Date: Thu, 17 Aug 95 08:32 PDT From: xxltony@crash.cts.com (Tony Lindsey) Subject: Mac*Chat#086/17-Aug-95 Mac*Chat#086/17-Aug-95 ====================== Welcome to Mac*Chat, the free, weekly electronic newsletter biased toward Mac users who are production-oriented professionals. Other Mac users may find many, many items of interest as well. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback and suggestions. Unfortunately, due to the massive numbers of messages I get every day, I can't guarantee a personal reply. Tony Lindsey, . http://www.cts.com/browse/xxltony Mac*Chat back-issues may be found within any Info-Mac ftp archive at info-mac/per/chat See the end of this file for legalisms and info on how to subscribe. Any [comments in brackets] are by Tony Lindsey. Topics: Highlights Of This Issue Being Part Of A Community Excellent Tips Favorite Freeware Excellent Questions For The Week Charities Need Help More About Claris Works 4.0 Tips For Consultants Online Support For Consultants Online User Groups Boston MacWorld '95 Reviewed Legalisms Free Subscriptions To This Newsletter Highlights Of This Issue ------------------------ Jeff Porten shares some of his newest nuggets of wisdom, Mel Halbert tells us about a whole pile of exccellent software, several readers ask questions of wide interest, a representative of a charity presents an idea, ClarisWorks4 gets further reviewed by more readers, Jeff Porten talks about the Macintosh Consultant Network, Michael Robertson tells consultants where to get the best software and tips, a Belgian Mac User Group is revealed online, and Shrimmy raves about the newest Boston MacWorld. Being Part Of A Community ------------------------- By Tony Lindsey Editing a newsletter like Mac*Chat has forced a few changes in my viewpoints, and I feel that I'm a better person for it. I'd like to spend a few paragraphs talking about this. Anyone who spends more than a couple of minutes online becomes aware of the noise and extreme levels of diversity that exist on the other side of your screen. People who normally would only be found under rocks are online and in your face. On the other hand, kind, decent, mature people have also been finding their way around, and are congregating into affinity groups of all kinds. Of course, we all have our own interpretation of "good" versus "bad." That's expected. Mac*Chat's readers, if gathered into a BIG stadium, would be a very, very diverse group. As a soft-headed idealist, I like to think that what we share is a sense of courtesy, plus a willingness to give something to our sub-group of the planetary community. Wisdom is a fine gift, and civility is a great way to express it. I use those qualities as the main criteria to select which messages get passed along. I'm glad we can't see the faces of the folks who share their helpful tips in every issue. Rather than being pre-judged by external features, sex, or locality, Mac*Chat's contributors are able to express their more-important qualities and inborn talents. I like that. Speaking of locality, Mac*Chat is being read and contributed to by your brothers and sisters in Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Mariana Islands, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Saudi-Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the Ukraine, the USA, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Did I miss anyone? The planet is very small. Let's work together to help each other. I like to think I'm doing my part, through editing Mac*Chat, acting as Neighborhood Watch Block Captain in my neighborhood, raising my nephew as my own son, and being a good consultant, friend, brother, son and husband. I don't aspire to more. When people use the Internet or traditional media to attempt to force their views on others, I find it humorous. Someone once said "Fads come from the top down - Trends come from the bottom up." I like to think this means that real, important changes can't be forced on the general public, by leaders (or folks who want to be leaders). No matter how hard some folks may try, they can't influence our planetary society as much as kindness and honesty among trusted friends. If you feel the same way, pass it along to the next person. Excellent Tips -------------- By Jeff Porten, Millennium Consulting Washington, DC Do-it-yourself HTML: It's true that there are tons of ways to learn good HTML programming on the 'Net, and that it's silly to hire a consultant for personal home page construction. However, the point must be made that just as in desktop publishing, knowing the code does not mean good end results. I *strongly* recommend that people who want to use the Web for commercial purposes (either professional information sharing, or commerce) hire a consultant to design the pages, or at least review works-in-progress. A consultant should be chosen on the basis of PRIOR WORK viewed live on the Net, not marketing pitches. For anyone who wants to learn good commercial HTML practices, I recommend reading the "Inet-Marketing" mailing list, run by Glenn Fishman: mail "subscribe inet-marketing Your Name" to [I also subscribe to that mailing list - It's fine quality, and fascinating reading!] Iomega drives: Iomega has announced the development of the Viper drive, due for release in 3Q '95. It's a Zip drive, with 1 gig on each disk. Prices are slated (and obviously, all this is vaporous and might change) to be $599 for the drive and one disk, $100 for additional disks. Publish and subscribe: A very good use for P&S is to use editions when you have to change a block of text and have that automatically ripple through a large document. I publish the original block, and have the rest of the document subscribe to itself. This has helped with tables of contents and indices, and occasional boilerplate documents. Keep all editions in a separate folder, out of the way. Improvements on Stickies: I am using Now QuickPad, an integral part of the highly recommended Now Up-to-Date 3.5 and Now Contact 3.5. A hotkey brings up a dialog box (a fast, small application), with a notes field and the option to attach it to an appointment, to-do, or contact. URLs, or anything else that I want to remember later, I toss into a to-do, which I later classify as Back Burner priority. Then I go through them after my higher priority items are finished. This is a very efficient way of dealing with lots of incoming data. I read it using EasyView on my external monitor, with QuickPad on the PowerBook internal monitor. Anything that bears remembering, I toss into the QuickPad, and trust Up-to-Date to bring it to my attention later, but only when appropriate. I have another QuickPad window, where I kept running notes on what to include in this letter. AOL is running in the background; when I choose to reply to anything I see, I type it up offline and get right back to work. For those who do not want to switch to Now Software, there is a utility that seems to be similar to QuickPad called Guy Friday, available in shareware. (I have a copy that came with my La Cie drive, but I recall seeing it in the Info-Mac archives.) I was impressed with the design, but have not used it extensively. Favorite Freeware ----------------- By Mel Halbert In case you are still running your Favorite Freeware collection, I have several useful items to mention. Some of these were perhaps not in existence when you first called for such items, but at least the first two were. All of these programs are currently available from Info-Mac sites. Hexedit: A program by Jim Bumgardner that displays the contents of any file byte by byte in hex and ASCII, and allows the user to change or insert/delete bytes. According to his documentation, it has some advantages over Apple's FEdit utility, but I am not familiar with that. (I do have ResEdit, but have never figured out how to examine files with it.) /info-mac/dev/hex-edit-107.hqx Drop*PS: A program by Rich Siegel that prints a PostScript file with a minimum of fuss. /info-mac/prn/drop-ps-113.hqx SimpleText Color Menu: A program by Alessandro Levi Montalcini that adds features to SimpleText. It includes a Color menu that allows inserting text in color, but to me its most important feature is the addition of Find and Replace to SimpleText, making it a much more useful program. /info-mac/text/simpletext-color-menu-211.hqx Drop*Rename: A program by Bob Bradley that allows similarly-named files to be renamed with one entry of the desired replacement string. For example, when I download a bunch of mac-chat-0xx-etx.txt files and want to change their names to Mac*Chat#0xx-etx.txt, I just select the group of files, drop them onto the Drop*Rename icon, and type in the appropriate Search and Replace character strings. (This kind of operation is normally a pain with a Mac, though it is easy on a computer having a command-line interface.) /info-mac/disk/drop-rename-110.hqx Dos2Mac: A drag & drop utility by Thierry Sourbier to convert PC-style text files to Mac format, and vice versa (automatically knows which way to convert!). It has some features that DosWasher does not have that may be important for text containing special characters. He has also posted a French-language version which is amusing to compare to see the translation of various menu items. /info-mac/text/dos-to-mac-10.hqx FileList+: By Bill Patterson. This is a disk cataloging utility with lots of options, almost too many for a beginner to understand. After some playing around with it, I developed a set of options than suit my needs and I use the program every day. There are, of course, a large number of disk cataloging programs out there and more appearing every month or so. Most are not free, and most that I have checked out omit some feature present in FileList+ that I can't live without. Among the better alternatives that I am aware of is Disk Wizard 2.0 (shareware), by Francois Pottier, and Floppy Catalogue 2.0, by Antoine Maklouf (free). The last version of FileList+ was 1.0b21 and it still is available on Info-Mac and elsewhere. However, this version introduced a bug in one of the sorting features I really wanted, so I went back to version 1.0b20 (released in Dec. 1991!). The author wrote in his last release that he was going commercial and there would be no further public domain releases. In August 1994 I sent him a letter outlining the problem I just mentioned and asking what was the name and publisher of the commercial version. Alas! I received no response whatever despite having enclosed a stamped, self-addressed envelope. So I just keep on with 1.0b20. /info-mac/disk/disk-wizard-2.0.hqx /info-mac/disk/floppy-catalogue-2.0.hqx /info-mac/disk/file-list-plus-10b21.hqx (Note that the URL given is for version 1.0b21 because version 1.0b20 was purged from all Internet archives long ago. If you do not need the Sort option "Files by path (& last)", 1.0b21 will work fine. Excellent Questions For The Week -------------------------------- By Rick Sciacca Have there been any reviews of Connectix's Speed Doubler? There ads/hype say it will speed up most macs, but I've heard elsewhere that its basically useless on anything but a PPC. How about aasking your readers if they have it installed on a non-PPC and if it really works, or does it just take up RAM and Disk space? -------- By Jake Peters, MacSupport, Boston, Ma http://www.shore.net/~jhp/jakehome.html How about posting a question that asks readers to review the Zip vs. SyQuest's EZ135. I am in the market for one of these drives for backup and my small consulting business for transporting the many Apple System software updates around (don't worry I am a student at work in Boston for mainly families that I know who own Macs, so no local consulting competition here). But, while the EZ is clearly faster, I read something about how their cartridge platters were second rate. Do you know if this true? Also I think that Zip seems to be head the way of becoming the industry standard as the next floppy disk. Do you think this will happen? Charities Need Help ------------------- By Lynn D. Gottlieb Don't know where you reside, so I'll assume it's not in WA, AK, ID or MT. I work for Harborview Medical Center, the trauma/burn center for 25% of the US land mass. I manage the Rehabilitation Learning Center, a privately funded project (gets its money from individual contributions) that is developing multimedia to teach persons with spinal cord injuries (like Christopher Reeve) the skills they need in order for them to leave the in-patient rehabilitation environment and function successfully in society. I'm also a well-known Mac User and bigot - I met my first Mac in 1984 (oh, those 128k Macs!), fell in love, and haven't fallen out of love yet. I commend your not wanting to take handouts from companies. I do have a suggestion. There must be a charitable organization in your hometown or neighborhood that uses Macs. If they're anything like us, they live a hand-to-mouth existence. Much time is spent trying to get money to survive. Today's political climate doesn't help non-profits one whit. Most of us look at up-to-date hardware and software as a pipe dream. So why not give the folks who want to give you freebies a list with the names, addresses and phone numbers of 3 charities that you know of who use Macs. Tell them that you don't want any freebies, but you'd appreciate it if they would donate the stuff to one of these organizations instead... If you do live in WA, AK, ID or MT, I'm sure you know of Harborview's stellar reputation. Perhaps we could be one of those three charities. If you live outside of our serving area, I'm sure you could find some worthwhile Mac-using charitable organization. [I can't say the idea of allowing ANY outside influence completely appeals to me, but I will gladly pass your request along. Folks reading this should also look at the shelves above their Mac - Are there older versions of Word, Illustrator, or whatever that you don't use any more? Those manuals and diskettes are badly needed by schools and every other kind of charity.] More About Claris Works 4.0 --------------------------- By russgold@netaxs.com (Russell Gold) I saw a very complimentary mention on ClarisWorks 4 in your last Mac*Chat and, while I largely agree, I want to point out one discrepancy: Claris claims that the product "supports Worldscript." Actually, it only supports the Japanese and Chinese Language Kits. If you delve deeply into the documentation, you discover that it has no support for right-to-left or contextual scripts, such as Hebrew and Arabic. In fact, I find it extremely easy to crash the program if I have the Hebrew script installed. Claris justifies this omission by pointing out that only the Japanese and Chinese Language kits are officially released by Apple as commercial products; however, the resources for other languages are readily accessible from Apple's ftp site: ftp://ftp.apple.com/dts/mac/sys.soft.intl/ in the foreign versions of System 7.0.1 and work just fine in System 7.0-7.5 (directions for using them are found in IM VI). Unfortunately, only SimpleText, Nisus Writer, and Worldwrite actually give true support for Worldscript. I am not crazy about the latter two because they require a hardware dongle to use non-Roman scripts, and SimpleText, of course, is wholly inadequate for serious work processing. I find Claris's claim particularly egregious because of their association with Apple - they really should know better! -------- By Guy Howe, Australia I have been using ClarisWorks 4.0 for a couple of months fairly heavily now. And it's *sort of* great. What I mean is, I was a big fan of earlier versions, and this one does everything they do and more, and all of the new things are good things (eg. sections, and I particularly like the way you can free rotate *anything*). But the styles, in particular, are just a bit too odd. Try taking a paragraph and setting it to one paragraph style, then another. Try a few different ones. Then, click the edit button in the styles palette, and notice the italicised formatting in the styles definition. Those are, so far as I can tell, formatting that is applied to the paragraph over and above or instead of the style definition. So, by applying styles and then overriding them, you seem to wind up with parts of the previous styles left hanging around. And that's just plain daft. That said, I use the styles, but I have to work around them a lot. By the way, the manual doesn't tell you, but you can remove the extra, italicised formatting information -- or at least *most* of it (it doesn't always entirely work for reasons I can't work out) by switching the styles pallette to edit mode and use click/shift-click to select all the italicised formatting information, then you choose Clear Properties from the little Edit menu in the pallette. Play with the styles for a while; you'll soon see what I mean. On the other hand, I like being able to use styles in the drawing module and whatnot. Oh yeah, and it's annoying that there is no 'Keep with Next', 'Keep Lines Together', or 'Page Break Before' settings for paragraphs or paragraph styles. And it's too hard to edit the outline hierarchy's definitions -- you can't get at the subsidiary styles (say, Harvard level 3) without clicking in a paragraph in an outline style. The second major annoyance is the outliner. Okay, it is useful, but still badly thought out. In Word (I know Word 5 backwards, and styles and the outliner were the ONLY things I liked about it; but I liked them a *lot*), you can have outline levels which applied paragraph styles, just like in ClarisWorks 4.0, but there was one outline for the entire document. This meant you could have non-outline styles (ie body text and the like) in between the outline paragraphs, and it would treat them as 'attached' to the immediately preceding outline heading, and you could hide them, move them with it, etc. In ClarisWorks, any non-outline styles between outline paragraphs breaks the outline. They are not hidden when you collapse the outline level, they don't move with the heading when you move it, and they cause the numbering to restart after them. Is Claris kidding here? Sure, I can use the outline style really nicely for bullet points and whatnot, and for planning the document when I am just tossing the structure around, but once I start typing in the text of my document, suddenly, the outliner is of little use. Oh yeah, and you can't drag outline paragraphs if they don't have any space or a number of bullet or something to their left. ClarisWorks would be a total Microsquish killer (in functionality, if not in marketing...) if it had styles that worked like Microsquish's (or rather, which kept the best parts of the way they're done now, 'coz there's some good ideas in there), and an outliner that worked like Microsquish's, and had Keep with Next and so on in paragraph formatting. But frankly, and I hate to have to say this, but I can produce most text documents faster in Word than in anything else, including the latest versions of WordPerfect, Write Now, Nisus, and so on, just because of the synergy between the simple but elegant outliner and the simple but elegant styles. I can't believe that there *still* isn't a word processor or integrated package on the Mac with a decent outliner, other than that horrid Microsquish monster. The really astounding thing is that Claris got styles almost exactly right in MacWrite Pro. All it needed was an outliner. *Sigh*. Tips For Consultants -------------------- By Weston1@netcom.com (Dave Weston, CDP) Consultants travel fast. Per Rudyard Kipling: "he travels the fastest who travels alone." My view: consultants travel all by themselves much of the time. I've been full-time computer consultant 24 years. For me, working alone is the one shortcoming of consulting: No one to talk with. No one to test new ideas. To stay sharp, I need sparring partners. Wish someone had given me this advice when I started: If you're thinking about going out on your own consulting, be prepared for intense, professional, aloneness. Find antidotes to that to keep your mind fresh. I currently have three valuable sources for meeting other consultants who feel the same: #1: Macintosh Consultants Network. International group of approximately 200 professional Mac pros. Informal meeting/conference once or twice a year. Sparkling exchange of ideas in seminars, at meals, at the bar. Never-ending stream of Mac talk from, for, and by consultants who make our living doing this. For me, a joy and a rejuvenation. For info on Macintosh Consultants Network (MCN), contact John Friedlander, Executive Director: <70744.2760@Compuserve.Com> #2: Macintosh Consultants Dinner Group - Los Angeles / Southern California #3: Macintosh Consultants Dinner Group - San Francisco Both above are informal, casual groups of Mac consultants who get together every few months for dinner. Lots of "Appletalk" and business-talk from consultants' perspective. Chance to be with people who are smarter than I am. For an independent consultant, that's nourishment. Many who attend are MCN members - but not limited to that. Welcome public consultants who offer services to other businesses and internal consultants who support Macs within a company or organization. But expect to be among major-league Mac pros ... this is not a neighborhood user group. Usually one or two vendors attend - software or hardware - bringing news of new offerings, questions about what we need in Mac market, sometimes NFR samples of their products for desert. No dues or fees. No business meetings. No formal requirements. We just split the dinner check among ourselves. My office maintains the mailing lists for both dinner groups. To be notified of dinners in your area, e-mail to: Your name: Snail mail address: city/state/zip: Fax: Tel: Why all that? Because I am experimenting to find best way to notify people of dinner when/where. Wrap it up here with Kipling on traveling fast: My words now, paraphrasing his: Whether you go to hell, or you go to heaven, you'll get there fastest if you find your own way! Online Support For Consultants ------------------------------ By robertso@sdsc.edu (MR Mac - Michael Robertson) (by way of pmorgan@morgan-news.com (Peter Morgan Morgan:Newsletters)) Just a quick reminder to use the WWW to get all the information you would possibly want about supporting Macs. Apple continues to improve their www site: www.apple.com (but if you log in to use it, be sure and leave them an email message telling them to make it SEARCHABLE!!! - Come on Apple.) There's a list of Apple sponsored (one way) mailing lists so you'll be the first on the block to know about new releases. Sign up for these at: http://www.info.apple.com/listproc/lists.html End all, be all Mac WWW starting points with pointers to great sources of info including Mac software/hardware vendors, price lists, etc.: http://www.macfaq.com/ http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~xray/mac.html You'll find FAQs (frequently asked questions) at: http://rever.nmsu.edu/~elharo/faq/Macintosh.html And when in doubt, it doesn't hurt to try: www.companynamehere.com (with your favorite www browser) ftp.companynamehere.com (with your favorite ftp browser) Online User Groups ------------------ By Bart De Gruyter, Bureau Studenten Raad van Bestuur Here's some info on the Belgian Macintosh User Group, MacBel UG in short. We are non-profit, more info can be found on: http://www.ping.be/~macbel/ We provide bimonthly magazines, internet access, and meetings to all Belgian Members. Boston MacWorld '95 Reviewed ---------------------------- By The Mac*Chat ListOwner The MacWorld Experience! MacWorld 95 - Boston was such an interesting experience. If it was a scorcher sun outside, inside it was the mammoth crowd experimenting with the new Clones and some of the very cool third party software that goes hand in hand to make the Macintosh what it is today! The Clones arrive with a BANG! Radius, Power Computing and Daystar unfolded the Apple Macintosh Clone myth into reality to the public as Apple introduced the new PowerMacs the 7200, 7500 and 8500 series. While you can get a 7200 for a mere US$1700, PowerComputing lowered its Power100 line to the same US$1700 too. This prompted Radius to reduce its lower-cost Radius 81/110 (110MHz 601, 16M, 730M, QuadSpeed CD-ROM) to US$3500. Radius has the superb monitors best suited for high end digital imaging applications. The GenesisMP from Daystar is a high end media- publishing workstation comes with (4)132 MHz 604, 16-32M, 2GB, Quad Speed CD-ROM, (6) PCI slots and nPOWER multiprocessing extension for Adobe Photoshop 3.0, Kodak Color Management and PhotoCD. The future looks very promising, but with all this competition does it mean high-end Mac/Compatibles at astonishingly lower prices remains to be seen. On the software front there were hordes of them. There was an striking emphasis on 3D Modeling and Web publishing tools. Starnine introduced WebStar 1.2 with built-in SSL support and Ceneca's PageMill - a fantastic HTML editor - stole the show on the WebServer/Publishing front. Strata's StudioPro, Specular's Infini-D, Avid VideoShop, Adobe's Photoshop booths were always filled up to the brim if not overcrowded. Deneba Software demonstrated Canvas5 while Apple's QuickTime VR booth was flooded. QuickDraw 3D-savvy applications were very popular. Gary Hornbuckle swiftly cleared the myth revolving around Open Transport. Right now OT1.0.6 ships as a built-in Mac OS component with the newer PowerMacs and also the 9500, and the release v1.1 expected in the later part of the year will have support for 68030 and 68040s. All in all, yet another fruitful MacWorld Experience! Legalisms --------- Copyright 1989-1995 Tony Lindsey. Nonprofit groups (such as Mac User Groups) or other non-commercial publications) are welcome to use any part of the Mac*Chat newsletters if full credit is given. All others will need to contact me. This newsletter is intended purely as entertainment and free information. No profit has been made from any of these opinions. Time passes, so accuracy may diminish. Publication, product, and company names may be registered trademarks of their companies. This file is formatted as setext, which can be read on any text reader. Tips from readers are gratefully accepted. Please write them in a user-friendly way, and if you are mentioning an Internet site, please include a paragraph explaining why others should visit it. Free Subscriptions To This Newsletter ------------------------------------- You may subscribe to Mac*Chat by sending e-mail to: listserv@vm.temple.edu The Subject line is ignored, so it can say anything. In the body of the message include the following line: SUBSCRIBE MACCHAT Your full name As an example: SUBSCRIBE MACCHAT Juliana Tarlton You will receive a nice long message explaining acceptance of your subscription, how to end it (if desired) and general listserv info. You will then automatically receive Mac*Chat in your e-mail box, for free, every week. ============== ____ ================================================ Tony Lindsey \ _/__ Free, weekly e-mailed Mac-oriented newsletter Mac*Chat Editor \X / xxltony@cts.com, http://www.cts.com/~xxltony/ ================= \/ ===============================================