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From: ace@tidbits.com (Adam C. Engst)
Subject: TidBITS#200/01-Nov-93
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 93 22:04:16 PDT
TidBITS#200/01-Nov-93
=====================
Welcome to our two hundredth issue! News this week includes a POP
mail client for the Newton, the release of Aladdin's SITcomm
communications program, a better PageMaker tip, and details on
the new SuperDrive. We also have a report on the Seybold
publishing conference in San Francisco, reader comments on the
Handeze gloves (including non-800 numbers for overseas readers),
and news of a chilling legal decision for RSI sufferers in
Britain.
This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- 71520.72@compuserve.com
New Seagate hard drives, new 10 GB HyperDAT, and new cases!
For APS price lists, email: aps-prices@tidbits.com <----- New!
Copyright 1990-1993 Adam & Tonya Engst. Details at end of issue.
Automated info: <info@tidbits.com> Comments: <ace@tidbits.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------
Topics:
MailBITS/01-Nov-93
New SuperDrive
Two Hundred Issues?
RSI & Handeze Gloves
Seybold SF Pushes Publishing Even Farther
Reviews/01-Nov-93
[Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-200.etx; 28K]
MailBITS/01-Nov-93
------------------
**Knoware**, a Macintosh Internet provider in the Netherlands, has
created a prototype of a simple POP (Post Office Protocol) client
for the Newton, according to Merik Voswinkel of Knoware. Although
Apple's NewtonMail has access to the Internet, many Newton users
want direct access to their Internet email, which is often
accessible via a POP server running on a Unix host. Although
Knoware isn't yet sure if they will complete their Newton POP
client, they stated that if not, they would release it to the net
for someone else to finish. Steve Dorner has said that he isn't
working on a Newton version of the popular Eudora, a POP and SMTP
(Simple Mail Transport Protocol - for sending email) client for
the Mac. Knoware -- knoware@indy.knoware.nl
**SITcomm shipped** last week, marking Aladdin Systems' first
foray into the communications market after years of concentrating
on utility programs. SITcomm's claims to fame are ease of use,
automatic handling of logins to many different types of systems,
automatic expansion and compression of files using StuffIt
technology, and translation of files from non-Macintosh formats
using StuffIt translators. Even better, SITcomm is scriptable and
recordable with AppleScript or Frontier. Elegance abounds, from a
battery-saving design for PowerBook users to one of the first
available ZMODEM tools for Apple's Communications Toolbox. SITcomm
requires System 7 and 2 MB of RAM and lists for $120, although you
can buy it for $39 if you own another Aladdin product or for $49
if you own a competing communications program. Aladdin -- 408/761-
6200 -- aladdin@well.sf.ca.us
**Alan Stearns** <alan.stearns@aldus.com> writes:
Thanks for the write-up of the tracking changes in PageMaker 5.0.
We did receive some feedback that tracking was too tight in
earlier versions, so now all five tracks are slightly looser than
they used to be - not just Normal and Very tight.
Your workaround of adding manual range kerning may work in some
cases, but it doesn't take you back to the original letter spacing
of a 4.0 or 4.2 document. And, if your file has many different
stories with the old tracking applied, it can become time
consuming. (Also, there is no way to do a "half-tap." You can only
kern in increments of .01 em).
My own workaround is less drastic than the one you see in the
Getting Started manual. I assume you'd want to use the new
tracking values in your new work, and merely want to keep your old
documents from changing when you convert them. This workaround
makes use of the fact that PageMaker looks for the tracking values
file in the document's folder first, and then looks in the Aldus
folder if it can't find a local file. (This is why when you choose
to save with "All files for remote printing," PageMaker makes a
copy of the tracking values file in the document folder.)
Make a "Convert" folder somewhere where you keep your old
documents. Then make a copy of the old Kern Tracks file and put it
in the Convert folder, renaming it to "Tracking Values." Now,
whenever you want to convert an old document to 5.0, move it to
the Convert folder and open it from there. All documents residing
in the Convert folder will use the old tracking values, and
everything else will use the new tracking values that reside in
the Aldus folder.
New SuperDrive
--------------
I briefly mentioned that my new Centris 660AV came with the new
SuperDrive that doesn't do automatic inject, as the older
SuperDrives did. In that respect the drive is more like the floppy
drives on the PowerBooks. However, I find the ergonomics of the
PowerBook drives better because the PowerBook drives are located
on the side, making for an easier motion than pushing a disk in
from the front.
Either way, it's not a big deal, and the new floppy drives do have
one nice feature not shared by the older floppies. A major problem
experienced by older Macs is that the floppy drive slot is used
for ventilation, and the airflow through the drive slot resulted
in dirty drives. The new SuperDrives sport a protective dust cover
that should reduce the amount of garbage inside the floppy drive.
The new drive is slightly larger than the old ones, so Macs
require new front panels to accommodate the new drive. These
panels resemble nothing so much as a pair of puckered lips, but
the important fact is that you can't mix and match the old and new
SuperDrives.
Apple claims that the new SuperDrives are functionally and
electrically the same as the old ones (other than the manual
inject and the dust cover), but Apple's rationale for switching is
that Apple can more easily source the new drives, which means that
the company can go to different suppliers to buy them, thus
reducing the price and ensuring a constant supply. In theory this
means Macs will cost less, but in fact it's more likely that Apple
or the channel will absorb the difference in the ever-shrinking
margins. Current model Macs made as of September, and all new
Macs, will incorporate the new floppy drive.
Information from:
Apple propaganda
Two Hundred Issues?
-------------------
I'm astonished. Two hundred issues is a lot, and I had no idea we
would reach this mark, not because I ever planned to stop
publishing TidBITS, but because I seldom think about the future in
that respect. The anniversary prompted me instead to think about
the past, and had I been able to scrape up the time, I would have
written an abbreviated history of TidBITS for those of you who
haven't been reading since April of 1990. Time is in ever-
dwindling supply, it so often seems, and instead of poring over
back issues to pull out our most successful stories and the most
embarrassing mistakes, I've decided to publicly thank some of the
people who have made publishing an issue of TidBITS almost every
week for over three years a true pleasure. In the process, I'll
tell you a bit about each person so you know more about the people
whose text you frequently see.
**Tonya Engst** deserves the most credit, of course, because even
though she only writes articles on occasion, she reads and edits
every issue of TidBITS, tightening my prose and often catching the
stupidities and infelicities that creep into anything that must
perforce be written quickly. Tonya has a degree from Cornell
University in Communication, with a minor in the History and
Philosophy of Science and Technology.
**Mark H. Anbinder**, our ever-vigilant News Editor, has devoted
an incredible amount of time to TidBITS over the last three years
as well. Although Mark graduated from Cornell (with a degree in
Linguistics, I believe) the same year Tonya and I did, we became
friends afterwards, when he was doing technical support for BAKA
Computers, the main Apple dealer in Ithaca, a medium-sized town in
New York State, and home of Cornell University. Mark has been the
president of MUGWUMP, the Macintosh Users Group in Ithaca, for
several years now, and also runs a FirstClass BBS called Memory
Alpha.
**Matt Neuburg** has graced our screens over the past few years
with long and insightful reviews of word processors, outliners,
and hypertext editors. Matt is currently a professor of Classics
at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, but we met when he
taught Greek Composition at Cornell, the class that I rank above
any other in terms of helping me as a writer. (Greek is a verb-
based language, whereas English is a noun-based language, so to
translate from English into Greek, you have to determine the
_meaning_ of the sentence to express the concepts in Greek.) As
I'm sure you've noticed from his reviews, Matt is an excellent
teacher and writer, and I owe him thanks for help with TidBITS and
during my years at Cornell.
**Ian Feldman** created the setext format that we introduced to
the world in TidBITS #100_, and he has provided megabytes of
comments and discussion on TidBITS, electronic publishing, and the
nets in general. Ian is a master of ASCII formatting, and that
skill shows through in some of the articles he's written or
formatted for us. Frankly, it's a unclear what Ian does, although
he's continually bombing off on long bike trips in Northern
Europe.
**Akif Eyler** of Bilkent University in Turkey wrote Easy View,
the excellent text browser that enables readers to easily skim
through issues of TidBITS and other structured text files. Without
Easy View, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to refer to
past issues of TidBITS stored on your Mac.
**Mark Williamson** of Rice University set up and has maintained
the TidBITS mailing list on Rice's LISTSERV for about a year and a
half now. His efforts have made TidBITS available to many people
who could not otherwise retrieve issues each week. Mark also
maintains the Info-Mac list at the same site, and his dedication
behind the scenes deserves recognition. Thanks are also due to the
kind folks at Rice who allow their machines and networks to be
used for the good of the Macintosh net community.
**Ephraim Vishniac** of Thinking Machines created a WAIS source
for TidBITS that makes it easy for Internet users around the world
to use the power of WAIS to search all of our back issues. Within
weeks of creating the macintosh-tidbits.src, it was being searched
over 300 times a day. I wonder what it's up to now.
**Pythaeus**, our own voice of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, has
continuously gone above and beyond the call of duty to provide
hitherto unknown information about every topic under the Macintosh
sun. You know who you are.
Scores of others have helped along the way as well, and the number
of people and the ways in which they have helped are too numerous
to mention here (or I'll have written that history after all).
Nevertheless, you too know who you are, and please consider this a
personal thank you to each and every one of you. I never intended
to monopolize TidBITS each week, since I don't pretend to be an
expert on everything, and the addition of expert voices from
around the net and around the world vastly improves our content.
RSI & Handeze Gloves
--------------------
My article on the Handeze gloves in TidBITS #199_ provoked a
number of comments and questions, the most common of which was a
request for a non-800 number for Dome Publishing. Sorry about
that - I realized I didn't have the non-800 number too late in
the day. The numbers are:
Dome -- 800/432-4352 -- 401/738-7900 -- 401/732-5377 (fax)
I received some comments from a doctor concerning the use of
heat and cold in healing. The general guidelines seem to be that
cold is useful in the first 48 hours after an acute injury, since
it decreases the amount of bleeding into the injured area. Heat,
in contrast, increases circulation, which aids healing by
providing the white blood cells needed to clean up the cellular
debris and by providing the nutrients, oxygen, and raw materials
needed to repair the damage.
Several people noted in reference to the strange four-hole
design of the gloves that in playing certain instruments like
piano and guitar, beginners are encouraged to increase the
strength and independence of the third and fourth fingers (middle
and ring fingers) which perhaps indicates that the design was
created to provide extra support for a vulnerable tendon in that
area.
**Rick Holzgrafe** <rmh@taligent.com> commented that you might be
able to find the gloves more cheaply at crafts stores that
specialize in hobbies like knitting, sewing and needlepoint, since
people who participate in such tasks often suffer from RSI as
well.
**Angus McIntyre** <angus@aegypt.demon.co.uk> and
**Fearghas McKay** <fearghas@challis.demon.co.uk> wrote to say
that the British legal establishment, in the person of Judge
John Prosser, has ruled that RSI is "meaningless" and has "no
place in the medical books." The ruling came down in a case
involving a Reuters desk editor suffering from "upper limb
disorder." It appears that the editor's doctor wasn't a
particularly confident or sure witness, in contrast with two
experts called by Reuters who claimed that RSI has "no medically
recognised symptoms which could be put down to a physical
condition."
Excuse me? Just because medical science doesn't fully understand
why millions of people around the world are suffering tremendous
pain from repetitive motions doesn't mean that they're all
hallucinating, or as in the case of the desk editor (according to
Judge Prosser), suffering from a "lack of confidence in his
ability and feelings of being watched and even victimised by his
colleagues at work." I agree that medical science doesn't
understand RSI completely, based on my research into the subject
last winter, but the pain is all too real. I doubt a doctor could
discover a pathology for blind justice either. Medical science
also doesn't know entirely how aspirin works, but you may have
trouble finding a doctor who won't prescribe it because of that
minor failing. If problems that have no medically recognized
symptoms have no place in the medical books then everyone
suffering from psychological problems should just stop whining and
get on with their lives. That's sarcasm, for anyone reading too
quickly to notice.
Rumor has it that the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is
considering an appeal of the case, and the NUJ has some seventy
similar cases pending that could be in jeopardy if this ruling
stands. Other groups, including professors, physicians,
physiotherapists, and the British Chiropractors Association, have
come out against the ruling, which, incidentally, applies only to
England and Wales, not to Scotland (and presumably Ireland), since
Scotland has its own legal system.
From various reports, Judge Prosser has something of a reputation
for having his decisions overturned. According to an article in
the Independent, in February he freed a 15-year old accused rapist
and ordered him to pay 500 pounds to the victim so she could have
"a good holiday." The successful appeal replaced the fine with a
sentence of two years detention. Perhaps the good judge will start
suffering from a little gavel elbow as his courtroom becomes
increasingly full of angry RSI-sufferers.
If the consequences of the ruling weren't so tragic, the whole
thing would be funny in a sick way. Some rulings have been more
successful, with several recent cases involving an electronics
worker and workers in a turkey factory (assembling turkeys is very
repetitive, I guess). The Trade Union Congress estimates that
100,000 people in the U.K. suffer from RSI, and we can only hope
that some of the RSI cases still to come before the courts will be
favorably received.
Seybold SF Pushes Publishing Even Farther
-----------------------------------------
by Jeffrey Veen, News Editor, South Coast Community Newspapers
6500lvee@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu
Conferences have a way of splitting their attendees into two
groups, and the Seybold San Francisco Expo was no exception. In
the conference rooms, executives and managers hypothesized on the
future of publishing, debating standards for electronic document
distribution and high-fidelity color halftone screens. But on the
floor, dashing from display to display, were the users. The users
work in the trenches, pushing the machines and software everyday -
for hours and hours - and they wanted a peek at their future. They
wanted to see the products that could make their work easier, more
productive, and more creative.
A number of vendors offered faster imagesetters with an increasing
number of features. Others lauded direct-to-plate printing from
the desktop for short-run color printing jobs. But the most
excitement focused on none other than the Macintosh and related
products. It's refreshing to see that our beloved machine still
has a stronghold in the publishing industry.
Of interest mainly to publishers were a number of companies
offering high-end solutions to age-old printing problems. It
seemed that at almost every second booth, another software firm
offered WYSIWYG trapping applications (programs that deal with the
interface between colors on a printed page). On-screen imposition
programs were quite popular as well. [Imposition programs print
multiple pages of a publication on a single piece of film in the
proper sequence and orientation for going directly to the press to
facilitate final folding and bindery, bypassing the film stripping
process, which involves pasting individual pieces of film onto
another piece of paper. -Adam] But all eyes continuously turned to
graphics and design applications.
Instant Images
The obligatory new product buzz was alive and well at Seybold. The
honor fell this time on HSC Software with their announcement of
Live Picture, a product that promises to change the way we edit
images. The $3,495 software package is similar in concept to Adobe
Photoshop but with a marked difference: you don't touch the image.
When you open an image in Live Picture, the program creates a
mathematical representation of the data. This process, known as
FITS Technology (Functional Interpolating Transformation System),
allows real-time editing and correction of any size image. HSC
Chairman and CEO John Wilczak proved the power of the software
during live demonstrations throughout the conference. Using a
stock Quadra 840AV, Wilczak opened a 150 MB file, resized it three
times, rotated it twice, and adjusted the contrast - all in less
than 15 seconds. He then zoomed into the image more than a dozen
times (instantly) and edited the shape of individual pixels to
prove his point: there is no data here.
Once you manipulate the image into a finished product, the real
work begins. Since the changes have been made only virtually,
saving your work can take some serious time - from a couple of
minutes to a few hours, depending on how drastically you altered
the image - since Live Picture must now update the data file. Once
it completes the calculations; however, you have a finished
product and something called a FITS file. This file, containing
only the changes you made to the mathematical model, can then be
compressed and sent to a client, who can apply it to her copy of
the original image. This means that instead of sending a SyQuest
cartridge overnight, you send the changes via modem in ten
minutes.
The importance of Live Picture was immediately obvious. Now, when
editing high-resolution images on the Mac, the focus can be placed
entirely on the creative process. No more waiting for screen
redraws and filters to calculate. A designer can experiment with
many different choices and still meet his deadline.
Of course, this means little to the majority of Mac users who
can't shell out over three grand for an application, not to
mention that the program needs a Quadra with 32 MB of RAM. But it
is the first step in a new direction and competitors will most
likely follow suit with similar technologies.
The technology for Live Picture was developed by Paris-based FITS
Imaging and is being ported to the Mac by HSC, who hope to have
the product shipping early next year. The company offered an early
adoption program, where professional users could help beta test
the program. As awed audience members lined up after the demo,
Wilczak said he had sold nearly $100,000 worth of Live Image by
the third day of the conference [which is actually only about 30
copies... -Tonya].
Freedom for FreeHand
Aldus pushed the illustration software envelope a bit further by
announcing FreeHand 4.0. The program boasts a completely
overhauled interface including an "Inspector palette." This new
feature will come as a blessing to those previously frustrated
with the way the program buried many of its most powerful commands
under layers of dialog boxes. Now, you can access everything from
page size to text formatting to measurements from one central
location.
The new version offers drag & drop transfer of colors and
gradients between palettes and objects as well as between
different palettes themselves. The text handling features of the
program have been greatly improved as well, including - finally -
the ability to enter text directly on the screen. New kerning
controls, column features, and text wrap options have been added
to make you wonder why you even need PageMaker.
The upgrade will be available by Christmas and will cost $150 no
matter what version of FreeHand you currently use.
XPressing Apologies
Quark busily hyped XPress for Windows during the conference but
had little to say about version 3.3 for the Macintosh. Expected to
ship soon, the new version comes only weeks after XPress 3.2 hit
the shelves. Quark explained that they rushed version 3.2 so it
would coincide with the release of the Windows version, ensuring
immediate cross-platform compatibility. The update to 3.3 will
include additional features planned for 3.2 but not included when
it shipped. Quark will concurrently release both the Macintosh and
Windows upgrades of the program.
In the continuing melee between XPress and PageMaker, Quark
continues to both push ahead and catch up, offering a number of
new features to the package. Mimicking a new addition to
PageMaker, XPress will now recognize colors in an imported EPS
image. Text boxes will act like picture boxes, offering any number
of variable shapes. The document layout palette, which Quark
modified in version 3.2 to the horror of many users, has been
"enhanced," meaning that it will most likely look more like it
used to.
The upgrade will be free to 3.2 users; $195 for everyone else.
News from the Top
Apple's display hummed with talk of the Power PC. The new machines
were there, too, but you couldn't see them. A number of demos were
running, but each consisted of a monitor and a mouse with cables
running behind the scenes. One showed a 486 based PC displaying a
fractal-rendering program. Next to it was a Power PC-based machine
drawing 20 to 30 of the same fractal in the same time. [Hmm,
that's the same demo Apple showed at Macworld Boston. -Adam]
Apple showed off its new QuickDraw GX, which features desktop
printer icons for drag & drop printing and queue viewing. A new
print dialog box offers different page sizes for different pages
in a document as well as printer selection without going to the
Chooser. Text attributes have been revamped from the old
bold/italic/shadow/outline days to include a slider for tracking,
a pop-up menu for special characters like swash caps, and Multiple
Master-like scaling of width and weight. QuickDraw GX will also
ship with "smart fonts" that automatically space and weight
individual characters based on their size and placement in a
particular word.
Apple's two recently-released LaserWriters gathered a lot of
attention, in great part due to their Postscript fax options.
Apple will offer an internal modem for both the LaserWriter Pro
810 and Select 360 that will enable anyone on a network to send a
high-quality fax as simply as printing the document. The 810
stands as a monolith to printers with three paper trays, 800 dpi,
and a 20 page-per-minute print speed. The 360 offers two paper
trays, 600 dpi , and 10 pages per minute. Both printers are based
on a RISC processor and run Postscript Level 2.
After the Storm
If a trend were to be found at Seybold San Francisco, it was the
shift in power from hardware to software. It was obvious that
programs will soon offer new techniques that leave processing for
later and put creativity first. With virtual editing just around
the corner and scripting of repetitive tasks already in place, we
may soon find that we no longer wait for our machines to catch up
to what we see in our minds. Look for a wide application of these
concepts, and start looking for them soon.
HSC Software -- 310/392-8441 -- 310/392-6015 (fax)
kptsupport@aol.com -- 75300.2707@compuserve.com
Aldus Corp. -- 206/628-2320
Quark Inc. -- 800/788-7835
Apple Computer -- 408/966-1010
Reviews/01-Nov-93
-----------------
* MacWEEK -- 25-Oct-93, Vol. 7, #42
eDisk 1.2 -- pg. 39
Stacker for Macintosh 1.0.1 -- pg. 39
Passport Producer Pro 1.0 -- pg. 40
VersaTerm 5.0 -- pg. 42
* InfoWorld -- 25-Oct-93, Vol. 15, #43
Desktop Publishing Programs -- pg. 69
QuarkXPress 3.2
Aldus PageMaker 5.0
FileMaker Pro 2.1 -- pg. 108
PortShare Pro, PortShare Lite -- pg. 109
* Macworld -- Dec-93
Quadra 840AV; AudioVision 14" Display -- pg. 50
Apple Newton MessagePad -- pg. 52
Finale 3.0.1 -- pg. 55
Turbo 040 -- pg. 57
Coolscan LS-10e; ScanMaker 35t -- pg. 59
Now Compress 1.0 -- pg. 59
Icon-It Pro 3.0.6 -- pg. 60
MovieMovie -- pg. 61
Useful Voice Processor for Mac 1.1v7 -- pg. 63
Power To Go 2.0 -- pg. 63
On The Road 1.1 -- pg. 65
PowerBook 140 F/25 Upgrade -- pg. 67
AsanteHub 1012 -- pg. 67
AppleDesign Powered Speakers; ACS100; ACS150 -- pg. 75
Now Fun -- pg. 77
Spectre Supreme -- pg. 77
Mr. File 2.0 -- pg. 79
Toner Tuner 1.0.3 -- pg. 79
HyperStudio 1.0 -- pg. 81
MobileWriterPS -- pg. 81
Office Tracker 1.1 -- pg. 82
Hello Music -- pg. 82
ultraShield 1.252 -- pg. 84
LightningScan Portable -- pg. 84
Falcon MC 1.0 -- pg. 88
New 040 Macs -- pg. 92
(too many to list)
PowerBook Duo 250 and 270c -- pg. 102
Optical Drives -- pg. 120
(too many to list)
$$
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