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TidBITS#158/11-Jan-93
=====================
Macworld Expo news here! We have our informal awards, focussing on
products like Retrospect 2.0, StuffIt Deluxe, The Journeyman
Project, and Envisio's SmartStack. We look more closely at
Apple's Adjustable Keyboard and MAXA's Alert, which promises to
fix all your problems automatically. Also check out a new Trojan
report and a note from the author of Gatekeeper along with Mel
Martinez's clever method of integrating Nisus and Expressionist
with QuicKeys.
Copyright 1990-1992 Adam & Tonya Engst. Non-profit, non-commercial
publications may reprint articles if full credit is given. Other
publications please contact us. We do not guarantee the accuracy
of articles. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and company
names may be registered trademarks of their companies. Disk
subscriptions and back issues are available - email for details.
For information send email to info@tidbits.com or ace@tidbits.com
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AOL: Adam Engst -- Delphi: Adam_Engst -- BIX: TidBITS
TidBITS -- 9301 Avondale Rd. NE Q1096 -- Redmond, WA 98052 USA
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Topics:
MailBITS/11-Jan-93
YAT - Yet Another Trojan
Gatekeeper Message
Nisus and Expressionist
Macworld Expo SF 1993
Most Interesting Hardware: SmartStack
Booth Most Likely to Drive You Stark Raving Mad
Best Giveaway: Video Toaster Tape
Best Buttons: Peachpit Press
Best Hat: Robin Williams
Best Financial Reason to Attend: StuffIt Deluxe
Most Promising Game: The Journeyman Project
Apple Adjustable Keyboard
Alert! Most Likely to Succeed, If...
Reviews/11-Jan-93
[Archived as /info-mac/digest/tb/tidbits-158.etx; 28K]
MailBITS/11-Jan-93
------------------
Phew, what a week! Macworld Expo is always a trip, figuratively
and literally, and this year was no exception. We'll have news
from the show for the next few issues, but first, I have to clear
up a few things from last week.
Lotus Number
Leon Campbell writes, "I called the 800 number for the $49 upgrade
to Lotus 1-2-3 mentioned in TidBITS#157 and the operator said she
only knew about the $119 upgrade price. I read her the TidBITS
piece and she put me on hold for a couple of minutes and came back
with the message that the number I called could not do the $49
upgrade. She gave me another number - 800/343-5414. I called and
they took care of the order very nicely.
Information from:
Leon Campbell -- campbell@brahms.udel.edu
Nisus Drag & Drop
Thomas Robb writes, "SoloWriter 1.3, the 'Japanized' version of
Nisus, has drag & drop already! I'm not sure if Ian Shortreed, the
'Japanizer,' wrote the code on his own or if Nisus gave it to him,
but it's there, according to the 1.3 literature."
Information from:
Thomas N. Robb -- trobb@ksuics.kyoto-su.ac.jp
Compatibility Checker Comments
Peter Galko writes, "I found that the Compatibility Checker
reported parts of the 7.1 stuff Apple sent me as a beta tester of
7.1 were supposedly incompatible with 7.1! It also reported that
there is a newer version of Adobe Illustrator (later than the
latest). Apparently Apple used an outside contractor to collect
the data, and they made a few mistakes, to say the least."
Information from:
Peter Galko -- galko@trix.genie.uottawa.ca
YAT - Yet Another Trojan
------------------------
by Jeff Shulman -- kilroy@netcom.com
There is a version of "CPro 1.41.sea" [masquerading as an update
to Compact Pro -Adam] that is really a Trojan. It will attempt to
erase your startup volume and any floppy in disk drive one. We
haven't finished fully analyzing it yet so it is possible it _may_
do more. So far it has only been sighted in Michigan. You can tell
it from any legitimate version by a 312K snd resource called "log
jingle."
Gatekeeper Message
------------------
by Chris Johnson -- chrisj@emx.cc.utexas.edu
Users of Gatekeeper 1.2.6 will soon receive a warning stating that
1.2.6 is out of date and should be replaced with a more recent
version. This warning appears automatically when modern versions
of Gatekeeper exceed six months in age and is intended to prevent
people from unwittingly depending on obsolete versions of the
program which may no longer offer effective or safe protection
from viruses. In spite of the warning, though, Gatekeeper 1.2.6
remains FULLY functional.
The six month time limit was chosen because it seemed likely that
due to the need for periodic bug fixes, functional improvements,
and code to stop new viruses, new versions would always be
released within six months of each other. Unfortunately, the
testing/debugging phase for Gatekeeper 1.2.7 has run unexpectedly
long and delayed its release beyond the anticipated six months.
So, some form of 1.2.7 will be made available as soon as possible
(if it has bugs, it certainly has far fewer than 1.2.6), and, in
the meantime, Gatekeeper 1.2.6 remains as functional as ever even
though it will complain about being out of date once every five
days.
I apologize for any inconvenience.
When 1.2.7 is available, an announcement will be posted in the
comp.sys.mac.announce newsgroup, and the file will be sent to all
major Macintosh archive sites, and posted to the comp.binaries.mac
newsgroup.
Nisus and Expressionist
-----------------------
Oops, I blew this one big time, writing last issue that
Expressionist was from Macreations and not Prescience, the company
that actually makes Expressionist. Sorry about that, Prescience.
In addition, Mel Martinez passes on this useful information on how
to link the current versions of Nisus and Expressionist.
Mel writes:
Expressionist and Nisus XS should be able to communicate
seamlessly through Apple events. Although Expressionist might end
up bundled with Nisus XS, I doubt it will be incorporated into the
program. With Apple events, there is no real need to do so.
Keep in mind that it is not necessary to wait for Nisus XS in
order to tightly integrate Expressionist and Nisus. Using
QuicKeys, you can easily set up hot keys that let you edit an
Expressionist equation that you pasted into Nisus earlier.
Linking Nisus and Expressionist
In Nisus, select the equation by double-clicking or click-drag.
Then press a QuicKeys key-combination to move the equation from
Nisus back into Expressionist for editing (I use command-
option-E).
The QuicKeys sequence macro looks like this and will do the
following:
* Change the Nisus clipboard to a designated 'equation' clipboard.
(This saves the current contents of the clipboard. I use clipboard
9 for equations.)
* Use command-C or Copy to place the equation in the clipboard.
* Call up Expressionist using an application QuicKey. (You could
also use a Apple menu item via an alias.)
* (optional) Create a new Expressionist window by using command-N
or New. This ensures that a window is open and that you don't
overwrite any existing equation.
* Use command-V or Paste to paste the equation into Expressionist.
Now that you're in Expressionist with your equation, edit it to
your heart's content. When you finish, press your QuicKeys
combination to copy the equation in Expressionist, return to
Nisus, and paste it in over the old version of the equation (I use
command-option-N).
This second QuicKeys sequence macro looks like this and will do
the following:
* Command-A or Select All to select the equation in Expressionist.
* Command-C or Copy to copy it to the clipboard.
* (optional) Command-W or Close to close the window (you must also
then include a step to decide not to save the equation in
Expressionist. If you have Escapade or a similar tool installed, a
simple N will suffice.).
* (optional) Command-Q or Quit to quit Expressionist. Not
recommended.
* Bring Nisus back to the front using the application menu in the
upper right-hand corner (this is the best way, believe me).
* Command-V or Paste to paste the equation at the current
selection point in Nisus. If you haven't monkeyed around, the old
version of the equation should still be selected and will be
overwritten by the new version.
* (optional) Restore the clipboard to your default clipboard in
Nisus (usually clipboard 0).
This works quickly and smoothly on both a IIsi and a Quadra. Note
that because Nisus has multiple Undos, you can always undo the
pasting of the edited version of the equation and go back to the
original.
This technique also applies to combining almost any tools such as
equation editors, table editors, or graphics programs with not
only Nisus, but other word processors as well. Nisus's main
advantage is its multiple clipboards and multiple Undos (as a
safety net). Also, Nisus's macro language allows one to combine
powerful internal Nisus macros with QuicKeys's interapplication
abilities. For example, a Nisus macro can systematically search
for a type of item (such as data) in a Nisus file, then use
QuicKeys to call up some other program to operate on it, return to
Nisus with the changes and then continue looking for the next
item.
[I use Nisus, Frontier, and QuicKeys to automatically reroute
certain bang-routed uAccess UUCP mailfiles while I'm on vacation
for just this reason. -Adam]
Information from:
Mel Martinez -- mem@jhufos.pha.jhu.edu
Macworld Expo SF 1993
---------------------
Although I don't think Macworld Expo had any stunning surprises
this year, it did feature more promising new products and solid
upgrades than I recall from previous years. Perhaps the hardest
part this year was remembering everything that I wanted to write
about after the fact, but here are some of the lights, mostly
high, a few low.
Best New Interface: Retrospect 2.0
Although PageMaker 5.0 added some nice interface elements such as
the ability to drag objects from one document to another, they
also left in some major interface idiocies, such as one setting
that requires navigating through five modal dialog boxes. Thus,
the best new interface award goes to Dantz for their clever
interface work with Retrospect 2.0. Although Retrospect 1.3 was
relatively easy to use once you understood its idiosyncracies, it
was never a striking example of good design. From the demo I saw
of Retrospect 2.0, Dantz has rectified that error and then some.
Almost everything is done from a main modeless window that
superficially resembles a non-scrolling System 6 Control Panel.
Five icons line up along the left, controlling functions such as
instant backup, scripts, reports, configurations, and tools. When
you select one with the mouse or by typing the first letter of its
name, additional options appear to the right, and again, you can
select items in that part of the window by first letter or by
clicking. I especially liked Dantz's use of the keyboard since it
makes sense to use the keyboard as a controller device when it
cannot be used for text input.
The other main interface element that improved significantly is
the scripts, which now appear in a single window, showing you the
source, destination, criteria, options, and schedule in a clean
and easily understood list. Creating and reading selection
criteria has become easier, and once created, modifying and using
the criteria is also much better. You can even view the files to
archive when you have multiple sources selected for archiving,
something which irritated me in the previous version. I could go
on, but take my word for it, Dantz did an amazing job on the
interface. I don't believe the functionality has changed
significantly although Dantz did add a few things like faster
compression and additional hardware support.
Dantz -- 510/849-0293 -- dantz@applelink.apple.com
Most Interesting Hardware: SmartStack
-------------------------------------
Given that I don't specialize in any particular area, I don't get
excited about advances in printer or modem or whatever technology.
However, one thing other than the Apple Adjustable Keyboard (more
on that in a bit) did catch my attention. Envisio, now owned by
Mirror, introduced the SmartStack, a device that allows you to
vertically stack up to seven SCSI devices in a single unit. Drives
in the SmartStack do not connect to each other using cables,
instead, the drives actually plug into each other. Envisio hopes
that this new way of connecting drives will reduce cable clutter,
interference, and SCSI errors. For $249, you buy a SmartSource
base for the bottom of your stack, which includes SCSI connectors
and a fan, and a top unit that offers another cooling fan and a
SCSI loopback connector so you can chain additional existing SCSI
devices. The SmartModules that contain the actual SCSI devices
stack neatly between the SmartSource and the cover module.
Envisio has ten SmartModules available now, including hard drives
ranging from 127 MB to 1 GB, a 128 MB removable optical drive, and
a 2 GB DAT drive. You are limited to modules produced by Envisio
or specifically engineered for the SmartStack, but Envisio is
negotiating with other manufacturers and working on additional
modules to accommodate network interface modules, CD-ROM players,
modems, disk arrays, and possibly even SyQuest drives turned on
their sides. SyQuest should also have a 105 MB 3.5" removable
drive out sometime this spring, according to various rumors I
heard, and that drive will fit within the horizontal size of the
SmartStack. Although some additional engineering is required, the
lack of a power supply or additional connectors on each module
should help keep the prices competitive, if not specifically low.
The SmartStack is worth a look, especially if you are buying a new
system and don't already have a number of external SCSI storage
devices.
Envisio -- 612/628-6288 -- 612/633-1083 (fax)
envisio@applelink.apple.com
Booth Most Likely to Drive You Stark Raving Mad
-----------------------------------------------
This award goes to the intensely designed Pinnacle Micro booth,
which had fully enclosed walls and ceiling and a funky green neon
waterfall. The walls seemed to be a brushed aluminum with a three
dimensional design etched into them in such a way that I kept
looking into the wall trying to make sense of the pattern.
Needless to say, I never did, and what with the booth's green and
purple spotlights, bright green waterfall, and neon pink plastic
flame thingies, I found it a truly a psychedelic experience, and
not one I care to repeat soon. I wonder what they sell?
Best Giveaway: Video Toaster Tape
---------------------------------
NewTek carries this award with their Video Toaster demo videotape,
which is about ten minutes of snazzy effects and animations, all
done with the Video Toaster. The Toaster grows more and more
impressive, and as I see it each year, I keep lusting after one
until I realize that I will never do video production. It's just
not a hobby I'm likely to get into in my copious spare time. I'll
depend on others for my Video Toast. (Quick quiz: Which makes
darker toast, a Video Toaster or a Flying Toaster?)
NewTek -- 800/368-5441 -- 612/881-2862
Best Buttons: Peachpit Press
----------------------------
Due to my current status as email junkie, I give the best buttons
award to Peachpit Press for their set of three yellow smiley
buttons, a normal smiley, a wink, and a kiss. I picked up the
buttons and stared at them for a few seconds the right way up, not
getting it until I turned them on their sides the way smileys were
meant to be. Runner-up goes to Wired magazine (supposedly the
Rolling Stone of the computer world) for their "Get Wired"
buttons. I haven't read much in the premiere issue of Wired yet,
but it looks interesting and might be worth checking out at $20
per year.
Wired -- 800/769-4733
Best Hat: Robin Williams
------------------------
A truly silly award to author Robin Williams, who has the third
edition of the Little Mac Book out (it's getting a bit bigger,
though), and pre-release copies of a new little book called "Tabs
and Indents." I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine
the topic of that book. Anyway, back to the award, Robin once
again wore the most interesting hats of the show while the rest of
us dressed in our "Ken and Barbie Go to Macworld" costumes. I
unfortunately forgot my fish tie.
Best Financial Reason to Attend: StuffIt Deluxe
-----------------------------------------------
The best deal of the show goes to Aladdin Systems for their
guerilla pricing on StuffIt Deluxe and SpaceSaver (which is
included with the complete StuffIt Deluxe package). Aladdin
offered StuffIt Deluxe for $45 and SpaceSaver alone for $25.
Although I understand that people don't often need the full power
of StuffIt because SpaceSaver can create and expand StuffIt
archives, I still think the extra $20 is worth it for the full
package. That one time someone gives you a file that has been
tar'ed and you can't expand it online due to disk space problems
(which I always have - or you work on a CMS machine that wouldn't
know tar from feathers and wants to translate it all into EBCDIC
anyway) it's nice to have the full set of StuffIt's translators.
It's also fun dragging things from archive to archive - an example
of interface done right.
Second prize in this category goes to Teleware for dropping the
price on their well-reviewed MYOB accounting program and its
just-released smaller sibling, Best Books, to $19 for the show.
Considering MYOB's list price of $99, the show special went over
so well that Teleware quickly ran out of packages and had to
promise to ship them after the show.
Most Promising Game: The Journeyman Project
-------------------------------------------
Presto Studios is finally shipping The Journeyman Project. I
haven't played it yet, not having received my AppleCD 300 yet, but
from the demos and from talking with the creators of The
Journeyman Project, it's an impressive accomplishment and a
ground-breaking game. The Journeyman Project is an interactive,
non-linear game, unlike Spaceship Warlock, which is more of a
movie. It has 400 areas, each of which has four views, and Presto
rendered each of the 1600 scenes and then retouched each one with
Photoshop, thus making The Journeyman Project the first
photorealistic game. The graphics are indeed stunning, but even
more impressive is the way Presto designed the game so you can
solve it either peacefully or violently. The Journeyman Project
does penalize your point total for using unnecessary violence, but
more interestingly, it makes future actions more difficult, thus
discouraging rampant violence. A nice change, and one I'll look at
in more detail once I can play for a while. If you're in the
market for a CD-ROM game, you won't do any better than The
Journeyman Project right now, although several interesting games
are in progress from other companies as well.
Presto Studios -- 619/689-4895 -- presto@applelink.apple.com
Apple Adjustable Keyboard
-------------------------
I finally saw Apple's new ergonomic keyboard, the Apple Adjustable
Keyboard. Its innovative features include the ability to open in
the middle to up to a 30 degree angle, splitting the standard
QWERTY layout (ISO for European users) so the 6, Y, H, and N keys
sit on the right-hand side of the split. The space bar remains
stationary in the middle and is enlarged for ease of use no matter
what the keyboard's orientation (I approve of this since the space
bar is the most commonly used key). The keyboard includes
detachable palm rests and a separate extended keypad which can sit
on the right or left side of the keyboard, attached by a short ADB
cable. The numeric keypad offers function keys on its left side,
then a cursor keypad, and on its right side, the numbers. Apple
also added features never seen before on Macintosh keyboards,
including speaker volume, mute, and microphone recording controls,
which will be ideal for the increasing number of multimedia users.
That's the good news, and even despite the upcoming bad news, I
still think this keyboard is one of the best of the mass market.
The bad news is that Apple only gave the keyboard the standard
little flip-down feet for slope adjustment, and as important as
the opening angle is, some vertical adjustment would have been
useful. Ideally you should be able to hold your hands so that your
thumbs are on top rather than on the inside when typing. I can see
where vertical adjustment would be hard to engineer, but hey, it's
my job to complain about this stuff.
Potentially more serious is the way Apple used chiclet-style keys
(like the buttons on a touch-tone phone only smaller and round)
for the escape key, the sound keys, and the function keys. I use
the function keys (along with QuicKeys) on my extended keyboard to
switch between programs because the function keys are hard to
logically or mnemonically map to application-specific functions
and work best on system-wide functions. I'm concerned that the
chiclet-style keys will prove enough harder to push that they may
actually aggravate repetitive stress injuries, contrary to the
keyboard's design. The infrequently used sound keys should be
fine, and I wish Apple had made the Caps Lock key a chiclet key,
since unlike all other keys it might be useful to have it small
and round so I couldn't press it accidently. Only extensive
testing will allow me to determine whether or not the other
chiclet keys will be a problem, but I'm considering replacing my
five year-old and somewhat flaky Ehman Extended Keyboard with one
of these Adjustable Keyboards.
Just today, we learned that Tony Hodges, maker of the Tony!
keyboard, plans to sue Apple for patent infringement. The Tony!
has been around for a while but has never shipped. When it ships
it will cost much more than Apple's keyboard but will offer more
in the way of customized key angles and tilting. At the moment,
both sides are muttering legalese, so it's hard to tell what's
what, but we'll write more about this should interesting details
develop.
I tried touch typing on the Adjustable Keyboard at the show for a
paragraph or two, and surprisingly, even at the maximum open angle
of 30 degrees, I made few errors. The errors I did make were on
keys more in the middle of the keyboard, the I and the U
primarily, rather than the keys that border the chasm. The
keyboard's tactile feedback felt much like other Apple keyboards,
which I don't prefer, but at least it's consistent. The unit I
used had the keypad on the right side as it normally is, but I
think I'd immediately try it on the left side so that I wouldn't
have to move my right hand as far to get to my Curtis trackball
and to off-load some non-typing duties to my left hand. No need to
discriminate here. The keyboard will supposedly list at $219 when
it ships next month, and it is only compatible with ADB Macs
(everything after the Plus), and it will work with PowerBooks. The
software for the special sound keys works with System 6.0.7 and
later. Give it a test write at a dealer and see what you think.
Information from:
Apple propaganda
Alert! Most Likely to Succeed, If...
------------------------------------
Of the new programs I saw, MAXA's Alert shows the most promise if
it lives up to all of their promises. Apparently the main
developer did a lot of the work on Norton Utilities for Macintosh,
and although his contract forbids him from working in the same
areas as Norton Utilities, he decided to create a program that
could work in much the same way, actually fixing problems rather
than just reporting them. Since disk problems were out, he created
Alert, which will scan your disk for conflicts and problems and
fix them for you. OK, I was skeptical too at this point, so I
pushed for some details.
Alert essentially goes through your disk and looks for things that
it knows are wrong. So, if you have a program that requires a
minimum memory partition of 1024K and for some reason you (or
someone) has set it to 666K, you're probably going have problems
(potentially of more than one sort). Alert will discover that
problem, and can fix it by increasing the memory partition,
without you doing anything. It can also do things like determine
that certain programs aren't 32-bit clean and that you are running
in 32-bit mode even though you don't have more than 8 MB of RAM
and you aren't using lots of virtual memory. As a fix, Alert turns
off 32-bit addressing, and using a database which MAXA promises
will be the most extensive in the industry (more comprehensive
than the one that comes with Help! from Teknosys), Alert will
provide you with the phone numbers for the vendors of the
offending programs so you can find out how to upgrade. The
database will be either free or cheap for two years after
purchase, unlike Help's quarterly subscription deal.
To make Alert more useful to consultants, MAXA designed it to work
not only over an AppleTalk network, but also over a modem. So if
you're an independent consultant and a client calls with a
problem, you can run Alert over a modem connection to determine
and automatically fix the problem on their machine.
My basic impression of Alert is that if it works and has a great
deal of depth (and those are big IFs) it will become an important
tool for all of us who are in some way responsible for keeping
less-knowledgeable users' Macs running (Hi Mom!). Unfortunately,
it's the sort of program that will require extensive testing on
many Macs before I'll be able to make that judgement, and since
it's not shipping yet, it will be a while before I can start the
testing process. If it turns out that Alert never tells you
anything you didn't already know, or if it isn't complete in its
reports about what it has done while you weren't looking, it will
quickly wither away.
MAXA -- 800/788-6292 (US and Canada)
Information from:
MAXA propaganda
Reviews/11-Jan-93
-----------------
* MacWEEK -- 04-Jan-93, Vol. 1, #1
MicroStation Mac 4.2 -- pg. 107
Norton Essentials for PowerBook 1.0 -- pg. 107
ToolPAKs for Canvas -- pg. 108
PostScript Color Inkjet Printers -- pg. 122
HP PaintJet XL300PS
Lexmark Color JetPrinter PS 4079
FastTrack Schedule 2.0 -- pg. 126
ACT! for the Macintosh 1.0 -- pg. 126
* Macworld -- Jan-93
Workgroup Printers -- pg. 132
(too many to list)
Full Motion Video Capture Boards -- pg. 140
(too many to list)
Color Management Tools -- pg. 148
(too many to list)
LCD Projection Units -- pg. 156
(too many to list)
2-D CAD Programs -- pg. 170
(too many to list)
Infini-D 2.0 -- pg. 180
Microsoft Project 3.0 -- pg. 181
FileMaker Pro 2.0 -- pg. 184
Hard drive formatters -- pg. 188
Drive7 2.3
Hard Disk Toolkit 1.1.2 Personal Edition
Silverlining 5.4
PLI MiniArray 850 MB, PLI MiniArray 2 GB -- pg. 189
Adobe Premiere 2.0 -- pg. 192
WorldPort 9600 Data Modem -- pg. 193
Object Master 1.0.2 -- pg. 194
The Battle of Britain -- pg. 194
IdeaFisher 2.0 -- pg. 199
Viva 14.4/Fax -- pg. 199
Serius Programmer 3.0 -- pg. 200
Stat-Ref 3.2 -- pg. 200
FlowChart Express 1.0 -- pg. 202
Hello -- pg. 202
LetterPerfect for Macintosh 2.1 -- pg. 204
NihongoWare Volume 1 -- pg. 204
Caduceus Physics 1.0 -- pg. 214
Nolo's Personal RecordKeeper 3.0 -- pg. 214
PathFinder -- pg. 215
WonderPrint 1.0 -- pg. 215
Organizer Link II -- pg. 218
Spectacular 1.2 -- pg. 218
Voice Navigator SW 2.3 -- pg. 220
Managing Your Money 5.0 -- pg. 220
..
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