Mac Expert 1995 Winter/Mac Expert - Winter 95.iso/Les fichiers/Tidbits/TidBits 101 à 200/TidBITS#180⁄14-Jun-93

Text File | 1993-06-14 | 28.4 KB | 561 lines | [TEXT/ttxt]

TidBITS#180/14-Jun-93
=====================

 Matt Neuburg's investigation into Inspiration 4.0 and other
   outliners anchors this issue, aided by Mark Anbinder's article
   on the Newton and some competition from EO. We also have bits
   about the Color Classic, one possible punishment for deterring
   computer crime, the correct pin-outs for the standard hardware
   handshaking cable, and look at a new Apple rebate program that
   will be popular with users but potentially a problem for
   some dealers.

 Copyright 1990-1993 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 [e-mail] or [e-mail]
 CIS: 72511,306 -- AppleLink: [e-mail]@internet#
 AOL: Adam Engst -- Delphi: Adam_Engst -- BIX: TidBITS
 TidBITS -- 1106 North 31st Street -- Renton, WA 98056 USA
 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:
    MailBITS/14-Jun-93
    Waiting for Newton
    Rebate Sparks Controversy
    Inspiration 4.0: Outliners and Me
    Reviews/14-Jun-93

[Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-180.etx; 29K]


MailBITS/14-Jun-93
------------------
  With the help of several users, Akif Eyler tracked down and
  eradicated a bug with styles in Easy View 2.32 that had escaped
  detection throughout the beta test process. I distributed the 2.33
  patch application several days ago; you should find it at the
  usual sites, although I don't know what the exact path will be -
  look for it in the same directory as Easy View itself.


**Cable Table Label** -- Alert reader Phil Reese
  <[e-mail]> wins the copy editing award for the week,
  noticing a serious typographical error in our chart listing the
  "standard" configuration for a Macintosh hardware handshaking
  cable. Somehow we switched the Macintosh pin numbers for
  handshaking in and out. Our apologies. The correct table is:

    Mac function     RS-232 function   Mac pin    DB-25 pin
    ------------     ---------------   -------    ---------
    RxD (receive)    Receive Data      5          3
    TxD (transmit)   Transmit Data     3          2
    Ground           Ground            4 & 8      7
    HSKi             CTS               2          5
    HSKo             RTS & DTR         1          4 & 20
    GPi              CD                7          8


**CAPITAL Punishment** -- The 17-May-93 issue of InformationWeek
  reported on news stories from China about a computer hacker being
  executed for defrauding the Agricultural Bank of China of about
  $200,000. The news reports said that Shi Biao was executed as a
  warning to others contemplating computer crime. Considering the
  ease with which computer viruses travel, if I were a virus author
  I'd think about other lines of work.


**Color-less Classic** -- A friend at Apple notes that Color
  Classic users can move the contrast slider bar in the Screen
  Control Panel all the way to the left, making the screen go pitch
  black. It would seem that users in that situation are stuck, since
  they can't see the slider bar any more, but pushing the screen
  contrast button on the Color Classic's front bezel will bring the
  screen back up.


Waiting for Newton
------------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- [e-mail]

  Apple's most actively publicized secret at the moment is Newton,
  the code name for the company's upcoming handheld personal
  organizer, and for the collection of new and adapted technologies
  making up this project. Despite Apple's usual policy of keeping
  unannounced products secret, Newton has been all the rage in the
  trade journals, among industry watchers, and even in Apple's
  publications and satellite television shows.

  Newton will undoubtedly be a remarkable achievement when Apple
  releases it later this year (the time until the first Newton-
  related product introduction is now measured in weeks), combining
  handwriting recognition, "intelligent" guesses about what our
  scribblings and scrawlings might mean, and a completely new way of
  storing data. However, one effect of all this publicity has been
  to push the development of competing products.

  One such product is the newly-released 2.2-pound EO, developed by
  a consortium of companies including GO Technologies (who created
  the unit's PenPoint user interface), manufacturing giant
  Matsushita, and AT&T. EO even looks like one of the prototype
  Newtons we've seen pictures of - a pad with a screen in the middle
  and "ears" protruding from each side. The ears, shaped like a
  Duo's floppy adapter, serve the similar function of providing
  ports and connectors.

  EO includes many of Newton's promised features. It has an icon-
  driven interface and handwriting recognition to turn written block
  letters into "normal" computer text (a cursive recognition module
  is anticipated in a matter of weeks), and while it doesn't yet
  know how to turn a rough sketch into an even square or circle, EO
  can guess when you write "lunch with Bill Tuesday" that you
  probably mean next Tuesday, you probably mean noon, and if you
  don't mean Bill Gates, it presents a list of the other people
  named Bill listed in your contacts database.

  EO's $799 cellular phone option provides not only a handheld Oki
  telephone that you use just like any other cellular phone, but
  also a level of integration that lets EO dial Bill's number for
  you and provides the capability to send or receive faxes just
  about anywhere. The unit's 8 MB of ROM contains its operating
  system and nine bundled applications. The RAM (4 MB expandable to
  12 MB in the basic model) is therefore free to manipulate data,
  and free for other PenPoint applications that you might choose to
  add to the internal hard drive. Software can be added via EO's
  PCMCIA type II slot or its optional external floppy drive, which
  attaches via a port on one of the ears that doubles as a parallel
  printer port.

  Rumor has it that Apple, even fairly recently, had not yet decided
  which of several Newton units to release first: the handheld unit
  with a flip-up cover that looks like Dr. McCoy's tricorder should
  have looked but didn't, the letter-sized pad with large screen
  area and ears, or some other variation. Another decision
  reportedly up in the air centers around which of the new
  technologies, some still under development, should be released in
  the first round. It seems likely that the decisions have been made
  by this late date, but I'm worried that some of the decisions
  might have been based not on what's ready or what makes sense, but
  on what's needed to go up against EO, Sharp's existing products,
  and other competitors' electronic organizers. (Some of Sharp's
  upcoming products are based on Newton technology.)

  One advantage Newton will have from the start is that its
  projected selling prices (in the $800 neighborhood for basic
  versions) are far lower than EO's price tag (from $1,999 for the 4
  MB model with no modem and no hard drive, to around $4,000,
  depending on the model and options you choose). It remains to be
  seen whether Newton's features will be comparable, and whether the
  look-and-feel of the package as a whole will prove worthwhile. For
  those who hate waiting, though, and don't mind that the ultimate
  evolution of the Rolodex, DayTimer, and Filofax lives in a product
  that costs dozens of times as much, EO is available today.

    EO -- 800/458-0880


Rebate Sparks Controversy
-------------------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- [e-mail]

  Apple USA today announced a new "On the Spot" rebate program that
  promises hundreds of dollars in instant point-of-purchase rebates
  to customers buying certain Macintosh models and peripherals in
  the United States, but appears to have put itself, and many
  dealers, "on the spot" in the process.

  At first glance, this rebate offer isn't all that different from
  previous offers. Essentially, Apple is providing an incentive for
  people to come into the store, as well as a way of boosting sales
  of some models that aren't selling too well or whose prices might
  be dropping in the future. (Typically, such price drops don't
  outshine the rebates that proceed them, so there's no need to
  wait.) However, unlike with previous rebate programs, in this
  case, Apple is asking some of its dealers to lay out the money
  that's being handed to the customers.

  Difficult logistics apparently prompted Apple to leave one segment
  of its dealership population in this position, while other dealers
  are receiving the rebate funds "in advance," in a sense, through
  discounts on the related purchases from Apple. Unfortunately, the
  details reached dealers so shortly before the beginning of the
  program that there was little anyone could do but express
  astonishment.

  The good news for Macintosh users and prospective buyers is that,
  while some dealers may elect not to participate because of Apple's
  approach, most will, and the rebates are quite attractive.

  Affected computers include the Centris 610 and Macintosh IIvx, and
  rebates range from $125 to $300 depending on the specific computer
  and configuration you choose. The IIvx, an unimpressive but solid,
  respectable computer, has already been reduced in price
  dramatically, and the rebate should make the price positively
  sensational. (It should also make the IIvx good competition for
  the hard-to-find LC III.)

  There are also rebates on a variety of popular peripherals, to
  further sweeten the deal. The rebate is simple; the amount is
  simply subtracted from your purchase price (after taxes, sorry!)
  before you sign the check. It could just make the difference
  between affording an almost-as-good system, or the one you really
  wanted.

  Information from:
    Apple propaganda
    Pythaeus


Inspiration 4.0: Outliners and Me
---------------------------------
  by Matt Neuburg -- [e-mail]

  Being obsessed with the flexible storage and retrieval of
  information, I use an outliner all the time - Symmetry Software's
  Acta. Being an academic, I use Acta mostly to hold my notes on
  books that I read, and to prepare and update notes for lectures I
  intend to give.

  You know what an outliner is: it holds text in a form that looks
  like - well, an outline. Let a piece of text be called (for
  historical reasons) a topic; conceptually, it sits at some
  hierarchical level, indicated by how much its left margin is
  indented on the page. If we create another topic to follow the
  first, it might be at the same hierarchical level, in which case
  it is shown on the page below the first, and with the same
  indentation. Or, we may make a new topic subordinate to the first:
  it will then sit immediately below the first and with greater
  indentation. If topics A and B are at the same level, and topic A
  has subtopics, then topic A's subtopics will follow A (be just
  below it) on the page, before B, thus showing that they belong to
  A.

  I am not addicted to outlining because all thought can be usefully
  arranged into outline format. On the contrary, an outline's
  combination of linearity (the topics run sequentially down the
  page) with hierarchy (some topics are subordinate to other topics)
  can render such arrangement quite artificial. A simple example is
  a proof: from a hierarchical point of view, what is proven
  "governs" the steps that support it, so the demonstrandum should
  be the topic and the premises its subtopics; but from a sequential
  point of view this looks backwards.

  Rather, I use outliners because of the way they allow you, within
  a traditional page-like medium, to view, navigate, and rearrange
  material.

  First, you can "close" a topic, so that its subtopics are hidden.
  Suppose I have four topics at the top level of my outline: I can
  start with all their subtopics (and therefore the subtopics of
  those subtopics, etc.) hidden, so all I see is those four topics,
  one right below the other. I go to the one I want and "open" it,
  revealing its subtopics at the next level down. I go to the one of
  these that I want and "open" it, and so on. If my topics are well
  named, I can thus quickly find my way into my document and get
  right to the piece of information or subject area that I want to
  read or modify or whatever.

  Second, a topic "owns" its subtopics. If I decide I don't like the
  way I have classified a topic, I can move it to another place in
  the outline, and all its subtopics (whether visible or not) will
  travel with it. If my hierarchy is logically contrived, this makes
  rearranging a lecture, say, much easier than trying to figure out
  in a word processor how many paragraphs need to move in order for
  the text to keep making sense.


Compare and Contrast
  Inspiration Software (formerly Ceres Software) has come out with
  version 4.0 of Inspiration, inspiring me to compare it with Acta.
  You may recall that Adam reviewed the previous version of
  Inspiration (3.0) in these electronic pages not long ago; I
  wondered whether the new version deserved to be considered as my
  own new outliner of choice.

  As an afterthought, I also glanced at Symantec's More, which is
  Inspiration's chief competition as a "high-end" outliner. The only
  copy I could wangle for this review is outdated (version 2.01);
  but that's okay, since the purpose of introducing More into the
  picture was not to compare Inspiration with it, but just to help
  put Inspiration's capabilities into perspective.

  Be warned: I ignore here the graphic diagramming facilities that
  characterize More and Inspiration. From one point of view this
  seems unfair. The Inspiration folks see the program as "centered
  on visual planning, brainstorming and idea development, not
  outlining." I'm not trying, though, to misrepresent Inspiration:
  it does have outlining capabilities, and I was genuinely curious
  as to whether I could use them to move up from Acta.


Nitty Gritty
  All three outliners share basic abilities to implement the
  concepts of viewing and arrangement described above. They
  distinguish a topic itself from the text of the topic in an
  intuitive way. They let you simply hide a topic's subtopics (so
  that when you "open" the topic again the visible structure below
  it is as before) or fully collapse those subtopics (so that when
  you "open" again you see only the topic's immediate subtopics). If
  a topic has features that are not currently visible (say it has
  hidden subtopics) they provide some visual indication of this.
  They let you move a topic (with its subtopics) to a new position
  by dragging. I could compare the implementation details of all
  these facilities, but one's preferences here, though strong, will
  be personal, and all three programs are perfectly adequate in
  these areas.

  Text entry is a major shortcoming in both Acta and Inspiration.
  Acta relies on TextEdit. Inspiration apparently does not, but its
  text entry is not much more sophisticated. In some ways it is
  quirky. If you double click in a word, then drag down a few lines
  (to include more words), the word you double-clicked in is
  sometimes (if you change directions while dragging) no longer
  included in the selection. Shift-click extends a selection, and
  Option-Right-arrow moves to the start of the next word, but Shift-
  Option-Right-arrow selects JUST the next word (it does not extend
  the present selection). In contrast, More provides extremely
  powerful shortcuts for selecting and navigating text, similar to
  those in Microsoft Word.

  Acta beats Inspiration slightly in facilities for navigation
  amongst topics via keystrokes. One glaring example: both programs
  have a keystroke to let you move to the topic sequentially
  preceding the current topic, but Acta also has a keystroke to let
  you move the cursor to the topic hierarchically governing the
  current one, wherever it may be; Inspiration does not, and it's a
  serious shortcoming (see below). Neither program lets you merge a
  topic into a topic just above it and at the same level (as More
  does); instead, you have to copy the text of one topic, paste it
  into the other topic, then go back to the first topic and delete
  it manually.

  On the other hand, Inspiration gives you some great tools for
  rearranging your material quite unheard of in Acta. In
  Inspiration, there is a Demote command, which grabs all topics
  sequentially below the current topic but at the same level, and
  makes them hierarchically subordinate to it; and there is a
  Promote command, which does just the opposite, grabbing all topics
  hierarchically just subordinate to the current topic and bringing
  them up to the same level. (More also has these.) What's more, you
  can select multiple topics (not necessarily contiguous), including
  or not including each topic's subtopics, as you please; you can
  then move them all en masse by dragging, or cut them (and paste
  them), or cause all to be moved or copied into subordination under
  the first one selected (called "collecting"; you can do this with
  More as well. When this is done with topics from disparate
  locations and at various levels, the results are implemented in an
  extremely sensible way. Inspiration also lets you "focus in" on a
  topic, bringing that topic to the upper left of the window and
  showing only it and its sub-topics. (More has the same thing,
  called "hoisting".)

  Inspiration provides a fundamental device lacking from Acta:
  within a topic, it distinguishes the topic itself from a "note"
  attached to that topic (like "body text" in Microsoft Word). If
  you are in a topic and you hit Return, text following the Return
  will be a note; the note is part of the topic (it has no
  independent existence), but it can be hidden, so that you can view
  your document without any notes visible. I like Inspiration's
  implementation of this; you can enter a mode in which all notes
  are invisible unless you click within the text of a topic, when
  that topic's note appears, only to vanish again as soon as you
  leave that topic. More has notes too (oddly called "documents"),
  but in some ways I actually like Inspiration's implementation
  better. Unfortunately, though, Inspiration misses a chief point
  (in my view) of having such a feature, which is, to be able to
  export JUST THE NOTES; this would allow you to use topics as
  signposts to plan and build a long continuous piece of normal text
  and then leave yourself with just the text. (The copy of More I
  looked at apparently couldn't do this either.) Both Inspiration
  and More do, however, let you print just the notes, which is
  something.

  Inspiration gives you much better control over fonts and
  formatting than Acta, which is relatively primitive in this
  regard. In Inspiration you have flexible control over the
  appearance of the outline qua outline (e.g., whether topics are to
  be numbered, and if so, how) - although this applies only to the
  outline as a whole, whereas More lets you apply different
  numbering formats to different parts of the document. Also, in
  Inspiration you can set the default font characteristics for notes
  text, and for topics at each level, separately (up to level 8,
  since 9 through 99 are clumped together). You are also permitted
  right- and centered-justification. However, you do not get fully
  justified text (whereas in More you do), and Inspiration does not
  provide style-sheets (whereas More does).

  Other than the omission of a "Notes Only" mode, Inspiration is
  splendid at exporting. Not only can you, for example, export to
  Microsoft Word format, but when you do, you get Word's outlining
  styles: your top-level topic ends up in Word's "heading 1" style,
  your next-level topics in "heading 2" style, and so forth, which
  is tremendously convenient. Acta, on the other hand, can export to
  RTF, but it just provides indentation without styles - everything
  comes out as nested modifications of "normal". (More has strong
  exporting facilities as well, but I was unable to test them with
  my borrowed copy.)

  The facility that most intrigued me in Inspiration is its capacity
  to give a topic a "child." This is an outline in its own right,
  which is attached to the topic but represented by a square in the
  document margin; when you double-click on it, it opens as an
  outline in a separate window. I was hoping that this would turn
  out to be a hypertextual facility, but it isn't; you can't link
  any topic to any child, but rather, a topic can have just one
  child. Remarkably, though, a topic within a child can have a child
  of its own; and you can open any child by name at any time. So
  even though it isn't hypertext, it does make the outline, as it
  were, hyper-dimensional: instead of a topic having only the
  subtopics that appear below it in the main outline, running
  linearly down the page, it also has the subtopics that live in its
  child outline, running in some virtual direction (into the screen,
  perhaps?) - and so on.

  Alas, when you export, children are not exported (can you think of
  a sensible way to do it?); you can, however, "disown" a child,
  making it an independent Inspiration document - and, just the
  other way, you can copy an Inspiration document into the present
  document as a child of any topic that doesn't have one. But note
  that this is still not hypertextual: you cannot link a topic to a
  different document, such that clicking on its child icon causes an
  independent document to open from the disk.

  Inspiration is System 7-savvy, and you can use System 7 to publish
  a topic or topics. What is publishable, though, is not an outline
  or even a piece of an outline; because Inspiration is a graphic
  tool, it's a graphic representation of the topic title (published
  from the graphic view of the document), in which notes and
  subtopics are not available. From an outlining point of view, it
  would be neat if the text were publishable as well.

  One aesthetic gripe about Inspiration: it messes up my screen's
  appearance, basically turning my 16 greys into simple black-and-
  white. (Being a ResEdit nut, I tried to fix this by altering the
  program's PLTE resource - it worked for Word 5.1! - but failed.)
  This really gets my goat, and seems to me to be a sign of bad
  programming (though, to be fair, I am well aware that handling
  colors in a Mac application is tremendously difficult). I find
  this behaviour so upsetting that it almost sets me against
  Inspiration despite all its other good points. Almost, but not
  quite...!


Conclusions
  My imaginary ideal outliner derives from my experiences with
  ThinkTank in its old Apple ][ incarnation. This program showed me
  what an outliner can be, and in some basic ways neither Acta nor
  Inspiration quite measures up. ThinkTank had wonderful navigation
  facilities for swift and convenient interface with your document.
  An example: it distinguished between "navigate up" (move the
  cursor up into the topic just above the current one, regardless of
  its depth in the nesting) and "navigate up at the same level"
  (move the cursor up into the topic above the current one at the
  same depth), with a single keystroke for either. Both Acta and
  Inspiration can do the former; neither can do the latter.

  This is not a minor point. Imagine a large and complex outline
  with many of its topics at many levels expanded. You know (because
  it's your document) that you have a topic "Greek Goddesses," and
  two of its subtopics at the same level are "Artemis" and
  "Demeter." Suppose "Artemis" is higher up sequentially, and you
  happen to be working in a subtopic of "Demeter" when you realize
  you want to say or consult something about Artemis. But "Artemis"
  may be way off above the screen somewhere. In ThinkTank, you could
  navigate quickly. A keystroke meant, "go to the topic to which
  this one is subordinate," so you clicked that a couple of times
  until you had moved up the hierarchy and the current topic was
  "Demeter". Then a keystroke meant, "go to the topic above and at
  the same level as this one," so you clicked that, and it took you
  instantly to another goddess; if this is Artemis, you're done, and
  if not, click a couple times more. Now you're at "Artemis," and
  you can work your way into the subtopics to find what you wanted.

  In Acta, you can't do this, but the workaround is acceptable. The
  first keystroke does exist, so you click it until you are at
  "Demeter," and then once more, so that you are at "Greek
  Goddesses." Now, if you don't see "Artemis" in the tangle of
  subtopics, collapse "Greek Goddesses" so that none of its
  subtopics show at all, then open it so just its immediate
  subtopics show - and there are your goddesses, sitting in a nice
  column. Now you can go right to "Artemis." It's true that you had
  to go way back out, and close a lot of stuff you might have wished
  you could leave open, but at least you can get where you want to
  go.

  In Inspiration, you can forget it. Neither keystroke exists. You
  probably will end up scrolling painfully through your document,
  searching by eye, just as if you weren't in an outliner at all.

  Since ThinkTank was brought over to Macintosh and evolved into
  (guess what?) More, it is not surprising that More turns out to
  have this and other abilities that ThinkTank had and that Acta and
  Inspiration lack. Although I find Inspiration's many special
  features intriguing, such as multiple selection and children, its
  poor performance at the most basic level, such as navigation and
  text entry, makes Acta a better choice for me, despite its
  simplicity in other respects. I'm much attracted by Inspiration's
  notes facility, but since it doesn't export just the notes, if I
  want to extract them I have to export to RTF, import into Nisus,
  and massage with a macro, and at that point I'm not doing anything
  I couldn't do with Acta in the first place, especially since Acta,
  though it doesn't have notes per se, does have the ability to hide
  all but the first line of a topic.

  On the other hand, preparing this review has had the accidental
  side-effect of making me want to investigate More, which even in
  the earlier incarnation I looked at did nearly everything
  Inspiration did, only better. (The comparison is fair, since More
  lays tremendous emphasis on its graphic capabilities, as does
  Inspiration.)

  Presently, if I decide I want more than just Acta's basic vanilla
  outlining features, I won't spring for Inspiration when More
  provides the power of style sheets, excellent text entry, and
  superb basic navigation. Price plays a role here, though. In
  street-price terms, More weighs in around $265, Inspiration goes
  for around $160, and Acta comes a bit lower. The only price I can
  find for Acta is a list price of $145, and the street price should
  be even less. That $100 difference between More and Inspiration
  may matter to some people. Also, More's future is uncertain - I
  have heard rumors about Symantec ceasing development on new
  versions (when we asked Symantec this, we were told that Symantec
  has neither announced plans for a version 4.0 nor said that
  version 3.0 will be the last version). If Inspiration decides to
  develop its basic outlining features more strongly, it could stand
  poised to take over More's sector of the market, while also
  beating Acta at its own game. Might the next version of
  Inspiration be the answer to my outlining prayers?

    Inspiration -- 503/245-9011 -- 503/246-4292 (fax)
      [e-mail]
    Symantec -- 800/441-7234 -- 408/253-9600
      [e-mail]
    Symmetry -- 800/624-2485 -- 602/998-9106 -- 602/890-2541 (fax)


Reviews/14-Jun-93
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 07-Jun-93, Vol. 7, #23
    RasterOps Editing Ace Suite -- pg. 47
    Datebook Pro 2.0 -- pg. 47
    Touchbase Pro 3.0 -- pg. 51


..

 This text is wrapped as a setext. For more information send email
 with the single word "setext" (no quotes) in the Subject: line to
 <[e-mail]>. A file will be returned promptly.

 For information on TidBITS: how to subscribe to our mailing list,
 where to find back issues, how to search issues on the Internet's
 WAIS, and other useful stuff, send email to: <[e-mail]>