Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/ii000023.zip/II000023.TXT

Text File | 1993-10-19 | 30KB | 590 lines

TidBITS#198/18-Oct-93
=====================

Apple promises future PowerPC upgrades for specific Macintoshes,
   announces that they turned a small profit last quarter, and
   officially terminates its relationship with John Sculley.
   Filling out the issue, we have the latest on Adam's Internet
   book including a letter from the publisher, and a call for
   sumex mirror sites to form a central registry. Finally, Matt
   Neuburg continues his detailed look at outliners, this time
   exploring Symantec's saurian MORE.

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]

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

Topics:
    MailBITS/18-Oct-93
    PowerPC-Ready
    Files on the Internet
    Letter from Hayden
    MORE, MORE, Dinosaur
    Reviews/18-Oct-93

[Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-198.etx; 29K]


MailBITS/18-Oct-93
------------------
  So, do you want the good news or the bad news first? The good
  news? Excellent! The sales of my book, The Internet Starter Kit
  for Macintosh, continue, as Hayden tells me, to go through the
  roof. Equally good news is that the book is going into its second
  printing with an updated disk. The main change is the replacement
  of InterSLIP 1.0fc3 with InterSLIP 1.0.1, and those of you using
  InterSLIP 1.0fc3 should definitely upgrade to 1.0.1 - it's on
  <ftp.tidbits.com> in:

    /pub/tidbits/tisk/mactcp/slip-ppp

  Continuing on in the good news vein, we fixed the problem with the
  nameserver, so sites should start knowing the name of
  <ftp.tidbits.com> so you don't have to use the IP number,
  <192.135.191.2>. But into every silverlining must a cloud of write
  errors come, and the bad news is that Hayden won't have the second
  printing back from the printer until 28-Oct-93. This means that if
  you have placed an order directly with Hayden already, you should
  receive your order soon. However, if you place one now, well,
  patience is a virtue, or so I'm told. In light of this news, I
  recommend that you check your local bookstores, since I hear that
  the books have started to wind their way through the distribution
  chain so more bookstores have them on the shelves.

  In other book news, there's a mistake in the contact information
  for Hayden in the first print run copies of the book. Don't use
  the <[e-mail]> address; instead use <[e-mail]> for
  general comments to Hayden about any of their books. Hayden didn't
  create that account until after those pages has gone to the
  printer, so it was too late when they realized that the username
  was already in use at the host site. Sorry for the confusion.

  Several people asked me about electronic updates to the book, but
  I think the concept of electronic updates to a paper book is a bit
  weird, so I'll stick to putting new information in TidBITS where
  everyone can read it. Considering that I've uploaded a ton of new
  software to <ftp.tidbits.com> since the book came out, electronic
  updates would be a daily job, something for which I can spare no
  time at this moment.


**The good news** continues, with Apple reporting late last week
  that they posted record revenues and unit shipments for the fourth
  fiscal quarter. Apple's revenue for the quarter was $2.14 billion,
  a 21 percent increase from the same quarter last year. Of course,
  revenues don't mean much if expenses were equally high, and
  although not impressive, Apple turned back to profitable ways,
  with a net income of $2.7 million, somewhat less than the $97.6
  million the company made the same quarter last year. Needless to
  say, earning $2.7 million is better than losing hundreds of
  millions, as had happened earlier this year (although the net
  income for the year was $86 million). Apple attributes the decline
  in net income to the fact that gross margins declined from 42.7
  percent of sales to 25.7 percent of sales.


**John Sculley's salary** won't cut into that net income any more,
  as he was officially replaced as chairman of the board last week
  by A.C. (Mike) Markkula, Apple co-founder and chairman of the
  board from 1977 through 1981. I won't dwell on whether or not
  Sculley left voluntarily, although he wasted little time in
  finding a new position as head of a company called Spectrum
  Information Technologies. No clue what they do.


**Ric Ford** <[e-mail]> noted that the System
  Update 2.0.1 does not replace the Software Update previously
  released since System Update 2.0.1 does not include MacCheck, a
  useful diagnostic utility.


**v.what?** -- A typo bit us in last week's issue. The article on
  the PSI PowerModem incorrectly said that the modem uses v.32 error
  correction and v.32bis compression - those numbers should be v.42
  error correction and v.42bis compression. Sorry for the confusion
  - the modem supports the v.32 and v.32bis communication protocols,
  which define the connection speed (9,600 bps or 14,400 bps), but
  are different from the error correction and compression protocols.


Sumex Mirrors, Speak Up!
------------------------
  Liam Breck <[e-mail]>, the Info-Mac moderator in
  charge the sumex reorganization, writes:

Attention administrators of Info-Mac mirror sites:

   We are compiling a list of Info-Mac mirror sites around the world
  so we can inform users where else our archive can be reached and
  so we can stay in touch with our mirrors about important changes,
  such as the recent file list format change.

  If you are in charge of, or closely associated with, an Info-Mac
  mirror site, please email me the following information:

* site Internet address
* site location (include organization, city, state, country)
* email address(es) of site administrator(s)
* name(s) of site administrator(s)
* site disk capacity
* site operating system
* how much of the Info-Mac archive is available at site
* how often site connects to Info-Mac for updates
* method used to update site


Letter from Hayden
------------------
  from Mat Wahlstrom, Publishing Coordinator, Hayden Books
       [e-mail]

Dear TidBITS Subscribers:
  Thank you for your enthusiastic participation in the special offer
  on our book by Adam C. Engst, The Internet Starter Kit for
  Macintosh. Your response has literally been overwhelming, and in
  between gasps we'd like to extend our thanks to you in making this
  endeavor a success. As Hayden has done nothing like this online
  sales offer before, our parent company has experienced some rude
  shocks in making the new technology mesh with the old (that's
  right, they still use PCs and mainframe databases).

  We download all of the orders we receive on a daily basis, sort
  them into international and domestic customer piles, and then
  route the former to our International Sales reps and the latter to
  our 800# Sales reps. This is what we were told to do when we first
  presented the idea. Then we were informed much later, just as you
  found out last week, that international orders should go directly
  through our "local" international offices (see TidBITS #197_ for
  that contact information). Add the fact that orders are parallel-
  processed (entered in sales, shipped from the warehouse), and you
  can see that some problems were bound to happen. Granted, for our
  part, we didn't initially confirm orders via email. We have
  corrected all of these internal problems now, and we will confirm
  future orders.

  However I'm sure you're saying, "Great, but where does that leave
  my order?" You can assume that your message made it through to us.
  We've had no perceptible data loss, and messages that ask what
  happened to your previous message can worsen an already large
  volume problem. It generally takes two to four working days to
  process domestic orders, and then tack on normal delivery time via
  whatever method you chose to have it delivered. For international
  orders, the situation is stickier for the aforementioned reasons,
  so generally allow four days to one week for processing, and then
  tack on the normal delivery time. Please remember that shipping
  and handling charges aren't for us: they're for the carrier of
  your choice once your order has been fulfilled. So please
  carefully check both your packing slip and your carrier receipt
  (if any) to determine the blame for a delay (and if it's with us,
  send me email personally!).

  I can't express enough how grateful we at Hayden Books are for the
  level of demand Adam's book has generated. Thanks to your
  enthusiasm and feedback on our problems, we have convinced our
  parent company of the importance of having mechanisms in place to
  deal with the needs, present and future, of the Internet
  community.


PowerPC-Ready
-------------
  As Apple releases several new computers this week (see TidBITS
  #195_ for more details on those machines), Pythaeus tells us that
  they'll be making a strong commitment to upgradeability with a
  "Ready for PowerPC upgrade" promotion. Officially, Apple will
  provide a PowerPC upgrade path for the Centris 610, 650, and
  660AV; the Quadra 610, 650, 660AV, 800, and 840AV, and the Mac
  IIvx  (probably the IIvi as well) and Performa 600.

  Apple created quite a stir when it first began talking about
  platforms it had slated for upgrading, leaving out the Macintosh
  Quadra design that's been used for the Quadra 900 and 950, and the
  Workgroup Server 95. Early buyers were stunned that the top-of-
  the-line equipment they'd been buying for almost two years would
  go no further.

  The list of upgradeable Macintosh models leaves out these Quadras
  and the high-end Workgroup Server, but market pressure may yet
  convince Apple to produce a tower-sized PowerPC model, and as a
  result, an upgrade possibility for tower-sized Mac owners. In
  addition, accelerator-maker DayStar Digital has announced that it
  will provide upgrades for the Quadra 700, 900, and 950 when Apple
  ships the PowerPC Macs, and will provide PowerPC upgrades for all
  color-capable Macs during 1994. Then the SE/30 can burn silicon
  once again.

    DayStar Digital -- 800/962-2077 -- 404/967-2077


MORE, MORE, Dinosaur
--------------------
  by Matt Neuburg - [e-mail]

  While reviewing Inspiration 4.0 for TidBITS #180_, I meant to
  compare it as an outliner with Acta, but the winner kept turning
  out to be MORE, which I had never meant to consider seriously, and
  of which I had only an outmoded version (2.0) to examine. So I
  took a closer look, and for two months now, I have used the latest
  version, MORE 3.1, on a daily basis.

  I liken MORE to a dinosaur in the best and worst senses. MORE
  started life as ThinkTank, the magnificent brainchild of Dave
  Winer, back in the Apple II days. As the Mac came to life, Winer
  evolved ThinkTank into MORE 1.0. Like dinosaurs, ThinkTank and
  MORE were vastly successful because they were the best at what
  they did. If you want to use an outliner as a serious writing
  tool, MORE remains the _only_ way to go.

  But after a Cretaceous heyday, dinosaurs had to adapt or die.
  Symantec bought out Winer (leaving him free to play God in the
  brave new world of scripting, with Frontier), and was a good deity
  stand-in for a couple of eras; but lately its attention has
  strayed, and MORE is showing signs of being too big and clunky and
  failing to keep up with the environment. If Symantec doesn't take
  it seriously again, or sell it to someone who will, it could
  easily go extinct. This would be a terrible loss.


The Milieu
  An outliner, you recall, works with text (and, in MORE and some
  other outliners, imported graphics) as topics. Every _topic_ is
  subordinate to (is a _subtopic_ of) some other topic, up to the
  main topic (or title) of the whole outline; an immediate subtopic
  of a topic is said to be one level deeper than that topic. The
  advantage of this organization lies in how you can view and
  rearrange topics. Any topic can have its subtopics either
  _collapsed_, so that they are invisible, or _expanded_, so that
  they appear below and indented relative to the topic. If you cut a
  topic, its subtopics (and their subtopics, and so on), whether
  visible or not, are cut as well; likewise, if you move a topic (by
  cut & paste or by dragging), its subtopics travel with it. This
  hierarchical structure for storing, viewing, and rearranging
  clumps of material is indispensable to me for creative work
  (preparing articles and lectures) and for reference (notes on
  books).

  MORE (like most outliners) also lets you _fold_ a topic, meaning
  simply that when the topic is visible, only its first line
  actually shows. This helps with viewing and navigation if topics
  become lengthy.

  Some outliners, MORE included, provide a second entity, usually
  called _paragraphs_ or _notes_. Only one note can attach to a
  given topic, and it can be shown or hidden independent of whether
  the topic's subtopics are collapsed or expanded. A frequent use of
  this feature is to make topics be subject headings only, with the
  actual discussion confined to notes. You aren't compelled to do
  this - in the old Apple II ThinkTank, you were, since topics were
  confined to 80 characters, whereas now a MORE topic (or note) can
  be as long as you like - but maintaining the distinction often
  helps clarity and flexibility.

  [By the way, I'm not using the MORE documentation terminology.
  They call topics "headlines" and notes "comments."]

  So much for the basic features that make an outliner an outliner.
  The devil, however, is in the details. MOREphistopheles comes into
  its own in the details.


Navigation
  A major MORE advantage is that it implements text navigation like
  a true word processor. Most outliners use or emulate Apple's
  built-in TextEdit routines (as exemplified by TeachText), which
  are primitive, to put it nicely. But MORE gives you text-
  navigation power nearer the level of Word or Nisus. Double-click
  to a select a word, triple-click to select a sentence. Up- and
  down-arrow keys move by line; right- and left-arrow keys move by
  letter, adding Command moves by word, adding Option moves to the
  start or end of the topic (or note); and Shift can be added to any
  of these to select text.

  Remarkably, such text navigation melds into topic navigation.
  Other outliners treat topics as isolated units. In Acta, for
  example, repeating the left-arrow key in a topic moves through the
  topic but stops at the first letter; but in MORE, when the start
  of the current topic is reached, the insertion point just moves on
  up to the end of the previous visible topic. (Of course you can't
  do this while selecting; a selection cannot consist of text split
  between topics, as this would make hash of the notion of a topic.)

  Similarly, other outliners make much of the distinction of whether
  you are _in_ a topic (you have selected its text) or _about_ a
  topic (you have selected the topic as an entity). Of course this
  distinction exists, but MORE lets it break down where convenient.
  In Inspiration, if the insertion point is within the text of a
  topic, you can delete text, but not the topic itself; you need to
  use the mouse, so that the topic itself is selected, before you
  can delete it. In MORE, with the insertion point in a topic, if
  any text is selected, hitting Clear deletes the text, but
  otherwise it deletes the topic; hitting Delete deletes the
  selected text or previous letter, but if you're at the start of a
  topic, it deletes the topic barrier itself, merging the topic into
  the previous one.

  Keyboard navigation between topics is similarly easy and powerful.
  Command-up- or down-arrow moves into the previous or next
  currently visible topic; option-left-arrow moves to the topic
  governing the present topic; option-right-arrow moves to the
  present topic's last subtopic. Similarly, keyboard shortcuts let
  you show or hide notes, fold or unfold topics, expand or collapse
  subtopics. I hate leaving the keyboard to use the mouse, so I
  appreciate MORE's full set of keyboard shortcuts, which is matched
  by no other outliner.

  And if you do choose to use the mouse, the way you use it is
  great. In most other outliners, you must use the mouse very
  precisely, to put the selection point right into a topic, or click
  right on the topic's "marker" to select the whole topic; with
  MORE, clicking anywhere to the right or left of a topic lets you
  select the topic, expand or collapse it (by double-clicking), fold
  or unfold it (by option-double-clicking). Almost the only time you
  have to aim precisely is if you elect to use the mouse rather than
  keys to show or hide a topic's note.

  The way MORE implements notes deserves commendation. A note
  appears, when made visible, as a scrolling window within the main
  window, below its topic; subsequent topics move down to
  accommodate it. Moreover, this window can be resized. If you click
  outside a note window, it remains, but its scrollbars turn
  inactive. The result is smooth, clean, and convenient, and not at
  all buggy, unlike other implementations of notes within outlines.

  Another nice feature is hoisting. To hoist something is to focus
  in on it, removing other material from view. If you hoist a topic,
  it shows as the first topic (top-left) in the window (in this view
  you can work with the topic's subtopics and create new ones, but
  you can't make a new topic at the same level). If you hoist a
  note, it fills the main window.


Reorganisation
  When you want to reorganise your outline, MORE provides just about
  every imaginable tool for doing so. To move a topic, you can cut &
  paste, or drag, or use keyboard shortcuts to move it a single
  increment up or down, or deeper or shallower. Keyboard commands
  also can promote all of a topic's immediate subtopics to its
  level, or demote a topic's co-topics to become its subtopics. You
  can split a topic into two at the insertion point within it; and
  you can even merge two topics into one (unlike any other outliner
  I know).

  Especially interesting is MORE's capability to _clone_ a topic.
  This is like an internal, mutual publish & subscribe: if two or
  more topics are clones of each other, any change made to the text
  of any of them, or to the text or organization of their subtopics,
  is instantly reflected in all of them. (Don't worry, if you delete
  a clone topic, its clones are not deleted!) Also, if a clone is
  selected there is a command to take you to its next clone. I find
  this valuable for creating multiple "views" of data within the
  same document. For example, I summarise a book from start to
  finish; beneath that I create subject topics and bring together,
  as their subtopics, clones of the relevant topics from the
  summary. Now I've got two views of the same material; if I make a
  wording change in one view, it's reflected in the other; and it's
  easy to flip from material in the summary view to the same
  material in the subject view.

  You can select multiple topics: it's easy to select contiguous or
  non-contiguous topics one by one; or, with modifier-clicks, all a
  topic's subtopics, co-topics, or topics on the same level whether
  they are subordinate to the same topic or not; or, from the menu,
  all topics at a given level or range of levels. Once you've done
  this, you can print or export just the selected topics, or even
  format the selected topics. You can also clone, copy, or cut &
  paste all the selected topics so that they come together under one
  topic.


Rulers and Formatting
  MORE's formatting capabilities set it apart from all other
  outliners. Formatting rules are contained in _rulers_, rather like
  those of Nisus: initially there is one ruler, attached to the
  title topic, but you can add a ruler to any topic; a ruler governs
  the formatting for its topic and all subtopics, infinitely deep or
  until another ruler is encountered. Rulers can be copied, cut, and
  pasted; they can be transferred between documents, and even named
  and stored in a library. A menu command opens a window in which
  you can set or modify the formatting rules for the ruler attached
  to the current topic. These formatting rules govern just about
  every imaginable aspect of the document's appearance: not just
  character formatting such as default font, size, style, and color,
  but also paragraph formatting such as justification (left, right,
  centered, or full), margins and paragraph indent, tabs, and line
  spacing, and even outline formatting such as topic labels and
  spacing between topics. Paragraph margins can be set relative to
  the page margins or to those of the governing topic. So every
  topic is a kind of paragraph (or collection of paragraphs), making
  MORE not a mere outliner, but a word processor which "does"
  outlines (superbly).

  That's not all. Every formatting rule has a _scope_: it applies to
  topics or notes or both, at a set range of levels of subordination
  starting with the topic to which the ruler is attached. This means
  you can have multiple formatting rules within a ruler, dealing
  with the same subject: for example, this topic should be bold, its
  subtopics should be italic, and their subtopics down to infinity
  should be plain.

  You aren't confined to using the ruler rules for formatting
  either. Character formatting can be set from the menus; paragraph
  formatting can be set from a Word-style ruler at the top of the
  window. Combine all this with MORE's powerful printing options -
  set page margins, create headers and footers, print all or all
  visible or all selected topics, set range of levels of topics and
  notes to print - and what you have is the ability to prepare a
  polished presentable printed document from entirely within the
  outliner. I know no other outliner that lets you do this.


A Case of the Clunkies
  There are many things I would change to improve the interface to
  give MORE a stronger market position. I have no idea whether these
  or any changes will ever take place. The creation date for MORE
  3.1 is December 1991; the Mac world has changed radically since
  then, but all one hears about MORE are rumours (unconfirmed) that
  Symantec is ready to abandon the program. Here, then, is a wish
  list that may be utterly in vain.

  First, some of the editing and interface details could use
  improvement:

  When you create a new topic MORE automatically places it just
  below the present topic. If this isn't where you wanted it, you
  have to move it. This is silly. Even Acta lets you make a new
  topic be a co-topic, subtopic, or co-topic of the governing topic
  at the instant of creation.

  When moving a topic by dragging, it isn't clear where it's going
  to be put when you release the mouse. Acta shows an outline of the
  topic as you drag, so you know just where it will go.

  There is no facility to select by paragraph, and no formatting
  rule to dictate the spacing between paragraphs. There is no
  keyboard command letting you move the insertion point sentence by
  sentence. There is no way to keyboard-navigate out of a note; you
  must either hide the note or use the mouse. There is no quick way
  to turn a note into a topic or vice-versa.

  Most distressing, MORE forgets certain crucial viewing
  information. You can resize a notes window, but if you hide the
  note and then show it again, MORE assigns its window a new size.
  Even worse, if you collapse a topic and then expand it, you can
  only expand either to just its immediate subtopics or else to
  infinity; MORE has forgotten the expansion state of the individual
  subtopics. Acta distinguishes between collapsing so that the
  current state of all subtopics is remembered, and _full_
  collapsing so that all subtopics are also collapsed.

  So much for editing and interface. Now, more general comments.
  MORE is System 7-compatible, but no more. At the very least it
  wants Publish & Subscribe, so that a topic from one outline can
  show up in another. (Of the outliners I know, only Acta 7 has
  decent Publish & Subscribe.)

  MORE has extensive import/export capabilities, and does a
  remarkably good job of maintaining formatting information. But it
  uses proprietary translation modules, so you're limited to what it
  includes. Either it should include more (Acta? Nisus? RTF?) or it
  should support XTND technology. It also lacks the ability (which
  ThinkTank had) to export just the notes.

  The manual (in six volumes) is huge, daunting, turgid, dull,
  confusing, uninformative, and inaccurate. It looks and reads like
  the Think C manual. A simple, stupendously unbelievable example:
  the "Quick Reference" is arranged by action - for example, it
  tells you what will happen if you press Enter, or if you option-
  double-click to the right of a topic. But I can find that out by
  doing it. I consult the Quick Reference because I want to know how
  to achieve some desired result; so it should be arranged by result
  ("To fold a topic..."; "To show a topic's note..."). The Online
  Help is even worse; I couldn't even find out from it how to create
  a new topic!

  MORE itself is too "big". I'm not saying that spell-checking,
  GREP-searching, summing, phone dialing, calendars, drawing tools,
  and a 144K graphing utility aren't nice, but they do make me
  wonder whether anyone in charge has a vision of what this program
  is supposed to do that doesn't involve the words "kitchen sink." I
  have not even mentioned MORE's Bullet chart and a Tree chart view
  of the outline, intended so you (the business type) can make
  diagrams and slide presentations. Because of all this, MORE costs
  too much. IN CONTROL is moving high volume with a street price of
  $85 and a variety of give-away packages; MORE's size, its battery
  of features, and its street price of about $260 add up to Pure
  Stodge.

  Here's my strategy in a nutshell. Now that System 7 is here with
  IAC and the rest of it, bust up MORE into several small components
  (outliner, bullet-charter, tree-charter, grapher, calendar),
  independent but completely capable of sharing data. Improve each
  component so it's the best at what it does, and eliminate all
  tools (such as drawing) that some other program will always do
  better. Then sell each component independently and cheaply. If
  someone buys all the components, you make more money than you do
  now; if not, you still win on volume. And move quickly, Symantec.
  The Cretaceous period is coming to an end.

    Symantec -- 800/441-7234 -- 408/253-9600
      [e-mail]


Reviews/18-Oct-93
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 11-Oct-93, Vol. 7, #40
    SuperMac ProofPositive Full-Page Printer -- pg. 1
    Adobe Premiere 3.0 -- pg. 35
    Conflict Catcher II -- pg. 38

* InfoWorld -- 11-Oct-93, Vol. 15, #41
    Adobe Illustrator 5.0 -- pg. 73

* MacUser -- Nov-93
    QuarkXPress 3.2 -- pg. 46
    Movie Movie -- pg. 48
    Apple Portable StyleWriter and MOBILEWriterPS -- pg. 52
    Nikon Coolscan -- pg. 52
    BrushStrokes -- pg. 53
    eDisk and Stacker for Macintosh -- pg. 54
    Colorsqueeze and PicturePress -- pg. 73
    ScreenLink -- pg. 77
    On The Road -- pg. 87
    MACphotographer -- pg. 87
    CLImate -- pg. 87
    Out of This World -- pg. 88
    OffLine -- pg. 89


$$

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Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Editor -- [e-mail] -- [e-mail]
Author of The Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh -- [e-mail]