Moderators.Jon.Pugh;Dwayne.Virnau;Lance.Nakata@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (06/12/88)
INFO-MAC Digest Sunday, 12 Jun 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 60 Today's Topics: Fortran competition: Absoft, Mactran and MPW (long) tired of xbin dumping core ?? here is a fix. Re: InvisHDMainBo3b InvisiHDMainBo3B File Sound cdev patch BroadCast's shutdown feature Re: Appleworks->MacWrite Transfer More info on Dimmer/Mac ][/System 6.0 Shutdown of OREGON1 Bill Gates in Copenhagen MF Event Documentation MacMysteries Disassemblers International Sorting OCR-A font JIODone call at end of drvrCtl DA routine Asnyc Peek Anyone know if Apple is planning to offer 1.6 Mb floppy capability? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 5 Jun 88 18:11:00 EST From: "Charles E. Bouldin" <bouldin@ceee-sed.arpa> Subject: Fortran competition: Absoft, Mactran and MPW (long) Reply-to: "Charles E. Bouldin" <bouldin@ceee-sed.arpa> I have been beta testing and/or using the 3 Fortran compilers for the Mac. In fact, this is taken from the article that I sent to Mactutor. First, the raw numbers on the tests that I ran. I chose to run the Sieve, Whetstone and LinPack. These are virtually universal tests of all Fortran compilers on all computers. These will tell a lot about the number crunching ability of these compilers, although virtually nothing about the integration of the compilers into the Mac environment. All tests were run on an upgraded 68020/881 Mac+ with Novy systems board. This gives about Mac II speed. Table entries are always, top to bottom, DCM Mactran, Absoft, and Lang. SYS. With that said, the results: Compile and Link Time Code Size Run time Sieve 5.2 sec DCM 155K bytes 12.1 sec 5.1 sec Absoft 13K 9.8 sec 29.0 sec Language Systems 49K 13.5 sec Whetstone 14.5 sec 171K 16.0 sec 7.8 sec 19K 12.4 sec 52.8 sec 54K 12.4 sec LinPack 11.5 sec 160K 549K whets* 6.3 sec 16K 526K whets* 40.2 sec 49K 347K whet* *On the whetstone test, the results are given in units of "whetstones" that reflect have many floating point operations were done. On the whetstone test, a larger number means FASTER execution. All other execution times are in seconds, where, of course, smaller number means faster. Strictly by the numbers, Absoft is a clear winner on 7 of 9 tests, ties one and loses whetstone speed slightly to DCM Mactran 77. But, the numbers don't tell all. Absoft's bugginess is legendary. Their small code size is because their philosophy is to put zero support for the Mac environment in the runtime package; for example, the default runtime window is a simple "glass tty". If you want Mac features, you must do it yourself. DCM suffers from the staggering 155K runtime library which is "dumb-linked" into your code. Thus, "hello, world" takes 156K. They even force you to carry the software floating point libraries around when you generate hardware floating point! No excuse for this, in my opinion. To be fair, part of the size is Mac environment stuff in the runtime libs. MPW fortran (language systems) is slowest on compile and is intermediate in code size. I think they hit the correct balance on code size, but need to work on the compile speed. They are competitive on Sieve, lose big on whetstone, and actually win Linpack (12.37 secs to Absofts 12.44). Lotta bugs still in the beta compiler, however. Easily the worst thing with all 3 compilers is the bugs. Folks on this net are well aware of the sad history of the Absoft compiler, but I also found code that DCM Mactran wouldn't compile which Absoft would. Lang. sys. compiler is still (beta, remember, I wanna be fair) easy to crash, either during compile or at runtime. Bottom line for me: I am sticking with Absoft compiler, since I think I know most of the things to avoid at this point. Neither of the alternatives shows (yet) enough improvement for me to switch. Absoft will have a significantly improved 2.4 release in late summer, with a lot of bug fixes, so I am going to wait and see. If 2.4 doesn't fix known problems, then I will think again about changing compilers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jun 88 02:06:48 CDT From: werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig) Subject: tired of xbin dumping core ?? here is a fix. if you use xbin on your UNIX-box to unhexify archived Macintosh files, you, probably, know that every so often xbin dumps core. this is, usually, caused by the fact that the name of the file which xbin is trying to create contains characters which are not legal under UNIX. this can be fixed why modifying xbin so that it does not try to create files with illegal characters. below follows a diff-file of the necessary C-source changes to the xbin source-code (which can be found in the archives at SUMEX and, probably, on your machine somewhere, if the executable is available) 255,262c255,266 < /* get rid of troublesome characters */ < for (np = namebuf; *np; np++) < if (*np == ' ' || *np == '/') < *np = '_'; < < sprintf(files.f_data, "%s.data", namebuf); < sprintf(files.f_rsrc, "%s.rsrc", namebuf); < sprintf(files.f_info, "%s.info", namebuf); --- > /* get rid of troublesome characters */ > for (np = namebuf; *np; np++){ > if (*np == ' ' || *np == '/' || *np == '!' || > *np == '(' || *np == ')' || *np == '[' || *np == ']' > || *np == '*' || *np == '<' || *np == '>' || > *np == '?' || *np == '\'' || *np == '"' || *np == '$') > *np = '_'; > *np &= 0x7f; > } > sprintf(files.f_data, "%s.data", namebuf); > sprintf(files.f_rsrc, "%s.rsrc", namebuf); > sprintf(files.f_info, "%s.info", namebuf); ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Jun 88 09:38:38 edt From: moy@nrl-csr.arpa (Gene Moy) Subject: Re: InvisHDMainBo3b This is in response to the following: I have a file called InvisiHDMainBo3b on my hard drive. It is in the >root directory. It takes up 325460 bytes in the data fork, and has no >resource fork. It is flagged as Invisible. I recognized the Bo3b as the >name of someone from Apple (see your TechNotes). What is this file? Do I >need it? It's taking up a lot of room. > This file is created by Aplle's HD Backup program. I t keeps track of files that have been backed up. There is also a file on each of the diskettes InvisHDBo3b on each of the floppies used in the backup process. The file starts out small if you do a complete backup around several hundred Bytes (yes Bytes, not KBytes). Whe you do incremental backups, this file seem to get larger. Does it have to be that large, I don't know. I did delete this file on my hard disk and HD Backup did not think I had ever done any backups before. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Jun 88 09:30:40 EDT From: Atul Butte <ST602397%BROWNVM.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU> Subject: InvisiHDMainBo3B File Brian Schipper <claris!skip@ames.arc.nasa.gov> answered my question about that invisible file on Apple Hard Drives: -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= To: ST602397@BROWNVM.BITNET Subject: Re: InvisiHDMainBo3b This file is used by Apple's HD Backup program to keep track of when and where each file has been backed up. You'll need it if you want to do incremental backups from your last backup, or if you want to restore a file automatically. UUCP: {ames,apple,portal,sun,voder}!claris!skip Applelink: SCHIPPER1 Arpanet: claris!skip@ames.arc.nasa.gov Phone: 415-960-2618 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _______________________________________________________________________ Atul Butte Brown University /-------\ /---------\ . ! OK ! ! CANCEL ! . \-------/ \---------/ ST602397%BROWNVM.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jun 88 09:28:36 PDT From: PUGH@NMFECC.ARPA Subject: Sound cdev patch For those of you receiving Apple's System 6.0, you might dislike the small size of the Sound cdev's selection window, as I did. You can enlarge this with a couple of simple patches. This is, of course, not recommended, so beware. Open the Sound file with a disk editor and change 0095 0062 to 0095 00FD and 009E 0054 to 009E 00F1 What you are doing is to enlarge two DITL items in the Sound resources. This is a bit difficult to do in ResEdit due to the layering of other DITL items. I used DeRez and Rez to change them and then compared them to get the patches since I can't distribute a modified piece of Apple's software. Jon ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jun 88 21:59 MET From: JOACHIM LINDENBERG <JOACHIM@iravcl.ira.uka.de> Subject: BroadCast's shutdown feature I got several mails concerned about the possibility to turn off a Macintosh remotely. Calm down... *** NO ONE CAN SHUTDOWN YOUR MACINTOSH UNLESS YOU ALLOW TO ! *** The shutdown mechanism is a runtime option, available on Mac IIs only. If used on Mac 512, +, SE only the shutdown dialog will be presented, power will remain on. There is a flag in the BroadCast globals called "shutdownenabled", that if true will allow shutdown messages to be processed. A shutdownmessage is simply an empty message. *** NOTE THAT THIS FLAG IS OFF BY DEFAULT - YOU NEED A PROGRAM TO SET IT (or enter the debugger) ! *** The user interface of BroadCast makes no provision to enable or send such messages, as it has been implemented for use in our lab - used by undergrad students to learn programming - it allows the operators to turn all machines collectivelly off. A special program is required to enable/send these type of messages, ON BOTH MACHINES. The feature is useless in a standard environment where the user should have complete control over the machine. I can't imageing that you'll need this feature. I mail you this information, that you get the feeling that none is able to shur your machine off without your consent. Please mail all questions/suggestions/bugs to one of the addresses below, use the bitnet address given only to request a copy of broadcast. Joachim - Joachim Lindenberg, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Karlsruhe Sommerstrasse 4, 7500 Karlsruhe 1, Federal Republic of Germany joachim@ira.uka.de, joachim@germany.csnet, ..!mcvax!unido!uka!joachim - Joachim Lindenberg, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Karlsruhe Sommerstrasse 4, 7500 Karlsruhe 1, Federal Republic of Germany joachim@ira.uka.de, joachim@germany.csnet, ..!mcvax!unido!uka!joachim ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Jun 88 07:55:36 PDT From: halff@nprdc.arpa (Henry Halff) Subject: Re: Appleworks->MacWrite Transfer > Date: Fri, 3 Jun 88 14:01 EST > From: JJ_KRAME%FANDM.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu > Subject: Appleworks->Macwrite transfer > > Hello All, > > I need to transfer a large appleworks(Apple ][)file to Macwrite. I have tried > Apple's file exchange and MacLink but have found that there is no suitable > translator.. Can anyone inform me of a simple method for completing this > task? Any help would be appreciated. Joe Kramer > > Bitnet: JJ_kramer@fandm > Consultant -- Franklin and Marshall College > Funny thing. I had to do the same thing yesterday. Here is my best solution. 0. Put a beer in the fridge. 1. On the ][, load Appleworks and bring the file up on the desktop. Hit open-apple-P and choose the last alternative on the menu, namely, print to disk. Make up a new file name and supply its full path name when Appleworks asks for it. The file will be printed to disk in the Apple ]['s funny version of ASCII. 2. Get yourself an Apple ][ telecommunications program. Figure out whether it runs under Prodos or DOS 3.3. 3. If the telecommunications program runs under DOS 3.3, use the PRODOS utilities to convert the file you created in step 1 to DOS 3.3. 4. Start the telecommunication program in the ][ and load a telecommunications program (like miniterm or Red Ryder) on your mac. 5. Hook the two machines together using modems or a null modem cable. (How to make a null modem cable: Plug the Apple ][ imagewriter cable into the "telephone" jack on the back of the Apple ][. Plug a regular modem cable into the "telephone" jack on the back of the mac. Hook the two cables together with a female-female gender gender changer. [How to make a female- female gender change: Go down to Radio Shack ... .]) 6. Set the two programs to communicate at the highest possible speed allowed by the programs/modems. 7. Start a text capture on the mac. Have the Apple ][ transmit the file you created in Step 1, or the one you created in Step 3. (DO NOT USE AN ERROR CORRECTING PROTOCOL FOR THIS TRANSFER.) When the file has been sent, close the text capture on the mac. 8. On the mac, get into MacWrite and open the file you captured in Step 7. 9. Open the beer you put in the fridge in Step 0. It's probably cold by now. Hope this helps. hh ------------------------------ Reply-to: pnet01!pro-simasd!pro-nsfmat!pro-la!pro-citadel!fredc@trout. Reply-to: nosc.mil Date: Sat, 11 Jun 88 04:58:01 PDT From: fredc@pro-citadel.cts.com (Fred Condo) Subject: More info on Dimmer/Mac ][/System 6.0 In an earlier message, I wrote that the Dimmer CDEV for the Mac ][, which is by Chris DeRossi of Apple, is incompatible with the new system release (6.0). Further investigation has shown that the incompatibility comes about as a result of an interaction between Dimmer and the MacroMaker. You can use one or the other, but not both. Of course, since Dimmer is a Mac-][-only CDEV, this applies only to Mac ][s. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Jun 88 16:39:18 PST From: "David Boyes (Network Postmaster)" <556@OREGON1> Subject: Shutdown of OREGON1 This is primarily directed at the BITNET subscribers to the Info-Mac Digest who receive their digests from MAC-L@OREGON1, but is of general interest to this forum as well. Host OREGON1 is being shut down by administrative fiat, therefore all subscribers receiving digests from this site will be moved to other servers over the next few days. You shouldn't miss any digests, and the address for submissions is still Info-Mac@sumex-aim.Stanford.Edu. Thank you for your patience in this manner. The Administrative Empire won this round... ---------- David Boyes (503) 686-4394 |BITNET: 556@OREGON1 Systems Group |ARPA : 556%OREGON1.BITNET@ University of Oregon Computing Center| CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU UUCP: [your fav backbone]...!tektronix!uoregon!oregon2!oregon1!556 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Jun 88 21:00:23 DNT From: Jakob Nielsen Tech Univ of Denmark From: <DATJN%NEUVM1.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU> Subject: Bill Gates in Copenhagen Bill Gates (CEO of MicroSoft) was in Copenhagen yesterday and gave a talk on his views of the future in the IBM PC sector. He promoted graphical user interfaces and windows very heavily and tried to get everybody to jump on that bandwagon. One of the major points of his presentation was a demo of PC-Excel which was indeed nice and has some features not in the present Mac version. Of most interest for this newsgroup may be the fact that Gates pointed to Excel as the exemplary application for the new hoped-for consistent user interfaces on the PS/2 (i.e. the same role as that played by MacWrite in the Mac world). On the basis of my experience at a recent ACM workshop on consistency,I asked Gates what other methods they would use to ensure consistent user interfaces. The answer was not really satisfactory but included a "MS Windows style Guide" (= Apple Human Interface Guidelines ??) It certainly seems that the OS/2 will take people down somewhat the same road as that travelled by Mac users. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Jun 88 13:23 EST From: <BELSLEY%BCVMS.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU> (DAVID A. BELSLEY) Subject: MF Event Documentation What are the sources available for documentation for the new Multifinder Event items; that is, WaitNextEvent, Resume, Suspend, etc? a. are there any non-ADPA sources, such as an add-on to Inside Macinosh? b. are there any TechNotes that deal in detail with these items? c. what is the relevant ADPA document name? Many thanks to responders - I know this stuff has been around for a while, but I've just encountered my first need for it. I am a bit miffed that it doesn't seem to be available in the normal ways. This is material that is highly akin to that of Inside Macintosh, and, to my way of thinking, ought to be similarly available. david a. belsley boston college belsley@bcvax3.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Jun 88 11:33:17 CDT From: CB Lih <CL06076@UAFSYSB> Subject: MacMysteries Hello, I have to setup Mac SEs on a regular basis. There's some things that have been bothering me about this process. Perhaps someone on the net could tell me why: do they put the top of the plastic sack on the bottom of the SE? do they put tape around the ends of the plastic sack on the keyboard cable? don't they twist the screen adjusters so it uses the whole screen? don't they give me a Mac II? Ok, I know the answer to the last question. Any takers on the others? And another thing. Why does the SE default to (tablet) instead of the mouse? Even 'slow' would be a great improvement over 'very slow'. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Sincerly, and I mean that, =---> CB Lih <---= User Services -> Computing Services -> University of Arkansas -> Fayetteville CL06076@UAFSYSB Disclaimer: There's a hole in my ozone layer. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jun 88 16:45 EDT From: "Maj. Doug Hardie" <Hardie@DOCKMASTER.ARPA> Subject: Disassemblers I am looking for a disassembler that is not dependent on a particular form of object code. The disassembler in the archive appears to look for a specific form from one compiler and it will ignore code that is not in that form. -- Doug ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jun 88 01:19:59 PDT From: Fung-Fung Lee <lee@shasta.stanford.edu> Subject: International Sorting Mac's international sorting routines are supposed to handle the sorting processing for non-Roman scripts. However, I recently found that they did not sort quite well with the Chinese Talk, the Chinese Script Interface System. Is it possible to create my own ordering routines? How can I do that? Fung F Lee (lee@shasta.stanford.edu) ------------------------------ Date: Wed 8 Jun 88 08:18:16-EDT From: Computing Analysis Corporation <eoyang@A.ISI.EDU> Subject: OCR-A font We have a need for an ugly font to be printed with a Mac on a Laserwriter: The IBM Ball says OCR-A #96 Our people would rather produce the documents on their Mac than on a selectric, however it must be scannable by a specific scanner which reads only this font. Does anyone know if it exists? Thanks much, Greg Eoyang ------------------------------ Date: Thursday 09 Jun 88 10:30 AM CT From: Tom Pinkerton <ASTTOMPA%UIAMVS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> Subject: JIODone call at end of drvrCtl DA routine Anyone, For a while now, I've been using an ending to the drvrCtl desk accessory routine that was supplied with my MDS development package. That ending, rather than simply returning, calls the low-level Device Manager routine IODone (pointed to by the JIODone global variable) before returning. I've been blindly keeping this in all my DA sources without really knowing its purpose. I assume that who ever wrote the sample DA for the MDS development system knew what he or she were doing when they added this call. All I can figure is that the call somehow clears the IO Request sent to the DA from the driver IO Queue so that other devices won't receive the request (since they needn't bother with it, I guess). Does anyone know anything about this? Is it safe to continue using this call, or can it have bad side effects on anything? Thanx, Tom P. ------------------------------ From: "R.Crispin - Psychology" <psych@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> Subject: Asnyc Peek Date: 9 Jun 88 12:39:31 GMT Reply-to: "R.Crispin - Psychology" <psych@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> A few weeks ago I got some stuff that was supposed to contain Async Appletalk and Async Peek. Appletalk I got, but only the documentation for Async Peek was included. Could some one send it to me. Thanks Richard Crispin Dept. of Psychology Bitnet: psych@watdcs University of Waterloo Unix : psych@watdcsu.UWaterloo.ca Waterloo, Ont. Canada N2L 3G1 (519)885-1211 ext 2879 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jun 88 16:31:02 est From: Lucius Chiaraviglio <chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> Subject: Anyone know if Apple is planning to offer 1.6 Mb floppy Subject: capability? A while ago I heard a rumor that Apple was planning to offer 1.6 Mb (quadruple density, I guess) 3+1/2 in. floppy drives for the MacIntoshes. Does anyone know when (if ever) this is supposed to happen? Also, does anyone have any idea of how compatible these 1.6 Mb floppy drives (if any) will be with 800 kb disks? I would prefer that they be able to write as well as read 800 kb and 400 kb disks. . . -- Lucius Chiaraviglio chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu lucius@tardis.harvard.edu (in case the first one doesn't work) ------------------------------ End of INFO-MAC Digest **********************