info-mac@uw-beaver (07/18/85)
From: Temporary Moderator Rich Alderson <INFO-MAC-REQUEST@SUMEX-AIM.arpa>
INFO-MAC Digest Thursday, 11 Jul 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 20
Today's Topics:
Correction to appledict version program I recently posted
Anchoring LaserWriters and other goodies
Dashes in messages
Keyboard Reconfiguration?
MacModula2 -- bug report & request for more
Mac and Mac XL joint programming?
two questions
OPS5, a request for comments
Epson connection, a request
getting PICTs into Lisa Rmaker
Asynchronous I/O: completion routines and network events
PurgeIcons
Worm Stat
XL/Served [LONG --RMA]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 8 Jul 85 13:36:03-EDT
From: Alan Crosswell <US.ALAN@CU20B.ARPA>
Subject: Correction to appledict version program I recently posted
Somehow, a bunch of blanks got deleted out from between two
parentheses in the PostScript program that I included in my recent
posting about the Mac postscript definitions. The line that came back
over the bboard looks like:
av ( ) cvs show
while what I posted was (blanks replaced with x's):
av (xxxxxxxx) cvs show
It's a big difference since what I was doing was allocating a string
that is overwritten by the cvs operator the cheap way -- by pushing a
string of blanks onto the stack instead of explicitly allocating a
string variable.
So, if you've copied this program and wonder why it appears not to
work, increase the number of spaces in the string.
Alan Crosswell User Services Columbia University
------------------------------
Date: Mon 8 Jul 85 13:53:21-EDT
From: Alan Crosswell <US.ALAN@CU20B.ARPA>
Subject: Anchoring LaserWriters and other goodies
We just installed a LaserWriter in a public area with an anchoring
device that is crazy-glued onto the bottom of the machine. It also
gets bonded to the table with some kind of pad that can't be pulled
off unless it is heated which can only be done when the top half
(connected to the LaserWriter) is unlocked from the bottom half (which
is stuck to the table).
These devices are reputed not to damage the table although we've never
removed one. If you do remove it to move it somewhere else, you have
to replace the bottom part which costs about 1/2 of the total price.
The company we use is Boston Copico. The person I dealt with is Larry
DuGay at 1-800-221-2108. It's called a CompuGard and runs in the
$40-60 range.
We formerly used Business Machine Security's (in New York City)
Anchorpad which is essentially the same thing but they are more
expensive and use a cheaper standard key lock while the Copico device
uses one of those round "pick-proof" ones.
We also recently installed CompuGards on two or three Macs and an
Imagewriter. We have previously anchored Macs, HP-150's, and
Imagewriters on Anchorpads. By the way, tha Mac we recently installed
included an external disk which they glued on it's side onto the
CompuGard.
Alan Crosswell
User Services
Columbia University
PS: We also have purchased insurance to cover the University's $1000
deductible since these devices can only act as a deterrent (you can
still steal the entire table or cut it or rip the formica off).
------------------------------
Date: 8 Jul 1985 1327-PDT
From: DKAVNER@USC-ECL.ARPA
Subject: Dashes in messages
Recently, many of the postings to info-mac have contained lines of
-------------
I use a program to split apart the digests and then print only those
messages of interest to me. Unfortunately, the only way to easily
break up the messages is to key off the dashes at the end. When
dashes appear within the body of a long message, I get all kinds of
unwanted stuff in my printouts.
Please, leave out the dashes in the future.
------------------------------
Subject: Keyboard Reconfiguration?
Date: 08 Jul 85 15:38:53 EST (Mon)
From: Steven B. Munson <sbm@Purdue.EDU>
Is there anyone out there who knows the definitive way to
reconfigure the keyboard? I know it can be done, since there is an
application in the public domain that does it, and Inside Macintosh
mentions that the instructions to do it will be out in its final
publication. It seems to me that this mechanism, whatever it is, is
the ideal thing to use for terminal emulators that want to have ASCII
keyboards, rather than entering characters with umlauts, etc. Barring
that, does anyone at least know how to get the accent key combinations
(command-u, command-`, ...) to generate keyDown events, so I can use
the option key as a control key, as I do in MacTerminal, thus freeing
the clover-leaf key for keyboard equivalents to menu items?
Just to make myself perfectly clear, I don't want to hack up an
existing terminal emulator; I want to write my own. I have a lot of
features in mind that the $100 products I see in the stores don't
have. It will be interesting to see if a good terminal emulator
really has to be as big as MacTerminal.
Steve Munson
sbm@purdue.ECN
sbm@purdue.ARPA
sbm@purdue.CSNET
------------------------------
Date: Mon 8 Jul 85 22:08:01-EDT
From: Daniel Breslau <MDC.BRESLA%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: MacModula2 -- bug report & request for more
At my office, we are looking into using Modula-2 from Modula
Corporation as a development language. The version we have has an
interesting bug: At odd moments, the editor sometimes inserts a
control-c into the source file! Has anyone else had this problem? We
had to get around it by writing a program to strip out ^C characters.
This has already been reported as a bug to Modula Corp.
We've found more recently that other control characters *may* be
getting into the code; in any event, code that should be perfectly
compilable isn't.
What sorts of problems (and features) are people finding with Mac
Modula-2? I will summarize and post to the net if requested. Thanks
in advance.
Dan Breslau breslau%mit-oz@mit-mc.arpa
------------------------------
Date: 8 Jul 85 13:14:12 PDT (Monday)
Subject: Mac and Mac XL joint programming?
From: Kevin <Mackey.PA@Xerox.ARPA>
A friend and I are developing a program together. He has a Mac XL and
I have a Macintosh. We had originally planned to share the Mac XL for
programming, but now that's no longer possible since he's moving.
We each want to be able to work separately on parts of the program,
but be able to integrate the parts the other's working on into the
parts we are doing. He has Lisa Pascal, so my question is: what
language should I use? Or should he switch from Lisa Pascal and use in
MacWorks whatever language I decide on? Is it possible for us to
exchange assembly code in some way?
Kevin
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 85 (Tue) 12:50:34 EDT
From: "Mark E. Schindler" <mfs%iris%brown.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: two questions
(1) We have been having problems getting Lisa 2/5s (Mac XLs) to work
with the LaserWriter over AppleTalk. Documents print approximately 3
out of 4 times, and long documents often only have parts printed or
are not printed at all. Has anyone else had this problem? If so,
have you been able overcome it? If so, how? Does it make any
difference that we do not yet have the new MacWorks XL?
(2) Has anyone ever seen a word processor for the Mac or other micros
that lets one set tabs that center the information underneath them? I
think that such tabs would be a great feature for such things as
survey design, etc.
Thanks in advance for your responses. I will summarize whatever I
might hear to the net.
Mark Schindler
Organizational Analyst
Brown University IRIS (Institute for Research in Information Scholarship)
mfs@iris.Bitnet
mfs%iris@Brown.CSNet
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 85 16:55:47 EDT
From: Benham.Motazed@CMU-RI-CIVE
Subject: OPS5, a request for comments
I inquired about this information a while back, and I figured since
the product has finally hit the market, I just get some news about it
again. Has anyone used the OPS5 software from Expertelligence or has
aquired it, that I could have a hands on demonstration for its
performance?? I appreciate your responses about this, since I have to
make a decision as far as purchasing it and stuff pretty soon.
benny@ce
------------------------------
Date: Tue 9 Jul 85 17:16:41-EDT
From: Yumi <Yumi.Iwasaki@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>
Subject: Epson connection, a request
A friend of mine in Japan is looking for a way to connect his Epson
printer to his Mac. I have received several suggestions but I have no
idea how they compare. I would like to know people's experiences with
them and/or information on any other means for connecting them. The
suggestions I have so far are:
EPSTART : software package (by EPSON?) A salesperson I talked to told
me it performed poorly, however. $49.95
an interface board : Apple $129
the Macintosh-Epson connection : package by Hayden Software
MacEnhancer box : Microsoft
Mac Epson Connection : The Bottom Line $69.88
Thanks. Yumi (iwasaki@cmu-cs-c)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 85 13:32:47 cdt
From: Alan Painter <ots!alan@rice.ARPA>
Subject: getting PICTs into Lisa Rmaker
I would like to include some resources of Type PICT in an
application's resources. Currently, I do this by creating the
pictures in MacPaint, pasting them in the Scrapbook, and copying them
from the Scrapbook onto the System using one of the Resource Editors
(in fact, I used Rmover for this about 10 months ago).
Problem: The application is not complete in Lisa format, so I cannot
Maccom the application from Lisa to just any disk: it must have a
modified System on it.
Looking at "Putting Together", I see a mention of including PICTs
inside of Rmaker by including files containing the pictures in the
same manner as resources of Type CODE are included. *Simple!*
So I used REdit to cut the pictures into separate files, sent these
files up to the Lisa (using MacCom), and naively inclluded these in
Rmaker.
Well, it didn't work, and I assume that the format of the PICT
resource file was incorrect.
Any pointers on how to get properly formatted Lisa PICT files in this
fashion (or any other fashion, for that matter)?
Sincerest apologies if this is (1) a trivial question or (2) an old
question discussed in previous news articles.
VOICE: Alan Painter
ARPA: ots!alan@rice.ARPA
------------------------------
Subject: Asynchronous I/O: completion routines and network events
Date: 10 Jul 85 22:44:24 EDT (Wed)
From: apope@BBN-LABS-B.ARPA
Here's a Mac technical question that doesn't seem to be addressed by
Inside Mac:
When using the low-level Device Manager routines to do an asynchronous
I/O operation, one can specify a "completion routine" to be called as
soon as the operation is completed. Does anyone know if this
completion routine is passed any parameters by the Device Manager? If
so, what are they?
Thanks for any information you can provide.
...Art Pope, BBN Labs Inc
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 85 7:25:46 EDT
From: Robert E. Yellen (MISD-SEAD) <ryellen@Ardc.ARPA>
Subject: PurgeIcons
PurgeIcons version 1.0 - origin unknown
Execution of PurgeIcons purges all unused icons from the desktop file.
There are no options available.
[This program is archived as <INFO-MAC>UTILITY-PURGE-ICONS.HQX at
SUMEX. --RMA]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 85 12:01:24 EDT
From: Robert E. Yellen (MISD-SEAD) <ryellen@Ardc.ARPA>
Subject: Worm Stat
Worm Stat Version .05 developed by George Wolford
A statistical anylsis program with graphing capability. I have not
utilized the program past executing it to see that it runs. Several
people here have used it and have raved about it. It has to be
converted using BinHex 4.0
[This file has been archived as <INFO-MAC>WORM-STAT.HQX at SUMEX.
--RMA]
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1985 18:00-EST
From: mss%dartvax%dartmouth.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Subject: XL/Served [LONG --RMA]
We just bought an XL/Serve and people around Dartmouth asked our
opinion of it. Two of us played with it for an afternoon and wrote up
an internal memo. It is by no means the last word on the subject, but
since I haven't seen any discussion of XL/Serve yet, I thought I'd at
least start by distributing a copy our memo. (Yes, I know there are
lots of potential problems with the experiments and our brief
description of XL/Serve leaves out many features, e.g., passwords, but
we didn't want to spend days on this and the results pretty much match
our gut reaction from playing with it.)
-Mark
------------------------------------------------------------
You probably have seen the ads for XL/Serve. We recently purchased
XL/Serve and installed it on one of our Lisas. This memo briefly
describes our experiences.
XL/Serve is a $200 program that allows many Macintoshes to share the
hard disk on a Lisa running MacWorks as if it were another disk. The
Macintoshes are connected to the Lisa over Appletalk. The hard disk
can be partitioned into many Sony look-a-likes called volumes, each of
which can be either read-only and shared among any Macintosh that
wants it, or dynamically assigned to exactly one Macintosh for both
reading and writing. The Lisa running MacWorks can act like another
Macintosh on the network and shares or assigns the volumes with other
machines (or it can run by itself and ignore the network).
Restricting volumes to be read-only creates problems with most
programs we experimented with, for example, MacWrite 4.5. We
envisioned creating one volume with a System, Finder, Imagewriter, and
a collection of typically used programs which everyone could share.
However, most programs create scratch files on the same disk as the
program, therefore most programs cannot be shared on a read-only disk.
In addition, a scratch file is usually created when a documented is
printed, sometimes on the disk with application, sometimes on the disk
with the Imagewriter and sometimes on the disk with the System file.
Finally, the Scrapbook is another file written on the disk with the
System file. None of these scratch files can be on a read-only shared
volume provided by XL/Serve. Therefore the only feasible way to use
XL/Serve is to place all of the programs on a shared volume, let each
user assign a private writable volume and copy the desired files from
the shared volume onto the private volume. Besides the inconvenience,
each private volume must be large enough to hold a system, folder,
imagewriter and application. For a 10M disk partitioned into 800K
volumes, we can get less than 10 shared Macintoshes running at the
same time.
XL/Serve provides some other facilities besides hard disk sharing. It
also allows provides a disk cache for the Lisa which is intended to
improve disk performance on the Lisa (for the hard disk or profile,
not the Sony drive). An imagewriter printer spooler can also be
provided (and used across the Appletalk network). There is no support
for a laserwriter spooler.
The current version of XL/Serve runs only on 512K Macintoshes and
Lisas (only the Lisa disk can be shared, not a Macintosh hard disk).
We performed some experiments to assess (crudely) XL/Serve. We
measured two numbers: how fast MacWrite 4.5 produces an untitled
document from being opened in the finder and how fast the finder
displays the first disk icon from when MacWrite 4.5 is quitted. All
experiments used Finder 4.1 and as similar system files as we could
reasonable create. We tried to create roughly the same desktop
environment for each test as well. For example, the XL/Serve tests
were all done after a fresh boot of the system. Each test was
repeated five times (one right after the other).
We tried several configurations of equipment: (1) a 128K Macintosh
using a Sony Drive, (2) a 512K Macintosh using a Sony Drive, (3) a 1M
Mac/XL running from a Profile, (4) a 1M Mac/XL running from a 10M
internal disk, (5) a 512K Mac/XL running from a 10M internal disk, (6)
a 1M Mac/XL running XL/Serve on a 10M internal disk with 256K disk
cache (using unallocated parts of its hard disk), (7) a 1M Mac/XL
running XL/Serve on a 10M internal disk with 256 dick cache using a
volume created by XL/Serve, (8) a 512K Macintosh running off a
XL/Serve volume (i.e., diskless), (9) two 512K Macintoshes running
simultaneously running off its own XL/Serve volume (diskless), (10) a
512K Macintosh using Hyperdrive and (11) a 512K Macintosh using a 335K
RAM disk. All times were made by reading a watch. Summaries of our
data are shown on the next page (all numbers are in seconds).
MacWrite 4.5 Start 1* 2 3 4 5 Ave
512K Mac (RAM disk) 3 4 3 3 3 3.2
512K Mac (Hyperdrive) 8 7 7 7 7 7.2
1M Lisa (XL/Serve, int) 10 9 9 9 9 9.2
1M Lisa (5M profile) 12 12 12 12 12 12
1M Lisa (10M internal) 23 15 12 12 12 14.8
1M Lisa (XL/Serve, vol) 19 15 14 14 14 15.2
512K Lisa (10M int) 20 15 15 15 15 16
512K Mac (XL/Serve) 25 20 21 20 21 21.4
512K Mac (Sony) 24 24 24 24 24 24
128K Mac (Sony) 29 28 28 28 28 28.2
2x 512K Mac(XL/Serve)** 44 36 38 40 39 39.4
MacWrite 4.5 End 1* 2 3 4 5 Ave
512K Mac (RAM disk) 1 2 2 2 2 1.8
512K Mac (Hyperdrive) 4 4 4 4 4 4
1M Lisa (XL/Serve, int) 6 6 6 6 6 6
1M Lisa (10M int)*** 11 11 11 11 11 11
1M Lisa (XL/Serve, vol) 13 11 12 12 11 11.8
1M Lisa (5M profile)*** 13 13 13 13 13 13
512K Mac (XL/Serve) 15 12 15 14 12 13.6
512K Mac (Sony) 14 14 14 14 14 14
128K Mac (Sony) 15 15 15 15 15 15
2x 512K Mac(XL/Serve)** 25 26 27 26 28 26.4
512K Lisa (10M int)*** 28 28 28 28 28 28
Notes:
* The first test was frequently longer than later tests. Although we
have no certain answer, some possibilities are i) the first time we
set up the tests a desktop file had to be written before starting the
application, increasing the time for the first test; ii) the first
time an application was run it loaded some resources into the system
heap which were then available during later runs of the application;
iii) some disk cache was being loaded during the first application run
and later reused during later runs.
** Both Macintoshes started and ended MacWrite 4.5 at the same time.
The times reported are the longer of the two times.
*** The measurements of these Lisa systems for MacWrite ending (i.e.,
for the Finder starting) are poor, since these three Lisa systems
already had a substantial number of files on them creating a large
desk top file which we believe is read everytime the Finder is
started. Thus, the times should be greater than normally expected.
------------------------------
End of INFO-MAC Digest
**********************