall
that
   the CopyPix call has been eliminated and is replaced by a plain old
   CopyBits call with pixmaps instead of bitmaps. Is this true?
      I am at a loss to figure out where the GetNewCWindow call went to.
   Any help there?

   Thanks all, David Gelphman
[e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (Gustav)
Subject: Scientific graphics desperately wanted
Date: 4 Sep 87 14:08:33 GMT
Organization: El. & El. Eng., Uni. of Western Australia

I am searching desperately for decent scientific graphics for Mac (SE).
The graphics to be called decent should have at least:

   error bars, curve smoothing, 3-D plots, contour plots, log-log,
   log-linear, Smith's Charts, curve fitting, hidden line removal

They should also know how to read data from other files (text), how to
operate plotters and how to write tektronix and/or postscript format
graphics.

I've been searching both for an application type program, as well, as
for a library (C or Pascal) to be used under MPW. Things like Cricket
graphics don't really do the job. Please, let me know, if you know!

    Yours in anticipation:

   ARPA :    [e-mail]
   UUCP :    ...!{seismo,mcvax,ucb-vision,uks}!munnari!swanee.oz!gustav
   snail:    Gustav Meglicki, Microelectronics Research Group,
         Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
         The University of Western Australia,
         Crawley, W.A. 6009, AUSTRALIA


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

From: [e-mail] (J.T. Teh)
Subject: Re: Rotation Algorithm wanted
Date: 9 Sep 87 08:59:16 GMT
Organization: Comp Sci, Melbourne Uni, Australia

Thanks for all those who replied to my post requesting a rotation
algorithm that would solve the problem of the rotated sihloutte having
"holes".

The main algorithm that would solve the above problem is to do the map
backwards and test if the unrotated pixel was set. However, no faster
algorithm was suggested. My current algorithm still scans the whole
array (a 200 by 200 in about 1 minute 30 seconds with optimisation by
removing multiplications and divisions from the loops).

I would still like to know if there is a fast algorithm for doing a
rotation as in SuperPaint which can do it in less than 2 seconds.

Below are the replies I received.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: [e-mail] (Sho Kuwamoto)

Re: rotations

This is a typical problem with any graphics operation involving
stretching, rotations, or any type of distortion.  The solution is to do
the map backwards. Take every point in your target, and map it back to
its corresponding point in the source.

What kind of work are you doing?  I helped a friend of mine on this
exact topic.  He was working on some sort of vision related program
which dealt with some things called textons.  I don't know what they
are, but I though you might.

                        -Sho
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: uunet!rutgers!moss!codas!auscso!mentat (Robert Dorsett)


I've faced similar problems, but with 3d generation algorithms.  I don't
know of any better algorithms, but you might want to try one of the
following two  techniques:

1.  Don't use the SANE transcendental package more than once.  That is,
create a lookup table and put the SANE cos and sin values in it.  If you
need single- degree precision, just use something like
    double cos[360],sin[360] If you need mixed-point precision, you can
iterate an in-between value with great accuracy.  SANE is SLOW.

2.  Depending on your aplication, you MIGHT find the type "FIXED" or
"LONGINT" to be somewhat useful in calculations.  Particularly with
Longint, if you can somehow skip between-point numbers, you can totally
avoid the floating-point bog by simply setting your lookup table to,
say, four digits of accuracy.  A 0.7071 number, for example, would exist
in the lookup table as 7071.  If you need X cos[X] (where X===7071, it'd
just be one multiply (X7071) and one div- ide (X7071/10000).  You do
lose a bit of precision if you lose track of your original matrix and
continue to rotate an already-rotated matrix, though.

For references, I recommend Foley and Van Dam's "Fundamentals of
Interactive  Computer Graphics" and, for a modern update, Artwick's
"Microcomputer Diplays, Graphics, and Animation."  Artwick's book is a
bit more elementary than the Foley/Van Dam book, but has better sections
on numerical techniques and a  really good section on hardware
technology.  It's more applications-oriented.

Robert

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: sun!rainier!dchen (David Chenevert)

    What you're doing is taking each pixel in a source rectangle and
dropping it into a destination 'diamond' (rotated rectangle), right?
And some of the pixels in the destination diamond don't get anything
dropped on them, right?  How about the following:  Take each pixel in
the destination diamond, back-compute which pixel should be copied into
it, and do that copy. This will assure that each destination pixel gets
written on.
    No faster than before, but better results, I think.

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

If you  have an answer on this one, please let me also know. Im trying
to get a quick algorithm for converting a flat-image to a bol-image.

The problems involved seem the same.

One of the hints is: make a table for sine, cosine from 0 - 90 degrees
in  float numbers, steps of 1/4 degree. This will take you 4 bytes * 90
degrees * 4 entrys per degree * 2 tables ==>> not too much space if you
take a global predefined array.

Piter Jonker Hilversum, Holland.

ihnp4!hvlpa!pjonker.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: Ken "Turk" Turkowski <turk@apple>

Try defining a polygon, rotating the polygon vertices, and filling the
resultant polygon.

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

The suggestion by Ken 'Turk' Turkowski seems the faster algorithm for my
particular problem but is there a faster _general_ rotation algorithm?

Thanks to all who replied in response to my query.

J.T. Teh ===========================
UUCP:    {seismo,mcvax,ukc,ubc-vision}!mulga!jteh
ARPA:    [e-mail] CSNET:    jteh%mulga.oz@australia


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

From: [e-mail] (Steven D. Leeke)
Subject: Re: VLSI tools on Mac-2's?
Date: 9 Sep 87 15:19:32 GMT
Organization: Stanford University

A recent MS graduate from Stanford who is a major player in Apple's A/UX
development team and another student still here ported UCB's Magic over
to AU/X under X just before AppleWorld earlier this year.  Total port
time was ~11 hours - straight.  They cut the tape/floppies(?) two hours
before taking off from SFO.  I have no idea if Apple will support either
X or release a Magic port.

Steve Leeke

--
Steven D. Leeke, Center for Integrated Systems, Stanford University
    {ucbvax,decvax}!decwrl!glacier!leeke, [e-mail]

"I suppose they don't use money in the 23rd century?"

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

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