Info-Mac 3/Info_Mac_1994-01.iso/Periodical/TidBITs/TidBITS#191

Internet Message Format | 1993-12-31 | 29KB

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Subject: TidBITS#191/30-Aug-93
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 93 22:15:28 PDT
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TidBITS#191/30-Aug-93
=====================

This issue offers news about DarkStar, an energy saving utility,
   an update to Gatekeeper (but no new virus, thankfully), a new
   QuickMail gateway, Newton MessagePad sales, a few AV Mac
   corrections, and, finally, an in-depth review of IN CONTROL, a
   powerful and flexible outliner mismarketed as a To Do List
   manager.

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- [e-mail]
   Makers of hard drives, tape drives, memory, and accessories.
   For APS price lists, email: [e-mail]  <---- New!

Copyright 1990-1993 Adam & Tonya Engst. Details at end of issue.
   Automated info: <[e-mail]> Comments: <[e-mail]>
   --------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:
    MailBITS/30-Aug-93
    DarkStar Released
    Gatekeeper Updated
    PostalUnion Update
    Get IN CONTROL
    Reviews/30-Aug-93

[Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-191.etx; 29K]


MailBITS/30-Aug-93
------------------
  Tonya was one for two last week. Her expose of space aliens
  calling technical support brought in reprint requests from three
  continents (and yes, please feel free to reprint that article as
  long as you credit Tonya and TidBITS fully, and please send us a
  copy of the publication - use the address at the end of the
  issue). At the same time, her article on the AV Macs had a few
  mistakes, which we correct below. We also hope to have some
  detailed first hand reports soon, which should help you decide for
  yourself about these fascinating Macs. Hey, I want one.


**AV Corrections** -- First, we accidently flipped the code names.
  The Centris 660AV was originally known as the Tempest, and the
  Quadra 840AV was known as the Cyclone. The GeoPort Telecom adapter
  isn't bundled, costs about $130, and based on early reports,
  hasn't appeared on shelves quite yet. Second, although the GeoPort
  architecture will handle ISDN, modems, and other "telecom" type
  things, it isn't how the Mac will connect to Ethernet networks, as
  we implied. The DAV (Digital Audio Video) connector is an internal
  connector much like a NuBus slot. It's designed not to connect
  directly to VCRs and video cameras (which attach via standard
  composite and S-Video input and output jacks on the back panel)
  but to NuBus cards so that a card can tap into the audio and video
  data streams within the machine. Uses for this might include JPEG
  compression hardware. Finally, Michael Shannon <[e-mail]>
  clarifies the method of recording from an AV Mac. "Actually, you
  MUST have a TV connected to do any kind of composite or S-video
  recording. The built-in video can only drive one display at a
  time. Therefore, to record video you must hook the AV to a VCR and
  then the VCR to a TV. There is no way to watch the display on the
  computer's monitor while recording."


**Book News** -- I haven't completed my book about connecting to
  the Internet from a Mac, but the major creative work is done, and
  I'm finishing the back matter now. I think this book will be
  extremely cool, and I hope to reprint some of the text here,
  although it will take some rewording to remove screen shot
  references. I have full chapters on the four major ways to gain
  Internet access - email through a BBS or commercial service like
  CompuServe, terminal access on a Unix machine, UUCP access using
  the three main UUCP programs for the Mac, and finally MacTCP
  access, expressly covering SLIP usage as well. The contents of the
  disk may surprise you (and I don't want to say anything concrete
  until all the papers have been signed), and for those not already
  on the Internet, there will be an immediate access method.


**Where's my Newton?** -- If your daily newspaper offers a comics
  page, you may have guessed that Doonesbury author Garry Trudeau
  already has his Newton MessagePad, and you may be jealous! Not to
  worry; even though virtually all dealers in the "regional roll-out
  areas" such as Boston, New York, and San Francisco have run out of
  MessagePads, and some early purchasers have managed to resell
  their units for huge profits, the nationwide roll-out appears to
  be on schedule for Labor Day. According to  Mark H. Anbinder,
  several dealers have reported hearing from Apple that they will
  receive their introductory shipments this week.


DarkStar Released
-----------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- [e-mail]
     Technical Support Coordinator, BAKA Computers

  No, this doesn't mean Darth Vader has been paroled. DarkStar,
  released last month by Apple, and officially known as the "Monitor
  Energy Saver Control Panel," allows Macintosh users to conserve
  power using "Energy Star compliant" computers and monitors. After
  a user-defined amount of idle time, the software puts the monitor
  into low power mode. You return from low power mode by pressing a
  key or moving the mouse, and it takes up to twenty seconds to
  return.

  Energy Star is the U. S. Government's energy conservation
  initiative, designed to limit the vast power consumption of
  desktop computer systems. Several computer and peripheral
  manufacturers have moved to comply with Energy Star guidelines,
  which call for less energy consumption when devices are active, as
  well as sharp reductions in energy use when devices are not in use
  but have been left on for whatever reason. The average office
  Macintosh, operating 24 hours a day, can use as much as $200 worth
  of electricity each year.

  DarkStar has the added benefit of preventing screen burn-in,
  without the extra processing burden of fish swimming around your
  screen all night. At last check, this utility was available only
  from AppleLink and from the FTP archive at sumex-aim.stanford.edu
  in /info-mac/cfg, but not yet from Apple's anonymous FTP site,
  ftp.apple.com. Your dealer should be able to obtain it, but
  because of the cost to the dealer of downloading software from
  AppleLink, please consider making a purchase at the same time you
  ask them to retrieve the software for you!

  This utility works on Quadras, Centrises, and LC IIIs, and with
  monitors designed with a low-power mode. These monitors have an
  "Energy Star" logo on the box. On other monitors, the image will
  go black, but since the monitor isn't in low-power mode, there
  will be minimal power savings, if any. PowerBook users can already
  take advantage of these computers' capabilities to turn off
  backlighting, the hard drive, and even the whole computer, during
  idle periods.

  For users of other computers or other monitors, I suggest CDU,
  Connectix Desktop Utilities, whose energy-saving features have
  been praised by the government's Energy Star program. These
  features include automatic idle-time shutdown, and automatic
  screen dimming. CDU's screen dimming feature works only on
  computers and displays with grayscale or color capability, or on
  Apple's compact Macs with internal dimming functions, such as the
  Classic.

  Of course, CDU offers many other useful and fun features; we'll
  take a closer look in the near future.

    Connectix -- 800/950-5880 -- 415/571-5100 -- 415/571-5195 (fax)

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


Gatekeeper Updated
------------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- [e-mail]

  Chris W. Johnson at the University of Texas recently released an
  update to his free Gatekeeper antiviral utility, version 1.2.8.
  The new version is a maintenance release, and doesn't address new
  viruses, but all Gatekeeper users should obtain this update.

  Some earlier versions of Gatekeeper may comment that they are out
  of date, and suggest that the user find an update. This feature is
  based on Chris's assumption that he'd release new versions from
  time to time. Before version 1.2.7 came out, owners of Gatekeeper
  1.2.6 found that the software led them on a wild goose chase for a
  not-yet-released update. Since many users neglect to keep their
  antiviral utilities up to date, this feature can be a helpful
  reminder (and as it only appears every few days, it's not too much
  of a nuisance).

  Gatekeeper provides specific protection against known viruses, and
  also acts as a reveal activity monitor, watching for operations or
  events that could indicate an unknown virus, or an unknown variant
  of an existing virus. On more than one occasion since its first
  release in 1989, Gatekeeper has been instrumental in discovering
  and tracking new viruses.

  You can obtain an update from the master FTP archive at
  microlib.cc.utexas.edu (in the directory microlib/mac/virus), or
  from other FTP archives, online services, user groups, or dealers.
  Then, read the documentation, install and configure the software,
  and please don't forget to send the author a postcard thanking
  him:

    Chris Johnson
    4505-B Avenue H
    Austin, TX 78751 USA

  Information from:
    Chris Johnson


PostalUnion Update
------------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- [e-mail]

  Continuing their quest to sweep away the barriers between the
  world's electronic mail systems, Information Electronics recently
  announced the approaching 01-Sep-93 release of PostalUnion/SMTP
  for QuickMail, a new PostalUnion/SMTP gateway for CE Software's
  QuickMail.

  PostalUnion is IE's modular gateway technology, allowing them to
  develop new gateway products efficiently by using common modules
  in similar gateways. (For example, IE's SMTP gateways for the
  various email products can all use a common SMTP module.)
  Especially in the case of QuickMail, PostalUnion's operation in
  part as a separate application allows for greater reliability and
  functionality than purely internal gateways can provide.

  One remarkable new feature of this particular product, which
  incorporates a new version of the PostalUnion technology, is that
  it allows an administrator to remotely access a special "console"
  module, and to remotely control all gateway operations over the
  Internet using telnet. This eliminates the need for AppleTalk-
  level remote access, at least for purposes of gateway control.

  Other improvements over IE's previous SMTP\QM gateway include
  multiple simultaneous incoming and outgoing SMTP sessions, and
  POP3 client support (so users can consolidate multiple mailboxes).

  Until 15-Oct-93, the $995 package (which is licensed per gateway,
  rather than per user) costs $695 direct from Information
  Electronics. Previous SMTP\QM owners may replace their gateways
  for $100. In addition, IE will offer a $400 sidegrade option for
  owners of other SMTP gateways for QuickMail. There's also a
  special low-priced bundle offer if you wish to purchase IE's $295
  QMConcierge mail forwarding software at the same time.

    Information Electronics -- 607/868-3331 -- 607/868-3333 (fax)

  Information from:
    Information Electronics propaganda -- [e-mail]

Get IN CONTROL
--------------
  by Matt Neuburg -- [e-mail]

  Veteran readers of my contributions to TidBITS know that I am
  unabashedly obsessed with computer tools for the storage and
  retrieval of information. They also know that an almost
  unqualified rave review from me is a rare thing. Hold on to your
  hats, here it comes.

  Take a simple, yet elegant, powerful, and above all useful
  fundamental idea as your program's basic metaphor. Then implement
  it with meticulous attention to the details of the interface,
  taking full advantage of the Mac's features to give lots of
  flexibility and convenience. That's the recipe for a great
  Macintosh application - such as the one I'm using right now.

  The object of my new affections is IN CONTROL (about $85
  discounted), from Attain Corporation. It's an outliner with a big
  difference. Outlines, you recall, are clumps of text structured as
  topics and (indented) subtopics, and since you can "expand" or
  "collapse" a topic's subtopics (to make them visible or
  invisible), or move a topic and its subtopics to another place in
  the outline, they are great for arranging, rearranging, and
  navigating information of all sorts.

  Here's the IN CONTROL (IC) difference. To the right of the outline
  you can create any number of "columns;" and into each column you
  can enter information corresponding to each topic of the outline:
  a date, a number, a keyword, a comment, that sort of thing, each
  column representing some concept you want to associate with the
  outline's topics.

  And why would you want to do that, you ask? Because now you can
  view your outline in new ways, by sorting or hiding topics
  according to the criteria of what's in the columns. Picture this:

* Make your outline a list of things to do, arranged into topics
  by some convenient typology (e.g. Schoolwork, Housework, Phone
  Calls, etc.): now add a column for the date and time when you want
  to do each thing, sort on this, and Presto! You're looking at your
  schedule in chronological order.

* Make your outline a list of your classical record albums, with
  subtopics listing every piece on each album: add columns for the
  date, the principal instrument, and the musical form of each
  piece, and now - want to know what albums contain flute concertos
  written between 1800 and 1850? Presto! Everything else is hidden,
  and you're left with a list of only those albums and those
  specific pieces.

* To write an article (like this one!), build an outline of topics
  and subtopics, so you can brainstorm and rearrange ideas easily;
  beneath each subtopic, write sentences of actual text you want to
  have appear in the article. Add a column categorising each topic
  as a "heading" or a "paragraph," depending whether it's a topic
  description or the actual text. Want to rearrange the ideas?
  Presto! Show only the headings, and alter the outline to your
  heart's content, with no "paragraphs" visible to mar your view.
  When you're finished writing, Presto! Show just the "paragraphs"
  instead - and since what's exported is what's showing in the
  current view, you can now export just the actual text (and send it
  to TidBITS!).

* Make your outline a bibliography of books and articles, with
  main topics by author's last name. Make columns for date,
  keywords, type ("Book" or "Article"), status ("Not yet read," "On
  order," or "Read"), and notes. Every entry in a column can hold
  32K of styled text; that ought to be plenty for your notes! The
  notes will occupy vertical room in the window only if they are
  showing: Presto! Just hide the notes column, or use the menu to
  show just the first line of all topics, and you can view your
  bibliographic info conveniently. Use the keywords to show just
  those articles dealing with "Aeschylus," or do a search-match to
  show just those books for which the notes contain the word
  "Laryngeal." When you're finished, export just the bibliographic
  information, retaining text styles, straight into your word
  processor.

  As these examples show, you can sort on different kinds of
  criterion. You classify a column as text, numeric, or date-time,
  and IC knows how to sort and co-sort accordingly. The techniques
  by which IC decides which topics to hide, called "matching," are
  even more sophisticated. You can hide or retain only those topics
  with a column entry identical to, containing, or greater or less
  than the current entry (or to stuff you type in a dialog box) -
  and again, comparison is done properly for text, numbers, and
  dates. Sorting and matching will not expose a topic that has been
  "collapsed" along with its co-topics into its governing topic, so
  this provides a further filter (that's important: collapsing and
  hiding are not the same, though both make a topic invisible). You
  can also manually select a topic or topics and hide or retain them
  directly. Furthermore, retained topics can be shown as an outline
  (in which case the topics that govern them are shown, even if they
  didn't match the requisite criteria, so as to make the outline
  levels meaningful) or in a simple one-column arrangement, called a
  "table." (After sorting, what you are shown is always a "table,"
  since otherwise the governing topics might have to be repeated
  several times, making nonsense of the outline.)

  It's important to understand that when you sort and hide topics
  this way, no change is made to your outline (although IC can also
  sort in ways that do rearrange topics); what's altered is your
  _view_ of the information in the outline. You can toggle back and
  forth with a button-press between such an altered view, with some
  topics hidden and/or sorted, and the normal view of the outline.
  Even cooler, you can preserve an altered view. You can hide and
  sort, and IC remembers the criteria and actions by which you
  arrived at the current altered view. You can then name this view,
  specifying the particular features which you regard as important,
  and the name appears in a pup up menu. The whole operation can now
  be performed again at any time just by choosing from this menu.
  Doing this doesn't mean, "show me just the topics that were
  showing previously"; it means, "do the same matches, sorts, or
  other changes that I performed earlier, on _this_ version of the
  outline." Such preserved views are called "scripts," and are easy
  to create and modify. (Scripts can be transferred to a new IC
  file, but not copied between existing files.)

  So you might think of IC as an extended outliner. For extra bonus
  coolness, you can extend your outline right on out of IC itself:
  any topic in your outline can be "linked" to any document on your
  Mac (assuming you're running System 7, of course)! Once you've set
  up a link, you select that topic and hit a command-key, and the
  document is opened by its application. The possibilities for this
  feature seem endless: demos, presentations with pictures,
  catalogues of documents, indexing....

  I'm sure that by now you're starting to think of all sorts of uses
  to which _you_ could put IN CONTROL. The adaptability of IC is
  certainly inspiring. Its makers also seem to have found it a bit
  daunting. In our present niche-oriented software market, what _is_
  this thing they've created? It's an outliner, a date-book, a
  database, a writing tool, a table-maker, an indexer - you try to
  label it, I can't. Attain's own pedestrian label ("To-Do List
  Manager") does it scant justice; this, and the several pages in
  the manual devoted to "time management," suggests to me that
  they're aiming at a business market. I guess that "thinking people
  who want to organise and navigate information" (like me) isn't
  considered a worthwhile proportion of the population.

  To make IC seem more like a To-Do List, there's a further feature:
  besides the columns that appear to the right of the outline, there
  is also a column that can appear to its left, consisting simply of
  a check-box for each topic. You can hide and sort on the checked-
  ness of these boxes, and the manual suggests you use them to mark
  whether you have performed the "to-do" item. This is a column by
  other means, modified to fit the specialised "to-do list" rubric;
  to me it seems an artificial appendage.

  The check-boxes, though unnecessary, are at least useful and
  unobjectionable. Not so, I thought, the calendar-reminder
  facility, even though the manual goes to some lengths to push this
  as a major feature. The interface between the outline and the
  calendar is brilliant, to be sure; but I found the component as a
  whole weak to the point of uselessness, by comparison to the
  shareware Remember?, which I use. There is no capacity to enter
  regular events ("every Wednesday at 5"), so if you want to use IC
  as an appointment book and something in your life recurs regularly
  you have to enter a separate notation for each occurrence, one by
  one. Nor can you enter dates descriptively, ("the second Tuesday
  of November"); you must find November on the calendar and figure
  out which day is the second Tuesday. And that won't be fun either,
  since calendar navigation is primitive (no nice pop-up menus with
  month names or year numbers). If an appointment comes around, you
  can be reminded (through an extension) even if IC is not running;
  but the signal consists only of a beep and a flashing icon in the
  menu bar, and we all know what that's worth (on my first Mac, my
  Alarm DA flashed for three weeks the first time before I noticed).
  And if you want to know what you're being reminded of, you have to
  open the right IC file yourself, manually. Contrast this to
  Remember?, which brings up an obnoxious palette in front of
  everything describing what's happening, and lets you bring up the
  calendar and list of upcoming events instantly from there if
  necessary. In short, the calendar-reminder feature feels
  artificially and inadequately imposed upon IC - perhaps (but this
  is just a guess) in hopes of giving it more appeal to the
  lucrative business market. However, I don't need IC as a calendar,
  so I don't care.

  Aside from this, IC's implementation is beautiful and thoughtful
  in its details. The document window has a removable bar with some
  popup menus and gorgeously drawn buttons across the top; the
  choices have been well made as to which functions to make
  accessible here. There is nice use of a changing cursor. You can
  Undo just about anything. In short, it's clear that serious
  thought has gone into making IC robust and intuitive, something I
  can't say of certain other "neat idea" applications I've had
  occasion to review in these e-pages.

  Keyboard navigation between topics is superb, including commands
  to move up or down to the next topic at the same level, whether
  adjacent or not, to move to the topic governing the present one,
  and to move to the present topic's last subtopic. You can select
  topics contiguously or non-contiguously. You can promote all of a
  topic's subtopics, or demote all topics subsequent to this one at
  the same level (to make them subtopics of this one). You can copy
  a topic with or without its subtopics. A style-sheet can be set
  for the whole document, dictating the default font, size, style,
  and color for each outline topic level; activating the style-sheet
  does not wipe out features not specified (if you change a level's
  font to Helvetica but don't specify a style, italics are not
  lost), and multiple alternate style sheets for the document can be
  maintained using a "script". My one complaint is that there is no
  keyboard command to move the cursor a word at a time; commands to
  split and merge topics would have been helpful too, and it might
  have been nice if graphics could be pasted into the outline.

  The outline is always at the left; everything to its right is a
  column. The width of the outline and of each column can be changed
  (or zeroed, if desired), and the relative position of columns
  shifted, by dragging in the bar at the top of the window. Each
  column's text can be given an independent default font, size,
  style, and color. A wonderful feature is that if a column is to
  contain keywords, you can enable fast entry of these: if you type
  the first letter(s) of a keyword in the column, the computer
  enters the rest, and if you hold down the mouse in the column, a
  pop-up menu containing the keywords appears. There is provision
  for multiple keywords in one column for a single topic; and you
  can set the sort order of keywords. Another neat thing is that you
  can set a column so that if you make a new topic, this column will
  contain the same value as its predecessor, or the next in a
  sequence of numbers. You can also cause a single value to be
  entered instantly in a column for all (visible) topics. There is
  spreadsheet-like keyboard navigation, as if topics and column
  entries were cells. Thus, IC is a rapid data entry tool.

  You may want to use this power to create tables or text that you
  intend to use in other applications. IC can import or export by
  copy-and-paste or (to maintain formatting) by using XTND
  technology. Tab/return-delimited tables are imported as topic
  (first column) and columns, and vice versa for exporting. When
  importing, tabs (or option-spaces) at the start of a line are
  taken as indent information: thus, you can import from any word
  processor right into outline form. You can export the same way, or
  (with XTND) export topic indentations as nested paragraphs, using
  rulers. A clever feature is that hidden columns do not figure in
  importing, exporting, or printing, and hidden topics are not
  exported or printed either. This makes it easy to transfer or
  present data in just the desired format. One of the first things I
  did with IC was to import a huge table I was constructing in Word;
  with IC's easy data entry, I'll finish it twice as fast, then
  export it back to Word. (The only downside to importing is that
  the IC file can be larger by 30 to 100%, depending on the source.)
  IC also has good printing capabilities, intelligently managing
  tables which may spread over multiple pages horizontally and
  vertically, and providing a basic range of options such as margin
  size, headers and footers, grid lines, column title style, and
  alphanumeric topic labels for the outline.

  The manual is splendidly written: clear, simple, small, explicit,
  graphic. I could have used a section gathering technical
  information; it is possible to err too far on the side of
  simplicity (not all your customers will be business nerds,
  Attain!). Also, "later in this chapter" is not much of a cross-
  reference; page numbers would help. There are twenty graphic
  online help screens, and balloon help; even the error alert boxes
  are informative rather than merely punitive. Two complaints about
  IC. First, I hate to harp on this, but is it really too much to
  ask that a program shouldn't mess up the "colors" on my 16-gray
  screen? Not only does IC do this, it sometimes turns its whole
  window black, and I have to go to some lengths to recover
  visibility. Second, a single bad interface decision: there is a
  situation where text jumps from under the mouse as you double-
  click on it, and you end up clicking in the wrong place. Attain
  should rethink this one.

  IN CONTROL revolves around a powerful basic concept. The interface
  is clean, lean, reliable, helpful, and sensible. Put these two
  elements into the hands of just about any user, who surely will
  find the program so flexible and adaptable as to serve all kinds
  of needs both present and hitherto undreamt of, and you've got a
  whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. IC is already
  taking over many tasks on my computer that I had assigned to
  lesser workers. No doubt it can do the same for you.

    Attain Corporation -- 617/776-2711 -- 617/776-1626 (fax)
      [e-mail]


Reviews/30-Aug-93
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 23-Aug-93, Vol. 7, #34
    Illustrator 5.0 -- pg. 43
    Panorama II 2.1 -- pg. 43
    TabHouse 1.56 -- pg. 50
    Roland    General MIDI Sound Module -- pg. 52
    Paint Alchemy -- pg. 52


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