Info-Mac-Request@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (The Moderators) (04/04/89)
Info-Mac Digest Mon, 3 Apr 89 Volume 7 : Issue 61
Today's Topics:
Applescanner problems
Debugging XCMDs
Disinfectant 1.0 Bugs
Flowcharting App.
How can I recover a scrambled card?
Mac ==> 3812 printer
Mac to PC Graphics Conversion
Milo and a PD/SW Print Spooler
other INFO-groups
Problem harmonizing Adobe Palatino
ResEdit 1.3d1 -- part 1 of 7
Simtel20 Problems
Taxes and shareware
TOPS repeater use with KINETICS FP
UPGRADE for the Mac-SE
Your Info-Mac Moderators are Lance Nakata, Jon Pugh, and Bill Lipa.
The Info-Mac archives are available (by using FTP, account anonymous, any
password) in the info-mac directory on sumex-aim.stanford.edu [36.44.0.6].
Please send articles and binaries to info-mac@sumex-aim.stanford.edu.
Send administrative mail to info-mac-request@sumex-aim.stanford.edu.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 11:57 EDT
From: Matthew Wall <WALL%brandeis.bitnet@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Applescanner problems
I'm posting the following for a colleague. Any help would be appreciated,
and should be sent directly to me. My original inclination is to mistrust
the device driver for the scanner, since the Apple Scan software is prone
to the same sort of `failed to reallocate data buffer' error message.
Seems like it's not purging RAM properly...
[original message follows]
The problem occurs in Hyperscan when I try to reposition the white cross
to change the contrast and/or brightness of a scan or when I try to change
the halftone pattern using the Option key together with the Up or Down
arrowkey. I get the error message "Failed to reallocate data buffer." I
have traced the source of this error message to the card script of the
"Halftone" card, specifically to the calling of the halftone XCMD in both the
"on mouseDown" and "on arrowKey" handlers. In addition, if I invoke the
"histo" handler from the message box I also get the error, possibly on the
call to checkError hyperScan ("Plot Histogram"). The "Effects" card which
allows you to click one of 30 buttons to change the dithering pattern
seems to work even though it too invokes a call to the halftone XCMD, but
an even stranger thing happens here. If I put a debugging statement such
as "put abc into msg" into the "on mouseDown" handler of the card script,
the same error occurs as on the "Halftone" card. Removing the debugging
statement allows the call to the XCMD go through with no error!
I am using the Apple Scanner connected to a 1 Meg Mac II (could it be a low
memory problem and if so is there any way around this short of
upgrading?) and am running the latest versions of both the scanner
software and Hypercard (1.2.2). I would appreciate any help on this
problem, as we cannot use Hyperscan effectively if we cannot control the
contrast and brightness settings.
******
Matt Wall
Research and Academic Computing
Brandeis University
WALL@BRANDEIS.Bitnet
(617) 736-4587
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 19:17:54 PST
From: PUGH@nmfecc.llnl.gov
Subject: Debugging XCMDs
Someone asked a while back about how to debug an XCMD from within Lightspeed
Pascal. Well, it ain't possible. The thing to do is debug it from within
Hypercard and that is easy as long as you have sufficient hardware support.
Here's what I do:
I use Hypercard and MPW with both running under MultiFinder. I compile and
link my XCMD directly into a test stack which cannot be accessed by Hypercard
at the time of the link (i.e. have Hypercard sitting at home while you are in
MPW) or the link will fail due to the file being open. Now you can pop over
and test the XCMD in Hypercard. I know it's obvious, but here's the fun part.
In your code, use debugging statements of the form:
sendCardMessage('put "Starting crummy code"');
sendCardMessage('wait 5 secs');
sendCardMessage(Concat('put "Variable x = ',numtostr(x)));
sendCardMessage('wait until the mouse is down');
sendCardMessage('wait until the mouse is up'); { remember debouncing? }
I also seem to recall a problem with NumToStr. It is defined as:
FUNCTION NumToStr(num: LongInt): Str31;
but Pascal complains about the Str31 being incompatible. I simply changed the
Hypercard callback to be defined as
FUNCTION NumToStr(num: LongInt): Str255;
Since Hypercard will not return anthing bigger than 31 it doesn't matter what
the definition is. The structure is the same. Typical Pascal cheating. I
personally don't see why they used Str31 anyways. Seems kind of limiting to
me. Of course, you have to avoid using Str255 in XCMDs anyway since a field
or container simply won't fit in one.
That's how I debug XCMDs. Any better methods?
Jon
PS
I spoke with some guys beta-testing Supercard and they were using my XCMDs
in Supercard too. Talk about compatible! They even offered to send me money!
Who says shareware is dead? Granted you can't live off of it, but it buys me
lift tickets.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 89 08:00:45 PST
From: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu
Subject: Disinfectant 1.0 Bugs
Disinfectant 1.0 has been released for about a week and a half
now, and for the most part it seems to be working well. There
have been a few bug reports, however, and I want to let you know
that I'm working on a 1.1 release to fix them. It will be at
least a few weeks before I release it. I want to wait a bit until
I'm certain that we've discovered all the problems in 1.0.
Until then, watch out for the following problems.
Some kinds of "damaged" files could cause version 1.0 to hang,
bomb, or put up its "out of memory" alert. Version 1.1 will do
a better job of checking for damaged files. If you get a bomb,
hang, or out of memory alert while scanning with 1.0, try removing
the file that was being scanned from your disk and then scan the
disk again.
Scanning an active server disk in 1.0 is problematic. If other
users create or delete files or folders while the scan is in
progress, it can sometimes cause other files or folders to be
skipped or scanned twice. This is a problem shared by almost all
programs which scan disks. We've designed and implemented an
improved disk scanning algorithm for 1.1 to avoid this problem.
Note that in any case we continue to recommend that you take
servers out of production to scan them. This is the only way to
avoid file busy errors and insufficient privileges errors.
Version 1.0 evidently doesn't work at all over a TOPS network.
We'll try to find out why and fix it if possible. For now you
should not attempt to scan non-local disks over TOPS.
Disinfectant works on unenhanced 512K Macs with System 3.2 or
later, but it requires the "Hard Disk 20" file. We overlooked
this in our testing of version 1.0. Version 1.1 will check to
make sure this file is present, and issue an alert if it is
missing.
Version 1.0 doesn't properly display its icon in the Finder,
because we forgot to set the "bundle bit" when we shipped the
program. This stupid mistake will be fixed in 1.1.
If you run 1.0 on a GateKeeper-protected system to try to repair
infected files, and if you forgot to add Disinfectant to
GateKeeper's list of privileged applications, you will get
"unexpected" error messages. In 1.1 we will try to special-case
these errors and issue a better message that mentions GateKeeper
explicitly.
We received reports that in some cases Disinfectant claims that
a file is infected, even when other virus tools report that the
file is uninfected (e.g., Virus Rx 1.4a1 and Virus Detective).
This is possible, since Disinfectant uses stronger checks than
most of the other tools. The files sent to us were indeed
partially infected, but not contagious. We'll document this
possibility in version 1.1.
The version 1.1 document will correct a few minor typos and errors,
and we'll add a "Version History" section.
Thanks to everybody who's written about Disinfectant - I enjoy
and appreciate your notes. Special thanks to those people who
have reported bugs.
John Norstad
Academic Computing and Network Services
Northwestern University
Bitnet: jln@nuacc
Internet: jln@acns.nwu.edu
AppleLink: a0173
CompuServe: 76666,573
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 15:14 CST
From: <MPARK%UTMEM2.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Flowcharting App.
The flowcharting application is Design/2.0 from:
Meta Software Corp.
150 Cambridge Park Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140
It began life and is principally still an application
for programmers to draw flowcharts and other kinds of
data-flow diagrams. It can be used to create and animate
entity relationship diagrams. It can also inspect block
oriented code (such as Pascal or C) and extract data-
flow relationships from it. It is also extensible,
meaning that tools can be added to it.
For all its features and medium-range price (several
hundred dollars), it is not their high-end product.
For, I believe, several thousand dollars, Meta Software
sells a very sophisiticated application for computer-
aided software engineering.
Mel Park
Dept. Anatomy and Neurobiolgy
Univerisity of Tennessee, Memphis
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 09:40:26 PST
From: Mike_Dustan@cc.sfu.ca
Subject: How can I recover a scrambled card?
I don't know if I'm asking the impossible, but here goes...
A client of mine has a 500K HyperCard stack with well over 400
cards in it. Two cards in it have become damaged; any attempt to
read them produces the message "Unable to read background or card
ID xxxx" (or something similar; the message was relayed to me
late at night over the phone). HyperCard promptly quits to the
Finder. This happens when you go to the cards in question or sort
or compact the stack.
There are two backgrounds in the stack; one contains a single
card with printing buttons and scripts and things. The other
contains all the data cards. No cards have individual scripts;
everything is done with background scripts, buttons and fields,
plus a large stack script. I use a number of XCMDs and XFCNs,
particularly Jon Pugh's HPopUpMenu (real slick, that!),
GetFileName, SetFileType, Sort and Find. All of these live in my
Home stack and don't seem to clobber anything else, so I don't
really suspect them (do I?).
The cards of the stack are hard-linked (i.e. by their card IDs)
to other stacks, so recreating the stack is essentially out of
the question.
Are there any tools, tricks, workarounds or the like that I can
use to either zap the offending cards out of existence, or
twiddle them so HyperCard can at least read them? Are there any
stack verification utilities that can scan a stack and pronounce
it well-formed? (Hello, Apple?)
Please E-mail me if you know of anything; time is of the essence
here.
Mike_Dustan@cc.sfu.ca <--should reach me.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 14:06:53 CST
From: Larry Pickett <C4898%UMSLVMA.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Mac ==> 3812 printer
Has anyone managed to get a ibm3812 page printer to print MAC
produced graphics? Specifically what would be the most efficient
procedure for porting MAC graphics into a VM Publish document?
Acknowledge-To: <C4898@UMSLVMA>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 15:40:05 MST
From: Bob Bolt <BBOLT%UALTAVM.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: Mac to PC Graphics Conversion
Does anyone know of a way to convert Mac graphics (bitmap, PICT or
whatever) to IBM graphics format? I would also like to know it it is
possible to convert the other way, even though the quality of the graphic
would probably be lousy. We are considering the purchase of an Apple
scanner, but some of the graphics we do must used on an IBM-AT, hence the
need for the conversion.
Also, does anyone have any experience with the new Hewlett Packard
scanner? I understand that it is both Mac and IBM compatible and the
number of gray levels can be set by the user. Please reply to me directly
and I will summarize for the net. Thanks.
==========================================================
Bob Bolt Bitnet: BBOLT@UALTAVM
Instructional Tech Centre CI$: 75410,2754
University of Alberta
==========================================================
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 89 21:12:36 CDT
From: Chris Cleeland <cleeland@rex.cs.tulane.edu>
Subject: Milo and a PD/SW Print Spooler
I have two questions:
(1) There was a posting around January of a demo copy (probably in beta test)
of an application named "Milo". I had heard of the program, and it's
reputation of making anyone's life easier if they worked with higher-level
mathematics much. I downloaded it (all six parts, about 400K after
unstuffing) and can only get it to enter the application. All it says
is that this demo copy has expired. None of the files that I downloaded
with it would open, and nothing that I tried to do would work. My
question is, does anybody know either who posted this on info-mac, or,
does anybody know how I can contact the original author of Milo, so as
obtain another *working* demo copy of the application?
(2) I also have a friend who does extensive work in Excel as part of her
work-study job here at Tulane University. She regularly (about once a
week) has to print out 23 specially formatted worksheets. This process
consumes about 2 hours of her time, God willing that the printer doesn't
screw up. She's confined to the following system: vanilla Plus (1 meg),
Imagewriter II, external floppy. I would like to know the following: Is
there a print spooler available in either the public domain or a share-
ware product that works (or even *might* work) with this setup? If no
PD or SW product exists, is there anything that's not too pricey
available commercially?
Reply to:
Internet: cleeland@rex.tulane.cs.edu
ARPA: cleeland@rex.UUCP
Thanks in advance,
Chris Cleeland
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 10:04 PST
From: "Vladimir Ivanovic 415.423.7786" <IVANOVIC%VAXR@circus.llnl.gov>
Subject: other INFO-groups
Darwin C. Weyh asks:
Does someone have a list of other INFO Digest such as INFO-MAC?
The answer is: Yes! The latest and greatest Arpanet information can be
found on SRI-NIC.ARPA. Here is an old copy (but still basically
accurate) of the overview. The index to the interest groups is in
NETINFO: and is called either INTEREST-GROUPS.TXT or a set of smaller
files called INTEREST-GROUPS-#.TXT where # ranges from 1 to 7.
================================================================================
Welcome to the DDN Network Information Center! The following public
directories are located on the SRI-NIC.ARPA computer system:
DDN-NEWS: DDN Management Bulletins and DDN Newsletters
IEN: Internet Experimental Notes
IDEA: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Idea Papers
NETINFO: Contains Admin. notes, Documents, Host/TAC info,
Domain/Internet info, PC/Kermit info, NSC/HA lists,
Network program info, DDN Vendors Guide and DDN New
Users Guide
NETPROG: Network programs for WHOIS, HOSTNAME, getting the NIC
host table and host table compiler
PROTOCOLS: Network Protocols Information
RFC: Requests For Comments
To get a listing of filenames within one of these directories while using
FTP, use the "dir" (directory) command, as in "dir RFC:".
Each directory contains an index or indexes to the files within that
directory:
DDN-NEWS:DDN-NEWS-INDEX.TXT
IEN:IEN-INDEX.TXT
IDEA:IDEA-INDEX.TXT
IDEA:IDEA-INDEX-ABS.TXT
NETINFO:NETINFO-INDEX.TXT
NETPROG:NETPROG-INDEX.TXT
PROTOCOLS:PROTOCOLS-INDEX.TXT
RFC:RFC-INDEX.TXT
Copies of these indexes are also stored in this directory for your
convenience.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 17:40:12 PST
From: Jay Lieske <JHL@naif.jpl.nasa.gov>
Subject: Problem harmonizing Adobe Palatino
I have downloaded the palatino.hqx file from the font/adobe
directory. After running it through Font Harmony (the Suitcase II
utility) and check/fix-ing the screen fonts all is well. However,
when I try to 'harmonize' the styles the machine blows up every time.
I have downloaded the file twice, so it might be a problem with the
Sumex file or it might be a problem with Font Harmony. Font/DA mover
seems to think everything's OK.
-Jay Lieske
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 14:19:32 PST
From: lauac%QAL.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu
Subject: ResEdit 1.3d1 -- part 1 of 7
This is the latest version of ResEdit in a Stuffit archive.
--- Alex
UUCP: {att,backbones}!ucbvax!qal.berkeley.edu!lauac
INTERNET: lauac%qal.berkeley.edu@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
[Archived as /info-mac/resedit-13d1-part1.hqx; 150K
/info-mac/resedit-13d1-part2.hqx; 145K]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 07:27 PDT
From: "BRIAN KLAAS, CH3 POLE J7, MAILSTOP CH3-69" <BKLAAS%CH3@sc.intel.com>
Subject: Simtel20 Problems
Hi,
I had some similar problems with simtel20 in the past, but I no longer have
FTP access so I have forgotten how to use it. The problem that is being
encountered I beleive is due to incorrect FTP and Kermit procedure. The file
has to be FTP in TENEX???? format, and then Binary kermit down to the mac.
The mac should be in MACBINARY Kermit, and I found that it worked with
VersaTerm, but not redryder 9.4.
It has been a while since I used the server, so oI do not remember exactly,
look in the README on the server, I think that helps out a little bit (but
not much).
Brian Klaas
BKLAAS%CH3%sc.intel.com@relay.cs.net
BKLAAS%CH#@sc.intel.com
disclaimer: void where prohibited by law.....
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 11:42:51 EST
From: alan@ems.media.mit.edu (Alan Ruttenberg)
Subject: Taxes and shareware
I go to school at MIT, and want them to send some money for shareware
that I use. However they say that they need social security numbers of
people who they make payments to in order to make payment. Has anyone
else had this problem. Any suggestions? Should shareware include a ss#
as a matter of policy so that easy payment can be made? Or is this
legally unnecessary. Opinion? Facts?
-alan
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 15:59 EST
From: "John L. Jamison x8508" <JAMISON@campus.swarthmore.edu>
Subject: TOPS repeater use with KINETICS FP
Has anyone been able to connect a localTalk network, extended through the
use of TOPS repeaters, to a FastPath 4 successfully? We're having some
problems. Any thoughts are much appreciated.
John Jamison jamison@campus.swarthmore.edu
Sys/Net Mgr jamison@swarthmr.bitnet
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore, PA 19081
215.328.8508
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 14:56:33 EST
From: Murph Sewall <SEWALL%UCONNVM.BITNET@forsythe.stanford.edu>
Subject: UPGRADE for the Mac-SE
>> Apple has already announced an upgrade for the SE to the SE-030 (due this
~~~~~~~
>> Spring - still vaporware as far as I know - the price quoted in InfoWorld
>> was $1,000
>
>A friend of mine bought a SE/30 (on the the drawing board it was know as
>the MAC SEx (really!) ) so it's not vaporware, but it's costs lot more than
>$1,000.
Your friend had to buy the case, monitor, and keyboard too :-) The upgrade is
just a swap of motherboard and disk drive. I don't believe the upgrade is
available as yet (I've seen both an SE-030 and a IIcx in my local computer
store; I wonder when a 20 MHz or 33 MHz model will be available?).
/s Murph
I bought the latest computer;
it came fully loaded.
It was guaranteed for 90 days,
but in 30 was outmoded!
- The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer's SCARLETT
FAX it to me at: 1-203-486-5246
------------------------------
End of Info-Mac Digest
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