howard@amdahl.amdahl.com (The Toolmaster) (07/16/87)
First the problem:
I am running 4.1/5.5 on an SE/hd and I am noticing a problem occasionally
with StdFile dialogs. They seem to be missing the Volume icon and name and
the folder popup menu above the scrolling file list. If I click in these
areas (where they should be) it works. In the case of the popup, it draws
the current dir and the rest of the popup with the path. If I select properly,
its all undrawn. If I move off the popup, the system will leave the current
dir. the way it should have drawn it in the first place. Under no circum-
stances have I been able to get the volume icon/name to draw in the right
corner. As I said though, clicking where it should be does raise me a
directory. Any clues? This behaviour has definitely been exhibited in
Excel 1.04. I think that its happened with other applications but I
didn't pay enough attention before to say for sure.
Now the general info:
AT LAST! Here I am, deep in the heartland of the Fortune 500; Corporate
America, with a MacSE on my desk, another one down the hall w/Laserwriter+.
Ah, it doesn't get any better than this :-) (well, a MacII would be nice :-)
Next step; there are a whole bunch of Macs in our new building and I'm going
to net them all together with Phonenet. This should get interesting.
On the LabMac, I am running MacInUse 1.0 to track usage. V2.0 is on order
(should be shipping "any day now"). I'll let everyone know how this works
out over time. Drop me mail if your interested.
Had a 50% failure rate on keyboards for the SEs. (one of them went bad)
Started sending two characters for one key, like "w" key would generate "wq"
and the "q" key would generate "wq", and "<return>" would generate "<return>;".
A new keyboard definitely fixed the problem. I don't know if it was like
that out-of-the-box since the only keyboard intensive task I seem to do is
post news. (The rest of the time is spent just reading and hitting space :-)
I talked to Lonnie Abelbeck about Versaterm (while trying to figure out the
keyboard problem) and he mentioned a 3.1 release is due in about a month
(with a corresponding 2.1 release of Versaterm-Pro). No word on features
I didn't ask and he didn't volunteer. So, Versaterm users might want to set
$10 aside at the end of the month.
STILL, waiting for Word3.01. BTW, that will be the official version number
according to a Microsoft Rep. my wife talked with on the phone yesterday. The
Rep. said it was not shipping yet, three or four weeks yet. I seem to remember
saying I'd rather wait a bit longer than get another low-quality release.
I'm beginning to eat those words. The Fullwrite guys have just about
managed to miss a HUGE marketing window. I guess that's the way it goes.
Spotted recently: a color version of MacDraw labelled version 2.0D25
(I think that's right, it was definitely a development version number)
which has the Font and Size menus separated and the Font menu ends with
"Font...". Three guesses.
Also, the wife was talking to the CricketDraw people recently about more than
one page ability. The answer, don't look for it in the next release, maybe
the one after it. Why? They seemed to say something about trying to maintain
compatibility with Apple and their postscript stuff (laserprep?) and Apple
is taking a millenia to produce "The Solution", or something close to that.
On the positive side, we don't see too many half-baked ideas come out of
Apple and this should be no exception. Still its funny, I've seen old versions
of CricketDraw (0.85 beta) that handled multiple pages. Time marches on,
and occasionally marches backwards.
Second to last word:
If you are a MacDraft user and you're planning on getting a large
screen, make sure you get the "Large Screen Version" of MacDraft from IDD.
The wife and I were down at Computerware trying MacDraft out and found it had
strange problems on a Radius, and different strange problems on a "Big Picture"
but strangely enough, ran out-of-the-box on the Sigma Designs display.
A call to IDD the next day uncovered the 'mystery version'.
Last word:
Is anyone using the Sigma Designs monitor out there? It seemed like a really
nice monitor. The ability to switch the resolution between 72/115 dpi on the
fly (via DA) was really neat. The 19" in 115dpi mode lets you get about 3
pages on the screen. The only implementational problem is working in 115dpi
mode with a fully expanded window and then switching to 72dpi; you can't get
to the resize box to size down the window. I could live with this :-).
From my first glance, if you're considering large screens, this is a must-see.
Well, that's all for now, hope it was informative. Meanwhile, I'll start
accumulating more data for the next "brain-dump". Signing off...
--
"Plan for the future because that's where you Howard C. Simonson
are going to spend the rest of your life." {hplabs,ihnp4,nsc}!amdahl!howard
- Mark Twain -
[ The disclaimer for this message may be found in my next article ]