info-mac@uw-beaver (07/15/85)
From: Temporary Moderator Rich Alderson <INFO-MAC-REQUEST@SUMEX-AIM.arpa>
INFO-MAC Digest Saturday, 13 Jul 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 21
Today's Topics:
Dashes in messages [INFO-MAC Digest V3 #20]
Useful RAMdisk setup
MS Word, turbochargers, RAM disks, etc.
Equations on the Laserwriter
OPS5
PackIt Application & Documentation
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Date: Fri, 12 Jul 85 00:51 EDT
From: Steve Strassmann <straz@[192.5.104.1]>
Subject: Dashes in messages [INFO-MAC Digest V3 #20]
It is unreasonable to expect people to leave out "--------" in their
messages; they're too useful, and people who start reading INFO-MAC in
the future will have missed your request. It's not too tough to make
your digest-parser more intelligent.
Almost every message begins with "From:" within 4 lines of the dashes.
There's always at least one blank line before and after the dashes. I
believe there are always 30 dashes.
You could request the moderator to insert a sequence, like "[3]"
before the third message, to assist your parser in its guesses.
With all these clues, your machine should perform as well as a human
at distinguishing message boundaries.
-Steve Strassmann,
MIT Media Lab /
Thinking Machines Corp. (STRAZ@THINK.arpa)
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Date: Fri 12 Jul 85 17:18:04-PDT
From: Len <Lattanzi@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Useful RAMdisk setup
I have found the following configuration of the RAMdisk very useful.
Setup a Startup disk with RAMdisk (I use Assimilation Process's) your
application, a system file full of fonts, imagewriter and a MiniFinder
configured to run your application. Now use an appropriate piece of
software to rename the MiniFinder to become the Finder. (I use
MacTools). And voila, if your ramdisk starter copies these files to
ram you'll find that running the MiniFinder as a fake Finder will buy
you a lot of room.
PS. I run this with MS Word which has tabs that center the text around
the tab.
Now if anyone out there has TurboCharger and the A.P. ramdisk could
you use tell me if you have discovered any incompatibilies? I'm
worried mainly about clashes between the auto-start procedures at
boot-time.
Len
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Date: Fri 12 Jul 85 08:31:01-PDT
From: Mark Richer <RICHER@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: MS Word, turbochargers, RAM disks, etc.
I have a 512K Mac with 2 apple drives. I find that MS Word takes a
rather long time to start up and quit. Last night I tried out
turbocharger with MS word, but it couldn't seem to be set in the
automatic mode. On top of that, there seemed to be little speed up
with less than 256K devoted to the disk "cache." Although, Word is
supposed to run on a 128K Ifind that it is memory hungry. If I scroll
through a document that is far less than a 100K it seems that it can't
keep the whole document in core because after you scroll backto the
earlier parts it needs to swap fromdisk again. Besides that after
using WORD for a while (and perhaps doing 1 or more saves) you get
that dreadful Session Too Long message that means you can't do
anything except button okay and pray that 20-30 minutes later you
current version is saved. At that point you must quit and start up
word again. I assume that what is happening is that it has run out of
core memory (or it's badly fragmented). Therefore, assigning to 256K
to a turbocharger or RAM DISK seems a doomed proposition.
Has anyone had a positive experience using WORD with Turbocharger or a
RAM disk? Any comments about the other problem with Session Too Long?
I also had a terrible problem the other day. Even though the document
was less than 150K the word complained DISK TOO FULL, even when I put
a blank disk (and swapped that and the original too many times).
ANyone else have this problem (Microsoft acted as if they never heard
it before, but I'm sure there's a bug in 1.0 that caused it)?
mark
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Date: 12 July 85 10:04 EDT
From: QP2%CORNELLA.BITNET@Berkeley
Subject: Equations on the Laserwriter
Ronald Iltis' problems with equations and fonts in MS Word on the
LaserWriter are not new. MS Word is slow with bitmapped fonts. I've
just been finishing up a 250 page book (the Handbook for our
statistics package) on the LWriter and we decided to do it in
MacWrite. We designed our own font for special symbols. MacWrite is
*MUCH* faster at bitmapped fonts and provides WYSIWYG page breaks
(essential when you have many figures as we do). I get pages at
perhaps 15 seconds/page for the worst case with many font
changes--faster for most pages.
A few tips:
Our modified font is based on Geneva (as is Princeton's). Using it in
Boldface looks better on the Laser.
Try setting pages in a larger font and reducing them with the Page
Setup command. We are running 85% reduction of 12 point type, which
is pretty close to 10 point. The bitmapped fonts get denser this way,
and really look pretty decent.
Be warned that if you work with a reduction, your page breaks change
as well. You must do final formatting with the Page Setup set the way
you are going to print. I also recommend turning OFF smoothing and,
of course, turning off font substitution. The smoothing algorithm
does some strange and wonderful things to characters that have already
passed through the boldface and italicising algorithms.
The Resource Editor lets you define fully kerned characters such as
overbars, hats, and superscripts that can go over any symbol. I've
even been able to succesfully put special-font hat over a Times y.
I agree that font changing is a pain. I recommend Assimilation's
MacTracks -- its saved me no end of grief in font (and size)
switching.
--Paul Velleman
QP2 @ Cornella
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Date: 12 Jul 85 10:14:52 EDT
From: Daniel.Zigmond@CMU-CS-SPICE
Subject: OPS5
There is a public domain OPS5 written in Common Lisp floating around
here at CMU. If ExperLisp is a full Common Lisp (I know version 1.0
was quite small, but 2.0 is suppoed to be fairly good) it would be
easy to compile OPS5 yourself. If there is someone out there on the
net who has ExperLisp, I could send them the code to compile. Then we
could all have OPS5 free!
Of course, this is OPS5 has no Mac enviroment stuff. I haven't seen
ExperOPS5 so I can't make a comparison. All I know is that this OPS5
works and is in the public domain.
-Dan (djz@cmu-cs-spice)
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Date: Thu, 11 Jul 85 7:51:17 EDT
From: Robert E. Yellen (MISD-SEAD) <ryellen@Ardc.ARPA>
Subject: PackIt Application & Documentation
PackIt version 1.0 written by Harry R. Chesley
PackIt allows you to take one than one Macintosh file (either
application or document) and place them into one file. This allows you
to keep all related files in one file for either transmission or
storage.
From the documendation I gather the preferred way is to pack your
files first, and then if ASCII file is needed run throught BinHex. I
believe I tried it once the other way and had problems.
I will send the documentation in a seperate message. The
documentation is written Harry R. Chesley and is comprehensive.
[PackIt is archived in [SUMEX]<INFO-MAC>UTILITY-PACKIT.HQX. The
documentation is a MacWrite Document in BinHex 4.0 format. It is
archived in [SUMEX]<INFO-MAC>UTILITY-PACKIT.DQC. --RMA]
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End of INFO-MAC Digest
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