Info-Mac 3/Info_Mac_1994-01.iso/Periodical/TidBITs/TidBITS#154⁄30-Nov-92.etx

Text File | 1992-12-08 | 28KB | 580 lines

TidBITS#154/30-Nov-92
=====================

 Psst! Wanna a free gateway from FirstClass or Microsoft Mail to
   QuickMail? Read on for the details and the catch. We also have
   the promised full review of UserLand's Frontier scripting
   package, a look at some of Apple's multifarious directions, and
   two good support stories - one about APS and one from Global
   Village that promises online support.


This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:

* Nisus Software -- 800/922-2993 x305 -- [e-mail]
    For info on Nisus or QUED/M contact us. Updates now shipping!

 For detailed information on Nisus Software and their products,
   please send email to <[e-mail]>. To receive all this
   information in one file, send email to <[e-mail]>.

 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. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and company
   names may be registered trademarks of their companies. Disk
   subscriptions and back issues are available - email for details.

 For information send email to [e-mail] or [e-mail]
 CIS: 72511,306 -- AppleLink: [e-mail]@internet#
 AOL: Adam Engst -- Delphi: Adam_Engst -- BIX: TidBITS
 TidBITS -- 9301 Avondale Rd. NE Q1096 -- Redmond, WA 98052 USA
 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:
    MailBITS/30-Nov-92
    Global Village Provides Global Support
    Apple Down Under
    New FirstClass-to-QuickMail Gateway
    Frontier Review
    Reviews/30-Nov-92

[Archived as /info-mac/digest/tb/tidbits-154.etx; 28K]


MailBITS/30-Nov-92
------------------
  Matt Neuburg writes:

  Readers interested in hypertext and/or SuperPaint may wish to
  check out my SuperPaint 3.0 HyperHelp, now lodged for FTP at
  <sumex-aim.stanford.edu> as:

    info-mac/app/super-paint-30-help.hqx

  This is a stand-alone hypertext document produced with Storyspace
  from Eastgate Systems, which we reviewed in TidBITS#95. Basically,
  you click on a part of a picture or on a word to bring up the
  linked material. It gives an excellent illustration of
  Storyspace's more _elementary_ capacities; Storyspace can do many
  things not illustrated here!

  Information from:
    Matt Neuburg -- [e-mail]


Kudos to APS
  Jeff Wasilko writes:

  I've had three of the new Quantum 42 MB drives on order from APS
  for nearly two months. After calling the sales department a number
  of times and getting no solid answer on when the drives would be
  in from Quantum, I called Paul McGraw, APS's vice-president.

  I got his voice mail and left a message - imagining the worst. To
  my surprise, I got a message back from him on my voice mail in a
  few hours. He was traveling, so he said I'd have to call him on
  his cellular phone. When I spoke to him later that day, he said he
  had already spoken with the sales manager and told him to ship me
  two out of my three drives from a shipment of 12 they had just
  received.

  He apologized for the problems, and explained about the delay.
  Apparently Quantum decided to make 80% of their drives with the
  IDE interface, leaving quite a few vendors vying for the other 20%
  (including OEMs like Apple). Additionally, Quantum has shifted
  their production to larger drives, making the mundane 40 MB and 80
  MB drives very hard to get. As it turns out, Paul was traveling in
  California to meet with Quantum to try to straighten out these
  problems.

  I had two drives on my desk the next morning. I've heard some
  people say some bad things about APS service, but I still feel
  their hearts are in the right place.

  [Also see TidBITS#148 for more on this hard drive shortage. -Adam]

  Information from:
    Jeff Wasilko -- [e-mail]


Global Village Provides Global Support
--------------------------------------
  According to the pop-media-business industry, this is the age of
  customer service. Whether this is true because the media said so
  or because it just happened, many companies have been placing an
  emphasis on happy customers. Lori Chavez of Global Village
  recently posted a message to the Internet encouraging customers to
  contact Global Village using a wide variety of communication
  mechanisms. We are especially pleased with their interest in
  providing support via many electronic services and hope more
  companies follow Global Village's example in making support widely
  available and encouraging deserved praise and complaints. Here's
  the post:

  Global Village encourages any Global Village customer who has any
  problems whatsoever with our products to contact us immediately
  via any communications mechanism available:

    [e-mail]
    FMJM51A at Prodigy
    GO GLOBAL for the Global Village CompuServe forum
    [e-mail]
    [e-mail]
    415/390-8300
    415/390-8282 (fax)

    Global Village Communications
    685B East MiddleField Road
    Mountain View, CA  94043

    Message in a bottle: Pacific Ocean

  We are here to serve our customers and if we don't do that job
  well, complaints on the networks are deserved. We don't mind
  positive comments when we do things right either!


Apple Down Under
----------------
  by Dale Rodgie -- [e-mail]

  [Dale submitted this a while back, and with our overload of
  articles, I've only just gotten to it. Nevertheless, his
  information is still timely, and I've added comments where I
  couldn't resist. -Adam]

  This past August, Apple Computer held its fourth Australian Apple
  User Group Convention. Ian Cooper from Apple Computer (Australia)
  described, in general terms, Apple's future plans. Here are some
  of the highlights:

* Apple is working on cutting down product development to six
  months. [And they seem to be achieving this. The only problem is
  that it makes technical and sales support more complex, and can
  confuse the consumer. Where is the happy medium?]

* There will be a major push with notebook computers. Apple
  currently holds second place after Toshiba in the notebook market.
  That's pretty good considering that Apple has only been in the
  market for nine months. [I believe that since Dale wrote this,
  Apple has taken first place in the notebook market - a testament
  to the tremendous job Apple did in designing the PowerBook line
  after the much-maligned Mac Portable.]

* Apple will reduce the price of the Quadra and introduce the
  PowerPC. The PowerPC will run Macintosh, MS-DOS, Windows, and OS/2
  software. [They keep saying that, but frankly, I'm not holding my
  breath until I see the PowerPC doing just that as well as current
  Macs and PCs do.]

* Apple's entry level Macintosh will be a Classic/LC style machine
  with a 68030 microprocessor and internal 256 color video. [Shades
  of the rumored LC III that will provide IIci-class power at the
  price of the current LC II. But will Apple ship it with a "III" in
  the name?]

* Other products or features on the drawing board include more
  flexible expansion, faster 68030s by improving software and
  hardware, further support for Apple II emulation, improved SCSI
  and NuBus, complementing 68040 computers with a DSP chip,
  integrated RGB and NTSC video & stereo sound. [Rumors I've heard
  place the Quadra 800, due along with the LC III this February, as
  the first machine that might ship with onboard DSP (Digital Signal
  Processing) support, which is essential for voice recognition and
  synthesis technology. Speaking of that, a friend reported hearing
  a machine running the new Macintalk and said he had to hack the
  code to assure himself that it wasn't digitized sound.]

* The customers want a Quadra in a notebook. Apple is working on
  continued miniaturization, grey-scale displays, RGB displays, new
  battery technologies, and a desktop alternative design for the
  PowerBooks. [If Apple puts a 68040 in a Duo, is it all that
  different from our 1991 April Fools Macintosh TX, a 68040 tower
  unit with a snap-off notebook? Of course the TX also operated as
  an AppleShare server using technology from Outbound when the
  notebook wasn't docked, but on the other hand, our imaginary
  notebook weighed 7.2 pounds, a then-unheard-of lightness. Reality
  is often stranger than fiction.]

* The System Software will be improved to make it easier to use.
  Other features planned for System Software include enriched
  applications software, application integration, enhanced
  navigation, improved help, MS-DOS and Windows file exchange,
  PlainTalk speech extension (planned for 1994) and world ready
  software. [Here's a simple ease-of-use improvement. When you
  expand an folder outline in the Finder, the Macintosh does not
  scroll the window to display the expanded outline, so you have to
  do the scrolling yourself. Basics!]


New FirstClass-to-QuickMail Gateway
-----------------------------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, Contributing Editor

  When gateway vendor Information Electronics announced earlier this
  year that it was dropping QuickMail add-ons from its product line,
  the company said it might have one more QuickMail product up its
  sleeve. In a surprise move just over a week ago, IE unveiled a
  gateway from CE Software's QuickMail to SoftArc's popular
  FirstClass BBS and another gateway from QuickMail to Microsoft
  Mail, both of which will be given away free of charge.

  The FirstClass-to-QuickMail gateway, called PostalUnion/QM, is
  intended primarily as a transition product for companies shifting
  from QuickMail to FirstClass, which also provides electronic mail
  and conferencing features. PostalUnion/QM is, however, a fully-
  functional bidirectional gateway which runs on the QuickMail
  server end and allows two-way exchange of mail and file
  enclosures. No separate software is required on the FirstClass
  side, as PostalUnion/QM takes advantage of the powerful gateway
  architecture of the FirstClass server. (The FirstClass server must
  have the gateway option installed.)

  Similarly, the soon-to-be-released QuickMail to MS Mail gateway
  will provide a transition capability for those who plan to shift
  from QuickMail to Microsoft's LAN-based email product. Again, this
  gateway will be a fully-functional bidirectional gateway.

  Both are free transition products, with no technical support
  available, from their release this quarter until 01-Feb-93 for the
  FirstClass gateway, and 01-Mar-93 for the MS Mail gateway. On
  those dates they will become commercial products for the benefit
  of those who don't want to switch from QuickMail to FirstClass or
  Microsoft Mail, but want to be able to communicate among the
  platforms on a permanent basis. The $495 annual licensing fee will
  include use of either gateway for an unlimited number of users, as
  well as access to IE's full suite of technical support services,
  which in our experience have proved thorough and helpful.

  Asked about the unusual licensing arrangement, Information
  Electronics president Megan Clodfelter said that they want to
  provide the product free of charge to companies who are switching
  to FirstClass, as IE has, or to Microsoft Mail, but she explained
  the high long-term price of the gateway by saying that they "have
  to charge quite a bit for the gateway simply because the burden of
  QuickMail support is so extraordinarily high." The company's
  experience has always been that their QuickMail products generate
  a tremendous amount of technical support time because of the
  difficulties users have with QuickMail. As a result, IE has
  stressed that they cannot promise to keep up with any changes CE
  Software might make to QuickMail that do not follow its gateway
  guidelines.

  The free gateway software will be available for downloading only
  from the company's own FirstClass system, which can be reached by
  modem at 607/868-3393. The FirstClass gateway is available now,
  and the MS Mail gateway should be there by 15-Dec-92. After the
  cutoff dates mentioned above, the free gateways will no longer
  work, though customers can arrange an annual license if they wish
  to continue using the software.

    Information Electronics -- 607/868-3331 -- 607/868-3333 (fax)
    SoftArc Inc. -- 416/299-4723 -- 416/754-1856 (fax)
    CE Software -- 515/224-1995

  Information from:
    Megan M. Clodfelter -- [e-mail]


Frontier Review
---------------
  The main ability that DOS chauvinists have held over Mac users is
  the ability to create batch files, or as my mother calls them, bat
  files (for storing in your C:\BELFRY directory). You use batch
  files for minor file manipulation and the like, and they're
  relatively easy to write and use, considering you're dealing with
  a brain-damaged command line interface. Perhaps the most common
  batch files that I've seen are those that change directories
  before running programs, thus ensuring that documents saved from
  that application end up in a specific place, something which
  doesn't initially seem applicable to the Mac, but which actually
  could help neophytes who randomly strew saved files around the
  hard disk.

  Still, many people find batch files useful for automating
  repetitive tasks, and the Mac has long lacked this ability. Since
  UserLand Software released Frontier ($190 mail order, $199 direct,
  $249 list) earlier this year, however, we can all start writing
  batch files like crazy. After all they're so incredibly useful,
  right? Maybe, maybe not.


Setting out
  I was pleased as Hawaiian punch when I received Frontier, and I
  immediately dug into the package to see what I could see. Frontier
  comes with two manuals - first a Users' Guide that ostensibly
  explains what Frontier is and why you want to use it. It also
  explains bits of how to use Frontier, but much more in the "work
  through this entire book and then you can probably do something
  useful" mode than the "experiment out of the box" mode that I and
  many others prefer. The second manual is a reference to all of the
  statements, verbs in Frontier's lingo, with which you write your
  scripts. You'll find this manual indispensable, although a pain
  when you simply want to find a certain verb. Luckily, UserLand
  provided an Apple event-driven program, DocServer, for referencing
  this information - that's probably what you'll use much of the
  time.

  I started reading to learn enough for basic experimenting, and the
  manual immediately provided a few minor examples including a
  terribly useful script to find all the Microsoft Word documents on
  your hard disk (Whee! Search and destroy!). Then it branched out
  to more useful examples such as a script that could backup files
  modified after a certain date. All this was impressive, certainly,
  and within the scope of what DOS batch files can do, but frankly,
  I don't care to find all the documents of a certain sort on my
  hard disk and when I want to backup modified files I use DiskFit
  Pro.

  I don't mean to slam on Frontier here, but rather to point out
  that like DOS batch files, Frontier is only as useful as you make
  it. Frontier will make life easier if you have tasks that you can
  automate, even if that automation must be of a certain complexity.
  In fact, the more complex your task the better, since that will
  make the development time in Frontier more worthwhile.

  Here is another example that may improve your quality of
  computing. You can create what UserLand calls "droplets," or
  iconified Frontier scripts that can accept drag & drop in the
  Finder. Someone could create a droplet that takes a floppy and
  creates an alias of the disk and its contents in a folder on the
  hard disk, and then ejects the disk. That way you wouldn't have to
  drag the disk to the trash to eject it (an interface monstrosity
  of the first degree), and you would have a searchable record of
  your floppies' contents. That's neat and fairly universally
  useful.


Travel travails
  So that's perhaps the greatest problem with Frontier - you have to
  figure out quite clearly what you want to do with it before you
  start. The average user is unlikely to start playing with it like
  HyperCard, if only because of HyperCard's graphics and button
  linking features. In addition, even though HyperTalk bears only a
  passing resemblance to English, Frontier's UserTalk makes
  HyperTalk look colloquial. UserTalk is not difficult in comparison
  to a full programming language (traditional programming languages
  give me hives) but Frontier uses by no means a trivial dialect. It
  does a lot, tapping into much of the generalized power behind the
  Mac's pretty face, and you pay for that power. Although I don't
  pretend to be a programming aficionado, I gather that UserTalk is
  a modern language, designed from the ground up without the
  historical quirks of more traditional languages initially designed
  on, ahem, older computers and operating systems. Just as the MacOS
  avoided many of the idiocies inherent in DOS (and as DOS improved
  on CP/M), so UserTalk improves on other traditional languages.

  I recently upgraded my venerable SE/30 to 20 MB of RAM (and I love
  it) which eliminated another objection to Frontier. I've had to
  force myself to realize that just because an application supports
  Apple events does not mean that you can access its power without
  it running. That makes no sense (that an inactive program could
  execute instructions), but I believed that for a while for some
  reason. This is an issue with Frontier because it must be running
  all or most of the time for you to get much utility from it.
  Dropping an item on a droplet will launch Frontier if necessary,
  and if you want Frontier to collaborate with StuffIt, you'd better
  have enough RAM for both to exist in memory at the same time.
  Frontier itself prefers 1 MB of RAM, so without at least 8 MB,
  you're pushing it pretty close. And, as Dave Winer, co-developer
  of Frontier, points out, desktop publishing and picture editing,
  especially with Photoshop, are tremendously RAM-hungry so larger
  RAM sizes are no longer rare. Serious Frontier developers will
  want plenty of RAM, but those who just want to run scripts written
  by others should stick with the svelte Frontier Runtime.

  I've implied unfairly that you can only use Frontier for writing
  and executing scripts. In fact, Frontier boasts three other
  features that add considerably to its overall utility. First,
  Frontier has what it calls an Object Database, which stores
  various types of objects such as data, scripts, tables, and so on.
  Apart from its obvious use as permanent variable storage for
  script-writing, the Object Database can store pretty much anything
  you want, so you could use it, for instance to store items in a To
  Do list, or any other minor databasey thing. You wouldn't want to
  store huge amounts of data in your Object Database because it
  holds all of Frontier's data, and is thus quite large and not all
  that fast. Luckily FileMaker Pro 2.0 works with Frontier, as does
  a tiny flat-file database from UserLand called uBase. Second,
  Frontier includes a relatively high-powered outliner, which isn't
  surprising considering that Dave Winer's most well-known program
  is the outliner MORE, now marketed by Symantec. Dave's a serious
  outline fan, and although I see their utility, I have a few
  personal quibbles with this one, primarily the fact that you can't
  have an item and then have a paragraph of text under it since
  Frontier's outliner doesn't word wrap. I'll stick to Inspiration
  for my literary outlining, but Frontier's outliner is good, and
  you'll get to know it well since you use it to write your scripts,
  indenting logical constructions as an actual outline rather than
  as a readability exercise, another indication of UserTalk's modern
  design. Third, as I said above, Frontier includes an Apple event-
  aware application called DocServer, which documents all of
  Frontier's verbs.


In the real world
  I've lurked in the UserLand forum on CompuServe for some time to
  sample the flavor of what people do with Frontier, and the main
  thing I can say is that if you know you need Frontier, then you
  need it (a nice tight tautology) and if you don't know you need
  it, you probably won't use it. The corollary to that is that if
  you need automation beyond QuicKeys, Frontier is your main hope.
  Tom Petaccia has come up with one of the more intriguing uses for
  Frontier, using it in conjunction with PageMaker's scripting
  language to help automate publication layout. Derrick Schneider of
  BMUG used Tom's glue file (you need one for every Apple event-
  aware program you want to control with Frontier - UserLand makes
  them freely available) in conjunction with FileMaker Pro 2.0 and
  HyperCard to automate the creation of their annual software
  catalog with Frontier in the middle, linking everything.

  How does Frontier compare to AppleScript? I don't know because
  I've only glimpsed AppleScript. When I asked Dave Winer about it,
  he didn't appear unduly concerned, which implies to me that
  AppleScript will fill a different, though partially overlapping,
  niche. Although AppleScript will let you record scripts, Dave
  assured me that Frontier will as well when necessary (only StuffIt
  Deluxe supports this right now). AppleScript looked a little
  easier, though perhaps less powerful, than Frontier. That does not
  necessarily imply that it will not have Frontier's depth, but if
  nothing else, Frontier has had a year head-start on AppleScript
  and is a mature program. In addition, since Frontier is by
  definition Apple-event driven; it should coexist happily with
  AppleScript, each doing what it does best.

  However, Frontier is here today, whereas AppleScript lingers in
  the vaporous shadows. In fact, and I'm surprised I didn't realize
  this before, Apple is in many ways using a standard IBM technique
  of pre-announcing a product to kill off the competition. I'm not
  accusing Apple of trying to knock off UserLand, but in many ways
  the comparison is apt. It's especially deceptive because much of
  what Apple does in system software is independent of third
  parties, but now that Apple charges for System 7.1 and possibly
  the modules like AppleScript and OCE, the competitive aspect shows
  more clearly.

  UserLand is by no means standing still while waiting for
  AppleScript. They just  released Frontier 2.0, a significant (and
  free!) upgrade which includes a new method of writing object
  specifications, the Object Model, which allows people to write
  scripts to control applications like FileMaker Pro 2.0 and Excel
  4.0 that support the Object Model. UserLand included support for
  HyperCard XCMDs (including many of those that use callbacks to
  HyperCard 1.x), a proprietary form of external command called a
  UCMD, and much faster menusharing. Menusharing allows programs to
  share menus between them, allowing the Finder to have a Scripts
  menu and StuffIt to have a Frontier menu, for instance. This is
  way cool, and more programs should support menusharing. All in
  all, it sounds like a good upgrade, and one definitely worth the
  2.0 moniker (numeriker?). Frontier 2.0 has numerous useful
  enhancements, but since many of them only make sense to users of
  1.0 (features like a command-click drop-down menu from each title
  bar, listing the hierarchy, and multiple selections in the
  outliner), and since UserLand mailed free 2.0 upgrades to all
  registered 1.0 users, I'm not going to delve further into the
  differences.

  Keep in mind that Apple events and Frontier can work over a
  network.  I quote from the description of the NightCleanup, a
  script that ships with Frontier 2.0.

    Imagine you're the network manager for a classroom full
    of Macintoshes. Every day, dozens of students come into
    the lab to do their assignments and projects. In the
    course of a day, new files get created, essential files
    are accidentally deleted. So once a day, you shut the
    system down and visit all the computers and replace
    missing files and delete extraneous ones, by manually
    pointing, clicking and dragging.

    NightCleanup - the first UserLand network utility, does
    this for you automatically and very carefully. It
    produces a detailed report of all the updating and
    cleaning up it did. And because NightCleanup is
    implemented using Frontier scripts, you can customize
    NightCleanup to exactly suit your needs.

    Of course NightCleanup can also serve the needs of
    network managers in corporations, and even be used to
    update the files on your hard disk when you return from a
    road trip with your PowerBook.


Help in the Frontier
  Aside from UserLand's personal help in their CompuServe GO
  USERLAND forum, there is an Internet LISTSERV discussion list
  devoted to Frontier, and several file sites that store public
  scripts. To subscribe to the FRONTIER LISTSERV and receive
  additional instructions on its use, send email to:

    [e-mail]

  with this line in the body of the message:

    SUBSCRIBE FRONTIER your full name

  Since this review is getting longer all the time, I'll wimp out on
  the details about the file sites and refer you to last week's
  (TidBITS#153) review of Frontier Runtime, where I gave the
  pertinent addresses.


End of the road
  I've flip-flopped in this review several times, making points
  about Frontier's limitations and then in the next electronic
  breath saying how wonderful it is. I think that reflects my
  ambivalent feelings about Frontier quite well. On the one hand, I
  do think it's the neatest thing since HyperCard, and on the other
  hand, I also think it's a complex wirehead program that will
  overwhelm many people accustomed to HyperTalk. Even Dave Winer
  admits that "script writing isn't for the faint of heart," and
  says that unlike the early HyperCard marketing folks, UserLand
  doesn't expect everyone to become a script writer. I have written
  a few scripts and although I eventually get them working, I find
  it a frustrating process for my little brain (especially
  considering the paucity of documentation for interaction between
  programs - take heed developers!). Such is the nature of the
  beast, and if you are considering writing Frontier scripts, think
  carefully about what you want first. Then dive in whole hog and
  enjoy yourself.

    UserLand Software Inc.
    400 Seaport Court
    Redwood City, CA  94063
    415/369-6600
    415/369-6618 (fax)
    [e-mail]
    [e-mail]


Reviews/30-Nov-92
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 23-Nov-92, Vol. 6, #42
    Persuasion 2.1 -- pg. 60
    PowerPoint 3.0 -- pg. 60
    Pinnacle Micro PMO-650 -- pg. 64
    InTouch 2.0.2 -- pg. 66
    MacroModel 1.0 -- pg. 68
    Microsoft Word 5.1 -- pg. 69
    2 GB Quadra Drive Arrays -- pg. 74
      PLI Internal MiniArray 040
      MicroNet Raven-040 Q9i/i2024R
      FWB SledgeHammer 2000FMF


..

 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.

 For an index of information on our sponsors' products, send
 email to <[e-mail]>. For the complete collection of
 files from Nisus Software, our current sponsor, send email to
 <[e-mail]>.