BMUG PD-ROM B4/PD-ROM B4.iso/Utilities/TidBITs/TidBITS 101-125/TidBITS#112⁄23-Mar-92.etx

Text File | 1992-05-27 | 29KB | 568 lines

TidBITS#112/23-Mar-92
=====================

 The main shadow and substance of this issue comes from Apple,
   with a combination of soft rumors and hard products, including
   the new LC II and a hot new laser printer. Check out an
   excellent review of SuperPaint 3.0, and read about yet another
   virus rearing its slimy head. You'll also find an article on a
   user group that keeps Reflex Plus alive against all odds and
   some clarifications of last week's review of Panorama II.

 Copyright 1990-1992 Adam & Tonya Engst. Non-profit, non-commercial
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Topics:
    MailBITS/23-Mar-92
    Classic PowerBook Rumors
    New Apple Crop
    INIT 1984 Virus
    Imaging Updates
    SuperPaint 3.0 Review
    Reflex Orphans Uniting
    Panorama II Clarifications
    Reviews/23-Mar-92

[Archived as /info-mac/digest/tb/tidbits-112.etx; 28K]


MailBITS/23-Mar-92
------------------
  Michel Langereis writes, "The 1992 MACWORLD Expo Benelux, to be
  held in Amsterdam from May 4th to 6th, has been cancelled, as
  confirmed by the organizers. There was no comment on the reason
  but I'll dig into it. What the heck is going on in Europe? Several
  expos have already been cancelled and I wonder if more will
  follow, although there aren't that many left."

  Information from:
    Michel Langereis -- neabbs![e-mail]


PowerBook Modem Fix?
  Jonathan Feinstein of Shrink2Fit Software passes along a useful
  hint for people having problems connecting to remote modems from
  their PowerBook's internal Apple modem. Apparently, these
  difficulties come from some non-standard aspects of Apple's error
  correction firmware routines, which Apple wrote that way to avoid
  infringing on Hayes's modem patents. This is not related to the
  problem we reported on earlier with the PowerBooks losing input
  data at high speeds.

  Jonathan says that Apple tech support suggested that he replace
  the standard "ATDT" dialing command with "AT&Q0DT" (that's a zero,
  not a capital letter O, after the Q). In other words, the command
  to dial Memory Alpha BBS would be "AT&Q0DT 1-607/257-5822" instead
  of "ATDT 1-607/257-5822". Note that many programs dial
  automatically, so you may need to reconfigure your program's
  default dialing command.

  Information from:
    Jonathan Feinstein


Classic PowerBook Rumors
------------------------
  Pythaeus tells us that Apple is preparing to ship its internal 80
  MB hard disk drives for the PowerBook series. This should come as
  welcome news for PowerBook power users who have been feeling
  scrunched between the small 20 MB and 40 MB standard hard drives
  that have been shipping in Apple's notebooks.

  More interesting, and a bit more surprising, is the rumour that
  Apple will offer a trade-up deal to owners of the smaller drives.
  As a result, all those existing PowerBook owners should be able to
  acquire an 80 MB drive without having to keep the original drive
  or try to sell it in a market with practically zero potential
  customers (after all, every PowerBook already has one of the
  smaller drives in it).

  As much as those 80 MB drives will be extremely welcome, we wonder
  if they will have the same, ahem, feature that some of the current
  80 MB drives have (notably the drives in some IIsi's). Apple ships
  drives pre-formatted, but the standard formatting often doesn't
  create as large a partition as possible. With some of the 80 MB
  drives, up to 4 MB of disk space may be wasted in a free space
  partition. You can recover this space by backing up your entire
  hard drive (not a bad thing to do while you're thinking about it
  anyway), running Apple's HD SC Setup program, and increasing the
  size of the default partition with the Partition button. If you
  don't know what you're doing, don't mess with this, since you will
  have to reformat your drive in the process, erasing everything on
  it. This is one of the advantages of Silverlining - you can resize
  partitions on the fly without reformatting. It's always a good
  idea to backup before performing any task of this sort though.

  Finally, as of April 15th, Apple will officially remove the 2 MB
  Classic and 2 MB Classic II from the price lists, thus admitting
  that 2 MB is really not enough RAM to run System 7. The 4 MB
  versions of those Macs will stick around, and you can bet that
  Apple won't introduce any more 2 MB versions of the desktop Macs
  again.

  Information from:
    Pythaeus


New Apple Crop
--------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, TidBITS Contributing Editor

  Continuing in its plan for a major set of product introductions
  every six months, Apple today announced several new hardware
  products, including one new Mac. The Macintosh LC II, a 68030
  version of the popular Mac LC, leads the pack, followed by a
  spiffy new LaserWriter, a new CD-ROM drive, and a version of the
  Apple OneScanner for Windows users (which we'll talk more about in
  a future issue).

  The new Macintosh LC II is, plain and simple, a replacement for
  the original LC. The new computer offers a 16 MHz 68030 processor
  in place of the 16 MHz 68020 in the LC. The '030 doesn't offer a
  tremendous speed advantage over the 68020, but it does provide a
  small improvement... and more importantly, provides virtual memory
  capability to the smallest member of the modular Mac line. The LC
  II also sports a newer '030 processor direct slot (PDS) for
  expansion purposes, allowing users to add '030 PDS cards while
  supporting most '020 PDS cards created for the LC (software
  upgrades may be necessary for such cards). [Adam: I certainly hope
  that the new '030 PDS slot is compatible with the current SE/30
  and IIsi PDS slots. The last thing we need is yet another slot
  format.] The LC II joins Apple's product line at the same retail
  price level as the LC ($1700 for a 4 MB RAM, 40 MB hard drive
  machine), making it an extremely affordable path to '030
  computing. An upgrade from the LC will be available in several
  months, but we don't have a price on that yet.

  One long-rumoured addition to Apple's printer line-up is the
  Personal LaserWriter NTR with a 16 MHz AMD Am29005 RISC processor
  and Adobe PostScript Level 2 at its heart. Otherwise, this printer
  uses the same engine as and is similar to the Personal LaserWriter
  NT, which will remain in the product line. The high-speed RISC
  processor allows this printer to work about three to five times
  faster than the Personal LaserWriter NT, a welcome speed increase.
  The NTR has the same built-in multi-purpose paper tray as the
  Personal LaserWriter LS, and you can add an optional 250-sheet
  paper feeder base. Like its competition, the QMS-PS 410, the NTR
  uses "intelligent" port and protocol switching, so it can be used
  with Macs, PCs, and mixed networks at the same time.

  One new product that I hadn't even heard about in the rumour mill
  is the AppleCD 150, a new CD-ROM drive that replaces the Apple CD
  SC Plus, which shipped just last year. The new unit has basically
  the same performance as the old drive at about 380 millisecond
  access time, but more importantly it has a new, trim case design
  for those of you who are picky about peripheral aesthetics, and is
  about $200 less expensive than the older drive, so it will fit
  better in the checkbook as well as on the desktop. It's not
  technically interesting, but the lower price will help to make
  some of those interesting new CD-ROM products accessible to a lot
  more people.

  Apple also announced that it is removing the PowerBook 140 2/20
  and the 21" monochrome Two Page Display from the product line (a
  delicate way of saying those products have been "terminated"). No
  replacements are planned for these products. Of course, Apple is
  also removing the existing Macintosh LC products and the Apple CD
  SC Plus. It's not surprising that the PowerBook 140 2/20 is
  disappearing - 2 MB of RAM and a 20 MB hard drive is ludicrous for
  that machine running System 7, but it is curious that the 21"
  monochrome monitor is going away.

  Still missing is the faster Macintosh IIsi that we're hoping to
  see some time this year. A 25 MHz IIsi would help differentiate
  that machine from the new '030 LC II, which is only slightly
  slower than the 20 MHz IIsi, especially when the IIsi is bogged
  down with internal video. The main gap in the product line,
  though, is a machine to replace the SE/30, which had the excellent
  combination of small size, good speed, and some expandability.
  Apple seems to be relegating the compact Mac line to the pokey
  Classic and the moribund Classic II, ignoring the fact that power
  users might want a compact Mac too.


INIT 1984 Virus
---------------
  These things come in fits and spurts. We went a long time without
  a new virus, and the world was a better place for it. Then wham,
  two viruses within a few weeks of each other. People who have
  files infected with this new virus will definitely want to get the
  attention of the as-yet-unknown anti-social troglodyte author,
  although I expect that attention will again fall into the category
  of violence to the knee cap region.

  This new virus is called "INIT 1984" presumably for the resource
  number that it installs in infected files. It differs from
  previous Macintosh viruses in two ways, one fortunate, one
  unfortunate. Luckily, it only installs itself in system extensions
  of the type INIT and does not affect the System file, the desktop
  file, control panels, applications, or data files. This is good
  because INITs are shared less than applications, which means that
  INIT 1984 has spread slowly, and indeed, only a few infections
  have been reported, one in the US and one in Europe. Apparently
  the virus works under both System 6 and System 7 though on old
  Macs with the 64K ROMs (the 128K and 512K Macs), the virus will
  cause crashes at boot time.

  Unfortunately, this is also the first virus that intentionally
  causes damage to the files on infected hard disks when it is
  triggered on any Friday the 13th in 1991 or later years. Damage
  includes changing the names and attributes of a large number of
  folders and files to random strings and the deletion of
  approximately 2% of your files. Needless to say, the file deletion
  aside, changed file and folder names and attributes would be
  almost completely impossible to fix if a backup was not available.

  The virus was discovered when it activated a few weeks ago on
  13-Mar-92, but it's possible that other Macs were damaged when the
  virus would have activated on 13-Sep-91 and 13-Dec-91. If you
  think you may have had files damaged or deleted on one of those
  two dates, please contact Gene Spafford at <[e-mail]>.
  If you are not on the Internet, feel free to send mail to TidBITS
  and we'll forward it to Gene.

  Looking quickly at a calendar, I see that the next Friday the 13th
  isn't until November of 1992, so the virus is not likely to damage
  your data until then if it hasn't already. However, you should
  immediately get an updated version of your favorite anti-virus
  utility to avoid further spreading of any existing infections. My
  favorite anti-virus utility, Disinfectant, has been upgraded to
  version 2.7 by its erstwhile author, John Norstad of Northwestern
  University and should be available at your favorite purveyor of
  public domain and shareware software. Do note one important change
  with Disinfectant. The Disinfectant INIT must now load _before_
  all other INITs to be able to detect and prevent INIT 1984 from
  doing its dirty deeds. All other anti-virus utilities will also be
  updated to detect and eliminate INIT 1984 as you read this, so go
  grab one now. Incidently, the current versions of both Gatekeeper
  and SAM Intercept generate an alert if this virus attempts to
  spread to other files. However, you should still get the updates
  to those programs so they specifically recognize that virus for
  what it is.

  Information from:
    Gene Spafford -- [e-mail]
    Mark H Anbinder, TidBITS Contributing Editor


Imaging Updates
---------------
  QuickDraw was pretty neat when it came out, since it allowed the
  Mac to be a true graphics-based machine. Later on, Apple added
  color, turning it into Color QuickDraw, the standard in color-
  capable Macs today. QuickDraw is starting to age, though, and
  Apple has been working on some fixes. We've heard about two
  projects. The first will work with QuickDraw, providing additional
  2D and 3D drawing features and some other nifty stuff, whereas the
  second project, which looms far in the future, will essentially
  act like Display PostScript, but will run faster and won't have an
  Adobe licensing albatross hanging from its neck.

  In the meantime, QuickDraw's new sidekick will work with graphic
  objects rather than merely lines, as QuickDraw does now. Objects
  will include a line, a curve, a path, a rectangle, a polygon,
  text, a bitmap, and a picture, which is a combination of one or
  more of the other objects. Even better will be the built-in
  features that have only been available in drawing packages, such
  as rotation, skewing, scaling, and enhanced color support for
  various color output devices.

  TrueType will gain from the new model, with Apple adding more
  sophisticated typographical controls for tasks like tracking and
  even some optical scaling, which allows you to significantly
  modify a font based on various variables. Currently only Adobe's
  Multiple Master fonts offer such capabilities, although Altsys
  recently announced Fontographer 3.5 which not only opens and
  creates Multiple Master fonts, but changes the weight of existing
  fonts or even interpolates between two different fonts. Of course
  Fontographer is for creating and editing fonts, whereas Multiple
  Master and the enhanced TrueType will allow font modifications
  within documents, but the end results are similar.

  Information from:
    Pythaeus
    Altsys propaganda

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


SuperPaint 3.0 Review
---------------------
  by Matt Neuburg -- [e-mail]

  SuperPaint, the old workhorse that started life as little more
  than a combination of a MacPaint clone and a MacDraw clone, has
  been given a new lease on life in the competitive world of
  increasingly sophisticated drawing and painting programs. Version
  3.0, produced by a Silicon Beach now subjugated to Aldus, adds
  some splendid color tools to its already solid and easy-to-use
  capabilities.

  SuperPaint 2.0 had lately been overshadowed by low-priced paint
  and draw programs (Color MacCheese, UltraPaint) incorporating the
  sort of color and texture tools associated with higher-priced
  programs; version 3.0 is clearly an attempt to reclaim some of the
  lost territory, and I suspect it will be successful. Serious
  artists may still need the greater power and precision of Canvas,
  FreeHand, PixelPaint Pro, or Illustrator, but if you want to buy
  just one all-around program for occasional use (pictures for
  HyperCard, diagrams for teaching, custom color icons, and the
  occasional desktop image are my main uses), and you'd rather spend
  a bit over $100, not something over $300, SuperPaint may prove an
  excellent choice.

  The original SuperPaint idea of combining a single draw layer and
  a single paint layer in one document remains a clever and powerful
  one. The draw layer permits precision work with basic geometrical
  shapes and text, and objects remain objects after you've created
  them: you can move them, delete them, or modify their attributes,
  at any time and independently of one another. It also allows
  objects to be encoded more precisely than the screen will show: a
  circle that looks jagged on the screen will be perfectly round in
  a higher-resolution print (such as laser printing), and you can
  edit at that higher resolution as well. The paint layer is just a
  collection of 72-dpi pixels; but even so, you can edit close up
  for precision work, and SuperPaint comes bundled with lots of
  "fun" paint tools and patterns (streams of bubbles or musical
  notes, that sort of thing). The result is that even the most
  hamfisted operator (like me) can have a good time and make
  something acceptable.

  The burning question is whether SuperPaint can add color features
  without sacrificing the ease of use that has been its trademark
  and greatest advantage over its higher-priced, more powerful
  rivals. The answer appears to be "Yes." The color tools are built
  conceptually onto the back of the old black and white tools in a
  thoroughly intuitive and straightforward way, and clever use of
  palettes that pop up from palettes allows easy mouse-driven access
  to everything (with keyboard shortcuts as well, but I can never
  remember them). Only one thing is clumsier to do than it was in
  version 2.0: making the widths for horizontal and for vertical
  strokes be different (though there is also vastly more flexibility
  here than there was, so perhaps the trade is a fair one).

  Using color is just plain easy. If your line or fill is solid, you
  can choose a color for it (from a pop-down palette); if it is a
  pattern, you can choose one color for the "white" part and another
  for the "black" part. SuperPaint remembers all your pattern-color
  combinations, and posts images of them on a floating palette so
  that you can recreate them with a single mouse-click.

  And that's not all. Included are a number of "textures" - complex
  color images, such as a water-surface or a delicately shaded brick
  wall, that can repeat at intervals of any size, even so large that
  no repetition may be visible on an ordinary page. Also, a number
  of gradient structures are included, so you can shade a round ball
  with a round smear of color. A solid line or fill, or the "black"
  part of a pattern, may be one of these textures or gradients
  instead of a color. You may edit the gradients, and you can create
  and save new textures. Since SuperPaint can also import EPS and
  TIFF images with full resolution (into the Draw layer as single
  objects), you have tremendous power and flexibility here
  (especially if you happen to own a scanner).

  Finally, when one image appears over another, you can set the
  nature of the interaction between the two: the front image's line
  and fill may each be opaque, transparent, or translucent. The
  possibilities for fun and experimentation seem endless.

  Now for the down side. First, SuperPaint can be a little slow if
  your machine is slow; and, more significantly, it is a terrible
  memory hog the moment you start using color. The program tries to
  compensate by using a virtual memory scheme (only showing on
  screen what it can maintain in memory, and keeping the rest on
  disk); but when I've assigned the program 4500K and I keep getting
  "Not enough memory to do that" alerts, I believe I've a right to
  be a bit exasperated, especially when "that" is something simple
  like save my document as a startup screen.

  Second, don't throw away your copy of Adobe Illustrator.
  SuperPaint has no facilities for making text follow a path. Worse,
  its Bezier tools (for determining mathematically the
  characteristics of a curve) remain as clumsy as in version 2.0:
  handles are not marked as to what point they belong to; you are
  not shown changes smoothly as you work and have mostly to operate
  by blind guessing and then waiting for the result to appear; and
  you can easily accidentally rocket yourself out of Bezier mode
  when you are not finished editing.

  Finally, if there isn't a PostScript (e.g. laser) printer in your
  life, be prepared for a disappointment at print time. On a laser
  printer, even a black and white one, SuperPaint will reduce
  everything intelligently to simulated gray shades, and will show
  all items from the draw layer (including rotated text and Bezier
  curves) in perfect high resolution. But on a QuickDraw device such
  as a StyleWriter, your output won't be much better than on an
  ImageWriter: nearly everything is reduced to 72 dpi, a waste of
  your 360 dpi capacity. Come on, Silicon Beach, I know you can do
  better than this, because Adobe Illustrator translates Bezier
  curves into high resolution and complex color blends into
  beautiful smooth simulated gray-shades on a StyleWriter. My
  crystal ball says some third party has or will develop an engine
  for converting SuperPaint's PostScript output into nice
  StyleWriter images. But then, my crystal ball has never been right
  yet.

    Aldus -- 206/628-2320


Reflex Orphans Uniting
----------------------
  The unwashed masses of computer users do have clout, though it has
  seldom been used to effect change in the overall strategy of a
  company bent on, well, screwing its users. The best recent example
  of this clout came when Apple decided under user pressure to
  license MODE32 from Connectix to solve the problems with unwashed
  ROMs on some of the older Macs. There has been talk of a similar
  campaign to free FullWrite Professional from the depths of PC-
  oriented Borland after the acquisition of Ashton-Tate. That talk
  has yet to lead to any concerted action, but another movement
  against Borland is just gathering steam.

  Remember Reflex Plus? Nah, I didn't think you did. It was a
  powerful and well-liked relational database that had its roots
  back in the early days of the Macintosh in 1985. Many people
  bought into Reflex Plus and spent thousands of hours and dollars
  creating custom databases to run their businesses. Then, in 1988
  Borland decided that they had to concentrate on their DOS and
  Windows products to remain in the marketplace at all, and in the
  process cut off all future development work on Reflex Plus,
  abandoning the entire user base. Many people switched from Reflex
  Plus to one of the other powerful relational databases but many
  others, an estimated 40,000, liked the Reflex Plus environment
  and/or did not wish to throw away the significant investments they
  had in Reflex Plus. Thus was born the Reflex Plus Orphans
  Association (RPOA), a volunteer user group dedicated to supporting
  users of Reflex Plus when Borland would not.

  The RPOA has provided support for Reflex Plus users on America
  Online and CompuServe for over a year now, and recently started a
  campaign to find a third party developer who could take over the
  Reflex Plus code and provide updates and support to existing and
  future users. Philippe Kahn, the CEO of Borland, said on
  CompuServe: "We love the [Mac]. So tell me of a concrete solution
  and we'll work on it." Despite this apparent (though never
  concrete) willingness, the RPOA has still met with much difficulty
  in dealing with Borland, although several developers have shown
  interest. Part of the problem is that Borland does not want to
  sell the Reflex Plus code to a company that will be unable to
  stand behind it and continue supporting its users, although
  Borland may get even worse PR for sitting on the code. Ironically,
  many people used Ashton-Tate as an example of a company that sold
  its software when it no longer wished to support it. Ashton-Tate
  sold dBASE Mac to New Era Software, which renamed it nuBASE and
  has recently suffered massive mismanagement, threatening its
  chances to continue supporting nuBASE.

  Borland does have a point in not wanting to just let anyone take
  over Reflex Plus, but at the same time, four years of neglect have
  done little for Borland's image in the Macintosh market. I
  wouldn't be too surprised to see Borland get back into the Mac
  market at some point, and although there is no indication that
  they are working on anything, there is all that code from
  Borland's Sidekick utility and Ashton-Tate's FullWrite
  Professional, Full Impact, and FullPaint just sitting around. Kahn
  is not stupid and selling Reflex Plus to a good home would do a
  lot towards helping the company regain some respect among Mac
  users, respect that might be of some use in the continual battle
  with Microsoft.

  What does all this mean for you? For most of you, not too much
  short of general knowledge of industry workings. If you are
  interested in lending support to the campaign to find a developer
  and know a company well-versed in the Mac, 68000 assembler, and
  Reflex Plus, you should tell them about the RPOA's efforts. If you
  harbor hopes of rescuing FullWrite Professional or Full Impact in
  the same way, I'd pay attention and see what works and what
  doesn't for the RPOA. Kahn is no pushover. Finally, if you own and
  use Reflex Plus, you can join the Reflex Plus Orphans Association
  for $25 per year and get a year's subscription to the RPOA News,
  online and phone support, discounts on support disks, and the
  latest version of the program (7/7/88) to its legal
  owners/licensees. In meantime, we wish the RPOA all the best in
  their quest to liberate Reflex Plus.

    RPOA
    3142 Beaver Brook Lane
    Baldwinsville, NY 13027  USA
    315/635-7550 (email is preferred)

  Information from:
    Fred Rushden/RPOA -- FredAR on AOL -- [e-mail]


Panorama II Clarifications
--------------------------
  Well, no one's perfect, and I missed a few things in my review of
  Panorama II last week. My overall comments stand, but there are a
  few things I feel the need to clarify.

  It is easy to display the results of calculations on forms using
  what Panorama II calls an auto-wrap text object and a variable
  merged in with the text. I can't believe I didn't realize that,
  especially since I have used formulas in auto-wrap text objects
  for creating intelligent addresses that know not to include a
  space for company name if there is none present.

  One cool feature that I forgot to mention is Smart Dates. Panorama
  II knows how dates relate to each other, so you can enter dates
  like "May 21" or "3/17" and have Panorama II expand into that the
  date format you are using in that particular field, even adding
  the current year automatically. Neater yet is the ability to enter
  "last Tuesday" and have the program figure out the proper date. It
  can be easier to remember a relative date than the absolute date,
  and it's always nice to have Panorama II enter the current year
  for you if you wish.

  Jim Rea of ProVUE explained the rationale behind the Design Sheet
  to me. Apparently, ProVUE assumes that most people will use the
  Field Properties dialog to define and modify fields at first, but
  once a user becomes more comfortable in the Panorama II
  environment, he or she will prefer to use the Design Sheet, which
  is much faster and more efficient for making multiple changes. I
  must be abnormal, then, because I've almost never used the Field
  Properties dialog. Maybe if I had read the manual more
  carefully... :-)

  Information from:
    Jim Rea, President of ProVUE -- ProVUE on AOL


Reviews/23-Mar-92
-----------------

* MacWEEK
    High-end OCR Software -- pg. 45
      WordScan Plus 1.0
      OmniPage Professional 2.0
      OmniPage 3.0
      AccuText 3.0
    PowerPort/V.32 -- pg. 45
    Comet/CG -- pg. 52
    Now Up-to-Date -- pg. 54

* BYTE
    Quadra 900 -- pg. 229
    Outbound Notebook System Model 2030 -- pg. 233
    XGator 1.0 -- pg. 233

References:
    MacWEEK -- 16-Mar-92, Vol. 6, #11
    BYTE -- Feb-92


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