Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/ii000035.zip/II000035.TXT

Text File | 1993-11-04 | 29KB | 586 lines

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 -- [e-mail]
   New Seagate hard drives, new 10 GB HyperDAT, and new cases!
   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/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 -- [e-mail]


**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 -- [e-mail]


**Alan Stearns** <[e-mail]> 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** <[e-mail]> 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** <[e-mail]> and
  **Fearghas McKay** <[e-mail]> 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
     [e-mail]

  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)
      [e-mail] -- [e-mail]
    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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