BMUG PD-ROM B4/PD-ROM B4.iso/Utilities/TidBITs/TidBITS 101-125/TidBITS#111⁄16-Mar-92.etx

Text File | 1992-05-27 | 32KB | 638 lines

TidBITS#111/16-Mar-92
=====================

 Aladdin Systems has the hot new program of the week with the
   free StuffIt Expander, but Apple may have stolen everyone's
   thunder by announcing significant enhancements to the Mac
   operating system. We try to explain why you will care, and we
   also have some updated information on Macworld Expos around the
   world, followed by a review of ProVUE's blindingly fast
   database, Panorama II. Read on, Macduff!

 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. Publication, product, and company names may be
   registered trademarks of their companies. Disk subscriptions and
   back issues are available.

 For more information send email to [e-mail] or
 [e-mail] -- CIS: 72511,306 -- AOL: Adam Engst
 TidBITS -- 9301 Avondale Rd. NE Q1096 -- Redmond, WA 98052 USA
 --------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:
    MailBITS/16-Mar-92
    StuffIt Expander
    Microkernel Mac
    Macworld Modifications
    Panorama II Review
    Reviews/16-Mar-92

[Archived as /info-mac/digest/tb/tidbits-111.etx; 31K]


MailBITS/16-Mar-92
------------------
  Kirke B. Lawton writes, "I just wanted to confirm that Casper
  [Apple's voice recognition technology] is based on a large
  database of voices. Two years ago I was "abducted" by a market
  researcher in a mall to participate in a special project. I was
  asked various questions about my geographic background, and then
  they had me read oodles of computer "commands" (i.e. "move cursor
  blue down") into a microphone. I was told this was for a
  Macintosh-related product.

  At least I know Casper will recognize my voice!"

  Information from:
    Kirke B. Lawton -- [e-mail]


VIM explanation
  Roger D. Parish writes, "I heard a good explanation for the "VIM"
  acronym at the SHARE IBM mainframe user's group conference in
  Anaheim last week:"

    Vendors Ignoring Microsoft  :-)

  Information from:
    Roger D. Parish -- [e-mail]


StuffIt Expander
----------------
  A while back we ran an article about Downline, a utility that does
  a wonderful job at decoding Binhex files and StuffIt 1.5.1
  archives. Of course, it would be nice if Downline understood
  Compact Pro and StuffIt Deluxe as well, since many people use
  those formats. I expect that Morpheus Systems is working on adding
  these features to Downline, but in the meantime, Aladdin has
  released a free program called StuffIt Expander, which should be
  especially convenient for System 7 users.

  StuffIt Expander weighs in at a mere 57K and should be available
  on the major online services now. It works fine with System 6.0.4
  or later, but System 7 users can take advantage of the Finder's
  drag & drop feature by simply dropping archives on StuffIt
  Expander to have them automatically expanded. Aladdin says that
  StuffIt Expander is compatible with the 68040, 32-bit addressing,
  and virtual memory. Not only that, but it supports AppleEvents (I
  have to play with it and Frontier a bit) and has intelligent
  background processing. It works well in the background as far as I
  can tell. It even works when Nisus is the foreground application,
  and Nisus doesn't give much CPU time to background applications.

  StuffIt Expander does not know about Binhex files, but it can
  expand archives from Compact Pro, StuffIt 1.5.1, StuffIt Deluxe
  2.0, StuffIt Deluxe 3.0 (not yet released), along with AppleLink
  packages. It cannot expand DiskDoubler combined files or self-
  extracting archives of any type, but there's no reason it should.
  Anyone who distributes a file compressed with DiskDoubler should
  make it a self-extracting archive, and the only reason to use an
  expansion program on a self-extracting archive is if the
  extracting code is somehow damaged but the archive itself is fine,
  an uncommon occurrence.

  Using StuffIt Expander is simplicity itself. Under System 7, drop
  an archive on the icon and StuffIt Expander automatically expands
  the archive. If the archive contains multiple files, the files
  will be placed in a folder. The resulting file or folder is always
  saved in the same folder as the original archive. If you use
  System 6, run StuffIt Expander and select Expand... from the File
  menu. You can't miss it; the only other choice is Quit.

  Some of you may wonder about the fate of UnStuffIt Deluxe. Aladdin
  is continuing to enhance it and will still freely distribute it.
  UnStuffIt Deluxe has a larger file size and fancier features than
  StuffIt Expander. The next version will support files compressed
  with StuffIt SpaceSaver, rejoin segmented files, decode Binhex
  files, and come with Aladdin's usually excellent help system. I
  believe that UnStuffIt Deluxe will be rather large in comparison
  to StuffIt Expander, so people who just want to expand most of the
  popular compression formats and nothing else can simply use
  StuffIt Expander and not worry about dealing with other programs.

    Aladdin Systems -- 408/761-6200 -- [e-mail]
      ALADDIN on GEnie, AOL, Connect, and AppleLink

  Information from:
    Aladdin propaganda
    StuffIt Expander documentation


Microkernel Mac
---------------
  When NeXT or Amiga owners feel the need to disparage the Mac in
  conversation, they often mention the fact that Mac doesn't have
  "true" multitasking, tacking a little verbal sneer on the tail end
  of "true." That generally means that the Mac uses what's called
  "cooperative multitasking" instead of "pre-emptive multitasking."

  I'm telling you this because Apple announced last week that it
  will be remodeling the Macintosh operating system to add pre-
  emptive multitasking and other operating system goodies including
  multi-threading, memory protection, support for dynamic link
  libraries, and some new I/O (input/output) features that will help
  peripherals to keep up with the CPU. Why is this good news and not
  merely propeller-head tech-speak? Well, let me explain what each
  of those goodies will do for you and then you'll see. For those of
  you fluent in said tech-speak, I'm aware that I'm over-
  simplifying. :-)


More multitasking
  Sooner or later, you'll need to figure out the difference between
  cooperative and pre-emptive multitasking (it's a great way to
  sound technical :-)). Please keep in mind that different people
  define this stuff differently. This is a painless-as-possible
  mainstream explanation.

  In a cooperative system, the foreground application cooperates by
  deciding how much CPU time (the amount of time the microprocessor
  spends executing useful commands) it wishes to give up to
  background applications, whereas in a pre-emptive situation, the
  operating system mediates among the priorities of active
  applications. For example, on the Mac, Nisus dominates the CPU and
  doesn't give other applications much CPU time. Nisus gets to make
  that decision and is perfectly within its cooperative multitasking
  rights. In a pre-emptive system, every running application has a
  priority level, and the operating system parcels out CPU time
  based on those priority levels and the number of applications
  running.

  A difficulty with pre-emptive multitasking is that in an ideal
  single-user interactive system, the foreground application is
  completely responsive. (If you click the Ignore button in Word 5's
  spell checker, you do not want the CPU giving priority to other
  programs since it's slow enough already!) In a pre-emptive system
  you can often manually set an application's priority level, but
  this can be a pain.

  That's the advantage of cooperative multitasking - the foreground
  application can appropriate an ample amount of CPU time to being
  responsive. Windowing systems on fast Unix machines are often less
  responsive because the windowing system is merely another
  application that gets its share of CPU time, no matter how much
  you may use it. On the other hand, in a cooperative multitasking
  system, the computer may not work as efficiently because the CPU
  spends lots of cycles just spinning its wheels waiting for you to
  do something. For example, I'm composing this article in Nisus,
  and Navigator was recently downloading in the background. Nisus
  took so much CPU time that I had to send Nisus to the background
  so that Navigator could finish the download. If Nisus had been
  more willing to share CPU time, Navigator could have finished up
  during some of the extra CPU cycles. If I were using a Quadra
  instead of our SE/30, the CPU would be running even faster and
  Nisus would be wasting even more of the CPU's time. Remember, a
  CPU cycles many times per second, so if priorities are set right,
  pre-emptive multitasking can work out quite well.

  In an ideal world, Apple might use a mixed scheduling technique
  that would give a lot of CPU time to the foreground application
  but would allow the operating system to parcel out CPU time to
  each of the background applications according to their priorities.
  That would provide fast foreground response while still allowing
  multiple background programs to do useful work.


Multi-threading
  Multi-threading allows a single application to do multiple things
  at the same time. Using multi-threading, a spreadsheet could
  simultaneously print a document, recalculate formulas, and accept
  data entry. Each task within the application, printing,
  calculating, accepting data, acts like a little program in a
  cooperative multitasking system, allowing you to keep working
  while other parts of the program do other tasks. Both multi-
  threading and pre-emptive multitasking will be even more
  necessary when Apple releases voice and handwriting recognition
  products because the Mac will have to be continually running the
  recognition code no matter what else is happening.


Kevlar memory
  Memory protection is an extremely useful feature that allows one
  program to bomb out of sight without disturbing its neighbors in
  memory, although it's still difficult to completely protect the
  system heap, since most applications use information in it. That
  mean that when you hit a nasty bug, such as the one that causes
  Word 5.0 to crash when using the grammar checker on 68000 Macs,
  only Word will stop working and all the other programs will
  continue working properly. As it is now, your machine restarts on
  that bug, which is a big no-no.


Dynamic link libraries
  When a programmer compiles a program, the compiler will link in
  various standard libraries to perform certain standard functions,
  like displaying text on screen. Those libraries are static but
  fast because they live in the program. Dynamic link libraries are
  a set of routines that applications can use at runtime rather than
  include those routines internally. Dynamic link libraries are
  slower than static link libraries. Like extensions, you could just
  drop some dynamic link libraries into a special folder and various
  applications could then use that code, allowing those applications
  to be smaller, simpler to write, and more similar to each other,
  thus increasing ease of overall use. If implemented correctly,
  dynamic link libraries also cut down on memory consumption, since
  they only need to exist in RAM once, no matter how many
  applications use them. Dynamic link libraries would be especially
  useful for companies like Claris and Microsoft, which have
  multiple applications with similar interfaces and shared features.
  I believe that dynamic link libraries are already available in
  Windows, so in this respect Apple is playing catch-up (cleaner
  than playing with ketchup).


DMA that SCSI!
  The two new I/O enhancements are direct memory access (DMA) and
  asynchronous SCSI. DMA has been around for a long time and many
  computers support it, including the Atari ST line. In fact, the
  Mac IIfx sports DMA in hardware, although it's somewhat useless
  since the current MacOS doesn't support it. DMA allows devices
  other than the CPU to read and write memory, thus allowing the CPU
  to spend more time on other tasks. It's not quite ideal because
  the CPU does have to check in occasionally to make sure that the
  right stuff is in memory, but it can significantly boost
  performance. DMA requires extra hardware as well as operating
  system support, so most people will need a new Mac to take
  advantage of it. Asynchronous SCSI requires DMA. When supported
  though, asynchronous SCSI allows the CPU to delegate a SCSI
  command to the SCSI controller and then stop paying attention to
  it and go perform other tasks, again increasing performance. For
  example, the CPU might tell the SCSI controller to load a sector
  from a hard disk into RAM. The controller can start this job while
  the CPU does something else.


When will rumor become reality?
  We've heard that these features will be available at about the
  same time as the PowerPC machines being co-developed with IBM. In
  other words, this is all fantasy because by the time the PowerPC
  machines come out in late 1993, Apple could completely change its
  mind about all this stuff. None of these ideas are new and many
  have been around for years in the Unix and mainframe worlds. So
  the moral of the story is that Apple, as always, is looking for
  ways to make the Mac into a better machine. In this case, Apple is
  looking back at standard operating system concepts that it didn't
  include the first time around. It's also useful to keep in mind
  that this means that Apple is not putting all its eggs under
  Taligent's Pink chicken. That's important because in many ways
  Apple is a software company and cannot afford to rely on another
  company for such key software. Moral or no, I'm still drooling
  over this stuff!

  Information from:
    Pythaeus
    Doug Davenport of SNAP Technologies

  Related articles:
    MacWEEK -- 09-Mar-92, Vol. 6, #10, pg. 1


Macworld Modifications
----------------------
  Those of you who try to make it to every MACWORLD Expo possible
  have probably noticed that it's becoming harder and harder as
  World Expo increases the number of expos around the world. The
  increase in number of shows has not been without its growing pains
  though. There have been several recent changes worth noting,
  though unfortunately the cornerstone Boston and San Francisco
  expos have not been rescheduled to fall and spring respectively
  (when the weather in each city is nicer).


MACWORLD Canada
  North American readers (at least those in the Northeast) will be
  pleased to read that MACWORLD Canada will be held for the third
  straight year in Toronto, and World Expo has rescheduled the show
  back to the autumn season, September 15th through 17th, to be
  precise. Apparently the exhibitors liked the fall timing better
  and an opening at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre made the
  switch possible. Last year's show in Toronto drew over 12,000
  people, so although it sounds like enough people to draw the
  interesting vendors, it's not quite the 50,000 person crush found
  in Boston and San Francisco.


MACWORLD Paris
  Jean-Philippe Nicaise, our French correspondent, tells us that
  MACWORLD Paris, which was planned for March 31st through April
  2nd, was cancelled recently. Apparently the show simply wasn't
  popular enough to make it feasible. French enthusiasts will have
  to wait until September, when Apple France puts on the Apple Expo,
  the only Macintosh-specific expo in France. Luckily there are also
  several other expos in Europe for multi-lingual Macintosh
  aficionados, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Birmingham,
  Helsinki, Milan, Oslo, Stockholm, and the European Summit in
  Geneva.


MACWORLD New York
  World Expo bought the rights to the Mac Business show that used to
  be held in New York in the spring and had scheduled a MACWORLD New
  York to take that time slot. Apparently there wasn't enough
  interest on the part of the vendors because that show was
  cancelled as well. There was also a sense that it was simply one
  show too many, that vendors didn't have much interest in another
  US show, and small companies found it difficult  to keep a show
  team on the road. Another problem may be the increasing power of
  the niche applications on the Mac. World Expo also bought the
  rights to a Mac Business show in Los Angeles in late winter, but
  replaced it with Multimedia '92 instead of trying to put on yet
  another general show that would compete with San Francisco.


MACWORLD United Kingdom
  Unlike New York and Paris, the MACWORLD United Kingdom expo in
  Birmingham is still on, although it has been merged with the Which
  Computer? Show and will now be held in the National Exhibition
  Centre in Birmingham, England from April 7th to 10th (the previous
  dates were right about now in March). Given the increasing
  tendency to make the shows more specific, as World Expo did with
  Multimedia '92, it's a bit surprising that they merged MACWORLD
  United Kingdom with a general computer show, although one has to
  assume that they felt they would get better exposure via the
  merger.

  Wherever you may be located, you can get more information on
  attending one of the numerous MACWORLD Expos around the world by
  sending a note of inquiry to:

    MACWORLD Expo
    c/o World Expo Corp.
    P.O. Box 9107
    Framingham, MA 01701 USA
    508/875-1573 (fax)

  Information from:
    Jean-Philippe Nicaise -- [e-mail]
    World Expo propaganda


Panorama II Review
------------------
  I think it's fair to say that everyone has need of some sort of
  database software, even if only for keeping track of names and
  addresses. I'll admit that I'm no database guru, although I have
  worked with Double Helix a bunch, rescued some data from an old
  version of R:Base, and fiddled with various other programs.

  For a long time I used HyperCard to do all my database work, but I
  was always frustrated by the way my stacks looked and worked, not
  to mention the fact that HyperCard is not exactly speedy. I'm sure
  much of that was my fault, and I know of ways that I could have
  done things better. But I didn't have to because of Panorama II
  from ProVUE Development.


Panorama II Introduction
  Panorama II is a flat-file database, but it sports a rather
  powerful programming language called PanTalk that includes lookup
  statements to achieve much of the relational features of the
  high-end databases. I'm no expert with FileMaker Pro, but I
  believe that the two are fairly comparable in terms of abilities,
  although I think that PanTalk is more full-featured than FileMaker
  Pro's scripting language. Actually, since you can create multiple
  forms in Panorama II that correspond to FileMaker Pro's layouts
  and since both databases can run with multiple users over a
  network, the main difference I've found is that Panorama II is
  blindingly fast in comparison to FileMaker Pro. To be fair, I've
  heard people say that FileMaker Pro speeds up significantly if you
  put it in a RAM disk, but that's a kludge and may not be possible
  on a machine with only a few megabytes of RAM.

  Panorama II gets its speed from running directly in RAM, and even
  there it is efficient. The program is 600K on disk and prefers
  976K of RAM, although it can run with less. ProVUE tells me that
  the default memory setting is enough RAM to open a 600K database.
  The other advantage Panorama II reaps from running in RAM is that
  it doesn't require the indexing structure that most databases use
  for fast searching. This shrinks Panorama II files so that they
  are only a third to a quarter the size of an equivalent file in
  another database.

  Of course, the price ProVUE had to pay the RAM devil is that
  databases cannot grow beyond the limits of memory, but I think
  that's becoming less of an issue these days with cheap RAM and
  virtual memory. I'm not going to do benchmarks, but suffice it to
  say that with my SE/30 I have yet to notice any delay in finding a
  single record in my 1000-record address database, which has quite
  a few fields. Access is simply instantaneous. Sorting the database
  on a field takes a little longer, but only a few seconds at most.
  Every action that I've performed with Panorama II from opening a
  database to saving and quitting has been similarly fast with sole
  exception of exporting text, which is a bit slower. Obviously
  ProVUE doesn't want you exporting out of Panorama II all that
  often. :-)


Forms
  Panorama II is based on the concept of the form as a window into a
  certain set of data, much as FileMaker Pro uses layouts. You can
  create multiple layouts and customize them with relatively
  sophisticated graphical layout tools, better than are in FileMaker
  Pro but not the level of Canvas, for instance. (Picky, aren't I?)
  ProVUE has obviously put a lot of time and effort into their
  layout tools, and while they are very good on the whole, I'd kill
  for movable guides like PageMaker has. Snapping grids and a cursor
  with tracer lines to the rulers just don't quite match up. I
  wonder if Aldus has a patent on those guides?

  It always takes some effort to design a nice screen layout, but
  Panorama II helps you out with its internal scrapbook, called the
  Flash Art Scrapbook. Once an image is in there, using it only
  generates a pointer rather than an image, saving disk space. The
  scrapbook can even hold imported EPS graphics. For those of you
  who prefer to click buttons and choose things from pop-up menus,
  Panorama II does all those things (including checkboxes and radio
  buttons) and the buttons especially are trivial to set up. For
  those of you with newer Macs or MacRecorders, Panorama II even has
  Flash Audio, which lets you include sound in your database.


Data & Design
  Things you won't find in FileMaker Pro include the Data Sheet and
  the Design Sheet, both of which are holdovers from previous
  versions of Panorama and even go back to OverVUE. The Data Sheet
  is a spreadsheet-like view of your database with the fields in
  columns and the records in rows. It's fast to move around in,
  faster than a list view you could create in a form, and has the
  added advantage of working much like a spreadsheet, which can be
  powerful and confusing. The power becomes apparent when you want
  to group the records by a certain field or total a row of numbers.
  Then you just click in that field and select the appropriate
  command from a menu. New users may find this confusing though,
  because some actions take place in the Data Sheet, like sums and
  averages, that cannot be done in PanTalk in a form. When you
  combine this with the lack of something like Double Helix's inert
  fields, which merely display data and don't save anything, it can
  be hard to get Panorama II to calculate and display statistics in
  a single result form. I get the impression I can do it, but I'm
  just not sure how at the moment. Panorama II and PanTalk combine
  to create a rich environment and I'm not surprised that it takes a
  while to fully understand it.

  The Design Sheet also looks like a spreadsheet, but in this case,
  each row holds a field definition with each option for that field
  in a column. I see why ProVUE stuck with their spreadsheet
  metaphor here, but frankly, I think a custom interface to
  modifying and creating fields would be easier to use, and in fact,
  there is a Field Properties Dialog box (though it doesn't have
  options for three of the least used field options). There are 17
  options for each field (name, data type, etc.). A few of the
  options are especially useful - output pattern for number and date
  display, input pattern for social security numbers and the like,
  ranges for defining sets of allowable data, choices for defining
  specific acceptable values, link for setting links to other
  databases, Clairvoyance for reading your mind, dups to prevent or
  allow duplication, default values, and equations that will
  activate when the field changes.


Clairvoyance
  The feature that sets Panorama II apart from all other databases
  that I've used is Clairvoyance. Simply put, Clairvoyance quickly
  scans the data you've previously entered (in another database
  even, if you like) as you're typing and tries to finish off the
  entry for you. It waits until it has a good chance of getting the
  entry right, but you can always just keep typing. It's a little
  disconcerting at first, much like having a small child destroy you
  at a video game, but after a while you can't remember how you did
  data entry without it (unlike a small child). The added advantage
  is that because it always enters an existing value, there is far
  less chance for typos and errors to creep in. It's almost worth
  buying Panorama II for Clairvoyance alone.


Macros, Formulas, and Crosstabs
  As I said, much potential programming can be done directly in the
  Data Sheet rather than in a macro. Once you've figured out what
  sort of thing is best done where, you can start creating formulas
  and macros. Formulas are relatively simple statements using built
  in functions to modify data in some way. For instance, I have a
  database to keep track of my running, and although it's not
  entirely trivial to calculate pace per mile, a formula does that
  fine. A formula also strips out the area code from local phone
  numbers before dialing, which is in turn controlled by a simple
  macro. Macros can do more sophisticated stuff like looking up
  values from other databases, and power users can even create menus
  in ResEdit and access them through macros, thus creating turnkey
  systems. The macro syntax is relatively easy to use, but like most
  other languages is extremely picky about the details of field
  types and punctuation. For those that don't want to write simple
  macros, Panorama provides a Macro Recorder for registering mouse
  clicks and menu commands. It's hard to say much more about macros
  except that you can probably get them to do what you want with a
  little work.

  One of the most powerful features in Panorama II is what ProVUE
  calls crosstabs. In reality, there's nothing new about crosstabs;
  they are merely rows and columns of data like you would see in a
  spreadsheet. What's neat about crosstabs though, is that they
  aren't in a spreadsheet, so you can use the database features in
  Panorama II to enter, sort, categorize, and select the data. That
  sort of thing is difficult to do in a spreadsheet, but relatively
  easy in a database.


Problems
  So it's not perfect. I have two main gripes with Panorama II.
  First, the interface is strange, and although sometimes ProVUE has
  hit upon a great way of doing something, other times it just falls
  flat. Second, although the manual does contain all the information
  you will need and is quite well-written, it's organized in an odd
  way that makes looking for the specifics of anything rather
  tedious. The manual problems may be my personal opinion though,
  because as much as I appreciate the descriptions of _how_ to do
  something, I often have trouble flipping to the right section. It
  looks reasonable in the Table of Contents, but I often have to
  poke around in the index to find what I want. There is also a
  Picture Index that provides page references to graphical elements
  and menu commands in the interface. I haven't been using it but
  should give it a try.

  The interface is a tougher matter. As I said, parts of it are
  great. Whenever you click on a tool in the toolbar to the left of
  any window, not only does the icon light up, but a two word
  description pops to the right, making it easy to figure out what
  each icon does. It's not obtrusive and it works. What doesn't work
  is the input box. Whenever you click in a field, you select it,
  and copy and paste work fine. The confusion starts when you
  double-click on a field, or select it and start to type. A little
  box springs up around the field for you to enter and edit data.
  The advantage of this is that you can increase the size of the
  input box as much as you want, which is handy for large amounts of
  data that won't display fully. The problem appears when you want
  to go on to the next field. Hitting the tab key will close the
  input box as you would expect and move you to the next field.
  However, clicking in the next field or in a button will only close
  the input box, so you have to click again to select the next field
  or button. It sounds minor, but I find it can be a big pain when
  doing data entry and unfortunately encourages mouse-less design
  since the tab key works so much better. In this respect FileMaker
  is much more cleanly implemented, though perhaps not so flexible.
  I prefer clean in data entry, and it's especially distressing
  since Panorama II does so much to speed and ease data entry.

  Panorama II has a few other minor interface quirks, like trying to
  get a box around a field and not have that box overwritten when
  the input box pops up. Panorama II supports multiple monitors, but
  not automatically. You open forms and macros in new windows by
  command-selecting an item from a pop-down menu in each window's
  title bar, at which point you can draw out on a representative
  desktop where you want the window to go. I'd much rather have it
  know how to zoom to the current monitor and pick a default size. I
  suspect that some of these quirks are left over from previous
  versions, and I hope ProVUE is evaluating the utility and design
  of them.


Panorama II Conclusions
  I'm happy with Panorama II. I primarily use it to keep track of my
  addresses and phone numbers because I've never seen an
  address/phone DA that I liked entirely. It took a bit more work to
  set up in Panorama II, but now I have a database that can dial
  phones and print smart envelopes with EPS graphics on them, and a
  single click will copy an entire address for use in a letter. The
  program is fast and responsive and it took me less time to figure
  out than FileMaker Pro. I've been pleased with the limited contact
  I've had with ProVUE too, since they independently sent out a free
  upgrade which added a few features and supposedly fixed a few
  bugs, although I've never had the program crash on me. When it
  comes right down to it, I have very little to complain about with
  Panorama II, and I fear only that I've been unable to completely
  do it justice in this limited space since I haven't even touched
  on things like its graphing or outline capabilities. Highly
  recommended.

    ProVUE Development
    15180 Transistor Lane
    Huntington Beach, CA  92649
    800/966-7878
    800/541-5137 (fax)
    ProVUE on America Online


Reviews/16-Mar-92
-----------------

* MacWEEK
    Fileserver Comparison -- pg. 29
      AppleShare 3.0
      DataClub 2.0
    Atlas Pro -- pg. 29
    AutoDoubler -- pg. 30
    PowerView -- pg. 36
    Shredder -- pg. 36
    Nexus fx -- pg. 37

References:
    MacWEEK -- 09-Mar-92, Vol. 6, #10


..

 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.