shulman@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Jeff Shulman) (11/11/85)
Delphi Digest Monday, 11 Nov 1985 Volume 1 : Issue 5
Today's Topics:
RE: Print to disk (Re: Msg 3113)
RE: Chernicoff Wrong? (Re: Msg 3114)
RE: Chernicoff Wrong? (Re: Msg 3123)
Ethernet & MacOffice
RE: Ethernet & MacOffice (Re: Msg 3145)
RE: Ethernet & MacOffice (Re: Msg 3149)
RE: Usenet Digest Volume 1 Issue 6 (Re: Msg 3159)
RE: QUED v1.21 (Re: Msg 3142)
MacTerminal
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From: PEABO (3119)
Subject: RE: Print to disk (Re: Msg 3113)
Date: 7-NOV-00:57: Programming
Rich,
The better databases (in my opinion, and for your application) allow
for the extraction of records for export into another application.
Sometimes the clipboard is used, and sometimes a variation of the
report generation feature of the database. Likewise importation of
records is allowed in a similar fashion.
If the clipboard is used, then you cannot move large amounts of data in or out
of the database at once, and it can be quite time-consuming to work that way.
For large amounts of data, the ability to read and write files is preferred.
Some integrated packages have telecommunication features for converting report
formats on mainframes to the database format, and presumable also in the other
direction. I am pretty sure Jazz can do this, for example.
Typical formats are: a line for each record, containing the fields,
with fields separated by comma or tab ... this one is popular with
Multiplan and MS-Chart (and presuambly Excel). There are also several
other formats: DIF (originated by the makers of VisiCalc), and SYLK
(by Microsoft for their spreadsheet products). These two are orieted
toward tabular material in spreadsheet forma, and can be quite awkward
to deal with, but very powerful because they encode all the display
attributes, column widths, and even formulas that are used in
spreadsheets.
Note that MS-WORD will accept the files containing fields separated by commas
for use with its mail merge feature.
The word processors on the Mac (MacWrite and MS-WORD) both allow text to be
saved in a text-only mode, where most of the special formatting information is
omitted, yielding an ASCII file.
Most programming langauges are able to read and write ordinary text files.
peter
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From: BRECHER (3123)
Subject: RE: Chernicoff Wrong? (Re: Msg 3114)
Date: 7-NOV-02:53: Programming
"0(A5)" denotes a certain location in memory; it does not denote the content of
register A5. Consider the difference between the following two instructions:
Move.L A5,A0 ;register to register
Move.L 0(A5),A0 ;memory to register
After the second instruction (but not the first), A0 will contain a
pointer to thePort. I presume Chernicoff (I don't have Vol. I) uses
the 0() notation to make this distinction clear. You should read
"0(A5) is a pointer to thePort" as "the memory location whose address
is in A5 contains a pointer to thePort."
Also, you must distinguish between the situations BEFORE and AFTER InitGraf.
BEFORE InitGraf, the contents of the memory location at 0(A5) is unknown. AFTER
InitGraf, 0(A5) contains ("is") a pointer to thePort because InitGraf put the
pointer (the one you passed to it) there.
As to why you can't pass 0(A5)... Here's a schematic of InitGraf's operation:
InitGraf:
; Caller's argument -- pointer to thePort -- is at 4(SP)
;
; First job -- put pointer to thePort where everybody will expect it to be:
;
(1) Move.L 4(SP),A0 ;get pointer to thePort into A0
(2) Move.L A0,0(A5) ;put pointer to thePort where it should be
;
; Second job -- initialize the QuickDraw global variables:
;
(3) Move.L WmgrPort,(A0) ;initialize the variable thePort
;initialize other QuickDraw variables...
Let's call the memory location denoted by 0(A5) by a name instead of a
number; let's call it "George" (remember, George is the name of a
memory location). If you Pea 0(A5) -- Pea George -- then after
instruction (1) A0 will contain George. After instruction (2) George
will contain George (George will contain his own address.) After
instruction (3) DESTROYS THE WORK OF (2), George will contain a
pointer to the current grafPort, i.e., he will contain the variable
thePort. But where now is a pointer to thePort? ThePort is the name
of a variable; the value of that variable is the address of the
current grafPort. How do we now find that variable -- where can a Desk
Accessory or the Dialog Manager, etc., obtain a pointer to it (its
address)? You say 0(A5) is ( contains) a pointer to it? No -- now
the memory location addressed by 0(A5) contains thePort, not a
*pointer to* thePort. True, A5 contains a pointer to thePort -- but
that's not what the specification requires. The Dialog Manager will
look for a pointer to thePort in the address contained in A5, not in
the register itself. Pea 0(A5) didn't accomplish the required task.
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From: MACLAIRD (3134)
Subject: RE: Chernicoff Wrong? (Re: Msg 3123)
Date: 8-NOV-00:25: Programming
This little equivocation bothered me for a while too! The trouble is
that the application's globals go the right way from (a5). However,
QuickDraw's go the other!!! The 68000 lets us do negative offsets: so
we have to "think negative" sometimes....by the way, I was also under
the impression that QuickDraw's globals could be put anywhere;
however, I gave up trying when I decided that the effort wasn't worth
it (MacDB taught me a lot that day).
[ ... ]
by the way, (pardon my English)
Laird.
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From: RWPHILLIPS (3145)
Subject: Ethernet & MacOffice
Date: 8-NOV-14:21: Hardware & Peripherals
Hey, guys --
I got the Fall 1985 issue of Wheels for the Mind from Apple in our AppleGram
from Apple, and it listed a gateway called 'SEAGATE' to connect the AppleTalk
system to an Ethernet system. I called the contact listed, but it wasn't them.
Has an yone w heard of this product, and if so, who has it and how much is it?
Thanks.
Ralph Wade Phillips RWPHILLIPS
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From: PEABO (3149)
Subject: RE: Ethernet & MacOffice (Re: Msg 3145)
Date: 8-NOV-22:42: Hardware & Peripherals
Ralph,
3COM makes an AppleTalk Ethernet interface. They are at 1365 Shorebird Way,
P.O.Box 7390, Mountain View, CA 94039 (415) 960-9200.
There may also be other companies with such a product, but you might
like to know that one of the founders of 3COM was one of the
architects of Ethernet back when he worked for Xerox.
peter
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From: CHESLEY (3199)
Subject: RE: Ethernet & MacOffice (Re: Msg 3149)
Date: 10-NOV 18:22 Hardware & Peripherals
SEAGATE was developed by Bill Croft at SUMEX (Stanford University Med Center).
It's being commercialized by a company called (if I remember the name right)
Kinnetics in Walnut Creek, CA.
All of the above people are friends of mine, so I really should be
giving them a better plug than this but I can't find the **** business
card. I'm not sure what state the product is in, but they're all first
class technical wizards.
It serves as a gateway between AppleTalk and Ethernet, and lets you use a Unix
machine as a file server for the Macs.
------------------------------
From: PEABO (3173)
Subject: RE: Usenet Digest Volume 1 Issue 6 (Re: Msg 3159)
Date: 9-NOV-20:07: Mousing Around
Re: Changing default baud rate of printer driver ...
Good luck, but I don't think the bottleneck in printing is really the
speed of the line. Printing is very processor intensive on the Mac
... during the second phase of printing, the print manager repeatedly
processes the page as recorded in Quickdraw format by the first phase
of printing, and converts it to a bitmap in horizontal bands. For
each band, it emits the bitmap to the printer.
Placing the buffer between the Mac and the Imagewriter speeds up
printing by overlapping the print time with the compute time for the
next band in the image. However, it is not clear if the limiting
resource is the speed of the serial line or the amount of time to
compute the bitmap. A complex page will take longer because the
entire page is clipped against the current band.
This suggests two things: one, use of a disk cache may speed printing
by reducing the time spend re-reading the Quickdraw image each time a
new band is started; two, there may be some gain to be had by finding
where the print manager allocated the buffer for the band, and
increasing it so that a larger band is processed (useful for Fat
Macs). This would reduce the compute time, but probably will
interfere with the overlap. Some experimentation would be necessary
to determine the optimum case, and it might be so data dependent as to
be unworkable.
peter
------------------------------
From: MACINTOUCH (3180)
Subject: RE: QUED v1.21 (Re: Msg 3142)
Date: 10-NOV 02:07 Tools for Development
Steve,
Is there an application that will let one do a "change all" within a
FILE, where any arbitrary ASCII string can be changed to any other -
and where TABs RETURNs and other invisible and CTRL characters are
treated the same as letters and numbers for finding/changing?
I haven't found one yet. I'd like to. It seems fairly simple to change the
editor's find/change logic to handle any 7 or 8-bit characters, using the mouse
to execute the commands -- it would be extra nice to have a change box where
characters were displayed in ASCII and hex AT THE SAME TIME (liek like the ISPF
option on IBM mainframes). An alternative would be to use a font that had some
display (hex or something like "tab" "lf" or "cr") symbol for ALL invisible
characters.
Other features I'm missing in Mac editors are:
- the ability to mask out discontiguous groups of columns and rows from a
"change all" or "find" command
Ric Ford
"MacInTouch"
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From: JEFFS (3194)
Subject: MacTerminal
Date: 10-NOV 16:22 Telecommunicating
Anyone know when the new MacTerminal is due out? It was *supposed* to be
out at the end of the summer but I haven't heard anything.
Jeff
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End of Delphi Digest
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