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TidBITS#65/10-Jun-91
====================

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Topics:
    MailBITS/10-Jun-91
    SevenBITS/10-Jun-91
    Window Gadgets
    HAM Sandwich
    More Apple News
    Reviews/10-Jun-91


MailBITS/10-Jun-91
------------------
  Tom Fitch writes, "In TidBITS#58, you mention that the Magnavox
  color monitor is a Trinitron, when in fact it is made by Phillips.
  Still a pretty good screen for the money. Also, if you are
  concerned about the expense of the Excel 3.0 upgrade, you may want
  to mention the Claris "sidegrade" offer, $99 for Resolve.
  Congratulations on the matrimony!" [Thanks, Tom!]

  A quick clarification. Last week I said something about how Claris
  was designing all of its products to share the same interface, but
  I accidentally included HyperCard in that list, which simply isn't
  true. HyperCard shares no features with the other Claris products,
  though it would be interesting if they modified the program so it
  did share some features. However, I'm not betting on a HyperCard
  2.5 or 3.0 anytime soon. See More Apple News for the dirt.

  Information from:
    Tom Fitch -- [e-mail]


SevenBITS/10-Jun-91
-------------------
  Lots of new utilities will be coming out to take advantage of
  System 7 and all that can be done with Apple Events and the like.
  From the sound of it, one of the most useful and powerful will be
  CE's QuicKeys 2.1 (besides I should say something nice about them
  after hassling them about not making QuickMail Server 2.5 System
  7-compatible two weeks ago). CE has come up with something called
  CE/IAC, which allows QuicKeys 2.1 to receive IAC events from other
  applications. That's the heart of QuicKeys's new System 7-
  studliness, which encompasses the Apple Events Extension, the
  Finder Events Extension, the UserLand Extension, and the Frontier
  Extension. The Apple Events Extension lets QuicKeys send Apple
  Events to other applications, even over a network if desired. The
  UserLand Extensions works like the Apple Events Extension, but
  supports UserLand IAC-aware applications. The Finder Events
  Extension sends Apple Events to the Finder, which can be useful
  for automating tasks involving the Finder. Included events are
  Show Clipboard, Show, Print, Open (Document, Application, DA,
  Control Panel, Alias, etc.), Sleep, and Get Info. The Frontier
  Extension can send scripts to UserLand's Frontier program, which
  is a scripting language for controlling applications via IAC. It
  strikes me that some of this might be a tad redundant, but the
  worse that can happen is that you'll have a choice in how to
  implement certain IAC actions. QuicKeys 2.1 is a $15 upgrade and
  should be out soon.

  For those of you who use MacX, Apple has an upgrade to version
  1.1, appropriately titled 1.1.7, since the only people who will
  upgrade are those who  use MacX and want to use System 7 as well.
  Do note that if you use MacX in A/UX, you should NOT upgrade since
  A/UX is not compatible with System 7. The other reason not to
  upgrade if you use A/UX is that A/UX has come with MacX since A/UX
  version 2.01, so you'd be wasting your money. The System 7-
  compatible version of A/UX will incorporate MacX 1.1.7. The main
  enhancement to MacX in terms of System 7 capabilities is that you
  can now use virtual memory, which is handy with X applications.
  You also get 30 days of Technical Answerline support from Apple
  for your $95 upgrade fee (which Apple claims is 34% less than the
  cost of the previous upgrade fee). The full price is $295, and
  MacX will be available from authorized Apple resellers in August.

  If you don't have System 7 yet and really dislike working with
  floppies, you can get it on CD-ROM from the May 27 issue of
  Metatec's NAUTILUS, but the catch is that you have to subscribe to
  Nautilus's monthly CD-ROM magazine, which is a tad pricey at $9.95
  per issue, although they do say that you can pay $19.95 for a
  single issue. You will find a second catch in that you will need a
  CD-ROM player. If neither the cost nor the hardware limit you, you
  might want to check out NAUTILUS. I haven't see too many issues,
  not having a CD-ROM drive regularly, but I do approve of
  electronic publishing.

    Jackie Promes, Apple -- 408/974-3609
    Mary Vaughn, Metatec -- 614/761-2000

  Information from:
    CE propaganda
    Apple propaganda
    [e-mail]


Window Gadgets
--------------
  This is absolutely no good. It must stop, and soon! Companies have
  begun to release Windows utilities that don't exist as a higher
  life form on the Mac. Sheesh, how will we Mac chauvinists maintain
  our self respect? Ah, well, it's probably good for us all.

  A standard piece of equipment on the Amiga and on certain Atari
  computers is the so-called "blitter" chip, which handles the
  graphics drawing. Did you ever wonder how those machines handle
  such impressive graphics? Well now you know. Do you wonder why the
  Mac and PC-clones don't have blitter chips? Me too. Weitek
  recently announced a User Interface Controller chip that
  intercepts graphics calls and processes them in the fast hardware
  rather than using Windows's own sluggish software. Much like a
  math coprocessor, which intercepts all the math calls and speeds
  them up, the Weitek chip should significantly increase the speed
  with which Windows draws the screen. Some operations speed up 25
  times - other only four times, but even still, that amount of
  speed will help make Windows more usable.

  The Mac doesn't suffer from super-slow graphics performance
  because the Apple designed its OS for graphics, but Weitek is
  apparently talking to Apple as well. Heck, System 7 zooms windows
  slowly on the slower machines, and a blitter board would smooth
  out some of those rough spots. Murph Sewall also mentioned that
  Apple is looking at Edsun's CEG (Continuous Edge Gradation, I
  think) chips, which make a standard VGA display look like it's
  working in 24-bit color. Add that chip to the Mac, and it would
  spruce up all those Apple 13" color monitors in 8-bit mode that
  will be running multimedia applications now that the QuickTime
  multimedia extensions are out. I can't remember how much the Edsun
  chip costs, though it was under $200 or so, but the Weitek chip
  should be showing up in PC boards for about $150. I think Apple
  should jump at both of these technologies, because I see no point
  in wasting CPU power on something that specialized hardware can
  handle. To be fair, Ergon just announced the XLR8-IT accelerator
  board for Windows. It does exactly what boards built with the
  Weitek chip will do, but costs a great deal more at $499.

  Probably the biggest news in the Windows world in the last few
  weeks has been Visual Basic from Microsoft. Put simply, it is a
  version of Basic along with a screen painter tool that allows
  programmers to quickly create full-fledged Windows applications.
  Only time will tell, but VB applications apparently run faster and
  look more professional than equivalent HyperCard applications.
  This has led to the release of a number of tools from third
  parties that add functionality to VB. Already you can get SQL
  tools, graphic tools, special effects, communications tools,
  financial and scientific functions, terminal emulation tools, and
  neural network tools to simplify your development efforts. Visual
  Basic lists for $199 and should ship in the next week or so. From
  what everyone has said (there's only been one lukewarm article in
  the magazines - everyone else has been drooling over this
  program), if you wish to develop in Windows, you'd do well to take
  a look at what Visual Basic can do for you, especially since you
  might be able to sell VB programs, unlike HyperCard (or anything
  else) stacks. Two features that don't yet exist in Visual Basic
  are support for Object Embedding and Linking (OLE) and Microsoft's
  Multimedia Extensions, although Microsoft has promised them for a
  future release.

  Merasoft has announced an interesting program that combines the
  best features of QuicKeys with the ability to sit in the
  background and look for certain conditions. E'vent Manager can add
  application-specific hotkeys to any application, locate files on a
  hard disk (a useful feature under Windows), launch programs, add
  an autosave feature to any application, and save and restore
  working environments of multiple applications and documents. The
  program's main claim to fame is that it can watch for certain
  events, such a pattern of keystrokes or application launches, and
  perform predefined actions, such as opening documents or changing
  default settings. Merasoft claims that creating the conditions
  requires no programming experience since users can merely select
  the statements they want from a list of acceptable commands. In my
  experience, that sort of programming (because that's what it is,
  call it what you will) is clumsy but effective.

  The final application that will inspire some jealousy in Mac folks
  is Relate from ObjectSoft. Relate allows users to create links
  between applications, inserting a small icon at the source end of
  the link. Clicking on the icon brings up a list of links from
  which the user can select the appropriate link, which will then
  open the document defined as the destination end of the link. I
  haven't seen this program, so I don't know how well ObjectSoft
  implemented it in ToolBook (anyone want to try doing this in
  HyperCard 2.1?), but I suspect that the entire utility rests on
  how well Relate integrates into the rest of the environment.
  Still, it's a neat idea and one that is at the heart of Ted
  Nelson's Xanadu system, although links are bidirectional in
  Xanadu, which is far more powerful.

    Ergon -- 601/856-4968
    Microsoft -- 800/426-9400
    Merasoft -- 801/225-9951
    ObjectSoft -- 201/930-0582

  Related articles:
    PC WEEK -- 27-May-91, Vol. 8, #21, pg. 17, 31
    PC WEEK -- 20-May-91, Vol. 8, #20, pg. 5
    InfoWorld -- 27-May-91, Vol. 13, #21, pg. 28, 31
    InfoWorld -- 20-May-91, Vol. 13, #20, pg. 5, 19, 34
    InfoWorld -- 06-May-91, Vol. 13, #18, pg. 1
    InfoWorld -- 18-Mar-91, Vol. 13, #11, pg. 13


HAM Sandwich
------------
  One of the neatest capabilities of Finder 7 is the ability to put
  anything (including an alias) in the Apple menu by simply putting
  that item in the Apple Menu Items folder in the System Folder.
  Most people have put DAs there, and lots more immediately included
  aliases to their favorite applications, but what some people don't
  realize is that you can also put folders in that menu. When you
  select the item in the menu, the folder opens up. That's how Apple
  implemented the Control Panels item - it's merely a folder in the
  System Folder that's hardwired to appear in the Apple menu.

  Of course once you realize that you can get to folders via the
  Apple menu, you (well, I did and a friend did, and lots of others
  did anyway) immediately think, "I wonder if that could be a
  hierarchical menu that would list the items inside the folder?"
  Now as much as I find hierarchical menus a pain on occasion
  (especially before I cleaned my mouse so well that it could pass a
  white glove test), I can see the utility of hierarchical menus for
  often-used folders. I assume that Jorg Brown and Now Software will
  enhance Now Menus to provide this capability, but I haven't heard
  anything from them about future products yet. What has been
  bouncing around on the nets for a while is a discussion about a
  program called Hierarchical Apple Menu, or HAM. (Forgive me if I
  wallow briefly in a pigpun.) HAM is written by Chris Derossi of
  Apple and will provide either four or six levels of hierarchical
  menu from folders when it is released sometime in June. I imagine
  that many levels of hierarchy would be truly difficult to
  navigate, but it might be easier than working your way through
  that many nested folders.

  The only thing that Chris has yet to decide is how to distribute
  HAM, shareware or commercial. Apparently he wants to get the
  widest possible distribution for HAM, and there's been some debate
  as to which method would provide it. Since two other commercial
  products will probably provide similar functionality (Now Menus
  should, and Connectix's HandOff II 2.2 will include a similar
  utility called SuperMenu), I think that the shareware method will
  gain the widest distribution. I suspect that it will not earn as
  much money as a commercial release, but then again, commercial
  software is a lot more work and requires tech support and more
  frequent updates than shareware products generally do. All in all,
  commercial software is more work but has greater financial
  rewards. For those wondering how shareware would work, considering
  that Chris works for Apple, I gather from the net conversations
  that Claris would have nothing to do with it (which makes sense,
  since Claris doesn't sell any utilities), and Apple too is
  completely uninvolved with the project.

  People have said that HAM stands to be the most powerful of the
  three utilities, probably in terms of the number of levels deep it
  goes. It's unclear how deep Now Menus or SuperMenu will go, but a
  shareware HAM combined with the free Understudy (which can allow
  certain applications to open files from other applications from
  the Finder) from Larry Rosenstein of Apple could damage some of
  Hand Off's popularity. I haven't used Hand Off II, but the current
  version of Understudy requires ResEdit for configuration, not
  exactly an ideal user interface. Still, it's hard to beat free
  (although the Hand Off II upgrade will be free to registered
  users).

    Connectix -- 800/950-5880 -- 415/324-0727

  Information from:
    Ian C. Evans -- [e-mail]
    Dean Yu -- [e-mail]
    Alexander M. Rosenberg -- [e-mail]
    Richard C. Long -- [e-mail]
    Kiran Wagle -- [e-mail]
    Dennis Cohen -- [e-mail]
    Leonard Rosenthol -- [e-mail]
    Alan D. -- [e-mail]

  Related articles:
    MacWEEK -- 04-Jun-91, Vol. 5, #21, pg. 15


More Apple News
---------------
  Anyone who has programmed on the Mac has used Inside Mac (OK,
  maybe a few bright people can just guess at the specifics, but
  everyone else looks it up). Inside Mac is pretty clumsy these
  days, with six volumes and an index that's required to figure out
  where the information lives, often in several books. Apple has
  finally announced that it is cleaning up and rewriting Inside Mac.
  I'm sure it will end up on paper, most things still do,
  unfortunately, but Apple will also make it available on CD-ROM. If
  you're interested in giving feedback, Apple is taking comments,
  suggestions, and errata from the current Inside Macintosh (as well
  as survey responses from a survey I didn't want to reprint in its
  entirety) at [e-mail]. Apple welcomes
  comments on the electronic versions, the book version, and any
  other related topics.

  I recently heard some nastiness from inside Apple/Claris.
  HyperCard was transferred to Claris for marketing because Apple
  felt it wasn't part of the system software. Claris claimed at the
  Developer's Conference that Apple and Claris co-developed and
  co-tested HyperCard 2.1, but the truth of the matter is that
  Claris only helped out with the testing. HyperCard 2.1 was
  engineered entirely by some of the people who worked on HyperCard
  2.0, none of whom were, are, or will be at Claris. To me that
  means that we're going to wait a long time to see another upgrade
  of HyperCard if only because the new HyperCard team at Claris will
  have to come up to speed on the program. This is the sort of
  problem that crops up with reorganizing all the time. I've also
  heard that an extra feature in the Report dialogs was supposed to
  be "removed" because Claris didn't have time to include it in the
  manual. Since there weren't any programmers working on 2.1, no one
  noticed the extra feature, but if you've got 2.1, check around in
  the report printing stuff for an undocumented feature.

  Finally, Bill Leue wondered if there was any way to use System 7
  file sharing protocols over a standard modem. The closest way to
  accomplish this is Shiva's NetModem, which allows a standard modem
  to dial into a LocalTalk network. A real solution would be similar
  to SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) but  would use AppleTalk
  protocols rather than TCP/IP, thus bringing up SLAP (Serial Line
  AppleTalk Protocols) as the acronym. I've heard that this is very
  possible, though a decent speed over standard modems may take some
  doing. Apparently, Apple even plans to add this capability
  directly into a later release of System 7. It should join features
  like the new printing architecture and the AppleScript language in
  7.x, where x is greater than one. x equals one is probably
  reserved for the bugs that are slowly cropping up, although most
  of them have been cosmetic so far (like the floppy icon not
  disappearing quickly when thrown in the trash).

  Information from:
    Mark B. Johnson -- [e-mail]
    Pythaeus
    Bill Leue -- [e-mail]
    Jeffrey A. Sullivan -- [e-mail]


Reviews/10-Jun-91
-----------------

* MacWEEK
    TokaMac LC, pg. 45
    88 MB SyQuest drives, pg. 45
      DataPak 88
      MR-90
      Infinity 88 Turbo
    ElectricImage, pg. 50
    Radar, pg. 54
    DynoPage, pg. 54

* PC WEEK
    Wireless LANs, pg. 91
      Motorola's Altair
      NCR's WaveLAN

* InfoWorld
    Animation Works, pg. 87
    HP LaserJet IIIsi, pg. 90

* BYTE
    System 7, pg. 42

* MacUser
    WordPerfect 2.0, pg. 56
    Radius Pivot for Built-In Video, pg. 58
    Radius Color Pivot, pg. 58
    CrystalPrint Express, pg. 70
    4D Write, 4D Calc, and 4D XREF, pg. 72
    ConvertIt!, pg. 76
    Reports 2.0, pg. 78
    Scheduling Programs, pg. 80
      FastTrack Schedule
      MacSchedule
      MacSchedule Plus
    Digital Darkroom, pg. 83
    CalenDAr, pg. 89
    DisplayServer II-DPD, pg. 89
    SnapJot, pg. 89
    For the Record, pg. 90
    Studio Vision, pg. 91
    Oids, pg. 92
    Palmtop Computers, pg. 110
      Sharp Wizard OZ-8000
      Casio B.O.S.S. 9500
      Poqet PC
      Atari Portfolio
    IIci Cache Cards, pg. 124
      DayStar FastCache IIci
      iir Cache Card 32
      Micron Xceed IIci
      Technology Works Cache Card 64
      TMS Cache Card 64
      Total Systems QuickCache IIci
      UR Micro MacCache 64
      UR Micro MacCache LP32
    CD-ROM Drives, pg. 150
      (too many to list)

References:
    MacWEEK -- 04-Jun-91, Vol. 5, #21
    PC WEEK -- 03-Jun-91, Vol. 8, #22
    InfoWorld -- 03-Jun-91, Vol. 13, #22
    BYTE -- Jun-91
    MacUser -- Jun-91


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