[comp.sys.mac.digest] Delphi Mac Digest V3 #47

SHULMAN@sdr.slb.COM (Jeffrey Shulman) (10/17/87)

Date: Sat 17 Oct 87 09:42:01-GMT
From: Jeff Shulman <SHULMAN@SDR>
Subject: Delphi Mac Digest V3 #47
To: Delphi-List: ;
Message-ID: <561458521.0.SHULMAN@SDR>
Mail-System-Version: <VAX-MM(218)+TOPSLIB(129)@SDR>

Delphi Mac Digest     Saturday, October 17, 1987     Volume 3 : Issue 47 

Today's Topics:
     Math typesetting (2 messages)
     RE: Hard disks.... (2 messages)
     RE: How to get info into HyperCard
     re: SE and mouse tracking
     DLOG/DITL on Mac II (2 messages)
     RE: Trouble with Power Station
     RE: Usenet Mac Digest V3 #79
     BMUG MacToberFest fair
     smart quotes
     Hard disks...
     RE: MultiFinder
     Apple Earnings - GOOD News
     HyperTalk question (2 messages)
     Shutdown
     Mac II ROMs (several versions?)
     Searching for the message. (6 messages)
     RE: Usenet Mac Digest V3 #82
     setting screen depth (2 messages)

---------------------------------------------------------------------- 

From: HAGIHARA
Subject: Math typesetting
Date: 10-OCT 03:32 Public Domain

Hello.  I have seen your program, Expressionist.  While it has a lot of
plusses, I find it extremely painful to go through italicizing the
variables in the equation.  Also while WYSIWYG approach is neat, I still
like the precise action of TeX.  Do you have any plan to implement
code-oriented features in your program?  By then I will be a registered
owner ...
                                Dave

------------------------------

From: DSACHS
Subject: RE: Math typesetting (Re: Msg 22783)
Date: 10-OCT 15:04 Public Domain

One problem with Expressionist is the very porr representation of
integral signs and braces. This is obvious when the graphics output of
Expressionist Maceqn, MathType, MathWriter and Microsoft Word are
displayed on a single page.

I have disected the Expressionist integral sign into its 6 components, 4
arcs and 2 ovals.  All the other programs use the Symbol font. MathType
and MathWriter even use the mulit-part representations..

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: Hard disks.... (Re: Msg 22785)
Date: 10-OCT 16:43 Hardware & Peripherals

I'm very happy with my Jasmine 80.  I bought it at the Expo and it
arrived about 2 weeks later.  Works perfectly, it's not very noisy, it's
fast, and I recommend it to anyone.  The driver software I have only
works on the the Plus /SE, but at the time I bought it I asked about Mac
II because I intended this to be the first part of my Mac II that I buy.
 Jasmine should have the Mac II driver software ready by now.

I have heard that the CMS units are also very good, and not much
different in price.

peter

------------------------------

From: NATURAL
Subject: RE: Hard disks.... (Re: Msg 22794)
Date: 10-OCT 20:35 Hardware & Peripherals

Bri and Peter... on some of the BBSs around, people have been
complaining about the CMS drive, particulairly, the 80s, so be alert.

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: How to get info into HyperCard (Re: Msg 22786)
Date: 10-OCT 17:07 Network Digests

>Date: Wed, 7 Oct 87 7:29:11 MST
>From: Major John Buono
>From: <buono%asbf-imp.huachuca-em.arpa@HUACHUCA-EM.ARPA>
>Subject: How to get info into HyperCard

[I don't have mail access, so I am posting this to the digest:]

>That is, how can you easily get information into a stack without the very
>time consuming venture of sitting at a keyboard and clicking aware.  To
>give an example.  I recently completed a stack for keeping tack of my library
>of books, records, video tapes and audio tapes.  This collection is very
>large (over 2000 books alone).  Now that the stack is completed I have to
>sit down for about 2 to 3 weeks of doing nothing but typing piece by piece
>to get the information in.

I have had in the back on my mind for the last ten years "putting my
book titles etc on the computer".  Although I may never get around to
doing this, let me mention that I figured the best way to proceed is to
buy one of those laptop machines (Tandy model 100's are very cheap these
days, although you would want to beef up the memory) and use that to key
in the data.  That way I don't have to make a production out of bringing
the Mac to the books or the books to the Mac and disrupting my workplace
for a couple of weeks.

Once the data is in the laptop, it's easy to transfer it to the Mac as a
text file, print it out for proofreading, and so on.  Then you use
HyperTalk to read the text file and produce the stack.  It's easy to
write HyperTalk programs to accommodate your input format, and while
they may not be super efficient, you can always leave the Mac chewing at
the file overnight.

I think it's also a good idea to pursue this task incrementally.  That
is, don't take 2 or 3 weeks off to do it (you'll never get the time),
but plan to take 3 or 4 months and do a little bit at a time, gradually
building up the stack.  This has the added advantage that you have
something to show for your efforts right away, to cheer you on when it
gets to be a drag.

>Wouldn't it be nice to be sent a
>hypercard stack of the index to a magazine that could be easily loaded (hmm
>maybe the cauzin reader will pay off yet).

The Cauzin reader is better than typing in the text, but for any file
that takes more than two pages of the magazine (optimistically 60-70K at
the highest density) it is much better to download the file from a
telecomm service.  HyperCard stacks are not bulky per se, but people
have been taking advantage of the sound features and including very
large 'snd ' resources in some of the stacks you have heard about.  For
stacks which really need 2 megabytes or more, I think the solution is to
use disks as an exchange medium, not telecomm.

peter                          "In any context, half of all references
PEABO @ DELPHI                  are local and half are global."

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: re: SE and mouse tracking (Re: Msg 22787)
Date: 10-OCT 17:27 Network Digests

>From: mlwh%sphinx@Sun.COM (Martin Hall)
>Subject: SE and mouse tracking
>Date: 5 Oct 87 05:12:55 GMT

>Is there a general problem with mouse tracking and Mac SEs?

All the new mouses do tracking of position locally in the mouse, and
send messages to the Mac with the position.  Older ("classic" mouses)
send digitzer pulses to the Mac, which tracks the mouse position.  So,
on an old Mac, when things get busy (principally disk I/O), the mouse is
sluggish because some of the pulses are lost which interrupts are
disabled.  But on new Macs, the mouse gets "jumpy" instead, because the
mouse position is accurately tracked but the screen position is updated
less frequently.  It gets worse though, because when the mouse is set to
one of its accelerator modes (using the Control panel), jumpy
coordinates get interpreted by the Mac as gross movements and the
software assumes you want to move the mouse faster than 1:1.

peter                          "In any context, half of all references
PEABO @ DELPHI                  are local and half are global."

------------------------------

From: MWEASNER
Subject: DLOG/DITL on Mac II
Date: 9-OCT-23:03: Macintosh Developers

While working on a new version of an application I came across something
that seems rather strange.  I hope someone can shed some light on this.

The original version worked on the MacPlus, SE, and II without problems
(don't know about the 64K ROM Macs).  However, the new version would
bomb on the Mac II with a bus error but still worked on the Plus and SE.
After much head scratching I finally found the problem.  I had changed
a WIND resource to a DLOG resource but had neglected to add the item
list ID or even add a DITL resource.  Once this oversight was corrected,
the program worked on the Mac II.

Now, can someone tell me:

  1.  why a program with a DLOG but without a corresponding DITL works on the
      MacPlus and SE,

and

  2.  why such a program doesn't work on the Mac II and gives a bus error of
      all things.

Please post your answer here to save others the grief I went through.

Thanks.

Mike Weasner

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: DLOG/DITL on Mac II (Re: Msg 2095)
Date: 10-OCT 00:13 Macintosh Developers

My guess is that it is dereferencing zero and location zero has
different things in it on the Mac II vs. the older machines.  You might
try looking around with the debugger and seeing what would happen if the
ROM tried to use zero as the address of a handle to the DITL.

peter

[ Also, referencing memory that doesn't exist will cause a bus fault on the
Mac II (it wraps around on earlier Macs.) - Jeff ]

------------------------------

From: WISNERS
Subject: RE: Trouble with Power Station (Re: Msg 22772)
Date: 11-OCT 19:56 Creative Pursuits


John I don't own Power Station, but I have discovered that the bug you
refer to is not unique to Power Station.  Apparently the routine that
updates the Master Directory or Desktop on the floppies using System
6.0b-x has a flaw. Using MS Word 3.01 I thrashed 2 floppies using 6.0b. 
I guess that either Word or Apple didn't get that particular routine
right-my guess is Apple.  We'll see when 6.0 is "officially" released.

Steve Wisner (WISNERS)

------------------------------

From: ASMCOR
Subject: RE: Usenet Mac Digest V3 #79 (Re: Msg 22787)
Date: 11-OCT 23:24 Network Digests

To Ted Johnson-
  The high-pitched sound is called an 'alias' and it is normal. It is a
function of the not-very-expensive sound chip in the Mac. There's no way
to avoid it through software, at least not with the square wave
generator. Even in four-voice mode it's noticeable at some frequencies.
 Jan

------------------------------

From: BMUG
Subject: BMUG MacToberFest fair
Date: 14-OCT 05:08 MUGS Online

PLEASE POST AND PASS ON THIS ANNOUNCEMENT WHEREVER POSSIBLE!

                              BMUG Presents:

                             The Third Annual

      MMM  MMM    AA     CCCC  TTTTTT   OOOO   BBBB   EEEEEE  RRRRR
      MMMMMMMM  AA  AA  CC       TT    OO  OO  BB  B  EE      RR  RR
      MM MM MM  AAAAAA  CC       TT    OO  OO  BBBB   EEEE    RRRRR
      MM    MM  AA  AA  CC       TT    OO  OO  BB  B  EE      RR  RR
      MM    MM  AA  AA   CCCC    TT     OOOO   BBBB   EEEEEE  RR  RR


                       FFFFFF  EEEEEE   SSSSS  TTTTTT
                       FF      EE       SS       TT
                       FFFFF   EEEEE    SSSSS    TT
                       FF      EE          SS    TT
                       FF      EEEEEE   SSSSS    TT


                               MACTOBERFEST!

                            The Show for USERS

                          Thursday, October 22nd
                              Pauley Ballroom
                            UC Berkeley campus
                           Berkeley, California
                               11 am - 7 pm

Whether you're a true beginner or an ace programmer on the Macintosh,
you'll be fascinated at MacToberFest.  See the latest in Macintosh
developments, demonstrated by end-users!  There will be seminars,
exhibits of high-end & exotic products, over $5,000 in door prizes
(including a Macintosh system donated by Apple Computer), and much, much
more!

At 7:30 pm in Physical Sciences Lecture hall, BILL ATKINSON, author of
HYPERCARD, will discuss his latest creation.  The next day, there will
be a 4th Dimension seminar by ACIUS at the BMUG office in Berkeley.


                     ALL EVENTS ARE ABSOLUTELY FREE!

                            Exhibitors include:

                 Cricket Software            Neuron Data
                 Farallon Computing          Palomar Software
                 Interleaf                   Radius
                 Kinetics                    Silicon Beach Software
                 Letraset USA                SuperMac Technologies
                 LevCo                       TOPS
                 National Instruments        VersaCAD
                 National Semiconductor


        For more information, contact BMUG at (415) 849-9114 anytime!

------------------------------

From: DDUNHAM
Subject: smart quotes (Re: Msg 22826)
Date: 14-OCT 21:20 Network Digests

 > From: PUGH@NMFECC.ARPA
 > Subject: Laser Quotes INIT

While these INITs may be useful, I don't consider them truly smart,
because they can't take into account context (i.e. you can't click an
insertion point and type a quote and get it to curve correctly).  The
only way to do it right is to build it in to a program.

It appears that Ann Arbor has been pressured into putting "smart quotes"
into FullWrite.  I suggest we all bug other word processor people to do
the same. In act, I make my algorithm available to any publisher who
wants it, in essence for free (I'd like to guarantee that everyone does
it the same way).  It only takes a few lines of code.

------------------------------

From: HALL
Subject: Hard disks...
Date: 14-OCT 22:47 Hardware & Peripherals

I've been looking around at some hard disks (see my previous messages
for the whole sordid story ;-) ), and of the fifteen or so companies
I've contacted (or tried to contact), the NuData drive seem to be some
of the best.  (OK, the best, but I won't guarantee it...)  Their prices
are kind of high, but they seem to be well built, use good components,
and the salesman knows what he's talking about.  (They also give some
pretty good developer discounts, in case any developers are
interested... ;-) )  They make 20MB, 40MB, 90MB drives and up.  In the
20MB and 40MB drives they use Fujitsu drives.  (Non-RLL.  They buy the
controllers from SMS, SuperMac's parent company.  They could get the
same RLL controller that SuperMac is trying to use in their drives (not
too successfully), but say they aren't good enough.)  In the 90MB and
bigger drives, they use CDC drives.  I had them run DiskTimer II on the
90MB drive, and it was impressive.  At 3 to 1 interleave, on a Mac II,
it did 21 in the reads, 48 in the writes (they don't use a blind write
like most people do), and 6 in the seeks.  That's more than twice as
fast (in the reads and seeks) than a DataFrame 60XP.

Before I run out and buy one (or several), has anyone used a NuData
drive? How reliable are the Fujitsu and CDC drive mechanisms?

Thanks, Brian

------------------------------

From: STEVEMALLER
Subject: RE: MultiFinder (Re: Msg 22828)
Date: 15-OCT 02:19 Business Mac

Yup. I went across the street today and picked up the "gold" masters.

    System 4.2
    Finder 6.0
    MultiFinder 1.0
    Font/DA Mover 3.5
    ...and so on

Nice to see real software for a change. I suspect that we'll have 'em
available

here before too long. But be forewarned: the new stuff is big. For
example, here is a directory from System Tools 1:

        Name                   Size    Last-Mod-Date
        --------------------  ------ -----------------
        DeskTop                  13K 10/12/87  8:03 AM
        TeachText                23K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Clipboard File            1K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Color                     3K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        DAJHandler                6K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Easy Access               4K  4/14/87 12:00 PM
        Finder                   99K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        General                  14K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Key Layout                4K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Keyboard                  5K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Monitors                 17K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Mouse                     4K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        MultiFinder              55K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Scrapbook File           12K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Sound                     4K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Startup Device            3K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        System                  321K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Read Me                  10K 10/12/87  8:00 AM
        Apple HD SC Setup        27K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Installer                32K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Macintosh II Script       6K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Macintosh Plus ScripI     5K  10/8/87 12:00 PM
        Macintosh SE Script       5K  10/8/87 12:00 PM

GOOD GRIEF! Can you believe that the Finder is almost 100K? Oy vey! And
imagine downloading the System (321K)? What do you'all think? Should we
upload this stuff?

Ciao,

     Steve Maller
     Apple Computer

------------------------------

From: STEVEMALLER
Subject: Apple Earnings - GOOD News
Date: 15-OCT 02:44 Business Mac

Strong Sales and Earnings Gains

Cupertino, California.  October 14, 1987.  Apple Computer, Inc. reported
strong increases in net sales and earnings in fourth quarter and fiscal
year results for the periods ending September 25, 1987.

Net sales rose to $786.4 million during the fourth fiscal quarter, a 54
percent increase over the corresponding quarter in the prior year. 
Fourth quarter earnings climbed to $0.54 per share, a 116 percent
increase compared to $0.25 per share, (as adjusted for a two-for-one
stock split effected on May 15, 1987) , in the comparable period of the
prior year.

For the full year, Apple's sales rose by 40 percent to $2.66 billion
from $1.90 billion in fiscal 1986.  Net earnings for fiscal year 1987
were $217 million, a 41 percent increase above the $154 million recorded
in fiscal 1986. Earnings per share were $1.65 per share compared to
earnings of $1.20 per share, (adjusted for the two-for-one stock split)
in fiscal year 1986.

"Our new products are shipping in record numbers," declared John
Sculley, chairman and chief executive officer.  The Macintosh family of
products is shipping at its highest level ever."

"Our education sales remain strong", said Sculley.  "The AppleIIGS has
helped us maintain a leadership position in the kindergarten through
grade 12 market by shipping in record volumes during this school year's
first education buying season.  The Macintosh family of products is
selling very well in the higher education market.

"We are very encouraged by the strength of demand for Apple products,"
added Sculley.  "We have taken this opportunity to increase sales and
marketing expenses in order to support further market expansion.  During
the current quarter we increased our field sales staff in the U. S. by 
approximately 25 percent from the end of the previous quarter."

"Fiscal year 1987 has been a year of record achievement for Apple
Computer," noted Sculley.  "We successfully introduced many new products
throughout the year.  They have been well accepted, particularly in the
business market.   We have now completed the repositioning of Apple and
enter fiscal year 1988 with strong momentum and a full complement of new
products."

------------------------------

From: DEWI
Subject: HyperTalk question
Date: 15-OCT 03:35 Creative Pursuits

I need to say something like "number of cards of background XYZ" in a
stack I'm toying with. It doesn't seem to be possible for some reason.
Anybody have any suggestions short of maintaining a count in a field
somewhere?
           Many thanks,  Dewi.

------------------------------

From: STEVEMALLER
Subject: RE: HyperTalk question (Re: Msg 22861)
Date: 16-OCT 00:21 Creative Pursuits

In response to your question regarding how to get "the number of cards
in background XYZ", I don't think there is a way to do it. Bummer, huh.
Nevertheless, here is a script I just tested and it works fine for the
same purpose. Not too fast, but it works...

  set lockscreen to true
  push card
  go to first card of bkgnd 1
  put 0 into numCards
  put the id of this card into cardOne
  put true into running
  repeat until not running
    if the number of this bkgnd is 1 then
      add 1 to numCards
    end if
    go to next card
    if the id of this card is cardOne then put false into running
  end repeat
  pop card
  set lockscreen to false
  put numCards && "cards in this background..."

Understand? Good...

     Steve Maller
     Apple Computer

------------------------------

From: MACENGLISH
Subject: Shutdown
Date: 15-OCT 23:39 Bugs & Features

When I select shut down, I get a messages that says "You may safely
switch off your machine now."  There is also a restart button.  When I
click on the restart button, sometimes it restarts my SE and sometimes
it crashes, so I have to turn off the Mac.  Any explanations?

Debbie

------------------------------

From: INTECO
Subject: Mac II ROMs (several versions?)
Date: 16-OCT 15:52 Macintosh II

It seems to me that there exists at least two versions of the Mac II
roms! At least mine have no PaletteManager... ($AA90...) Uwe

------------------------------

From: NATURAL
Subject: Searching for the message.
Date: 16-OCT 17:27 Creative Pursuits

No, this is not a moonie post.

For some reason, when I search for the word 'message' in a script from a
script, it doesn't seem to find it.  Anyone know why?  Is this a key
word or something?

Tx.

josh

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: Searching for the message. (Re: Msg 22876)
Date: 16-OCT 19:53 Creative Pursuits

It should work, but take note that "message" has more synonyms than any
other HyperTalk word:  message, msg, msg box, msg window, etc.

You are putting "message" in quotes, right?  If you don't it will take
what ever is in the message box and use that as the search string.

peter

------------------------------

From: NATURAL
Subject: RE: Searching for the message. (Re: Msg 22883)
Date: 16-OCT 23:55 Creative Pursuits

Bingo.  No quotes.  That's it.

------------------------------

From: NATURAL
Subject: RE: Searching for the message. (Re: Msg 22888)
Date: 16-OCT 23:57 Creative Pursuits

While on the subject of HyperQuestions...

Is there anyway to recover from a disapearing field.  It was transparent
and I know it's there but I think it's hidden.  Hmm, maybe a show all
fields... Off to the HyperBible.

------------------------------

From: PEABO
Subject: RE: Searching for the message. (Re: Msg 22889)
Date: 17-OCT 01:34 Creative Pursuits

put 0 in num repeat for the number of fields on this card
    show field num
    add 1 to num end repeat

peter

------------------------------

From: STEVEMALLER
Subject: RE: Searching for the message. (Re: Msg 22890)
Date: 17-OCT 03:38 Creative Pursuits

An easier way of showing all fields on a card...

  repeat with i = 1 to the number of card fields
    show card field i
  end repeat
  repeat with i = 1 to the number of bkgnd fields
    show bkgnd field i
  end repeat

     Steve Maller
     Apple Computer

------------------------------

From: DSACHS
Subject: RE: Usenet Mac Digest V3 #82 (Re: Msg 22880)
Date: 16-OCT 20:58 Network Digests

RE: newton@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Mike Newton)  request for larger file
names from Finder: The public domain program "Layout" may be of some
help.

------------------------------

From: JOSEF
Subject: setting screen depth
Date: 17-OCT 02:49 Programming Techniques

I have an application which for reasons of speed, has to write directly
to the screen.  Before doing so, I would like to be able to set the
screen depth momentarily back to 1.  I cant find anything in IM-V about
how to do this. Does anybody know?

Joe

------------------------------

From: STEVEMALLER
Subject: RE: setting screen depth (Re: Msg 2108)
Date: 17-OCT 03:43 Programming Techniques

Joe,

It would be faster to write directly to an offscreen grafport that is
one bit deep, then do a CopyBits(offMap,thePort^.portBits...) to the
real screen. You see, if you are going to bump the Mac screen back and
forth between 1 and n bits, you are actually going to take more time,
expecially if MultiFinder is running. Haven't you ever done that on the
Control Panel "Monitors" cdev? Takes a moment to figure it out.

Let's face it: the days of direct screen access are numbered. If you are
on a color system, you are going to have to suck it in and be a  model
citizen...

     Steve Maller
     Apple Computer


------------------------------

End of Delphi Mac Digest
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