Mac Expert 1995 Winter/Mac Expert - Winter 95.iso/Les fichiers/Tidbits/Tidbits 01 à 100/TidBITS#14_23-Jul-90.txt

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TidBITS#14/23-Jul-90
====================

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Topics:
    Bits On PostScript
    Ehman Screen Real Estate
    PostScript Trojan
    Reviews/23-Jul-90


Bits On PostScript
------------------
  The furor over Apple's and Microsoft's announcement of TrueType
  has faded with time, especially since Adobe promised to release
  the specs of its Type 1 PostScript fonts. The font world has been
  in the news recently, though, with Adobe announcing that it plans
  to create drivers for the Mac, Windows 3,0, and OS/2 to take
  advantage of PostScript Level 2.

  The Macintosh driver is Chooser-selectable and works with any
  Macintosh application. It will ship with the first printers
  utilizing PostScript Level 2, probably in the last quarter of
  1990. The announcement from Adobe didn't say anything about
  Apple's current driver, but we got the impression that this driver
  was meant to be used by everyone with PostScript printers.
  Curious. The main goals of the new driver are to (a) improve
  performance on current printers and printers supporting PostScript
  Level 2, (b) support device-specific printer features such as
  special paper bins, printer-specific pages sizes, duplex printing,
  cut film, etc., in every application, and (c) allow exporting of
  PostScript files by printing to disk from the driver. Adobe is
  open to suggestions for this new driver which should be sent to
  them at the network address, [e-mail]. If you are
  unable to use the nets, you could try calling them, but the phone
  may not be a proper channel for comments.

  Adobe's net announcement is especially interesting given recent
  rumors regarding PostScript and TrueType. Evidently, there has
  been talk about the future of TrueType being an eventual merger
  with PostScript. InfoWorld quoted Jim Stoneham, Apple's text and
  type products manager, as saying "In my opinion, I think we could
  take the best of both formats and converge on one standard." Apple
  said that Stoneham's remark does not represent the company's
  official position, but admitted that two font standards may only
  confuse and irritate users.

  Our feeling is that PostScript is here to stay because of the
  large investment many sites have in PostScript laser printers and
  fonts. It also doesn't help that developing a complete font
  technology is a large task. The main carrot that TrueType has held
  out to us rabbits is the on-screen font scaling, which is done
  relatively well by Adobe's ATM already. We hope that Apple will
  come to its senses about TrueType and form some sort of Open Font
  Foundation that will take the best parts of various font
  technologies and merge them into a single open standard.

  Microsoft is the odd one out at this point, since NeXT and IBM
  have both endorsed PostScript over TrueType, and no matter what
  IBM may do wrong, its endorsement still carries clout. It seems
  clear that Microsoft wishes to control a part of the printer and
  font industry, but in this case Microsoft does not have its usual
  head start over competitors (as it did with Word and Excel for the
  Mac). It may be that Microsoft feels that it can control the
  entire microcomputer software (and we wouldn't be too surprised to
  see more Microsoft hardware) market, especially given its recent
  coup with Windows 3.0 and dominance over IBM in OS/2 development.

    Adobe Systems Inc. -- 415/961-4400

  Information from:
    Adobe Systems Incorporated -- [e-mail]
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro -- [e-mail]
    Dominic Dunlop -- [e-mail]

  Related articles:
    InfoWorld -- 23-Jul-90, Vol. 12, #30, pg. 1


Ehman Screen Real Estate
------------------------
  The king of the discount mail order firms, Ehman Engineering,
  introduced a two page monochrome monitor (it can't do grey scale)
  at Macworld Expo last August. At the time we were rather
  interested in it because of its $899 price tag, but finance reared
  its ugly head and we ceased our investigation.

  However, someone on the net recently asked for input on that
  specific monitor (obviously attracted by the small price on such a
  large screen) and received some interesting replies. Ehman
  received extremely good reviews on the quality of the monitor,
  although when the monitor was first available, a number of people
  had to wait for up to two months to receive their monitors due to
  the demand. Ehman's monitor received six recommendations to one
  each for Apple, Radius, and SuperMac (and no, the original request
  for information was not biased towards replies from Ehman owners).
  Some people who owned several monitors said they preferred the
  Ehman monitor to Apple or Radius monitors. Looks like a case of
  the low end striking back.

  One of the most informative postings came from someone who had
  ordered one, having looked at all other two page displays without
  being impressed. He felt that the Ehman monitor is as good as or
  better than the standard monochrome displays that come with Sun
  workstations, though not as good as the NeXT MegaPixel display.

  It has a refresh rate of 78 Hz and an image size of 1050 by 817
  pixels at 72 dpi. The phosphor is standard P104 (if you know what
  that means, we don't) and cannot be upgraded to grey scale because
  the CRT inputs are digital, not analog. If you are using an SE or
  SE/30 at the same time, the small monitor is still usable. As an
  undocumented tip, one person found that you are given a choice of
  positions for the small screen if you hold down command-option
  while the Ehman monitor INIT runs. Other amenities include the
  necessary cabling, a card for an SE, SE/30, or Mac II-class
  machine, and in the overkill department, Stepping Out II for those
  who want the virtual screen size to be even larger than two full
  pages.

  If you are worried about going the mail order route, Ehman has a
  two year warranty on the beastie as well as a 30-day money back
  guarantee. If you plan to attend a Macintosh show, you might be
  able to buy it even cheaper, as one person reported purchasing it
  for $745 on a show special. Pretty tempting, though we're still
  lusting after the full-page color display provided by PCPC's
  Flipper.

  Information from:
    John Hardin -- [e-mail]
    John A Feinberg -- [e-mail]
    Shirley Kehr -- [e-mail]
    David Phillip Oster -- well![e-mail]
    Rick Genter -- lti2![e-mail]
    Jeff Stearns -- [e-mail]
    Ed Darken -- [e-mail]
    Robert C. Berwick -- [e-mail]


PostScript Trojan
-----------------
  There has been discussion on Usenet recently of a new trojan horse
  that is  a bit different from the usual sort. Most trojan horses
  are fairly simple minded in that they try to erase files or entire
  hard disks, which has become tediously obnoxious. This new trojan,
  which has yet to be named, lives in certain PICT files and if you
  print these PICT files on a PostScript printer, the trojan is
  downloaded to the printer and executed. It changes the PostScript
  password in the laser printer to a random number, thus preventing
  you from using the printer. This is normally disastrous, because
  there are 65,536 possible passwords (it's an integer) and you
  might have to try each one of them to set the password back to the
  default of 0. This is because you have to know the old password to
  set a new one. The PostScript language can do this automatically,
  of course, but rough estimates forecast the time it would take to
  be over three weeks of continuous checking. Not my idea of a fun
  month.

  Luckily, someone came up with an ingenious PostScript program
  which resets the password to 0. You must have a program such as
  SendPS (free from Adobe) to send the code to the printer.

  If you're wondering why PostScript bothers with passwords at all
  when it defaults to 0, you do so justly. Adobe's Red Book says
  that the password is included so system administrators can keep
  unauthorized people from changing any other (pseudo) permanent
  states of the laser. For this to work with the Mac, you have to
  change all versions of the LaserWriter (or possibly LaserPrep)
  file that are used with the printer to recognize the new password,
  which is a hassle. Don't do this unless you consider yourself a
  minor PostScript deity and like using ResEdit as well. It might be
  best not to have a password at all if it is set to a default in
  most printers. Unused passwords lead to trouble, as it has done
  here.

  Are you wondering what the alternative is if you can't afford a
  month of downtime for your Mac and printer or can't get a copy of
  the code to reset the password? One person said that his EEPROMs
  were somehow reset during a ferocious lightning storm, but it's
  hard to fly a laser printer on a kite like Benjamin Franklin's
  famous key. Remaining dry and on the ground, you can either reset
  the password by taking out one of the EEPROMs in the printer (our
  source didn't know exactly which one) and risk destroying things
  or you can go to your friendly local dealer and purchase new
  EEPROMs for about $150. Neither is a good option. However, the
  code to reset the password and the SendPS program should be
  readily available for anonymous FTP on the nets at sumex-
  aim.stanford.edu and rascal.ics.utexas.edu, and if not, I will
  personally make sure they are on the Memory Alpha BBS (607/257-
  5822) in Ithaca, NY. Memory Alpha sports a full line of anti-virus
  tools and all are welcome. We'll include an update next week in
  TidBITS if we find out which PICTs carry the evil code and what
  the trojan will be called.

  In light of all the safe sex campaigning, wouldn't it be ironic if
  even ogling a few lewd PICTs required that you protect yourself?
  Ah, cruel, cruel world.

  Information from:
    Doug Davenport -- SNAP Technologies, Ithaca, NY
    Adam C. Engst -- TidBITS Editor
    Chris Johnson -- [e-mail]
    Werner Uhrig -- [e-mail]
    Michael Newbery -- [e-mail]
    Casper H.S. Dik -- [e-mail]
    Mike Blackwell -- [e-mail]
    Steve Liget -- [e-mail]


Reviews/23-Jul-90
-----------------

* InfoWorld
    MacDraft 2.0, pg. 65

References:
    InfoWorld -- 23-Jul-90, Vol. 12, #30


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