info-mac@uw-beaver (07/24/85)
From: John M. Agosta <INFO-MAC-REQUEST@SUMEX-AIM.arpa> INFO-MAC Digest Wednesday, 24 Jul 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 25 Today's Topics: Control Cs in files NEON! Review (long, long message) How to get PICTs into Lisa RMaker Thunderscan -> laserwriter software? NEON! v.s. MacApp? Imagewriter as a regular printer? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20-Jul-85 18:18 PDT From: BSF.TYM@OFFICE-2 Subject: Control Cs in files Re: Daniel Breslau's posting in Info-Mac V3#20 about control Cs in Modula-2 files. If they are using the Apple program editor (the version we have was written by Bill Duvall and is copyrighted by Apple and Consulair Corps), it will place control Cs in the file if you hit the enter key. They do NOT show up when you do a "Show Invisibles", so your filter seems to be the best approach (short of not hitting enter). Not good, particulary if you are preparing text for upload to a DEC type system! Bill Frantz - Key Logic - BSF.TYM@Office-6.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Jul 85 18:11 PDT From: piersol.pasa@Xerox.ARPA Subject: NEON! Review (long, long message) For those of you who have heard of NEON! (from Kriya Systems) and are curious about it, the following are my impressions following a week or so of reading the manuals and a few days of playing with the system. 1. NEON! is a new language, similar to Forth in many ways. There are several enhanced features which move the language away from 'pure' Forth, and into the realm of object oriented languages. 2. If you have programmed in Forth before, you may be pleasantly surprised by the advances over a more standard Forth, aside from the object oriented extensions. For instance, the Forth concept of variable (which uses @ and ! to fetch and store from the variable), has been replaced by a type of entity called a 'value'. There is a prefix assignment operator which sets the value: i.e. the phrase ' 4 -> alpha ' sets the value of alpha to be four. The expression ' alpha 2 + ' would then evaluate to 6. Notice the difference from the standard Forth variable, which would have required an expression like ' alpha @ 2 + '. This little bit of wizardry is done with multiple cfa's, and NEON! documents a few useful defining words to allow the creation of similar entities yourself. Even better, you can cause the elements on top of the stack to temporarily become named values as you execute a word. An example: : sumsquares { a b -- a^2+b^2 } a a * b b * + ; in NEON! is equivalent to : sumsquares ( a b -- a^2+b^2 ) dup * swap dup * + ; in MacForth. I personally find the former far more readable. Dyed-in-the-wool Forth enthusiasts may disagree, of course. You are not forced to use this feature, which obviously involves a certain amount of overhead, but for complex word definitions this feature is a dream come true. 3. NEON! uses the Macintosh parameter stack as its own main stack. This makes toolbox calls a breeze. All you have to do is put the parameters on the stack in the order you see them in 'Inside Macintosh' and follow it with a call to the toolbox. For those calls that return a value, a dummy word is placed on the stack just prior to the call to hold the return. This rather simple mechanism allow NEON! to support virtually EVERY toolbox routine with almost no overhead. Nice. 4. NEON! includes a good basic set of object definitions, and a workable object system. This simplifies working with windows, rectangles, points, handles, etc. This was, of course, the reason for implementing NEON! in the first place. I personally found the language to be far superior to MacForth in dealing with such entities. It is easier to produce powerful applications in NEON! than in any other Macintosh language I have seen. 5. The language supports an interesting module facility. These modules may, of course, define new objects and words. Objects defined within a module can only be instantiated within that module. The module is compiled into a binary form, and words can be 'imported' into the main application in much the same manner as the similar feature in Modula-2. Most importantly, these modules can be loaded and purged rapidly during execution, allowing segmented applications (larger than can fit in memory) to be created with little or no effort on the programmer's part. This is perhaps my favorite feature of the language. 6. The system includes a utility to produce 'clickable' applications programs which run without any other support. This is a complex process by NEON! standards, but is no worse than the procedures I've seen for the various C compilers around. The Kriya 'Typing Tutor' application was supposedly written in an early version of NEON!, so it obviously is really capable of producing salable applications. 7. NEON! is rather Mac specific. Many of the basic classes are intimately related to the Mac's operating system. Don't look for much portability to other machines anytime soon. 8. I had hoped for a nice in-line assembler, but as yet none exists. This is a minor deficiency that I expect to see corrected in relatively short order. There is no floating point support, but I suspect it would be very easy indeed to write an interface to SANE. 9. The sources for all of the basic object classes, interfaces, and even the programming environment front end come with the system. It is very instructive to the novice NEON! programmer to look over this code to see how the front end was implemented. The documentation includes an excellent 19-lesson tutorial, documentation on the pre-defined object classes, and the NEON! vocabulary. Also included is an extensive table of system equates. Overall, the documentation appears complete and of relatively high quality. All in all, I am pleased with NEON!. For the $150 price, it is a true bargain as application environments go. I believe the price has gone up to $225 now, but it is still a worthy programming system for a serious Macintosh developer. I am not affiliated with Kriya Systems in any way other than as a satisfied customer. Kurt Piersol ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jul 85 11:10:56 cdt From: Alan Painter <ots!alan@rice.ARPA> Subject: How to get PICTs into Lisa RMaker I received 2 answers to my "PICTs into Lisa Rmaker" query and they solved the problem. Just in case there are others who aren't familiar with the process (as seems to be the case from the first letter in the last digest) I am giving a complete description of the process. 1) Create a picture in MacPaint and (using the lasso) paste it into the scrapbook. 2) Use REdit to copy the PICT resource out of the scrapbook and into a file (one picture per file). Do this by copying a file containing a resource of some sort and cutting out all of the resources and then paste the PICT into the emptied file (there may be a better way of getting an empty file, but I couldn't find one). 3) Transfer the file to the Lisa using MacCom. It will show up as a .RSRC file on the Lisa (with an associated .MFEN file that can be deleted and ignored.) 4) Translate the .RSRC file (which is in REdit format) into a .RSRC file in RMaker format. The formats and the method for doing this are desribed below. I wrote a trivial Lisa Pascal program for doing this. 5) Include the .RSRC file into the RMaker file as a resource of type PICT in the manner described in the "Putting Together" chapter of Inside Mac. It is essentially the same way that CODE is included except that the resource ID is declared with it. Note that steps 3 and 4 are interchanged if the PICT format is translated from REdit to RMaker in the Mac itself, rather than on the Lisa. Here's a description of the formats that I received from: munnari!fac1.anu.oz!smynmath@seismo.CSS.GOV >The PICT resource obtained from REdit has a resource header which >must be removed for the file to input to RMaker (so that RMaker can >put it back again!) If you DumpPatch your picture file (assuming >it has just one PICT in it) you will find that the header is the >first half of block 0; the next four bytes are a LongInt giving the >length of the resource; the PICT itself starts at byte 260 of block >0, and starts with 5 integers (words), being the length again followed >by the picture bounds.rect. The PICT ends with an FF byte. > >I wrote a small Pascal program to cut a sequence of bytes from any >file (perhaps you can do this with some utility supplied but I >couldn't see how); I then cut length+2 bytes starting from block 0, >byte 260. The file formed is then in the correct format for RMaker. >This procedure will also work for capturing other resources, including >CODE! > > Neville Smythe, Maths, Australian National University Alan Painter ots!alan@rice.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Jul 85 09:53:55 PDT From: <DAVEG%SLACVM.BITNET@Lindy> Reply-to: DAVEG%SLACVM.BITNET@Forsythe Subject: thunderscan -> laserwriter software Date: 23 July 85 09:54-PST From: DAVEG@SLACVM To: INFO-MAC@SUMEX-AIM Subject: thunderscan -> laserwriter software Date: 23 July 1985, 09:51:09 PST From: David M. Gelphman 415-854-3300 x3186 DAVEG at SLACVM To: INFO-MAC at SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD Subject: thunderscan -> laserwriter software Among the many jewels of information contained in the MAUG conference with Andy Hertzfeld was a mention of a program which allows printing of a thunderscan document on the laserwriter written by someone named Bill Bates. Does anyone have any details about this program such as what the capabilities are and who sells it? David Gelphman DAVEG@SLACVM.BITNET ------------------------------ Date: 19-Jul-85 20:54 PDT From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2> Subject: Re: NEON! Review From: piersol.pasa@Xerox.ARPA ... It is easier to produce powerful applications in NEON! than in any other Macintosh language I have seen. Has anyone had experience with the recently announced object-oriented MacApp in any of the various languages implementing it? I would like to hear some impressions of these. Seems like they would make the most appropriate comparison to Neon. I'm curious how related the Neon classes are to MacApp, since Neon appears to fill the niche for the FORTH MacApp. -- kirk ------------------------------ Date: Tue 23 Jul 85 08:20:08-PDT From: Steve Dennett <DENNETT@SRI-NIC.ARPA> Subject: Imagewriter We have an Imagewriter that we'd like to use with other pc's than our Mac. Does anyone know if the Imagewriter supports Epson or any other printer's graphics? Or is there an MSDOS program that let's it be used by programs such as Lotus 123? Thanks. Steve Dennett dennett@sri-nic.arpa ------------------------------ End of INFO-MAC Digest **********************