KOFOID@cc.utah.edu (08/27/90)
There is a request at the bottom of this letter. But first, an introduction... SAD STORY I recently downloaded a shareware system (identity unimportant). The only documentation was a HyperCard stack. This is not good, as it assumes that I will only read about the program while sitting at the computer. I prefer reading paper pages in the sun under a tree. Time to make a printout. Remember, HyperCard is hypertext. Cute little hidden fields pop up unexpectedly, buttons move to cards out of sequence, and fields scroll below the bottom of the card. Stacks are usually not printable linear documents. In this case, however, most of the important information is visible. There are 270 cards. I requested half-card printing to get 8 images per page. In order to read the print (Geneva), this means enabling font substitution. Things began to slow down. Over an hour for the job, with my colleagues breathing down my neck to get at the printer. At page 1, the printer ran out of paper! Obviously, I didn't want to wait another 75 minutes. Unfortunately, HyperCard is crippled, unable to print designated pages. The kludge, of course, is to copy the first 8 cards to a new stack, and print it. It was at this point that I made the most charming discovery of all: The stack is *password protected*. The asterisks mean "pronounce this while screaming". Why? I have been struggling with this. It makes no sense to me. Apparently, the authors want no one to print it in intelligible form, copy the contents of fields to abbreviated help documents, change misspellings, add comments for student use, or even read the document away from the Macintosh. I hope this is simply naive ignorance, because otherwise, it is arrogance of the worst sort. COMMENTS: 1. Hypertext is useful *only* at a computer terminal. 2. Duplicate all hypertext information in normal, linear, printable form. 3. Don't pass protect or otherwise freeze documentation. This is an insult to the user. Even with books, we can make notations in the margin. REQUEST Does anybody know how I can either deprotect the stack, or at least print its first page to match the remaining, successfully printed items? Cheers, Eric. __________________________________________________________________ | Eric Kofoid; Dept. Biology, U. of Utah; SLC, UT 84112 | | (801) 581-3592 | | kofoid@bioscience.utah.edu | | | | -- The University of Utah is blameless for anything I've said -- | |__________________________________________________________________|
bayes@hpislx.HP.COM (Scott Bayes) (09/10/90)
Couldn't you do what I often do (inelegant, but worked with a local DeskWriter) and "Print Stack", pressing cmd-. after seeing the first page exit the printer? Probably wastes 1 page, but is an order of magnitude or better down from reprinting the whole stack. Scott "inelegance is my middle name" Bayes