PD ROM 1/PD ROM Volume I - Macintosh Software from BMUG (1988).iso/Electronic Messages/USEnet Digests/USEnet Vol. 4/USEnet 4.72

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Usenet Mac Digest     Saturday, June 4, 1988         Volume 4 : Issue 72

Today's Topics:
: Saving style info in text file
     A/UX remote commands problems
     "C" compiler for Z80
     Quest+Leech+SoundMaster
     Perhaps something really *is* amis a Jasmine.
     Re: FullWrite Professional -- changes between demo and release
     FullWrite/MakeWrite
     postscript previewing on a Mac (I or II)
     MPW C external for 4D???
     DA question
     Anybody using MacWorkStation?
     Database toolkits
     Postscript file convertion
     Comments wanted on Expressionist equation editor. (2 messages)
     PCPC WSI
     FullWrite Pro bug.
     Re: The Overbar in the Symbol font
     Re: FullWrite bizzarity explained (?)
     FullWrite -- I'm sorry, but...
     A Multiuser Helix II Problem
     Re: FullWrite -- I'm sorry, but...
     Reducing disk swaps on 2 floppy Macs

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

From: [e-mail] (David Phillip Oster)
Subject: Re: Saving style info in text file
Date: 31 May 88 03:03:52 GMT
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brian Gaines)
writes:
>Have any standards been proposed for files carrying the new text style
>information? It would be useful to have an interchange format. I have
>tucked the StScrpHandle information into the resource fork of the
>associated text file as a resource 'styl' id 128. The file can be read
>as plain text by other applns but mine can pick up the style info and
>restore it.  However, if we all start inventing resource ids there will
>be chaos.  In the longer run it would be nice if MacWrite, Word, etc
>would read up these files.

This is a real good start.  I published an article in comp.sys.mac a
while back called "How To Write a TEXT Editor. Part 1"  Part 2 was going
to be on this very issue.  Here are some more points to think about:

Sticky Point 1: the diffreent system file problem. 1.) The 'styl'
resource has integers for the font-ids.  This is a no-no for anything
you are going to give to anybody else.  You need an additional resource
that is a table that maps font-id integers to string font names.  Apple
does this in 'ictb' resources (see Dialog Manager, Vol 5 of Inside
Macintosh.)  How about using the Font table part of of an 'ictb' as our
file format and storing it in a resource of type 'Font' id=128.  (Note
the mixed case of 'Font'.)

If the required fonts can't be found, the program should probably
present a dialog asking how the fonts should be mapped.

Sticky Point 2: the old editor problem 2.) Since a user could create a
file with a new editor, then change it with an old editor, then open it
after the change with a new editor, we have to store some kind of
checksum, such as the total length of the text in the first 4 bytes of
the resource (for later extension of Text Edit by apple.) in the next 2
bytes should be a checksum composed by XORing each pair of bytes in the
text:

    xorVal = 0;
    for(i = 0; i < Length(Text)/2;i++){
      xorVal ^= ((short *) Text)[i];
    }

That way, if the length and checksum don't match the program should ask
the user whether it should try to use the 'styl' info or not.  If this
is too garbaged up to use, the user can always close the file and try
again. Some menu commands to discard 'styl' info, or to fix it up might
be nice.

Sticky Point 3: the multifinder compatibility problem: 3.) As long as we
are adding resources, remember that the multi-finder compatibility
guidlines say that when you open a file, it should come up in the same
spot as the screen as last time. (If that spot exists in this systems
screen configuration.)  I think we should use a 'WIND' 128 resource as a
resonable place to put the rectangle of the screen a window should be
placed.

Sticky Point 4: Other resource that should be in the file: the
international resource: INTL 0, INTL 1, and the 'intl' resource that
this document requires.

The printer job dialog record,  I think 'Prec' 128 is pretty much a
standard for this.

The old editor 'EFNT' and 'ETAB' resources, so that old, single font
editors will see soemthing reasonable.

Sticky Point #4: If you give users something they'll want to edit it 4.)
Remember, if you let the users set fonts,sizes,styles, and colors
they'll want to be able to do searches, and search and replaces that are
smart about fonts. I've come up with a neat user interface for this, and
FullWrite has one also.

Note 1: 1.) Note you can use multi-font text edit to implement tabs, by
using a special "tab" font, consisting of characters of many different
widths. (These have the nice property that they mouse like a tab should,
but you have to replace every tab further out on the line as you type in
the middle of the line.)

Let's get some programns out there! We'll make a standard!
--
Copyright (c) 1988 by David Phillip Oster, All Rights Reserved
If you wish to republish this info, please get in touch with me.
--- David Phillip Oster            --When you asked me to live in sin with you
Arpa: [e-mail] --I didn't know you meant sloth.
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu


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

From: [e-mail] (Peter Meyers)
Subject: A/UX remote commands problems
Date: 27 May 88 13:55:58 GMT
Organization: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels

Help! I have a problem with remote commands under A/UX.

The remsh command to go from the Mac II (A/UX) -> VAX (4.3BSD UNIX)
works only  if you use it to remote login (remsh host). Whenever I want
to do a remote  command on the VAX (i.e. remsh host ls), all I get is
silence, so I have to  stop the command. The netstat command under A/UX
shows first the state ESTABLISHED, and then aftera while (~ 30 sec.) it
says CLOSE_WAIT. Could there be some misunderstanding between the remote
shell daemons?

When I want to login from the VAX on the Mac II, netstat gives state
SYN_SENT, and after a minute the command stops with a 'connection timed
out'.
--
Peter Meyers
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Laarbeeklaan 103
1090 Brussel
Belgium

----------
[e-mail]
...!mcvax!prlb2!vub.vub!peterm


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

From: [e-mail] (Frank Ferrie)
Subject: "C" compiler for Z80
Date: 31 May 88 00:41:26 GMT
Organization: McGill University, Montreal

Dear World,

  I know this is out of the Dark Ages, but does anyone know of a public
domain "C" cross compiler (even a cross assembler) for the Z80 family
that runs on a MAC?  The thought of having to go near a PC is almost as
bad as having to revise 6 year old Z80 assembly code.
--
Thanks,
Frank Ferrie


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

From: [e-mail] (David Phillip Oster)
Subject: Quest+Leech+SoundMaster
Date: 31 May 88 11:01:44 GMT
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley

Here is soemthing fun to do with your mac:
    1.) Buy Crystal Quest.
    2.) Copy the Crystal Quest Sounds file.
    3.) Use ResEdit, or some other tool like DiskTop to change the type of
the
    "Copy of CrystalQuest Sounds" file to 'rsrc' (note the lower case.)
    4.) Use the recently posted Sound Leech utility to copy out all
resources
    of type 'SMSD' (note all upper case.)
    5.) Use the recently posted CDEV SoundMaster to associate the sound
    "Quest.Snd.Thru" with a disk insertion event.  (Note: you'll have to
drag
    the file into the system folder before SOundMaster can see it.)

Result: A Macintosh that moans orgasmically every time you put a floppy
in it.
--
Copyright (c) 1988 by David Phillip Oster, All Rights Reserved
If you wish to republish these directions, please contact me.
--- David Phillip Oster            --When you asked me to live in sin with you
Arpa: [e-mail] --I didn't know you meant sloth.
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu


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

From: [e-mail] (Roy Smith)
Subject: Perhaps something really *is* amis a Jasmine.
Date: 31 May 88 15:34:42 GMT
Organization: Public Health Research Institute, NYC, NY


    A couple of weeks ago, somebody flamed Jasmine for cashing their check
and then claiming that they never got the order in the first place. I
came to Jasmine's rescue saying that we've done a lot of business with
them and never had any problem.  At the time I suggested that it must
have been a fluke; even the best run business offices will occasionally
loose a piece of paperwork.

    Well, I guess it's time for me to retract my defense.  They just did
exactly the same thing to us.  We sent them an order a couple of weeks
ago with a check enclosed.  When we hadn't gotten the drive by last
Friday, we called them up and asked where it was; they said they were
waiting to get the check.  My initial reaction was to fume at *our*
business office for neglecting to include the check with the order like
they were supposed to until it turned out that not only did Jasmine get
the check, but they cashed it too.  Harumph!

    Conclusion.  Jasmine started out as a good company to do business with.
 They offered a good product at a price that couldn't be beat.  Now, it
looks like they've grown too fast.  Not only have they raised their
prices but quality of service seems to have dropped as well.  If Jasmine
expects to stay around, they had best get their act together, and quick.
Hey Jasmine, you guys read the net?  You've certainly lost a good source
of word-of-mouth advertising and you've come damn close to loosing a
loyal customer (PHRI has probably done close to $10k of Jasmine business
in the past year or so) as well.
--
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri![e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (Jeff Meyer)
Subject: Re: FullWrite Professional -- changes between demo and release
Date: 31 May 88 18:45:28 GMT
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA

Basically, I think Chuq hit most of the changes -- certainly the ones I
would have listed right off, and his emphasis is exactly right, it's a
solid product now.  I'm fairly sure that some changes were made page
setup/doc setup/something with margins, but I'm frankly not going to try
to dredge up the demo (from the bowels of some 3M tape I've got laying
around) to check.

By the way, found a rather obscure bug in the released version the other
day.  If you save a document as "Text with Carriage Returns", most lines
have an extra space at the beginning of the line.  Slightly annoying,
though not much of a hassle to me -- a button-click in McSink or Emacs
takes care of this.  Still, for people writing for electronic mediums,
it needs to be fixed (and I'm sure it will be).

                        "Let the meek inherit the earth -- they have it
                         coming to them."
                                            -- James Thurber
--
                                        Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET:     [e-mail]
Manual UUCP:  {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO:        You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
<*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>


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

From: [e-mail] (Old Sneep)
Subject: FullWrite/MakeWrite
Date: 31 May 88 18:47:56 GMT
Organization: The Ancient Harmonies

I am told that someone asked here whether FullWrite can take a plain
text file with embedded formatting commands and produce a document with
the ask-for formatting.  I see Ed Moy has already observed that
MakeWrite will do this to a limited extent, producing a MacWrite
document.  There is a problem with MakeWrite, in that files produced
this way are sometimes not importable into other word processors.  For
instance, imports of MakeWrite files into Ready Set Go fail.

On the other hand, I am also told that if you read the
MakeWrite-produced file into MacWrite and save it *under another name*
and import the second file into RSG, it works.  I don't know whether
this is true from my own experience, but if so, this information may be
of some relevance to the question regarding FullWrite.
--
Paul DuBois     UUCP: {allegra,ihnp4,uunet}!uwvax!rhesus!dubois     |
                ARPA: [e-mail]              --+--
                                                                    |
alt.sex: just say rmgroup.                                          |


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

From: [e-mail] (Isaac Balbin)
Subject: postscript previewing on a Mac (I or II)
Date: 31 May 88 00:55:31 GMT
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia

Does anyone do this? What software do you use? How effective is it. For
interest, I wish to (screen) preview postscript output which  originally
emanated from ditroff.
        Please EMail you replies to me.
                Thanks.
--
Isaac Balbin
Department of Computer Science,      ACSnet: [e-mail]
RMIT,
GPO BOX 2476 V,                   ARPA:[e-mail]
Melbourne, 3001           CSNET: isaac%goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au@australia
AUSTRALIA                         UUCP: ...!uunet!goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au!isaac


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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: MPW C external for 4D???
Date: 26 May 88 13:22:24 GMT
Organization: Biomedical Center, University of Uppsala, Sweden


    Anyone out there that can help me with a short example
    on how to write an external procedure for 4D in MPW C.
    All the examples seems to be written in Pascal in the
    manual. I need to pass a couple of reals and integers
    to the procedure.

    I get very funny errors and I do not know if I use
    variabeltypes that do not correspond to the 4D types or
    if there is a problem with ttransfer of the code segment.

        Mats


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

From: [e-mail] (Jay D. Bolter)
Subject: DA question
Date: 31 May 88 14:20:11 GMT

Can anyone suggest how to create a Desk Accessory with a large  amount
of code (say 70 or 80K)? What are the factors that limit  you to 32K? Is
it possible, for example, to store more code in one's  own resources (in
addition to the DRVR resource) and then call in  that code as needed. If
so, how do you pass control to and from these  code resources? Can
anyone suggest any books or articles that discuss  problems of large
DAs? (I am programming in MPW Pascal.)


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

From: [e-mail] (ephraim vishniac)
Subject: Anybody using MacWorkStation?
Date: 31 May 88 20:05:26 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA


The description in the May 1988 _Outside_Apple_ makes MacWorkStation
sound like an almost ideal vehicle for whipping up a Mac front end to a
mainframe application.  The price is a bit steep, but not a problem if
MWS is really good (i.e., is usable and will save us several months of
work).  So my question is, how good is MWS?  I'd like to hear the good
and the bad from anybody who's worked with it.

I'm especially interested in how well it can handle a situation such as
the following:

We're building an information retrieval system.  The result of a search
is a list of articles, with their headlines visible.  The user should be
able to browse through the articles in any way he pleases. To improve
apparent performance, we should anticipate his likely choices by sending
the first few paragraphs and the best few paragraphs of each article
while the user is pondering his next move. Paragraphs will be cached in
memory.  If the user selects something we've prefetched, we win.  If he
makes an unanticipated move, we should be able to abort our transfer and
act on his request promptly.

Will MWS allow us to carry on this kind of background activity?  Does it
use error-detecting/correcting protocols?  Does it allow transmission of
binary data or are you restricted by the underlying network?  What's the
performance like on bulk data transfer?

Also, short of buying the whole package, is any technical documentation
available that might answer questions such as the above?
--
Ephraim Vishniac                      [e-mail]
Thinking Machines Corporation / 245 First Street / Cambridge, MA 02142-1214

     On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put
     into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"


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

From: [e-mail] (Steven D. Leeke)
Subject: Database toolkits
Date: 31 May 88 20:59:38 GMT
Organization: Stanford University

I would like to be able to use something like the resource manager for a
database since it does so many things well, but the resource mgr itself
is out due to performance limitations on large files and the upper limit
of 2727 resources/file.

I should start by asking if there is a way to augment or "fix" the
resource mgr to get beyond these limitations?  Would multiple (ugh)
resource files be a reasonable option?

In light of this, what database toolkits (source or binaries) are
available to help support an application with 30-40 distinct object
types, 10-20 fields per object type, several thousand object instances,
and the need to look-up & return an object by type and serial number?
Many objects reference or contain other objects.

We have ctree source and while it might do the job it is a generic
toolkit. At this point in the project I would really like to plug in a
library to get the needed functionality.  Also, as the resource mgr
does, it would be preferable to run out of one logical file, but this
isn't a hard and fast rule.

Finally, functionality is more important than price, i.e. we need to get
the project completed...

Many thanks for any help anyone can offer,

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?"


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

From: [e-mail] (Fang Zhong)
Subject: Postscript file convertion
Date: 1 Jun 88 01:45:09 GMT
Organization: Duke University Physics Dept.; Durham, N.C.


        Is there an existing product that will convert a standard
postscript file to a MacDraw readable file, or readable with any other
draw programs. I have a graph in postscript format, I want to paste it
into a MacWrite file. Can someone on the net point out to me the way to
do this?
        Thanks.


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

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Comments wanted on Expressionist equation editor.
Date: 31 May 88 22:52:27 GMT
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department


   We are looking for a good equation editor. We have used MacEqn, and
don't particularly like the user interface. I have the demo disk for
MathType, and the one shortcoming is that is does not permit fonts
larger than 24, even though we have such fonts. This can be a pretty
severe shortcoming for making overhead slides, and expanding the
equations in a drawing program is not the way to guarantee consistent
sizing.
   Expressionist was the third equation editor reviewed in the April
MacWorld, and they mention that its large symbols don't look very good.
Can anyone tell me, though, if it can make use of user-supplied large
fonts? Has anyone out there tried to use it for overheads, and what were
the results?

    Thanks.

   Willard Korfhage

   ARPA : [e-mail]
   UUCP : {ucbvax,ihnp4,randvax,trwrb!trwspp,ism780}!ucla-cs!korfhage


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

From: [e-mail] (Willard Korfhage)
Subject: Re: Comments wanted on Expressionist equation editor.
Date: 31 May 88 23:26:09 GMT
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department

One other question that I forgot to ask about Expressionist was how many
levels of superscript and subscript can it handle? MathType is limited
to just two, but on rare occasion I need three.

  Thanks again.
   Willard Korfhage

   ARPA : [e-mail]
   UUCP : {ucbvax,ihnp4,randvax,trwrb!trwspp,ism780}!ucla-cs!korfhage


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

From: [e-mail] (Clay Jackson)
Subject: PCPC WSI
Date: 31 May 88 21:43:23 GMT
Organization: Microsoft, Inc., Redmond, Washington

Has anyone had any experiences (either good or bad) with PCPC's HD20WSI
(it's an update board that will make an older HD20 into the equivalent
of an HD20 SC).  I'm getting really tired of my old HD20, and would like
to upgrade, if this is a reasonable path.

Thanks!
--
Clay Jackson
{...microsoft!clayj}


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

From: [e-mail] (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: FullWrite Pro bug.
Date: 1 Jun 88 04:36:55 GMT

I found a really strange bug in FullWrite pro (this has been confirmed
by Ashton-Tate, too, although they aren't quite sure what they're going
to do about it...)

Take a Word 3.x document. Import it into FWP. Now, go into the
find/change and try to search for '-'. It won't find any. FullWrite
stores dashes internally as ascii AE. When it imports dashes from Word,
however, it doesn't convert them over -- they remain ascii 2D. They both
print the same and show the same on the screen, but they're separate
characters.

The workaround is to select a Word-dash, copy it into the clipboard and
then paste it into the find/change window. They don't seem to really
know why the internal representation is different, or why it isn't
converted.

Strange, but true.

So if you KNOW those dashes are in there, they are. It's just that a
dash isn't a dash anymore. (and then there's optional hypens and
en-dashes and em-dashes and.....)


Chuq Von Rospach            [e-mail]        Delphi: CHUQ

    Robert A. Heinlein: 1907-1988. He will never truly die as long as we
                           read his words and speak his name. Rest in
Peace.


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

From: [e-mail] (Jim Meiss)
Subject: Re: The Overbar in the Symbol font
Date: 28 May 88 03:06:03 GMT
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas

In my once favorite Mathematical word processing font, "Princeton" there
were a number of zero width characters, overbars, dots and carots, so
that you could make appropriate symbols. These work quite well, and even
display properly on the Mac screen.

Unfortunately there is something strange about Princeton font: it can't
be installed using the newer versions of the Font/DA mover. If you do
install it, it sometimes causes crashes for example in Cricket Draw
(even version 1.1). I never could figure out whats  strange obout this
font....(It does have a FOND resouce, though all entries are zero...).


                Jim Meiss
                 [e-mail]
                [e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (Dennis Cohen)
Subject: Re: FullWrite bizzarity explained (?)
Date: 31 May 88 13:02:16 GMT
Organization: Ashton Tate Development Center Glendale Cal.


No need to worry about having "broken" anything.  The Thesaurus and
Dictionary were licensed from and delivered by Microlytics.  They came
with the bundle bit set.  This was not a problem before System 6.0,
Finder 6.1 which did not become available until after FullWrite shipped;
therefore, noone in the testing groups ever encountered the difficulty.
Your solution of turning off the bundle bits is exactly the right
solution (as I recommended in a previous posting).
--
Dennis Cohen
Ashton-Tate Macintosh Division
dBASE Mac Development Team
--------------------------
Disclaimer:  Any opinions expressed above are _mine_!


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

From: [e-mail] (Clive Steward)
Subject: FullWrite -- I'm sorry, but...
Date: 1 Jun 88 00:23:02 GMT
Organization: resident visitor

in spite of the religion being formed, I have to wonder on what bases
such great enthusiasm is being grounded.  Though perhaps I haven't found
features which answer some of the problems....would be open to
suggestions.

And I will add up front, can really appreciate that the postit notes,
change bars, etc., are overlay additions which any word processor would
be the better for, especially for professional/group use.

My position:  I think FullWrite has a way to go before it challenges
Word as  powerful balanced document tool.  And also that Word could be
improved to match ease of use, mostly through some easy visual
controls/indicators  added to work with its rich style abilities.  (e.g.
Consider a little stack  of style layers, showing/selecting styles on
mousing).

Now to the experience.

To begin, my model of working with Word has been:  quickly write some
text. Then hit it with styles and the index/contents tools to produce a
very finished looking product almost immediately.  Pictures and
multi-column/sidebars take  a bit of fussing with display page.

I couldn't seem to find anything like this power in FullWrite.  All in
all, it feels rather like MacWrite -- you know, rulers everywhere,
because it's the  only way to get what you'd like.

In fairness, the sum experience was this weekend, trying to move a
medium size (50 page) document from Word 3.  The translator worked
somewhat; at least all  my text and pictures came through.  However,
much formatting, including  headings, was lost.  It did tell me so.

Then came the fun.  Yes, it's slow, and yes, it takes more than half of
a 2.5 meg Mac Plus; however also no crashes, no problems with
Multifinder.

The real problem seems to be the limitations built into a rather fixed
document model.

The style model especially seems to be missing essential design and user
freedom features.  It may possibly be seen as an improvement, to set
base  styles for (only) the text classes the FullWrite programmer
thought important. But why then are substyles singly inherited from
these, and themselves not  able to have anything like the same degrees
of freedom?  Some key points  missing:

    1)  You can't set the inter-paragraph spacing, except at the
    top level, where it is for the entire document.

    Thus where I have inclusions of program code, for instance, each CR
    separated line will have lots of space, or I will have to multispace
    between each paragraph through the entire document, as in using a
    typewriter.

    2)  Substyles don't allow setting first line in/outdents separately
    from the global style.

    Thus I can't have a style for bullet items, etc..  Back to ruler
    pairs for _each_ list and the return to normal text style
afterwards.

    3)  Though sidebars seem to be the intended answer for unusual
things,
    they don't fill in here (included listings, etc.) at all.  And see
below.

Other things noticed:

    1) The outliner requires selecting the entire document first, to
    generate an outline.  I couldn't even seem find a way to do this,
    across chapter boundaries.  And don't find the outliner interface
    nearly as easy or failsafe (scrambled text for me often) as Word's.

    2)  Working with graphics seemed unduly difficult;  also the
    drawing tools, including interface to Bezier curves, seem very
    awkward.  I agree that they could be well left out; would
    rather use SuperPaint, especially as it's upgrade promises.

    3)  Sizing anything (especially graphics) included in sidebars
appears
    to be a royal pain -- resize each of (possibly several -- why are
there
    several) involved layers first, etc..

    And some, like the drawing 'canvas', seem to require sizing by
numbers,
    not point and drag to fit!

    4)  Things (notably backspacing over text) seem to slow down in
sidebars,
    thus making them still less desirable as a substitute for a
generalized
    style capability.

It's interesting also that the first thing people seem to ask for is to
turn off the WYSIWYG.  I agree, though that slowdown is minimal, really.
  Obviously some (!) work was put into making screen update rapid; it
shows.

And clearly a lot of work went into FullWrite itself, with good
intentions.

What I really don't understand is the 'bash Microsoft' tone in the
recent articles, unless it's smarting about the bug-infested first Word
3.00 release.

If you really needed such a tool, weren't you glad it was there?  I have
been.  Think few of us are really in a position to cast such stones.

And just because a company's getting big, or has to do with IBM (now, I
might have to think about that one), doesn't automatically bring evil.
It's still individuals -- aren't we who write programs always -- who put
the sweat into making these things.

I think that the competition will bring us better versions of both
products, and possibly growth towards (RTF?) generalized interchange
formats.  Clearly, presenting an easy interface to document quality
formatted text is a complicated problem.

Can we see the progress as fun?


Clive Steward (not my best literary effort..., but it's pseudo-Monday)


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

From: [e-mail] (John C. Beatty)
Subject: A Multiuser Helix II Problem
Date: 27 May 88 14:00:41 GMT
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario

I am running what Odesta tells me is the current version of MultiUser
Helix (version r40a).  I have not been successful running it under
MultiFinder, and would like to hear from people who either have or have
not been successful doing so.

All three of Double Helix II, the MultiUser host, and the Network Node
appear to have the same problem: they "exit unexpectedly" when I switch
back from another application - for example, Macwrite or Word3.01.  The
Network node is least reliable; it consistently fails the first time I
switch back.

I have experienced this difficulty from a stock Mac Plus, a Mac Plus
upgraded with a Radius accelerator, and on a Mac II.  With respect to
the Mac II, the failure occurs when the Mac is booted from an
unretouched system tools distribution disk (release 5 system software),
running a fresh version of the Network Node.  My host machine is an SE
running system 6.0 and finder 4.2, and equiped with a 2mb Levco
accelerator.

I have discussed this problem several times, over perhaps a four month
period, with various people at Odesta.  They invariably claim to have
been told that the Network node works under Multifinder, and that the
host software does not.  However, I have yet to talk to anyone who has
themselves run the Network Node on a MacII.  They periodically promise
to investigate and get back to me - I have yet to hear from anyone.
They generally suggest increasing the size of the memory partition; this
does not help.

At this point I am unsure whether I have a problem, or whether Odesta
has a problem.  Knowing whether other people have experienced the same
difficulty will tell me where to look.

Thanks for your help.

[e-mail]


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From: [e-mail] (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Re: FullWrite -- I'm sorry, but...
Date: 1 Jun 88 18:00:41 GMT
Organization: Fictional Reality

>My position:  I think FullWrite has a way to go before it challenges Word as
>powerful balanced document tool.

I would say it this way. FullWrite has a way to go before it becomes
what  it's potential shows that it should be.

I feel that it already matches Word in power and beats it in ease of use
and flexibility. There are certainly some areas where it is weaker, but
there are some areas where it is much stronger, too. So all of this is
on balance. If the areas where it is weaker (some formatting issues and
styles) are critical for you, it might not be a good time to switch
over.

>And also that Word could be improved
>to match ease of use, mostly through some easy visual controls/indicators
>added to work with its rich style abilities.

Microsoft hasn't shown any great track record on "improving" their user
interface in my mind. Word 3.x always felt to me like a PC program with
a veneer on it, rather than a Macintosh program. I could get it to do
what I wanted it to do, but I always felt like it was fighting back. I
don't have that feeling with FWP.

>To begin, my model of working with Word has been:  quickly write some text.
>Then hit it with styles and the index/contents tools to produce a very finished
>looking product almost immediately.  Pictures and multi-column/sidebars take
>a bit of fussing with display page.

My model is very similar, as a matter of fact. What's important, though,
is that you stop trying to do things the way Word does them. The writing
paradigms are very different, and until you stop trying to make
FullWrite act like Word and start doing things the way FWP was designed
to do them, you're going to be very frustrated.

Think how frustrated you'd be if you were trying to go the other way,
and  kept trying to bring up sidebars in Word to store stuff in. It
isn't fair to put down one program because it isn't like another
program. That's MUCH different than putting a program down because it
can't do something.

>I couldn't seem to find anything like this power in FullWrite.

It's there. Once you start working with FullWrite, you'll find it.

>it feels rather like MacWrite -- you know, rulers everywhere, because it's the
>only way to get what you'd like.

Not at all true. I use rulers more in FWP than I did in Word, but only
because you can't (yet) put rulers in your styles. Word has just as many
rulers, it's just that the display mechanisms are different (and, of
course, you can turn them off in both).

Assuming rulers are turned on in both, what Word does is show the
current ruler in the ruler bar at the top of the window. What FWP does
is show the rulers, in context, with the text. I find the latter much
nicer to use, since I can SEE where the ruler definitions change. With
Word, that can be a pain.

>In fairness, the sum experience was this weekend, trying to move a medium size
>(50 page) document from Word 3.  The translator worked somewhat; at least all
>my text and pictures came through.  However, much formatting, including
>headings, was lost.  It did tell me so.

I've been using it three-and-a-half weeks. A weekend with a program of
this complexity is nothing, frankly. It took me about two weeks to
really start getting any kind of feel for it at all, and I'm just
starting to be what I would consider proficient, having now slogged
about 60K worth of stuff through it.

How long did it take you to learn Word to the point where you could beat
it into submission? It took me longer than it's taken with FullWrite.

>The style model especially seems to be missing essential design and user
>freedom features.

The style model is weaker than Word. Ashton-Tate on CompuServe has
acknowledged this, and has said (without going into details) that it'll
be significantly enhanced in the next release due this fall. I would
expect that the new release will allow styles to have most of the
functionality of Word styles, including paragraph spacing and rulers.
There may also be something like a "Based on" style.

>    1) The outliner requires selecting the entire document first, to
>    generate an outline.  I couldn't even seem find a way to do this,
>    across chapter boundaries.

Chapters are completely separate entities, and (basically) nothing
crosses the boundaries. This may or may get relaxed later, it's a fairly
basic part of the design of the program. What WILL happen is that the
next release will be smaller, faster and make better use of chapters so
that chapters can be larger, reducing the need to arbitrarily split text
up for memory management.

>    2)  Working with graphics seemed unduly difficult;  also the
>    drawing tools, including interface to Bezier curves, seem very
>    awkward.  I agree that they could be well left out; would
>    rather use SuperPaint, especially as it's upgrade promises.

I haven't used FWP enough to comment, but I will point out that Word 4.0
will ship with SuperPaint, the current version, not the upcoming
SuperPaint II. So if you want the added features of SP II, you still
have to go and buy it... I'm ALSO looking forward to SP II since it will
do auto-tracing of bitmaps, which I can then shift over to Freehand to
manipulate. (at least until Freehand comes out with an auto-tracing
mode).

>If you really needed such a tool, weren't you glad it was there?  I have
>been.  Think few of us are really in a position to cast such stones.

I was very glad I had word 3.0. I would have died limited to MacWrite or
WriteNow. But it always felt to me like it was hoarding it's power -- it
would always make me fight to get what I wanted out of it. FullWrite
doesn't do that to me. I also have problems with Microsoft as a
corporation -- the hassles getting information, the inability of them to
let me know of new versions (yes, they DID ship out 3.01 free, bless
them. But did they bother to send you a message when they released 3.02?
Or Excel 1.06? Or did you find out from a friend, and then wait four or
five weeks for the upgrade to show?). I'm getting much better vibes from
Ashton-Tate on support and futures for the product -- and they aren't
afraid to admit to bugs in public (I'm keeping an eye on the A-T Forum
on CompuServe. There's a very refreshing openness and a high level of
expertise on that board, things I always felt were missing from
Microsoft's on-line groups up there -- where the common answer seemed to
be either silence or "Call our support number")

This doesn't make Word a worse Word Processor. But FWP is the first one
I've seen that has the power to take Word on in its own territory. And
FWP is the first WP that really has been designed to be a Macintosh word
processor. And it shows -- it is, for all it's power and complexity,
simple and intuitive.

>And just because a company's getting big, or has to do with IBM (now, I
>might have to think about that one), doesn't automatically bring evil.

No, by a long shot. Ashton-Tate ain't small. But I have talked to dozens
of people who have had to order upgrades (that they found out about on
Bulletin boards) for bug fixes in Microsoft products. And had the
request get lost, sometimes two or three times. When Excel is crashing
every few minutes on your Mac II, and it takes you twelve weeks to get
the fixed version of the program because Microsoft lost the request
twice and then spent three weeks shipping it to you, it doesn't engender
a lot of corporate loyalty. And I know enough people who have been in
this position that I don't believe it to be a rare fluke. It happens a
lot.

I used to work with a lot of Microsoft products. Microsoft File, which
hasn't been updated since 1984 (it'll get a facelife this year, but I
wonder why they bother). Word 1.05, later Word 3.0, later 3.01. A
love/hate relationship. Excel 1.04 (now 1.06, but I haven't asked for
it).

The only one I have left is Excel (actually, I have Word on my disk,
primarily because my editor requires my articles to be shipped in Word
format -- so I write in Fullwrite, export in Macwrite, and import into
word before mailing it off. Other than that...). And my guess is that
Full Impact may well do for Excel what FullWrite seems to be doing for
Word -- giving people a choice (for the record, I really like Excel, and
have no intention of switching over.)


Chuq Von Rospach            [e-mail]        Delphi: CHUQ

    Robert A. Heinlein: 1907-1988. He will never truly die as long as we
                           read his words and speak his name. Rest in
Peace.


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

From: [e-mail] (Larry Rosenstein)
Subject: Reducing disk swaps on 2 floppy Macs
Date: 1 Jun 88 17:23:58 GMT
Organization: Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computer


I remembered this discussion from a few weeks ago, and for fun looked
into what was going on.  (Synopsis: people were wondering about using an
LRU algorithm for ejecting disks in the disk switch dialog.  Sometimes
you have 2 floppy drives but the system only uses one of them.)

It turns out that the code to allow Command-Shift-0/1/2 during a disk
switch was added to the Mac Plus ROM at the same time that Command-. was
added to abort the disk switch.  (You did know that Command-. will abort
the disk switch and return a "volume not available" error, right?)

It turns out, that the code has a bug.  Instead of checking for ASCII
characters $30-$32, it checks for $00-$02.  (Note that Mac SE & Mac II
users can use Command-Shift-Control-@/A/B to generate these characters
and actually eject the diskettes during a disk switch!  I don't have a
machine to try this one, but it should work.)

I was able to write a small INIT file that watches for
Command-Shift-0/1/2 during a disk switch and posts a keystroke that the
ROM will recognize.  I have tried this on a Mac Plus and it seems to
work.  I don't have a Mac SE or Mac II with 2 floppy drives to try it
out on those machines. (I also don't know if it will work on 64K ROM
machines.)

Before posting this in general, I would like to have a couple of people
try it out a bit more.  So if you have a Mac SE or Mac II with 2 (or 3)
floppy drives, and are willing to be a guinea pig for this, send me
mail.

--
         Larry Rosenstein,  Object Specialist
 Apple Computer, Inc.  20525 Mariani Ave, MS 27-AJ  Cupertino, CA 95014
        AppleLink:Rosenstein1    domain:[e-mail]
        UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!lsr

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