Mac Expert 1995 Winter/Mac Expert - Winter 95.iso/Les fichiers/Tidbits/TidBits 101 à 200/TidBITS#194_20-Sep-93.txt

Text File | 1995-06-21 | 28.3 KB | 573 lines | [TEXT/ttxt]

TidBITS#194/20-Sep-93
=====================

Numerous comments, tips, and announcements (After Dark, anyone?)
   fill the first part of this issue. Akif Eyler's Easy View
   wins the 1993 MacUser Shareware Award for Text Tools. Apple
   announces the Apple Workgroup Server 95 Tune-Up and combines
   the Newton Connection Kit and Connection Pro Kit into a single
   package. Finally, I look at Conflict Catcher II, the essential
   extension manager that actually catches conflicts.

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- [e-mail]
   Makers of hard drives, tape drives, memory, and accessories.
   For APS price lists, email: [e-mail] <----- New!

Copyright 1990-1993 Adam & Tonya Engst. Details at end of issue.
   Automated info: <[e-mail]> Comments: <[e-mail]>
   --------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:
    MailBITS/20-Sep-93
    Easy View Wins Award!
    AWS 95 - The Latest Update
    Connection Kits Combined
    Conflict Catcher II
    Reviews/20-Sep-93

[Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-194.etx; 29K]


MailBITS/20-Sep-93
------------------
  Last week I failed to mention (mostly because I didn't know) some
  necessary information about my new book, mainly the ISBN number.
  Here then are the details:

  The Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh, by Adam C. Engst.
  Published by Hayden Books. ISBN# 1-56830-064-6. $29.95 U.S.A.
  $37.95 Canada.

  I presume that the real price will be a little lower, since many
  bookstores discount books, although I have no idea what overseas
  pricing will look like (I'm just the author, after all!). In
  addition, Hayden has agreed to give TidBITS readers a discount,
  although the details were still wending their way through Hayden's
  sales department late Monday, so I'll publish those details as
  soon when I know them.

  There will be online ordering via email, but Hayden hasn't
  finished setting up the address. Once it is available, I'll
  publish a simple electronic order form so that you can submit the
  information in such a way as to make it easier on their data entry
  folks.

  I realize this all sounds very disorganized, but as my editor told
  me, this book has come about as close as possible to being a "book
  on demand." It normally takes a good bit longer to push a book out
  into the channel, but since the Internet changes so rapidly,
  Hayden is doing a great job at shipping it out while the
  information is still current.


**APS Price Lists** -- Thanks to the efforts of Frank Knapp at
  APS, we added a new feature to the APS price lists available from
  [e-mail]. The price list is available for request
  as part of APS's TidBITS sponsorship, and in the past we marked
  new prices so you could easily scan the list and see them. Now we
  also include the price drop in dollars. In addition, we changed
  the way we indicate a new price list. In the past, we added a
  simple "<-- New" to APS's contact information at the top of the
  issue. To give a rough idea of how many prices have changed, the
  "New" now roughly indicates the number or importance of the
  changes. A few changes get "new," a few more get "New," more yet
  get "New!", and major changes get "NEW!" It's fuzzy, but it should
  help. Finally, just so you know, APS tracks orders via the 800
  number listed in the online price list. So, if you call using a
  different 800 number because you have it handy, make sure to
  mention TidBITS as the source of the prices, or else Macworld or
  someone else undeserving will get credit.


**Stalking the wild Tyvek[tm]** -- A reader writes: A totally
  useless upgrade to your comment in TidBITS #192_ - in the article
  about dust covers, you mentioned that the covers are made "from
  Tyvek, a strange, durable material that definitely never came from
  anything living."

  Just to set the record slightly less crosswise, Tyvek[tm] is a
  sort of synthetic fur that has been melted into a sheet. The raw
  material is a garden variety plastic, made from petroleum, which,
  as you know, derives from the countless remains of little critters
  unlucky enough to be buried deep beneath the swamps of Texas or
  the sands of Arabia.

  Last I heard Tyvek[tm] was a registered trademark of the DuPont
  Company, whose computers unfortunately can't make that little
  registered trademark symbol. [My Mac can, and the setext format
  cleverly accounts for that, changing it into [tm]. In an ideal
  world, a setext browser would convert it back, but even the
  estimable Easy View doesn't yet do that. -Adam]


**InterNews Caveats** -- A number of people wrote in response to
  my InterNews review to note that it isn't as fast as Nuntius and
  cannot display (though it can save) text after the first 32K,
  which causes problems with long messages such as the Info-Mac
  Digest posted in comp.sys.mac.digest (but TidBITS sneaks in, since
  it's almost always less than 32K). A few bugs were flushed out by
  the release, and Roger Brown said that he's working on fixing
  them, so keep an eye out for an update this fall.


**Toner Tuner News** -- Anthony Pun <[e-mail]>
  reports that Working Software says that Toner Tuner, the utility
  that helps reduce the amount of toner or ink used in draft
  printouts, works beautifully with the 600 dpi HP LaserJet 4M.
  There are apparently still problems with the DeskWriter 3.x
  drivers, but Toner Tuner does work with the older 2.2 version of
  the DeskWriter drivers. Other bugs due to be fixed in the next
  upgrade, which will be free, include tweaks for PageMaker 5.0,
  FreeHand, and Illustrator, all of which use custom PostScript
  code. And finally, Working Software reduced the price from $49.95
  to $24.95 per machine and has made the program available in
  Egghead and through some mail order companies. Working Software --
  408/423-5696 -- [e-mail]


**Palette Police** -- Edward Reid <[e-mail]> writes in
  support of Matt Neuburg's complaint about programs messing with
  the "colors" on his 4-bit monitor. "Yeah! Keep on them. I don't
  use IN CONTROL, but I have the same complaint about Quicken and
  Retrospect. I can understand a graphics program playing with the
  palette, but for the others it's just plain rude. I think it's a
  problem specific to 2-bit and 4-bit mode, although I tried some
  program a few months ago that had an option to "Use system color
  palette" to fix this problem. I don't know enough about color
  palette management to understand exactly what's going on, but my
  guess is that programs are tested on 8-bit color monitors and
  black and white monitors, but seldom on anything in between. Also,
  the problem might be more or less severe depending on how the user
  has customized the display (though I'm only conjecturing at this
  point). For example, I've changed my desktop to be a uniform gray
  instead of the standard dither. The programs we are discussing
  turn the desktop black, which is immediately obvious. It might not
  be as obvious with the standard desktop."


**After Dark List** -- Lloyd Wood <[e-mail]> writes:
  Since the release of DarkSide of the Mac, and the arrival of many
  other products that support After Dark modules, interest in
  writing the modules has grown - helped in part by the competitions
  that promise big rewards for your work.

  To address this interest, a mailing list for people wanting to
  write After Dark modules has been set up, along with an FTP site
  that will hold code, announcements and the like (join the list to
  find out the address). This way, starting code can be easily
  shared and you can get feedback on modules from expert module
  programmers. To join the list, send a message to:

    [e-mail]


Easy View Wins Award!
---------------------
  At Macworld Boston this past month, Akif Eyler's text-file browser
  Easy View won the 1993 MacUser Shareware Award for Text Tools,
  beating out Rich Siegel's excellent editor BBEdit and Mark Wall's
  DOCMaker. Since Akif wasn't able to put in an appearance from
  Turkey, I accepted the award (a snazzy clear glass or plexiglass
  disk, appropriately inscribed) for him. I hope the ZiffNet/Mac
  folks were able to mail it to Turkey without trouble.

  MacUser wrote: "Distributing documents among users who may or may
  not have the creating application is a continuing frustration for
  many Mac users. New technology such as Adobe's Acrobat or No Hands
  Software's Common Ground offers one kind of solution, but there's
  another one that's often overlooked: text files enhanced by a
  special text-only format called setext [and created by Ian
  Feldman]. Setext files include unobtrusive formatting tags that
  let the reader software easily navigate a text-only file with a
  click of the mouse. M. Akif Eyler's Easy View is an excellent
  setext reader for the Mac that has evolved over the past year.
  (Mac setext booster Adam Engst distributes his popular TidBITS
  on-line magazine in setext format.) It's a clever, ground-breaking
  concept that deserves recognition."

  Akif's award especially pleases me for two non-obvious reasons.
  First, the Easy View/setext combination shows up in comparison to
  Acrobat and Common Ground, the glorified fax machines of the
  software world. Many of us who actually do electronic publishing
  in real life are concerned about the use of Acrobat and Common
  Ground, since like DOCMaker, they hamstring the content in
  exchange for the dubious ability to mimic paper. Second, although
  Akif programmed Easy View entirely on his own, a team of us from
  the U.S., Sweden, France, and Turkey helped design and test Easy
  View over the Internet. Easy View is truly an international
  Internet effort.

  So I'd like to extend public congratulations to Akif and to those
  who helped make Easy View into a winner. If you're not already
  using Easy View to browse through TidBITS issues on your Mac, you
  can FTP it (and a patch to take you from 2.32 to 2.33) from
  <sumex-aim.stanford.edu> as:

    /info-mac/text/easy-view-232.hqx
    /info-mac/text/easy-view-233-patch.hqx


AWS 95 - The Latest Update
--------------------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- [e-mail]
     Technical Support Coordinator, BAKA Computers

  Adding to the string of recent software updates, Apple has
  released the Apple Workgroup Server 95 Tune-Up disk set, providing
  enhancements to the A/UX operating system software and AppleShare
  Pro, and some bug fixes for the AWS 95. The package also includes
  System 7 Tuner, which upgrades the System 7.0.1 that runs on top
  of A/UX on the AWS 95.

  The update addresses a cornucopia of problems, including:

* file management, resulting in fewer problems with time stamping
* name changes to files and folders
* file locking
* error handling and recovery
* security effectiveness
* hardware support for such devices such as the AppleCD 300 and
  Apple's 230 MB hard drive
* onboard video
* file sharing speed

  Apple recommends that all AWS 95 owners obtain and install the
  Tune-Up, which is available on AppleLink under "Apple Products ->
  Apple SW Updates," on the Internet via anonymous FTP from
  <aux.support.apple.com> (130.43.6.2), on the October ARPL CD, from
  most A/UX authorized dealers (and some others), or by calling
  800/892-4651 ext. 400.

  [Time for a brief rant here. I approve highly of Apple fixing
  problems and releasing the fixes to the public for free in this
  manner. However, it's fast becoming impossible to keep track of
  which little "Tune Up" or "Hardware Update" or "Software Update"
  does what, and which machines need them anyway. If someone would
  like to investigate this and write an article for TidBITS (and
  update it when necessary), the world would forever be in your
  debt. I recommend using InstallerSpy, a really neat tool that lets
  you investigate what an installer script really does. You can
  probably find InstallerSpy on your favorite FTP site like <sumex-
  aim.stanford.edu>, but since that site is so busy I snagged a
  version from another site - <mcgnext.cc.columbia.edu> as:

    /info-mac/util/installer-spy-0.40.hqx

  So, if you're interested in making Macs easier to understand, drop
  me a line and we can figure out what information should go in the
  article. -Adam]


Connection Kits Combined
------------------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- [e-mail]

  Citing confusion among dealers and early product testers, Apple
  consolidated the Newton Connection Kit and Connection Pro Kit for
  both Macintosh and Windows platforms. The new Newton Connection
  Kits will be less expensive than, but offer all the functionality
  of, the originally-announced Connection Pro Kits.

  Users of the 0.9 beta version of the Newton Connection Kit
  apparently recommended a more complete solution to Apple,
  suggesting that the capability for importing and exporting
  information was critical. Also, some dealers and other Newton
  outlets expressed confusion regarding the different functionality
  of the different products. In Apple's original plans, only the
  Connection Pro Kits for Macintosh or Windows supported data import
  and export; the Connection Kits simply provided for backup of data
  on the MessagePad, and installation of software packages and
  updates from the Mac or Windows side.

  In a move that should eliminate most of the confusion, Apple
  removed the Newton Connection Kits from its product lists, renamed
  the Connection Pro Kits as Connection Kits, and lowered the price
  somewhat. This results in a single kit for Macintosh and a single
  kit for Windows.


Conflict Catcher II
-------------------
  They come in all shapes and sizes, big ones, little ones, quiet
  ones, and loud ones. They come when you least expect them, and
  when you most expect them. They can ruin your next two minutes,
  your day, or, if you're unlucky and stupid, your professional
  life. I speak, of course, of the crash, the conflict, the bomb, or
  the bug. My Macintosh takes a long time to start up due to the way
  I have it configured, so even though I test a lot of software, I
  still detest crashing needlessly. I almost never lose data because
  I save frequently, back up frequently, and generally take
  precautions.

  But, as much as I hate the single crash because there's nothing I
  can do about it, I really hate multiple, reproducible crashes.
  Crash on me once, no big deal, crash on me twice and it's time to
  waste some more of my valuable time figuring out why. In the past,
  I would usually attribute the crash to an extension, stare at my
  list for a long time while analyzing what the crash might have
  been related to, and then shut one off. Usually I was right;
  sometimes I was way off. Those missed guesses were the pits
  because then I had to turn off half the extensions, test, change
  the set of active extensions based on the test, and repeat ad
  nauseam, which is Latin for "until you head butt the screen."

  Enter Jeff Robbin's Conflict Catcher, released last year by Casady
  & Greene. It did a bang up job of taking over the mindless tedium
  of turning extensions on and off and testing for conflicts.
  Unfortunately, it was a thoroughly mediocre extension manager. It
  didn't have the fancy features we now expect in an extension
  manager, in part because adding links and the like would increase
  the complexity of the conflict testing algorithm immensely.

  Never one to shrink from increased complexity, Jeff set out next
  to place Conflict Catcher at the top of the extension manager
  heap, and from what I've seen, the latest release, Conflict
  Catcher II, meets that goal. I'll try to cover all the major
  features.

  Conflict Catcher allows you to create sets of extensions, Control
  Panels, System Extensions (the ones loose in the System Folder,
  including items like MacsBug and other extensions that have to
  load before Conflict Catcher itself), startup items, and even, if
  you run System 7.1, fonts. (From now on, I will refer to the lot
  of them as "extensions" unless I have to address one type
  specifically.) You wouldn't necessarily want to replace Suitcase
  with Conflict Catcher, but it can load and unload fonts at
  startup, which can be useful when tracking printing problems (see
  TidBITS #172_). Incidentally, enabled extensions are highlighted;
  disabled extensions aren't - I far prefer this to the method of
  double-clicking on one to check it. And for those of you who care,
  Conflict Catcher moves extensions into disabled folders rather
  than change their file types.


Usage
  You can view extensions by Name, Type, Order, or Info - the first
  two of which are self-explanatory. In Order mode you can reorder
  extensions simply by dragging them around in the list, and in Info
  view, clicking on an extension displays its version, location,
  creator and type, System Memory, and High Memory. When in Info
  mode, you can delete extensions or open them from within Conflict
  Catcher. This is a handy method of figuring out what disabled
  extensions you have lying around that should be thrown out. You
  can often avoid switching view modes by using click shortcuts. If
  you shift-click on an extension, Conflict Catcher locks it on for
  conflict testing (I also lock things like MODE32 and Memory on
  permanently, since I never want them turned off), but if you
  option-click, Conflict Catcher displays the information about the
  extension, just as though you were in Info view. If you command-
  click, Conflict Catcher opens the extension as though you had done
  so in the Finder.

  Various buttons to the left of the scrolling list provide useful
  utility functions. In Order view, a Sort button restores the
  default loading order, and in Info view, that button changes to
  Open to enable you to open the selected extension. Next are Enable
  All and Disable All buttons, which are handy to have at times, but
  more commonly you want to enable or disable all the startup items,
  or all the fonts, for instance. Jeff added a clever feature that
  allows you to click on the title of a section in the scrolling
  list, Fonts for instance, to enable or disable just the fonts.
  Below those buttons live the Conflict Test and Links buttons,
  which I'll explain further below. Finally we have the Report
  button, which creates a detailed system report for you, which can
  aid developers in tracking down conflicts when you report bugs,
  the online help button (Conflict Catcher also sports extremely
  good balloon help), and the Prefs button, for customizing
  functions like whether or not you want to recognize the Fonts
  folder and for turning off some options to ensure that Conflict
  Catcher doesn't patch any traps or cause any conflicts itself.

  At the top of the scrolling list of extensions (which can be
  increased in size by resizing the entire Control Panel window),
  Conflict Catcher can show  estimated memory use for the currently
  selected set of extensions. No more going through loop of checking
  About This Macintosh, turning an extension on, and rebooting to
  determine how much RAM a specific set of extensions uses. You can
  turn balloon help on with a button up there too, and to the left
  is a pop-up menu that lets you create, switch between, and assign
  startup keys to sets of extensions. So for instance, I have a set
  of extensions that loads MODE32 and the CD-ROM extensions but
  nothing else so I can play The Journeyman Project, Presto Studios'
  amazing but sluggish CD-ROM based game that prefers 16 MB of RAM
  in its fastest configuration. I can restart my machine and hold
  down the J key to use that set without fussing with any dialogs or
  anything else. I'm sure you see the utility of sets, but Conflict
  Catcher does have one neat idea here. It has a default set called
  Original Settings, which reflects the current state of your
  extensions when you open Conflict Catcher. If you accidentally
  Enable All, for instance, selecting the Original Settings set
  reverts to the original settings. The only slight problem I've
  found with this is that sometimes I wish to change a set when
  Original Settings comes up, which requires that I select the set,
  then make my changes - merely a quibble.


Links
  The Link feature is a major step up from the previous version of
  Conflict Catcher. You can now create Grouped, Incompatible, and
  Force Order links using any of the extensions you have on your Mac
  or any that you can specify through the use of an Add Custom File
  button. Conflict Catcher ships with six standard links for
  handling things like various different screen savers, font
  utilities, and the like, where you don't want more than one on at
  a time. Four buttons allow you to Create, Remove, Import, and
  Export links, and a pop-up menu lets you select existing links and
  edit them. Be careful with links, though, because although
  logical, they can work in unexpected ways. For instance, if you
  Group link (so if one is on, the other is also on) a Control Panel
  and a startup item such as MacTCP and InterSLIP Setup, if you then
  turn off all the startup items by clicking on the title in the
  list, the MacTCP will also be turned off, which may not be what
  you wanted.


Conflict testing
  The Conflict Test feature of Conflict Catcher is in many ways
  devilishly simple. If you are experiencing a _reproducible_
  phenomenon (it doesn't have to be a bug - it might just be strange
  hard drive accesses, but it must be reproducible or you'll be
  chasing ghosts), you can click on the Conflict Test button to
  start the test. Conflict Catcher first asks you to lock any
  extensions that must remain on, an essential step. For instance,
  if I was testing a problem with a program compressed by
  AutoDoubler, I would want to lock AutoDoubler on to make sure I
  could always access the program (without first expanding the
  program with DDExpand, which might change the test). I also
  sometimes use the lock feature to give Conflict Catcher an
  environment which must exist - the set of extensions without which
  I can't work in normal life, since I know those extensions work,
  and if there's a conflict with a new one, the new one must go.

  Once you lock on necessary extensions, you restart the Mac and the
  conflict test begins. I won't bore you with details of the
  algorithm, not that I know many, but suffice it to say that
  Conflict Catcher does what a smart, but ignorant, person would do,
  in that it turns sets of extensions on and off at different times
  to create different testing environments. The only exception to
  this is that the first time it turns everything off to ensure that
  an extension is causing the problem. This technique proved useful
  recently, when PageMaker 4.2 crashed every time I opened the
  Define Colors dialog. When I ran a conflict test, Conflict Catcher
  informed me after one restart that the problem wasn't with any of
  my extensions, but might be related to 32-bit addressing or
  virtual memory. That immediately pointed at the 32-bit Enabler,
  and switching to MODE32 instantly solved the problem.

  In normal use, though, you have to go through a series of
  restarts. First you test the problem to see if it occurs using
  that set of extensions, then you restart. Conflict Catcher asks
  you if the problem existed that time or not, and you repeat the
  process after answering. The number of restarts varies by the
  number of extensions you have, but it's never excessive. The
  important part of this process is that you verify the situation
  each time, since there's no way an automated program could do that
  (so why try?) and you have to answer the question accurately each
  restart. If you forget the answer, you can have Conflict Catcher
  redo the last set.

  One of the important facts about the conflict testing is that it
  works on your system, with what you run, no matter whether it's
  commercial, shareware, or a freeware extension you just picked up.
  Unlike Help and some similar programs, Conflict Catcher doesn't
  worry about a database or anything like that which would be
  inherently flawed. It simply does what you could do if you had
  unlimited time and patience.


Other touches
  There's a lot to like in Conflict Catcher II. For instance, even
  though Now Startup Manager moves extensions into disabled folders,
  it keeps a list of them separately, which means that you can't
  manually move extensions in and out of those folders behind its
  back. Conflict Catcher doesn't care about that at all, so you can
  manually turn things off by moving them into the appropriate
  disabled folder. The trade-off is that Conflict Catcher is a bit
  slower to load, particularly if you have a ton of extensions for
  it to track each time you open it. I'm willing to take that small
  speed hit in exchange for being able to move extensions in the
  Finder though. In addition, if you use Startup Manager already, or
  another extension manager that uses the "Extensions (disabled)"
  method of storing disabled extensions, Conflict Catcher can step
  right in and use your current setup.

  One of Conflict Catcher's best features is hidden deep in the
  preferences. A checkbox labeled Recognize Aliases, when checked,
  allows Conflict Catcher to load extensions from aliases, rather
  than requiring the original extension. This has two main uses.
  First, you can load extensions over a network, so a network
  manager can keep one updated version available at all times rather
  than hassle with a bunch of different versions of popular
  extensions. Also, if you have a small boot disk (like a floppy),
  you can load more extensions than fit on your floppy. But the
  coolest use for loading extensions via alias will delight some
  PowerBook users. If, like me, you boot from a RAM disk, you can
  keep copies of your extensions only on the hard disk, which allows
  you to effectively shrink the size of your RAM disk, making more
  RAM available for programs without losing any functionality.
  That's way cool. The only caveat to this method is that your hard
  disk will spin up seemingly randomly a bit more often, since every
  time an extension wants to look at its file, it must look on the
  hard drive rather than on the RAM disk. This technique allowed me
  to save something like 800K of RAM disk size and is a major plus
  in Conflict Catcher's favor. Note that not all extensions will
  allow themselves to be loaded via alias, although Super Boomerang
  is the only exception I've found so far.

  Conflict Catcher costs about $50 from the usual suspects and pays
  for itself the first time it catches a conflict that wouldn't have
  been immediately obvious (and there's no reason you have to use a
  conflict test if you think you know what the problem is, although
  a conflict test can help identify two or three way conflicts a
  person would be hard pressed to find). Jeff has posted a demo
  version to <sumex-aim.stanford.edu>, but given their backlog on
  posting new files, it may take a while to show up. Highly
  recommended.

    Casady & Greene -- 408/484-9228 -- 408/484-9218 (fax)
      [e-mail]


Reviews/20-Sep-93
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 13-Sep-93, Vol. 7, #36
    AutoCAD 12 -- pg. 43
    MacProject Pro 1.5 -- pg. 43
    MacP&L 4.0 -- pg. 46

* InfoWorld -- 06-Sep-93, Vol. 15, #36
    PowerBook 180c -- pg. 88
    Portable StyleWriter -- pg. 89
    Rae Assist -- pg. 104

* InfoWorld -- 13-Sep-93, Vol. 15, #37
    AutoDoubler 2.0.1 -- pg. 86
    Stacker for Macintosh 1.0 -- pg. 90


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