SHULMAN@sdr.slb.COM (Jeffrey Shulman) (08/01/88)
Date: Mon 1 Aug 88 09:27:41-EDT
From: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN@SDR.SLB.COM>
Subject: Delphi Mac Digest V4 #13
To: Delphi-List: ;
Message-ID: <586445261.0.SHULMAN@SDR.SLB.COM>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(218)+TOPSLIB(129)@SDR.SLB.COM>
Delphi Mac Digest Monday, August 1, 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 13
Today's Topics:
RE: MAC II Composite video board
Case Problem
Mathematica
Scanners (2 messages)
MultiLith Masters in a Laserwriter
HD Backup
re: Another Finder/Desktop Idea
re: Open Folders
LaserWriter 6.0 Driver *feature*
RE: Usenet Mac Digest V4 #90 (3 messages)
re: Re: Hard Disk Icon
GrowZone procs (4 messages)
Disk catalogger (2 messages)
MacSqueeze incompatible with Excel 1.5
OpenResFile bug
Police Quest
RE: INFO-MAC Digest V6 #66
re: mathematica (2 messages)
MAC-Wang emulation
Smalltalk V/Mac?
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From: MACWEEKBOS
Subject: RE: MAC II Composite video board (Re: Msg 26973)
Date: 12-JUL 11:28 Macintosh II
Data Translations has a pretty nice board called QuickCaptures. I'd
check it out.
Ric
------------------------------
From: EGBDF
Subject: Case Problem
Date: 12-JUL 23:52 MUGS Online
Can anyone help me? Is there anyway to change from upper to lower case
in Word 3.0 without actua 3.0 without actually typing everything over
again? I understand the "find" and "change" functions but to do this
for every letter of the alphabet would be a bit tedious. Thanks in
advance. Pat
------------------------------
From: ROWLAND
Subject: Mathematica
Date: 13-JUL 18:57 Macintosh II
I received my copy of Mathematica today. For anybody else that's ordered
a copy start trying to get a copy of Wolfram's book about Mathematica.
It is NOT included with the package and is absolutely necessary. NONE of
the documentation has any information about how to use the mathematical
part of it (ie what functions are available or what it does or ...). The
only info is about how to use the Macintosh ! For $800 that is one of
the chintziest decisions I can think of; it bodes ill. (I still haven't
found anyplace in the Boston area that carries the book - I've tried MIT
Coop and Quantum Books.)
There are some sample files from which you can deduce something, but I'm
fairly expert and am having problems; a novice would be totally lost.
Also memory is required - they have really scrimped to make it work in 2
Megs - and you can't make any of the pretty pictures that probably wowed
the demo audiences.
I've managed to bomb it fairly regularly (in fairness at least half of
them were probably due to running out of memory - the program does not
handle this at all gracefully).
If I ever figure out how it works, I'll let you know if it can do any
math ...
Mike Burns
------------------------------
From: RJWM
Subject: Scanners
Date: 14-JUL 01:49 Hardware & Peripherals
I need to incorporate several hundred line diagrams (flow charts) into
an electronic manual, does anyone have a good recommendation for a
scanner for the Mac? It needs to have high precision and it would be
nice it if could capture the charts in something other than a bitmap
form. Thanks. -Richard Mansfield
------------------------------
From: CHUQ
Subject: RE: Scanners (Re: Msg 27063)
Date: 15-JUL 00:16 Hardware & Peripherals
SuperPaint 2.0 will have auto tracing in it. Adobe Illustrator 88
already has it, I believe.
The best discussion I"ve yet seen on Scanners is in the current isue of
Verbum.
I'd definitely track it down before buying anything. There are quality
and cost issues that nobody else has dealt with (or at best glossed
over....) in the other magazines.
chuq
------------------------------
From: BLOOMHARDT
Subject: MultiLith Masters in a Laserwriter
Date: 14-JUL 15:49 Business Mac
Has anyone tried running a Multi-Lith master through a Laserwriter? I'm
still struggling with ways of getting Laser images onto this particular
printing plate - it's a paper plate.
Paul Bloomhardt
------------------------------
From: BRESCIAN
Subject: HD Backup
Date: 14-JUL 21:19 Business Mac
I've just attempted to backup my CMS 30meg hard drive with the Apple HD
Backup from the Utilities 1 disk. I have a little under 25 meg on the
drive and the backup program said I would need 64 sides. This makes
sense, since that's about 25,600 meg worth of floppy. What happened was
that I got the "Backup Complete" prompt -- and that was when it also
read 20 sides to go at the bottom of the screen. I was only on disk 22
(side 44, 800K disks). Am I safe, or should I be bummed that I have to
do this all over again? Everything seems to be okay with the drive, and
just for fun. I checked the last disk to see what was on it, and it did
have the lasy files from the HD. Thats last files, not lasy files, oops,
also a comma after fun. You see? I'm all flusstered! Help! -Paul
------------------------------
From: DDUNHAM
Subject: re: Another Finder/Desktop Idea (Re: Msg 27068)
Date: 16-JUL 05:31 Network Digests
>From: "Anthony E. Siegman" <siegman@sierra>
>Subject: Another Finder/Desktop Idea
>small "launch" button somewhere in one of the corners, and clicking on
>that button launches a user-preselected application
Sounds like a horrible interface; it fails my sloppiness test because it
uses small buttons. Icons at least are big fat targets.
David Dunham "If it has syntax, it isn't user-friendly."
Maitreya Design
------------------------------
From: DDUNHAM
Subject: re: Open Folders (Re: Msg 27068)
Date: 16-JUL 05:31 Network Digests
>From: "Frank ODwyer Trinity College Dublin"
>Subject: Open Folders
>finder opens windows which were closed before the call to the DA
Gosh, sure sounds like Finder speeds up its operation by only writing to
disk when absolutely necessary (when it launches something). Sure
sounds like replacing Finder is more than just calling _Launch. (Sorry,
I've never been a fan of DAs launching things -- what happens when
you're in an application and forgot to save your changes? What happens
under MultiFinder?)
David Dunham "We've got the best government money can buy."
Maitreya Design
------------------------------
From: JEFFS
Subject: LaserWriter 6.0 Driver *feature*
Date: 16-JUL 12:41 Macintosh Developers
There is a new *feature* (read *bug*) with the LaserWriter 6.0 drivers.
A call to PrOpenDoc will reset the current resource file to be the
printer resource file. This isn't a problem as long as the printer was
opened last (as in TN#161) but if it wasn't..... This was NOT a problem
with the previous drivers. The work-around of saving and resetting the
current resource file between the PrOpenDoc call seems to work.
I've reported the *feature* to MacDTS and await their reply.
Jeff
------------------------------
From: HALL
Subject: RE: Usenet Mac Digest V4 #90 (Re: Msg 27080)
Date: 16-JUL 21:31 Network Digests
>I just spoke to SoftStyle today regarding an additional printer driver
>to the PrintWorks collection that would work w/the DeskJet (they already
No, no, no. Don't bother with SoftStyle/PrintWorks. I've tried
PrintWorks (with an Epson printer) and it's garbage. It worked very
inconsistently; I had to reinstall it every time I wanted to print!
SoftStyle's tech support was no help (and was a long distance call to
Hawaii!). Basically, I had to throw PrintWorks away and start all over
again. Besides the fact that it didn't work very well, it can't be
installed by dragging the drive! It has to be installed using the
Installer. Makes me wonder what they're really doing behind my back...
If you want to run a DeskJet from a Mac, the only things (so far) is
the Grappler LQ from Orange Micro. It works very well (I used it for
about two weeks before I had to return it), but is slow. Also, some
things (on the Mac II, anyway; I didn't have any trouble on the SE)
won't print to it. I suspect that will be fixed in the release version.
(I was using a beta...) It does require 4x fonts to print; Orange
Micro is supposed to be shipping several families of 4x fonts with the
LQ. Of course, you can use the LaserWriter II SC fonts, which have 4x
fonts for Times, Courier, Helvetica and Symbol for 10-24 point printing.
Brian
------------------------------
From: ALLBERY
Subject: RE: Usenet Mac Digest V4 #90 (Re: Msg 27087)
Date: 17-JUL 21:53 Network Digests
Grappler LQ does indeed ship with 4x fonts for laser printers, etc. I
haven't had a chance to test it with a LaserJet yet, but it works well
(if slowly) with an Epson compatible. [WARNING: if your printer is
"smart" about paper feeding, try to disable the smarts. The Grappler is
also smart about it, and you can't disable that.]
You actually need 2.5x fonts with Epson LQ1500 or compatibles, 4x with
300dpi printers. [Uh, strike that warning above, you were talking
DeskJet, no?]
++Brandon
------------------------------
From: HALL
Subject: RE: Usenet Mac Digest V4 #90 (Re: Msg 27095)
Date: 17-JUL 21:58 Network Digests
Yes, I was talking DeskJet; did I forget to mention that it was slow
when printing with Mac fonts? The only way to speed it up is to print
with the native fonts.
Brian
------------------------------
From: DDUNHAM
Subject: re: Re: Hard Disk Icon (Re: Msg 27083)
Date: 17-JUL 21:28 Network Digests
>From: thecloud@pnet06.cts.com (Ken Mcleod)
>Subject: Re: Hard Disk Icon
I wrote a quick and dirty INIT called BootDiskIcon; it fakes the Mac
into using any icon you like for the startup disk (well, I don't think
it works for floppies, because Finder has an override for their icons).
I'll post it to DELPHI, and it should eventually get to your net (thanks
to the hard-working Jeff Shulman).
David Dunham "Whenever you see a sign 'No Exit,' it means
Maitreya Design there is an exit."
------------------------------
From: DDUNHAM
Subject: GrowZone procs
Date: 17-JUL 22:21 Programming Techniques
I'm sitting here pondering GrowZone procedures. I've got one, and it
works, but I can't really figure out what it's supposed to do. Let's
say, for example, Standard File takes too much memory and calls my proc.
What's a clean way to get back to my main
event loop? (One thing, I think I'll need to do more preflighting.)
------------------------------
From: PEABO
Subject: RE: GrowZone procs (Re: Msg 2469)
Date: 19-JUL 12:26 Programming Techniques
You'd have to force-cancel the SF dialog, I suppose. The GZ proc is
supposed to its work in an isolated fashion, so you shouldn't need to do
anything with your main event loop. The idea is that you take advantage
of available memory to hold reconstructable resources. When the GZ proc
gets control, that signals you to unload the resources and purge them
(presumably the unloading is a matter of writing things to disk or
eliminating data that has been computed or cached for performance
reasons). Or, you have resources that would be purgeable, except you
need to maintain some kind of synchronization between them (can't purge
A and keep B, for instance). So the GZ proc knows about these
dependencies and purges things in an orderly fashion.
If the GZ proc succeeds, then it returns control in the context it was
called from. If it doesn't, then the application gets hit with an
out-of-memory condition which it handles as best it can. Practically
speaking that would get you back to your event loop (is that what you
meant by your question?).
The GZ proc probably shouldn't do much more than purge resources (or
release memory you are keeping track of yourself), because it can't call
on anything that would need to allocate memory.
peter
------------------------------
From: JIMH
Subject: RE: GrowZone procs (Re: Msg 2471)
Date: 19-JUL 20:13 Programming Techniques
Peter, i was thinking about a growzone proc a while back and thought
that it might be nice to allocate a block of memory when you start your
program that you dont intend to use thats freed up by the growzone proc.
this would not need to be large, just big enough to let the program
save the files and exit gracefully. I havent given it a lot of though
but it seemed like a good idea at the time. when i get around to
implementing it i guess i will find out ;-) jim
------------------------------
From: DDUNHAM
Subject: RE: GrowZone procs (Re: Msg 2472)
Date: 20-JUL 22:46 Programming Techniques
Sounds like what Knaster suggested in his first book. The problem is,
you can run out of memory by some sort of provisional request (at least
that's what I hear the LW SC does), so quitting all the time would be a
bad move.
------------------------------
From: HALL
Subject: Disk catalogger
Date: 19-JUL 00:08 MUGS Online
I need a disk cataloging program that: 1. Makes two lists of disks,
one listing files, sorted by filename, giving diskname, pathname, type,
creator, date(s), size, etc., but MUST show the comments from the Get
Info box. The other list should list the disks sorted by disk name,
show the contents of the disk's get info box, and then list the files on
the disk by filename, preferably showing type, creator, etc., and MUST
show the comments from the Get Info box. 2. It shouldn't catalog the
contents of my hard disk(s) along the way... 3. It should output the
file in text (at least) format. Any other options/goodies would be
great, but all I'm doing is producing a printed list of disks/contents
available from my MUGs' libraries. It should also be capable of
handling at least 1000 disks, but 100 or so would be OK. ;-) I know
that DiskQuick 2.10 does most of this, but it doesn't show the Get Info
comments in the listing by filename (I think; maybe I should check
it...).
Thanks, Brian
------------------------------
From: JEFFS
Subject: RE: Disk catalogger (Re: Msg 27098)
Date: 19-JUL 07:37 MUGS Online
You should be aware that Apple has provided *NO* way to access the Get
Info comments nor are they currently willing to tell anyone how to do
it. They told me it WILL be changing in future Finder's. Thus, if you
happen to find such a program, it WON'T work with future Finder's.
You'll have to wait until Apple provides a standard method that will
work across all Finder's.
Jeff
------------------------------
From: MACWEEKBOS
Subject: MacSqueeze incompatible with Excel 1.5
Date: 19-JUL 10:41 Bugs & Features
I've been advised by the product manager of Symantec's MacSqueeze that
the current version of that utility is incompatible with Excel 1.5.
Saving a squeezed file under Excel 1.5 (with its new file format) will
damage the file.
Symantec has a patch, I believe, and is coming out with a new version.
Contact the company for details or check next week's MacWEEK.
Symantec Corp., 10201 Torre Ave., Cupertino, Calif. 95014-2132; (408)
253-9600.
Ric Ford
------------------------------
From: DDUNHAM
Subject: OpenResFile bug
Date: 19-JUL 21:07 Programming Techniques
Am I right in remembering that the bug with OpenResFile when the name of
the file came from a resource (or didn't, I don't recall) affects 64K
ROMs only?
------------------------------
From: HALL
Subject: Police Quest
Date: 21-JUL 21:39 Games and Entertainment
Well, now I'm having trouble with Police Quest (finally solved BDC, and
those others...). I've made it onto the narcotics squad, and need some
evidence to keep Marvin Hoffman in jail. By reading the clipboard and
files, I can figure out that there's a warrant for him under another
name, but can't seem to tell the judge that. I get in to see here all
right, but after that.... (It took me quite a while to figure out how to
arrest the drunk, not to mention how to keep Hoffman from shooting me in
the first place...)
Thanks, Brian
------------------------------
From: HALL
Subject: RE: INFO-MAC Digest V6 #66 (Re: Msg 27145)
Date: 26-JUL 19:47 Network Digests
>Date: 22 Jul 88 16:12:00 EDT
>From: <brun@nrl-lcp.arpa>
>Subject: Cyrillic fonts
>Reply-to: <brun@nrl-lcp.arpa>
>
>Is there a freely available font for the Cyrillic characters (Russian)?
There are a number of them available in the NAMU (NASA Area Macintosh
Users) Software Library; send $3 for a catalog disk to:
NASA Area Macintosh Users
Software Library Catalog Disk
403 NASA Road 1 East #384
Webster, Tx. 77598
NAMU is a non-profit educational organization. Software Library disks
are 800K, $6 by mail to nonmembers, $5 by mail to members; $3 at
meetings (if you supply your own disk), $4.50 including a disk, to
members. Dues are $15 a year for individuals, $21 for households.
Brian
------------------------------
From: MACWEEKBOS
Subject: re: mathematica (Re: Msg 27145)
Date: 29-JUL 14:55 Network Digests
re: Mathematica
I am speaking on my own, and not as a representative of MacWEEK...
You hit the nail on the head. I am convinced that Mathematica is an
important product and I'm not sure exactly what it does. I know that it
does mathematics and I look forward to examining it closely in the next
few weeks. It has been released and you can buy a real copy today. I
didn't write the MacWEEK articles about Mathematica, but it seems to me
that it is worth telling people that the thing exists so they can follow
up on it themselves while we, too, are trying to understand it
completely. I hope you'll take a look at it and let us know on the net
what you think.
Ric Ford MacWEEK Boston
------------------------------
From: ROWLAND
Subject: RE: re: mathematica (Re: Msg 27153)
Date: 29-JUL 20:12 Network Digests
I've had Mathematica for the past two weeks, working it rather hard on
some real problems. Overall I am really impressed. The book by Wolfram
is available (at Quantum Books in Boston area) and gives a very good
introduction to the package.
So far I've used it on two problem areas and learned a fair amount new
(about the problem area) each time. In one case I observed some
particular behavior, decided it was a general result, and Mathematica
essentially proved it with built-in knowledge about symbolic vector
analysis.
In a second area (Mie scattering from a sphere) I was able to enter the
symbolic equations from the textbook essentially exactly as they stood
and get some nice plots of numerical results from those equations (which
involved three or four kinds of special functions and their
derivitives). I was able to do in four hours (and one hour was spent
discovering that Mathematica's phase convention was different from mine)
what had taken me nearly two months to do as a graduate student.
The thing that has impressed me the most is that it takes away none of
the fun of doing this kind of applied mathematics. You still have to
decide what approach to take or what kind of simplification to do - it
just removes the drudgery and leaves the fun. It does NOT lessen the
need for mathematical knowledge and experience, but it makes gaining
that experience a whole lot easier than doing it by hand, loosing signs,
miscopying terms, etc.
The mathematica kernel is separate from the front-end on the mac. In
fact the potential exists for doing the actual math calculations on a
big machine and just using the mac for the interfacing. This is good
because the thing eats memory (not unreasonably but because the problem
can swell during intermediate calculations) - you can't even load the
symbolic integration module in 2 megs, 4 or 5 megs is recommended, and I
don't always have room to spare with 8 megs.
Too many other features to mention here (and I certainly haven't
explored it to even know them all yet), but overall I have to agree it
is significant. I would estimate a factor of between 5 and 10 speed up
in exploration time for physics problems, and that is getting close
enough to make a qualitative difference in how some things are done.
Sorry about the length of this message, but for people that do this sort
of thing for a living or for the joy of it : get the book to see what's
up. I'm betting you'll fall in love (so to speak).
Mike Burns
------------------------------
From: FMBBS
Subject: MAC-Wang emulation
Date: 30-JUL 20:59 Telecommunicating
I need a program for the MAc that emulates the Wang terminal. I am a
VALCOM dealer and would like to use my MAC to get into the Valcom system
without having to buy another terminal for my desk. Any help?? Bill T
------------------------------
From: RAMARREN
Subject: Smalltalk V/Mac?
Date: 31-JUL 23:47 Tools for Developers
I saw the announcements for Smalltalk V/Mac in the latest HOOPLA! and am
very excited. Combined with the ParcPlace v2.3 product, it looks like
we now have a real Smalltalk development capability on all Mac's.
Do you have any comments on Smalltalk V/Mac? How might one go about
being on the beta list? I have folks at JPL who are just starting to
get interested in using Smalltalk now and I would like to see what to
recommend.
Also, did you notice the two positions that Apple is looking for
Smalltalk developers advertised in the same HOOPLA!?
I am currently testing/playing with the ParcPlace v2.3 system on the
Plus and the II and it is very slick.
gdg
------------------------------
End of Delphi Mac Digest
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