PD ROM 1/PD ROM Volume I - Macintosh Software from BMUG (1988).iso/Electronic Messages/USEnet Digests/USEnet Vol. 4/USEnet 4.40

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From: Jeffrey Shulman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Usenet Mac Digest V4 #40
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Usenet Mac Digest     Friday, March 18, 1988         Volume 4 : Issue 40

Today's Topics:
     Sound Driver & MultiFinder Fix
     Question on Palettes...
     Data Mark Checksum Error
     RAM disks II, Wrath of BufPtr
     Re: Hard disks
     TI microExplorer (Mac II coprocessor) ...
     Pagemaker doc size
     Re: Graphics from MPW
     Mac IIs, A/UX, and Networking
     Re: Want mailing list software
     Printing Scaled Bitmaps
     Adjusting color monitors
     MPW fatal problem
     Coral Allegro Common Lisp objects
     Prototyper
     Re: antialiased lineProc
     Delphi Mac Digest V4 #5

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

From: [e-mail] (Richard Siegel)
Subject: Sound Driver & MultiFinder Fix
Date: 16 Mar 88 13:54:57 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University


        The reason that the Sound Driver glue malfunctions under
MultiFinder is because it allocates a handle (for its own globals, I
s'pose), and stores this handle in low memory. The catch comes in
because when initializing itself, it looks at this handle and tests
whether the value is <= ROMBase. If it is, then it assumes that the
handle there is valid and goes ahead. Normally, this handle is set to a
greater value than ROMBase by an IAZNotify routine. This works fine
under the single-program Finder, but under MultiFinder, the IAZNotify
hook never gets called on application exit! (Didn't Apple say something
about the *Notify routines going away soon....?) So what happens is when
you run an application, the handle appears to be valid, and the Sound
Driver uses it, and havoc results.

        Anyway, it's easy enough to do yourself; in LightspeedC, just
put this at the end of your program:

        asm {move.w ROMBase, $E4}

        (I'm not entirely sure of the capitalization of ROMBase; you'll
want to check it out.) $E4 is where the sound driver glue stores its
handle. The code for Pascal is hardly more difficult, and is left as an
exercise for the reader.

        (Thanks to Jon Hueras for the info here)

                --Rich

Rich Siegel


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

From: [e-mail] (Ward Freeman Eldred)
Subject: Question on Palettes...
Date: 16 Mar 88 21:22:39 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

Hi,

    I was writing a simple graphics program when I wanted to implement a
fade in and out of my objects.  I set up a palette and it functions
properly. I would like to use the animate_entry command to make the
object fade, but this command is not working.  According to Inside Mac
V, you need to set the animated bit.  I have tried doing this using the
SetEntryUsage, but have come to no avail (when I called SetEntryUsage, I
called with usage = the system constant animated and tolerance=0.

Any ideas on what to change?  (oh yeah, I am using PMForeColor to draw
my objs)

Thanx,

we08.


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

From: [e-mail] (cam clarke)
Subject: Data Mark Checksum Error
Date: 17 Mar 88 00:01:31 GMT
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center

I work in a computer center, helping users and answering questions.
Part of this work includes rescuing damaged Mac disks.  Recently I've
noticed a rash of MS-Word 3.01 documents which have become damaged.
Looking at the files with FEdit+ reveals that one sector somewhere in
each file is unreadable because "Data Mark Checksum Incorrect."  What
exactly is this problem?  The huge quantity I've seen recently makes me
suspect Word is somehow causing this, but let me stress that I have no
proof; perhaps our Macintosh disk drives are slowly dying.  In any case,
is there a way to read this sector?   In the case of wordprocessing
files, any data recovered is a help, even if some of it is incorrect.
Has anyone else noticed these kind of errors, and if so, from what
programs?  For now, I'm creating a new file, consisting of all readable
sectors from the old file, and then turning that into a file of type
TEXT.  Is there a better solution?

                    -Cam Clarke

--
[e-mail]    [e-mail]
[e-mail]        [e-mail]
..{seismo, harpo, ihnp4, linus, allegra, ut-sally}!harvard!husc4!clarke


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

From: [e-mail] (IRIS)
Subject: RAM disks II, Wrath of BufPtr
Date: 16 Mar 88 21:20:59 GMT
Organization: Stanford Data Center


Thanks to everyone who responded to my original posting about the
changing size of RAM disks created with RamStart.

It seems that RamStart doesn't install the same *size* RAM disk each
time; rather, it installs it in the same area of memory.  So if the size
of the Macintosh RAM cache changes (with a corresponding move of BufPtr)
then the size of the RamStart RAM disk will grow or shrink.

If anyone is interested, I have found two solutions to this problem:

1) Use the program RamSnap by Dove.  This program is shipped with all
their products, and is supposedly available separately.  RamSnap seems
to keep the size of the RAM disk constant regardless of the size of the
cache.

2) Disable the Macintosh RAM cache.  In the system folder, the RAM
caching code is in the CACH 1 resource in the System File.  At the time
an application is launched, INIT 35 moves BufPtr down as necessary for
the size of the RAM cache as specified in the conrol panel.  It then
brings in the balance of the caching code from the CACH 1 resource.  All
this is documented in Tech Note 81.  If you remove these two resources,
BufPtr doesn't move down and caching doesn't happen.  Disassembling INIT
35 indicates that it's removal shouldn't cause any problems (if anyone
knows of any reason why INIT 35 *shouldn't* be removed (besides from the
fact that "the user should always be in control of the RAM cache")
please let me know).  So far preliminary testing with this setup
indicates no problems whatsoever and RamStart RAM disks of consistant
size.

Again, many thanks to all of you who pointed me in the right direction.
--
David Finkelstein
Stanford University
[e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (Juri Munkki)
Subject: Re: Hard disks
Date: 16 Mar 88 11:52:00 GMT
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

There's no catch (I think). The CMS 60 MB drive is actually a Seagate
ST277N. The local Seagate representative told me that Seagate in
currently making this model in much larger quantities than the smaller
models. Mass production has brought the prices down and the 277 is now
almost as cheap as the ST225N (20MB drive). The ST277N is not really
slow, but it's not fast either (40 ms). The CMS formatting software
looks very good.
--
Juri Munkki
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

Disclaimer: Please place a standard disclaimer here.


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

From: [e-mail] (bill luciw)
Subject: TI microExplorer (Mac II coprocessor) ...
Date: 17 Mar 88 14:30:45 GMT
Organization: Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, NY

Well, our KBS Lab is ordering a microExplorer, the coprocessor for the
Mac II. It will be equipped with 12MB of memory (using a
daughter-board), and we will be using the Development System from TI as
well as trying to run TCP/IP.  I wonder if anyone (beta-sites, maybe)
has had some relevant experiences with the product or can comment on
some of our concerns:

1) What impact (if any) does the alledged lack of "true" DMA have on the
paging performance of the microExplorer?

2) Is TI's implementation of RPC available to other applications (such
as those developed under MPW)?

3) How well integrated is the microExplorer into the rest of the Mac
environment - (cut, copy, paste, print on an AppleTalk printer) ?

4) Can you install the "load bands" on third party disks (SuperMac 150)
or do they need to remain on the Apple hard disk (the load bands are
supposed to be normal, finder accessible files)?

5) How much of a hassle is it to port applications over to the little
beastie from a normal Explorer (what about ART, KEE, SIMKIT, etc.)?

6) Do any benchmarks (ala Gabriel) exist for this machine?

7) How about ToolBox access from the Lisp Environment? (or am I
dreaming?)

That'll do for starters ...

Our group is responsible for testing this type of technology and
developing a  "delivery vehicle strategy."  Ideally, said delivery
vehicle should be under $10K, but it looks like we'll be around $20K
before we're through. This puts the microExplorer in the same price
range as a "reasonably" equiped Sun 3/60FC.

Thankyou in advance for all your comments and I will post our
experiences (good or bad, of course) as they develop ...


Happy St. Patty's Day ...
--
Bill Luciw / Technology Leader        ATTnet:  [phone]
Knowledge-Based Systems Group           UUCP: ...rutgers!rochester!kodak!luciw
Eastman Kodak Company                   ARPA: [e-mail]
 "Don't take life seriously, you'll never get out of it alive!"  -- Bugs Bunny


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

From: [e-mail] (William Equitz)
Subject: Pagemaker doc size
Date: 17 Mar 88 16:47:50 GMT
Organization: Stanford University

I posted a note regarding the fact that Pagemaker documents won't get
any smaller when you delete pages.  Linda Iroff of Cornell University
([e-mail]) responded that deleting pages then "saving
as ..." will do the trick.  Thanks!  (I haven't tried it yet, though).

-Will Equitz ([e-mail])


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

From: [e-mail] (Tom Taylor)
Subject: Re: Graphics from MPW
Date: 18 Mar 88 00:01:05 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Sho
Kuwamoto) writes:
>Can you open up a window from an MPW tool and do graphics in it?  I am
>an MPW neophyte, but have had some experience in mac programming
>before.  What I'd like to do is to have the user input text in the
>worksheet window and have graphics pop out in the other window.  I
>don't want to create an actual application because that would defeat
>the whole purpose of using MPW....
>
>                        -Sho

Yep, you can open up windows from tools (Command & GetListItem do, for
example).  In order to open windows, you must call InitGraf.  Don't call
any of the other init routines because the shell already has.  The
reason you have to call InitGraf is that the shell sets up a separate A5
world for tools. Be sure to close/dispose of your window(s) before you
quit your tool.

Tom Taylor / Development Systems Group


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

From: [e-mail] (Peter Steele)
Subject: Mac IIs, A/UX, and Networking
Date: 17 Mar 88 12:46:29 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Acadia Univ., Nova Scotia

My boss said he'd read something about A/UX being able to be used as a
"super gateway" and told me to find more info on it. I presume he means
that A/UX can be used as a gateway for several different types of
networks, but he didn't really expand on this. In any case, does anyone
know what capabilities the Mac II with A/UX has as a network
server/gateway? Any information would be appreciated.


--
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 [phone]x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia  Internet: [e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (Peter Steele)
Subject: Re: Want mailing list software
Date: 17 Mar 88 12:37:35 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Acadia Univ., Nova Scotia

I haven't followed all the responses to this, but in case someone hasn't
mentioned it, you might look at Silicon Press by Silicon Beach Software.
It is designed specifically for making mailing labels and name badges.
It isn't expensive ($41 at MacConnection) and it can import data from
other packages. It also accepts standard mail merge data files.

For the price, its worth looking at. Actually, Silicon Beach sent us an
evaluation copy for free, no obligations. We will buy it if we actually
decide to use it.

The only problem with this package is that they haven't upgraded it much
since its initial release. And its dying for improvements. What it has
works well. It just could use some more features, like a graphics
palette. It is reviewed in the Fall '86 BMUG Newsletter.

Hope this helps.


--
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 [phone]x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia  Internet: [e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (Peter Steele)
Subject: Printing Scaled Bitmaps
Date: 17 Mar 88 17:23:42 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Acadia Univ., Nova Scotia

I frequently prepare documentation for using Macintosh applications and
make heavy use of screen dumps (or portions of them). I find a full
screen dump too large at its normal size and use SuperPaint to scale it
down. I do the scaling in the "draw" plane so resolution is maintained
when it it printed. My complaint is that certain types of patterns in
bitmaps (e.g., the gray desktop) reproduce as a sort of plaid. Its great
if you want that effect, but I don't. It does this if I print directly
from SuperPaint or after I've pasted it in Word. Curiously, when I tried
FullWrite, it prints out a near perfect scaled reproduction (the plaid
effect is almost nonexistent). I'd use FullWrite but it is far too buggy
and slow as it is now. Does anyone know of a way to improve the results
of printed scaled bitmaps on a LaserWriter. I'm using various reductions
(85, 75, 60, and others). The best results are 96 and 48, but those are
not always satisfactory (either too little or too much reduction). Any
advice would be greatly appreciated.


--
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 [phone]x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia  Internet: [e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (David Phillip Oster)
Subject: Adjusting color monitors
Date: 18 Mar 88 06:10:06 GMT
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley

After a few months and a few moves, a Mac II's color monitor no longer
has the clean, sharp image it had in the beginning.  Where can I learn
to realign a color monitor? Can anyone recommend a good book?
--
--- David Phillip Oster            -- author of Menu Clock
Arpa: [e-mail] --
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu


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

From: [e-mail] (Nicholas Spies)
Subject: MPW fatal problem
Date: 17 Mar 88 03:01:02 GMT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI

This may be old news (but, then again, maybe not). MPW has a fatal crash
when using commando catenate. Add a bunch of files to cat in the
commando dialog and then select a new file to save to... then watch it
crash and burn.
--
Nicholas Spies            [e-mail]
Center for Design of Educational Computing
Carnegie Mellon University


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

From: [e-mail] (ken ewing)
Subject: Coral Allegro Common Lisp objects
Date: 17 Mar 88 16:47:22 GMT
Organization: Yale University, New Haven, CT


Concerning Coral Software's Allegro Common Lisp support for object
oriented programming:  It presently doesn't support CLOS, but does have
its own oops called Object Lisp, used primarily for doing the user
interface stuff -- for which it is EXTREMELY useful.  OL supports
multiple inheritance, but of bindings, not merely values (ie instances
have access to ancestor's bindings, thus if the instance changes its
value, the value for the ancestor changes as well.  Compare this to
inheriting merely values: if an instance changes its value, then the
ancestor's value remains the same -- the instance shadows the ancestor's
value with its own.).  I don't know whether other oops' work inheritance
on bindings, but I do know that this has turned out to be extremely
useful to me in my work.  Another useful feature is that OL really has
only classes and subclasses, so that any useful "instance" can at some
later time spawn a subclass without incurring any conceptual-gymnastics
penalties.  Finally, OL classes are recognized by the common lisp
function typep (but not by typecase), needless to say, another very
useful feature.

Concerning CLOS:  Version 1.0's manual seemed to indicate that Coral
would scrap its OL as soon as CLOS settled down.  This is supported by
the fact (explicitly mentioned in version 1.1's manual) that OL hadn't
been suberbly optimized for speed (this isn't a euphemism for SLOW, OL
is fast enough to do complex Mac interface stuff), suggesting that Coral
thought of it as merely a temporary measure.  Now it appears that
Allegro CL's users have prevailed upon Coral to keep OL around, because
the manual for version 1.1 claims that Coral will implement OL on top of
CLOS when CLOS arrives.  A good move in my opinion.

ken ewing   [e-mail]   [e-mail]   yale!ewing

PS: I work for Yale, and I haven't let them take responsability for
    anything I say.  I'm only connected to Coral as a satisfied
customer.


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

From: [e-mail] (Clayton Elwell)
Subject: Prototyper
Date: 17 Mar 88 21:43:29 GMT
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer and Information Science

Well, folks, on Monday I ordered Prototyper, and yesterday it arrived.
After a couple days of playing with it, I'm very impressed.  It seems to
be well worth the money.  It's not perfect, but it's much better than
any alternative I've found.

It actually makes user interface hacking pleasant :-).

Although it generates code that's a little large, it really does what
they say it does, and it's a lot easier to take working code and slim it
down than to start from scratch.  The dialog handling features are quite
nice in this respect.  I think I'm going to like icon buttons...

Anyway, I would recommend this product to anyone who has better things
to do than page through Inside Mac while they are trying to get a
program working.

--
                  Clayton M. Elwell <[e-mail]>

    The Ohio State University, Department of Computer & Information Science
              2036 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus OH 43210 / [phone]


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

From: [e-mail] (David Phillip Oster)
Subject: Re: antialiased lineProc
Date: 18 Mar 88 05:17:56 GMT
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Sho
Kuwamoto) writes:
>Has anyone written a lineProc that does a smidgen of anti-aliasing?

Ya, I've done it. Here is the algorithm:

1.) draw the graph into an offscreen, black and white bitmap at double
or triple resolution. 2.) Use a tuned assembly language routine to prowl
the offscreen bitmap, converting square groups of bits into single, gray
pixels, by counting the number of "on" bits in a square. Accumulate
these in an offscreen pixmap. 3.) call CopyBits to display the offscreen
pixmap. You will want to register the colors your offscreen pixmap uses
in the pallette of the window you are displaying in, so no color table
arbitratration will be necessary between the offscreen pixmap and the
window's pixmap.

Anybody willing to post a tutorial on doing a better algorithm? How
about stereo on the Mac II?
--
--- David Phillip Oster            --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II.
Arpa: [e-mail] --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60.
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu

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

From: sun!hoptoad!astral![e-mail]
Subject: Delphi Mac Digest V4 #5
Date: Tue Mar 15 16:13:00 1988

> From: MACLAIRD
> Subject: My poor Lisa's Internal Hard Disk
> Date: 21-FEB 17:43 Hardware & Peripherals

> I recently installed the [Sun Remarketing] double-sided floppy drive
> in my Lisa 2/10.
> The DS drive works all right, although it will not format disks in the
> Lisa Pascal Workshop, and presumably the Lisa Office System.

I would suppose then that it also won't format diskettes under Uinisoft
Uniplus+
        or SCO Xenix

Does this mean that the new DS drive is not SS compatible for anything
but MacWorks XL environment?

Is it just formatting which fails?  Does it read/write OK?

I somehow forsee a switch and both drives installed internal to XL.

> Formatting a disk which is already formatted can take a while,
> but not long enough to make me hack into the driver.

I'm not clear what you mean here.  Formatting a new disk doesn't work,
but formatting a disk already formatted for the MacWorks environment
does work?  Huh?

> The HFS hack recalls "Hard Disk 20" on my Mac 512K.

It IS a hacked HardDisk20, as far as I know.

> I then discovered that the INIT file would not work from floppy at boot.
>  I can post the fix if anyone wants, but I wanted to warn Macintosh XL
> owners.

PLEASE POST SOMEWHERE (LIKE HERE) OR EMAIL ME A COPY!

> It could be that Sun stands to profit from selling their 20-megabyte
> drive. Me, I will put the drive into my Lisa 2/5, which has no internal
> hard disk.

To avoid the overheating of the Widget?

I'm very interested in working with any/all Lisa / Mac XL users who are
interested in the continued viability of the Lisa.  I'm running a Lisa 2
with SCO Xenix most of the time, MacWorks XL some of the time, and my
sweetie is running her Mac XL in MacWorks XL mode most of the time.
We're networked together, and also use a serial connection between them
to afford upload / download between Xenix and Mac environments... and
I'm hoping to port Columbia's CAP to provide AppleTalk service on the
Xenix machine. I've been considering the Sun Remarketing 800K DS Floppy
/ 20Meg Winchester upgrade for both machines, BUT, if the XL Widget dies
from overheating, and the Lisa/Xenix won't be able to format floppies,
then it sounds like Sun is only supporting MacWorks environment.  I'll
do whatever hacking I have to do (preferably in cooperation with others)
to get DS 800K floppies in all Lisa environments, without overheating
problems.  Anyone else up for the challenge?
--
Sunny Kirsten, Astral Consultants   AppleLink: X0013    [phone] (voice)
233 Humboldt St., San Rafael, CA 94901  GEnie: astral   [phone] (modem)
USENET: {amdahl,frog,ihnp4,lll-crg,nsc,ptsfa,pyramid,sun,ucsfcgl,well}
        !hoptoad!astral!sunny


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

End of Usenet Mac Digest
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