VRML Tools for 3D Cyberspace

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W I N D O W A T C H Volume 1 No. 9 The Ascii Edition WHAT'S INSIDE Vol.1 No. 9 December 1995 Editorial VRML: Worlds of the Imagination Herb Chong Disaster Prevention and Data Recovery Phil Leonard The Windows95 Registry Kent D. Bentkowski Alice Writes a Column Peter Neuendorffer Windows Aspect: A Tutorial - Part Eight Gregg Hommel Stanley Bob Miller Bob Miller The Many Faces of Santa Derek Buchler Word Processing and the Suites Frank McGowan A Trip to All Points....Everywhere Kyle Freeman Surfing the Net From the Sticks! John M. Campbell DriveSpace3 Jim Gunn Why Wizards Aren't so Wonderful Robin Mabry Idiots Redux Bob Miller Alice's Doors Peter Neuendorffer Dear Santa Leonard Grossman Jim Gets his Dream Machine Jim Plumb The In-Touch Sampler Lance Jones A Report From the Israel Stan Kanner Acrobat v2.1 Notes Jim Plumb 'Twas the Night Before Christmas Derek Buchler Reflections of a ModemJunkie Leonard Grossman The Last Word Ben Schorr ww WHAT'S INSIDE Vol.1 No. 9 December 1995 Editorial VRML: Worlds of the Imagination Herb Chong Disaster Prevention and Data Recovery Phil Leonard The Windows95 Registry Kent D. Bentkowski Alice Writes a Column Peter Neuendorffer Windows Aspect: A Tutorial - Part Eight Gregg Hommel Stanley Bob Miller Bob Miller The Many Faces of Santa Derek Buchler Word Processing and the Suites Frank McGowan A Trip to All Points....Everywhere Kyle Freeman Surfing the Net From the Sticks! John M. Campbell DriveSpace3 Jim Gunn Why Wizards Aren't so Wonderful Robin Mabry Idiots Redux Bob Miller Alice's Doors Peter Neuendorffer Dear Santa Leonard Grossman Jim Gets his Dream Machine Jim Plumb The In-Touch Sampler Lance Jones A Report From the Israel Stan Kanner Acrobat v2.1 Notes Jim Plumb 'Twas the Night Before Christmas Derek Buchler Reflections of a ModemJunkie Leonard Grossman The Last Word Ben Schorr ww * * * * * Worlds of the Imagination: Virtual Reality Graphics Software Copyright 1995 by Herb Chong It's now been several months since I have been adding a graphic into each issue of WindoWatch. It's time that I explained how I created them and how you can go about creating some yourself. At this time, doing virtual reality graphics like those I've been showing is not for the impatient. It takes hours and sometimes weeks to get something just right. Each of the images may take hours or days to render on a fast machine. You need to be able to think and visualize in three dimensions and have an artistic inclination, even if you don't have a huge talent. Myst and Doom are the most well known of the computer games that use virtual reality. Myst's animations and images were all done on a Mac using an expensive professional software system. If you've seen Myst screens before, you'll see that they are hyper-realistic. Surfaces are a little too clean and sharp. On the other hand, it's pretty realistic how objects move and change shape around you when you move toward or past them. Doom is a different, less ambitious, virtual reality game. Absolute accuracy isn't the point. Notice that nothing casts shadows? However, its backgrounds and surfaces do otherwise and change properly as you move about the dungeon. More import-antly, they change quickly so that on faster machines, there is no flicker at all, even though, the differences in perspective is generated as needed. By contrast, Myst uses pre-generated animations for all its movement. It blend them together seamlessly so that it looks like you are just moving, not playing carefully pre-planned m vements of a camera. Virtual reality graphics is computer art, although some say that computers and art are mutually exclusive. With the tools like those I will describe in this article, you will be able to create nearly everything you can imagine. The better your ability to create new ideas and new ways of looking at things, the more amazing your imagery will be. I'll start off with some basic concepts of computer graphics and move onto the tools you need to get started. Then, I will show a gallery of some images from some projects I have worked on, or that other people have worked on and that I have captured. Finally, I will give a list of software that I have used, interesting places to visit on-line, and magazines to check out. Doing virtual reality graphics is tremendous fun and lets you turn some of the images in your mind into images others can admire. Here is a sample, just to give you a flavor of what is to come. You can create an image just like this, with no artistic talent at all, in about 5 minutes. You do have to know a bit about how to use your program, but that's a different kind of talent. This is a cube, a cylinder, and three spheres. They are resting on a plane surface (the grass) and surrounded by a hemisphere (the sky and clouds). There are 2 lights illuminating the scene, and some of the objects glow a little too. The hardest part of doing this picture was figuring out how to get a perfect hemisphere and then trying to find a nice picture of sky and clouds to put on it. I created this picture using trueSpace 2.0, a program at the high end of the price range at about $450 to $500 in stores. How does one go about creating an image like Figure 1. Let's start at the beginning. What do I mean by virtual reality graphics software? It means many things to many people. Some people insist that it's not virtual reality unless you are wearing goggles, gloves, and experienc-ing the sights and sounds, and maybe even the smells, of a world as you move through it. That's pretty high tech stuff and, frankly, not only very expensive, but not nearly as realistic as the advertising would have you believe. Some people call Doom a virtual reality game. Well, it is, but only in the sense that you can move about and interact with a world someone else has created for you. The Doom construc-tion sets make worlds or levels of your own, but there are only certain things you can do. The kinds of virtual reality graphics software I am going to tell you about are the kinds that an artist would use to create images and movies of objects and scenes. The art might be for its own sake, as part of another image, or it might be used to visualize the sequence of events in an accident investigation called forensic graphics animation. There might be only a single image or a sequence made into a movie. Another limitation on the software I'm going to talk about is that it can't be too expensive. The prices of the software I'm going to describe range from free to about $500. This covers the range from very simplistic software to complex software used by professionals. The truly professional software used to make movies in Hollywood start in the several thousand dollar range and go up. Normally, commercial virtual reality movie studios have specialized hardware to help them make their movies faster. I'm not going to look at any of that software or hardware. Modeling The first thing that virtual reality graphics software has to do for you is to be able to model or represent the world that you want to create as an image or movie. The modeling tool can be an integral part of a program, a separate program part of a virtual reality graphics package, or a completely separate program that can create objects you can load into a scene builder. The modeler might be so simple that it only allows you to import 2D or 3D clipart to a full-blown CAD program that can completely design an office building. No matter what it's capabilities, the modeling program's job is to create and manage objects for you. Most modeling program have a set of primitives that they can create if you don't import any clipart. Usually, they are simple shapes like sphere, circle, cube, cone, flat plane, and cylinder. A good modeling program lets you use these objects to build almost anything you can imagine. All modeling programs let you load pre-created objects and modify them to some degree. Some programs allow only one object format, usually a proprietary one. Most allow you to use files from CAD programs too. The higher end tools also understand some of their competitor's object formats and import them. What do you do with objects in a modeling program? For most such tools used with virtual reality graphics software, one of the most important things they do, is let you alter an object's geometry. This means reshaping the object. If a lamp is just a little too big, you might want to shrink it. If you're framing a picture, the frame might be a little too thin. Modeling programs also let you deform objects, sometimes arbitrarily, sometimes only in certain ways, and they can let you stretch and shape and twist parts to your heart's content. If you want to bend a cone to touch its toes, you should be able to do it. You'd be amazed at what shapes four spheres and a cube can be end up like with about two minutes manipulation. I'll show you in one of the images in the art gallery at the end of this article. The remaining manipulation a good modeling program can do is to break apart groups or join together objects into groups. The next important thing that a modeling program does for you is that it allows you to apply textures or materials to the surfaces of an object. Some programs will let you create your own textures. Others give you only a fixed palette to work from. Whatever the modeling program's texture manipulation capabilities, they all allow you to pick a texture and apply it to an object. Texture in virtual reality graphics programs is a more general concept than common English use of the word implies. Before a texture is applied to an object, the object's not visible, just like some ghosts are supposed to be. Once a texture is applied, light can interact with it. These are the lights that you work with in the virtual reality graphics software, not the lights in your office around your computer! What are some examples of textures? Well, water is a texture. An entire object, the contents of a swimming pool, is made of water. It has certain properties and certain interactions with light. Concrete is another texture. The important thing to remember here is that to virtual reality graphics software, a texture is a solid and not just a surface property. Yes, you can apply a texture only to the surface of an object, but usually that is not sufficient. Materials that allow light to pass through them like water and glass need to be made entirely of a material, not just painted on the surface with a coating. The technique used to generate the scene governs just how much of a material's bulk properties need to be modeled. There are two major ways of rendering images in software of the target price range, shading, and ray tracing. I won't get into the details of either until I finish talking about scenes, but suffice it to say for now that shading requires less modeling of a material's properties than ray tracing. More details later. The remaining features in modeling programs vary so much that I'm not going to describe them. Suffice it to say that the kinds of things you can do to text with a text editor or word processor, you can do to objects with a good object modeling program, like cut, paste, rearrange, move, and so on. Time for some more pictures. Figures 2 and 3 are images I created using Visual Reality 2.0. It's a program that typically retails for under $200. It comes on 7 CD-ROMs with a huge 3D clipart library and pre-built scenes. Figure 2 is from the Simply Scenes CD Jurassic Adventure. It's a scene full of plants and landscaping and all set for populating with any one of ten dinosaurs (included but not in this image). The volcano looks pretty realistic, doesn't it. Figure 3 is from the Orbit City Simply Scenes CD. It's a city floating in space. This is a view looking out from the center of the city past the hydrodome and the landing pad to the planet surface below. You can take objects out of and put your ow objects into the scenes. Visual Reality comes with two other Simply Scenes collections, the Starter Pack, and Northern Castle. Imagine the computer games you could create scenes for in a dark and gloomy castle! Scenes Once you have a bunch of objects, you still don't have an image, and certainly not a movie. Scenes are where everything starts to come to-gether. Although terminology varies in the manuals, a scene is a collection of objects, their positions, and orientations, lights, back-ground, and a camera. The lights have intensities, possibly direction and scatter, and sometimes shadows. The camera has a position, orientation, and a focal length. Varying the focal length is zooming, just like you would with a zoom lens on a camera. The scene editor might be a separate program, or it might be the same program as the modeling program. It's useful to be part of the modeling program be-cause one of the things you do when building scenes is move objects around, perhaps rotating and scaling them, so that they are arranged just the way you want them to be. You move lights around in a similar way to get the right effect too. Most of the scene editors work in wire frame mode. This means that you don't see the object as a solid object. Instead, you see a skeleton of each object. When there are many objects in a scene, it can sometimes become very hard to tell apart one object from another. Newer pro-grams have a solid viewing option. Objects are drawn with surfaces visible so that you can tell what the relationships between objects are. You can see if two objects are touching or one is being blocked more easily. However, this costs lots of CPU power to do. Don't even think about it without a fast Pentium system and a very fast video card. Building good scenes is easier if you have an eye for composition, but since this is all done on a computer, you can render a test image whenever you want to see if things look good or not. Most modeling programs will allow you to manipulate the camera and move it around to get the right view. Unlike real life photography, if the mountain is too big, you can shrink it a little. Talk about power! Don't like the clouds, get new ones. It's easier than hiring and firing extras in a real movie. Speaking of mountains, it's time for another picture, of mountains, of course! Figure 4 has appeared in a prior issue of WindoWatch. It's a computer generated picture of Yosemite Valley looking from west to east, near El Capitan. Although it is quite realistic, you can tell that it's computer generated. The trees have no shadows under them, the leaves are too sharply visible, and there are "creases" in the rocky cliffs in the background. I created this image using Vista Pro for Windows 3.0. It's a program that takes US Geological Service Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data of sections of land, and allows you to model the surface and populate it with plant life. You can also get a DOS version. It's slightly faster than the Windows version, although the Windows version has some additional features. If you buy the CD-ROM version, you get maps of most of the US at low resolution and some selected areas at higher resolution. If you don't like pictures of the Earth, on the CD-ROM are compatible maps covering about 1/2 of the surface of Mars. If that's still no enough, there are simple ways to generate your own landscapes. Rendering Leave it to computer types to come up with a complicated name for a simple idea. When you render the image, you do the equivalent of clicking the shutter button on a camera. In this case, the camera is a virtual one in the virtual world you have created. How fitting! Under the covers though, a tremendous amount is happening. Because many people spent many years figuring out how to do something they thought was simple, they couldn't just call it something ordinary, so everyone in the know now calls it rendering. There are two types of rendering used in virtual reality graphics software of the target price range, shading and ray-tracing. They take two opposite approaches to how to figure out what appears in your images. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Expensive programs sometimes use a lighting model called radiosity to generate realistic images. It takes tremendous amounts of CPU power to use and for some situations, generates very unrealistic images. Shading and raytracing have been around for a while and, compared to radiosity, much faster. Shading first figures out from the viewpoint, view direction, and view focal length, what objects are visible. If an object is partly visible, the program conceptually cuts the object off so that only the visible portion is left. Next, it examines every visible surface and looks to see what lights are shining on it. If there are any, it uses a mathematical formula to figure out, given the color of the light and the surface material, what the apparent color of the part of the surface should be. If there is no light, then the program might assume a default ambient light and calculates the resulting color. Then it figures out, for each dot (pixel) in your image, what is visible from the dot, and colors the dot appropriately. This was the first solid view of objects generated for computers. Prior to shading, only wire frame models were used. There was neither the theory nor the computing power available to do any better. Shading was invented in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Ray tracing takes a completely different approach. It goes from the view point, in the direction of the view, out in the exact direction of each dot that will appear in your final image. This is a backwards ray of light tracing back from where it would have hit the view point, out through the target dot. It keeps going backwards until it hits an object. When it does, the program figures out how much of the ray would have bounced, any change in color caused by the texture, splits into two and refracts as necessary, and keeps going back until it hits a light, doesn't run into any more objects, or has been dimmed so much by its reflections that nothing could have come from that ray and made it to the camera. The last case is easy. The program paints the dot black. The first case is almost as easy. Now that the program knows that it has hit a light, it knows the color and brightness of the light. It retraces the path from the light to the viewpoint, altering the brightness and color as appropriat , until it reaches the dot. Whatever the color the light last was set to is the new color of the dot. If the ray has split into two because of refraction and reflection, the two contri-butions are added together and the blended ray ends up at the dot. This can happen many times to build up the color of a single dot if the scene has plenty of partly transparent, refractive, or reflective objects. What does this really mean? Time for more pictures. Figures 5 and 6 are of the same scene. Figure 5 was shaded while Figure 6 was raytraced. There are two important differences you should note: the shiny cone isn't reflecting anything except light in the shaded version, and the colored glass cube is rendered completely differently. Look at the base of the shine cone in the raytraced version. You should be able to see on the bottom right and tiny part of the sphere reflected back. Similarly, looking through the purple glass cube, you can see that the cone is reflecting both the picture on the cube and the back of the purple cube. Finally, you can see on the faces of the cube both reflected and refracted images of the cube and the sphere. That's the difference you get with raytracing. So why doesn't everybody do raytracing by default? It took about 30 seconds on my system to render the shaded image at 640x480. It took about 15 minutes to do the raytraced version. This is for a very simple scene. In the scene I'm working on for my current animation, I am working with several thousand objects at once. It takes just over 100 megabytes of RAM to load the scene and another 100 megabytes of RAM to ray trace it. It takes about 6 to 10 hours to raytraced a single 640x480 frame. There is one refinement left that is commonly used in raytracing pro-grams. Notice that there are no shadows in both images. Although one can generate realistic shadows for shaded images, ray traced images are where the best details are from . Figure 7 is the same scene raytraced with shadows enabled on the lights. Notice that now you can tell that the glass cube is floating in the air. There is a shadow under the entire cube. Animation If you have a fast enough computer, the really exciting stuff happens when you begin doing animations. Animations are nothing more than a sequence of images played back sufficiently fast that you can't see the individual frames changing. Instead, you just get the impression of a continuous image that is changing. This is how both television and motion pictures both work. With a good rendering program, you can create single frames or whole bunches of frames. However, if you try to use a plain rendering program to make a movie, you're going to be disappointed. Just like trying to use an ordinary camera to make movies by slowly moving and taking a picture and playing back in a movie projector, you get too rapid and jerky changes in the picture. To get smooth animation, you have to move the camera or objects on a smooth path and with small enough movements to make the motions not too abrupt. For normal amateur computer video work, this means you need to gener-ate frames at 15 per second. Time to do some arithmetic. A twenty second clip is 600 frames. If you run a small image and stick with simple scenes and rendering techniques, the frames might take about a minute each. Six hundred minutes is ten hours of rendering time. Don't plan to do animations unless you have a fast computer or a lot of patience. I normally generate video animations at a size of 320x200 pixels. This translates into a 192K output BMP at 24-bit color (no animation program I mention in this article outputs less). Six hundred such frames occupy at least 112 megabytes of disk space. You need lots of disk space to do this too. I reserve a 1GB drive just for outputting my animations. I have created ones with up to 5000 frames. That almost filled the output drive. To get the smooth paths you need for smooth animations, you need a program that can generate good camera movement paths. The more sophisticated tools will have animation tools designed just to edit paths. These days, almost all program work with something called B-splines. Corel Draw is an example of a program that generates and works with B-spine curves. However, Corel Draw's drawing package only does two dimensional B-splines. For animation work, you need three dimensional B-splines. Programs like VistaPro and Visual Reality have separate modules that animate parts of a scene. TrueSpace has the animation builder all included. Besides animating the camera, you can animate other objects in the scene. Objects can move on their own spine path. So can lights. Fancier animation programs like trueSpace can animate textures too, so that an object's surface can change as you go by it. Objects can even deform from frame to frame of an animation. If you had to specify every state of every object in every frame of an animation, you would never get anything interesting done. Imagine trying to co-ordinate six hundred individual movements of only one object for the twenty second hypothetical example. Instead, animation building tools work with something called key frames. The term is borrowed from the cartoon motion picture industry. The main artists drawing an animation sequence don't draw every frame. Instead, they draw just the important ones. At a certain time (frame number) they know that something has to be a certain way. For instance, the hammer head starts at frame 3 and hits the glass at frame 9. A bunch of apprentice artists, called 'tweeners, fill in the missing frames so that everything looks smooth when all the frames are put together. They're called 'tweeners because the fill the "in between" frames. Fortunately for you and I, we own computers. Yes, you still have to figure out the keyframes and get them right, but then you can tell the computer to fill everything in. If all you want to do is to fly past something for the six hundred frames on a straight line, you just tell the program where it is supposed to be on frame 0 and where it is supposed to be on frame six hundred. The computer takes care of everything else. If you want a curved path, you need to do more work. If the line between two places doesn't have to be straight, all kinds of things can happen. This is where B-splines come in. They are a way of specifying smoothly curved paths with a few "control points" and some "tension" adjustments. The control points are exactly where you want to have a keyframe. By adjusting the tension of the path on either side of a key frame, you can come up with amazingly complex paths with only two key points. If you want to get fancy, you might want to use several dozen control points, but you don't need to. The computer knows the path and just divides it up smoothly based on how much time (number of frames) happens between the points. Unfortunately, animations are huge. Figure 8 is the first frame of an animation I have been working on for a while. I created a ten second clip of it and compressed it as much as I could and still preserve enough detail to see what the camera is flying past. It is just over 800Kb in size. This is in Video for Windows AVI format with the Cinepak compressor. If you have any version of Video for Windows 1.1c or higher, you can play back the file. Video for Windows has other compressors which make different tradeoffs of quality versus file size. Most Windows rendering programs allow you to choose what output format to use. However, none of them explain which animation format makes which tradeoffs. MPEG does the best compression for a given quality or file size, but there are as of yet not that many good MPEG players available. Fancier rendering programs allow much more than path, object, or texture animation. Figure 9 is similar to one that has appeared before in WindoWatch and was used on the WindoWatch home page for a while. It was created using Typestry for Windows 2.0. This is a prog-ram specialized just for raytracing and animating text. You would probably use it to do a logo for TV. One thing you can see in this picture is that there is fog surrounding the letters. With Typestry, it's possible to have the fog flow by, rippling and swirling as it passes. Talk about neat effects! You can also put the type on a flag and have the flag blowing in the wind, and some other effects too. Summary So, here we are. I've shown you some of the art I have done using virtual reality graphics software and given you some insight into what goes into creating some of the images I have done. I've also mentioned some of the software I have used and how much it takes to use it. This article is a bare overview of what is available and what can be done in virtual reality graphics. You should have an idea now of what terms are used by people and what to look for when trying to decide if you should jump in or not. If you intend to do more than dabble in virtual reality graphics, be prepared to spend the time to learn to use your software well, and be prepared to spend lots of time at it. Some of the images I did for this article took more than a twenty-four hours to render on a 486/66. I have done images which have taken 60 or more hours to render. The 5000 frame animation took, with interruptions, more than 11 hours to do the low resolution preview and 10 days to render the final version on my Pentiu . Raytracing also takes plenty of RAM. Several of the images in the gallery took more than 80Mb of RAM to load and another 60MB of RAM to raytrace. Shading would have been a bit less expensive at about 25MB more. If you really want to design and build worlds of your own, you need to invest plenty in it, but how often do you get to design a world just the way you like it? Abbreviated List of Resources 3D Design - a magazine devoted to virtual reality graphics software published by Miller Freeman. Contact them on Compuserve in the DDDMAG forum, 600 Harrison St, San Francisco, CA 94107, or 1-415-905-2200. Caligari - trueSpace 2.0 and trueSpace/SE - modeling, rendering, and animation packages. The full version of trueSpace has a street price of under $500. The SE version is basically just trueSpace 1.0. It has a street price of under $100. Both versions allow you to pick shading or ray tracing rendering techniques. I like trueSpace because everything is in one module. It is really good at rendering and modeling changes on the fly so that you can try things as they occur to you. You can check out their web page at http://www.caligari.com. They are also on Compuserve in the Graphics Vendor C forum. Otherwise, you can contact Caligari at 1933 Landings Drive, Mountain View, CA 94043 or 1-415-390-9600. Corel Corporation and Ray Dream Software - Corel Draw 6.0 includes a package called Corel Dream. This is a repackaging of Ray Dream Designer by Ray Dream Software. Both do modeling and rendering using raytracing. If you want to do animation, you need to look at Ray Dream Studio. It is Ray Dream Designer with added animation, clipart, and textures. Corel Draw 6.0 has a street price under $500. Ray Dream Designer 4.0 is available for under $100, while Ray Dream Studio 4.0 is under $300. Contact Corel at 1600 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1Z 8R7 or 1-613-728-8200. Pixar - Typestry for Windows - it's a modeling, rendering and animation package for typefaces only. The other drawback is that it only raytraces. This means that it can take a long time to do images. You can get it for under $200 street price. If you need to do logos or anything that involves fancy text, Typestry is your program. Contact Pixar at 1001 West Cutting Boulevard, Richmond, CA 94804 or 1-510-236-4000. Virtual Reality Labs - VistaPro and Makepath Flight Director - Vistapro is a modeling and rendering package only. If you want to do animation, you need to use Makepath Flight Director. Vistapro costs under $90 street price, but you'll most likely have to pay list price for Makepath Flight Director as very few places carry it. You'll have to get it from VRLI directly. List price is $69. You can contact VRLI at 2341 Ganador Court, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 or 1-805-545-8515. Visual Software - Visual Reality 2.0 and Simply 3D 2.0 - these two packages also do modeling, rendering, and animation. Visual Reality is the full featured package and can be had for under $200 street price. Simply 3D is under $40 street price. Both are powerful rendering and animation tools. Simply 3D is much less capable at modeling, but it's really cheap. Both come with a big collection of scenes and clipart for you to use. The only thing I don't like about either of these is that you need to work in separate programs for each phase of the rendering process. You need to get models in the modeler and then assemble the scenes in the rendered and scene editor. This means more planning to get the right effects. Programs that are all in one like trueSpace allow more experimentation. However, Visual Reality has more control over its animation. You can contact Visual Software on the Animation Vendor A forum on Compuserve, at 21731 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 310, Woodland Hills, CA 91364, or 1-818-8 3-7900. POV-Ray Team - POVRAY is a freeware ray tracing program. You can do tremendous things with it and you have huge amounts of control over the objects you work with. There are two problems however. First, it's only a DOS program. Second, it uses an ASCII scene description file as input. You have to work out the coordinates of everything yourself. However, free is free. You can obtain POVRAY from the Graphics Developers forum on Compuserve, many BBSs, and from Walnut Creek CD-ROM. Walnut Creek publishes "The Official Poverty CD-ROM". It contains the software, all the documentation, hundreds of scenes for you to render, hundreds of images to look at, and dozens of animations too. You can check out Walnut Creek on the Internet at http://www.cdrom.com. Otherwise, you can contact them at 4041 Pike Lane, Sta D-902, Concord, CA 94520 or 1-510-674-0783. Figures 15 through 20 are a project I am working on right now. These are all frames taken from a scene that I am animating. Each pair of frames are shaded and raytraced versions of the same scene. See if you can tell the difference. I did these images in trueSpace 2.0. The pic-tures on the wall are all photographs of mine that I have scanned in and converted into textures. The models of people from Noumenon Labs, KETIV Technologies, and Modern Medium. You can contact KETIV at 6601 NE 78th. Court, Suite A-8, Portland, OR 97218 or 1-503-252-3230. You can contact Modern Medium at 580 West 8th. Avenue, Eugene, OR 97401 or 1-503-343-4281. As anyone can plainly see, this article of Herb Chong's represents both a major effort and a major contribution. We are very proud that he allowed WindoWatch to publish his work. In the last weeks, Herb has become a member of IBM's research team. He is the Contributing Editor of WindoWatch and will be the Guest Editor of The WindoWatch Anniversary Issue or Vol.2 No.1 mid-January of 1996 ww * * * * * A Crash Recovery Tour! DISASTER PREVENTION AND DATA RECOVERY WITH WIN95 Copyright 1995 by Phil Leonard Things are good! You just upgraded your machine to Win 95 and everything runs pretty smoothly. Then one day, your system Crashes. Your hard drive is Toast. Are you prepared for this sort of disaster? If not, then this column is for you. I will take you on a tour. A Crash Recovery tour with a live demonstration. You will get step by step instructions on how to prepare your own Disaster Prevention and Data Recovery Strategy. By now, you should have noticed, that it is not as easy to backup and restore data using Windows95 as it was with Windows 3.x. Your choices are the same, backup and restore in DOS, or load Windows and restore. But now you must protect your Long File Names. 16 bit Win 3.X utilities no longer work properly in Win95. In order to use DOS based backup utilities, you must save and restore Long File Names. So this must become a part of your Disaster Prevention Strategy. Follow me then, through a simulated crash. The sacrificial lamb, so to speak, is an old Maxtor 250MB hard drive. Let me swap out the drives now, and install the blank Maxtor drive. I will be using a Conner 250 / QIC 80 tape backup drive in Windows with Win95's Backup program and a Conner 3200 / Travan tape backup drive in DOS with Arcada's Backup Exec Software. WIN95 DISASTER PREVENTION If you have not already done this, you must create a Win 95 System Disk on a blank floppy. Go into Control Panel (Start | Settings | Control Panel) and open Add/Remove Programs. Select the Startup Disk tab and press the Create Disk button. With Notepad, open c:\autoexec.bat and print out a copy. Remove all of the Rem statements Win95 created and remove all of the directory switches. (Rem LH C:\Windows\command\MSCDEX.EXE /S /D:MSCD000 /M:9 /L:J becomes LH MSCDEX.EXE /S /D:MSCD000 /M:9 /L:J) Save this newly created Autoexec.bat to your floppy in the A:\ drive. Here is an example: Open C:\Config.sys and print out a copy. Remove all of the Rem statements Win 95 created and remove all of the directory switches. (I.e.rem devicehigh=c:\dos\mouse.sys becomes devicehigh=mouse.sys) Save this new Config.sys to your floppy in the A:\ drive. Here is an example: Take the two printouts for your Autoexec.bat and Config.sys and open Explorer. Reading line by line, copy each driver needed from your C:\ drive to your A:\ drive. ( copyC:\windows\command\mscdex.exe to the floppy in your A:\ drive.) You will find emm.386 and himem.sys in your C:\Windows directory. Test out your Emergency System Disk. Exit Windows and shut off your machine. Restart with your Emergency System Disk in the A:\ drive. When you see Starting Windows 95 press the F8 function key. Step through each config.sys and autoexec.bat line on the floppy. Be sure each driver loads properly and then fine tune accordingly. Once everything seems to be working properly, we can continue. WIN 95 BACKUP IN DOS 1. Download a free program called DOSLFNBK v 1.0 by Duncan Murdoch. You can ftp it from ftp://ftp.cica.indiana.edu/pub/pc/win95/sysutil/doslfn10.zip. This program is an adaptation of LFNBK.EXE included on the Win95 CD. If for some reason you do not have the ability to download DOSLFNBK.EXE, you can follow the readme included on the CD. (CD:\ADMIN\APPTOOLS\LFNBACK\Lfnbk.exe & Lfnbk.txt) 2. Exit Windows and restart in DOS. Do not just shell to DOS. Create backup copies of all of your Long File Names by running DOSLFNBK.EXE for each hard drive on your system. You can create a small batch if you prefer. You can leave the backup created on the hard drive so that it ends up on the backup tape. You do not need to keep DOSLFNBK.EXE on the Emergency System Disk. To Back Up Long File Names on your C:\ Drive to the file name C:\BACKUP.LFN: At the C:\ drive type DOSLFNBK C:\ /V To Back Up Long File Names on your D:\ Drive to the file name D:\BACKUP.LFN: At the D:\ drive type DOSLFNBK D:\ /V 3. Start your DOS based Backup program and prepare your backup. Tip: Be sure to select all Hidden, System and Read Only Files. Tip: Be careful not to overwrite Backup.lfn. Keep each drive separate. WIN 95 RECOVERY IN DOS 1. Start your system with the Emergency System Disk in the A:\ drive. 2. FDISK to partition the drive. 3. Type "Format C: /s" to format and transfer the system. 4. Install your tape backup software. 5. Restore all the files on your system from your backup tape in DOS. IMPORTANT: You should not overwrite IO.SYS, but you SHOULD overwrite MSDOS.SYS. It is a hidden read-only system file in your root direc-tory. A good way is to erase MSDOS.SYS before starting the restore use ATTRIB from the startup disk to remove the system, hidden, read-only attributes. Type in ATTRIB MSDOS.SYS -H -S -R then DEL MSDOS.SYS). Then tell your backup program not to overwrite existing files. 6. Restore your Long File Names LOCK C: DOSLFNBK C:\ /R /V and if you have a D:\ partition: LOCK D: DOSLFNBK D:\ /R /V Reboot your system and things should be back as they were. WIN 95 BACKUP AND RECOVERY FROM WITHIN WINDOW The other option you have is to restore Win 95 with the backup utility Microsoft Backup, included with Windows 95. This procedure requires that you re-install Windows 95 and then restore your backup tape. Although backing up a system in DOS is as easy as backing up a system in Windows, it is certainly easier to restore a system from Windows than it is to restore a system from DOS. This option is not always available to everyone due to incompatible tape drives. 1. Start your system with the "Emergency System Disk" in the A:\ drive. 2. FDISK to partition the drive. 3. Type "Format C: /s" to format and transfer the system. 4. If you have the CD version of Win95 to install, select that drive and type SETUP and enter. If you have the floppy version, install the first disk in the A:\ drive, select the A:\ drive and type SETUP and enter. Install Windows95. 5. In Windows, select Microsoft Backup and restore your system. FINAL THOUGHTS It is important to be prepared for a disaster. Unlike previous versions of Windows, you can not simply copy your system from one drive to another without losing all of the hundreds of Long File Names present on a typical Win95 system. Therefore you must prepare a strategy. You should test out the strategy in the event of a disaster. This only makes good computer sense. Enjoy! PHIL'S WIN 95 TIP OF THE MONTH Make the Win 95 START MENU really work for you. Instead of just adding shortcuts to the START MENU, add new FOLDERS. When you add a folder to the START MENU it creates a cascading effect. Folders within folders create menus within menus. Right click on the START BUTTON | OPEN | NEW | FOLDER and fill in a menu name. Open the new folder, and either drag in shortcuts, create new short-cuts, or add more folders. Now you have plenty of room for program descriptions up to 70 characters long. When naming programs, add a space in between each L E T T E R like so. Move all of your frequent-ly used programs here. No more sifting through Program Manager Folders and menus. Programs you use most often are instantly avail-able at all times. And there is no limit to the number of programs or folders you can add. Stay tuned next month for my Win95 Tip of The Month. Phil Leonard continues to come up with these pithy road maps which solve problems. This backup routine is no exception. Phil is a regular WindoWatch contributor and is a Comptroller during the rest of the time. ww * * * * * Secrets of the Windows95 Registry WINDOWS 95 REGISTRY F.A.Q Things You Need To Know About The Registry! by Kent Daniel Bentkowski Perfik Graphix - Buffalo, New York August 11, 1995 Based on Win95 Pre-release Version 0.95 ßeta (c) 1995 Kent Daniel Bentkowski and Perfik Graphix Post-Win95-FAQ--v1.0a: Released August 24, 1995 The WindoWatch Edition released December 1995 TABLE OF CONTENTS [1] Legal Mumbo Jumbo . . . . [1-1] Disclaimer - Use this FAQ at your own risk! [1-2] Trademark Information [1-3] Copyright Notice [1-4] Suggestions, Contributions, and E-Mail [2] Introduction [2-1] A word from the author [2-2] About the Windows 95 Registry FAQ [2-3] Getting the Windows 95 Registry FAQ [2-4] Adding to the FAQ [2-5] Acknowledgments [2-6] Technical Support? Surely, you jest! [2-7] Conventions used in this FAQ [3] Registry Architecture [3-1] What exactly is the Windows 95 Registry? [3-2] Recovering Registry Data [3-3] Configuration Backup [3-4] The Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE) [3-5] The six Hkey Handles of the Registry [3-5-1] Hkey_Local_Machine [3-5-2] Hkey_Current_Config [3-5-3] Hkey_Dyn_Data [3-5-4] Hkey_Classes_Root [3-5-5] Hkey_Users [3-5-6] Hkey_Current_User [3-6] SubKeys of the six Hkey Handles [3-6-1] Hkey_Local_Machine [3-6-1.1] Hkey_Local_Machine\Config [3-6-1.2] Hkey_Local_Machine\Enum [3-6-1.3] Hkey_Local_Machine\Hardware [3-6-1.4] Hkey_Local_Machine\Network [3-6-1.5] Hkey_Local_Machine\Security [3-6-1.6] Hkey_Local_Machine\Software [3-6-1.7] Hkey_Local_Machine\System [3-6-2] Hkey_Current_Config [3-6-3] Hkey_Dyn_Data [3-6-4] Hkey_Classes_Root [3-6-5] Hkey_Users [3-6-6] Hkey_Current_User [4] Customizing Windows 95 [4-1] Icons from the actual bitmaps [4-2] Drag shortcuts onto the Desktop [4-3] Change the Desktop folders Default.Icon [4-4] Add the Control Panel to the Start Menu [4-5] Control Panel power at your fingertips! [4-5-1] Still More Control Panel Power! [4-6] What you need to know to edit the Recycle Bin [4-7] Removing unwanted items from the Desktop [4-8] How to change the My Computer Default icon [4-9] Renaming "My Computer" [4-10] Dragging "Scraps" to the Desktop [4-11] Change the Desktop's default folder [5] Fine Tuning Windows 95 [5-1] New design for the Start-Up screen [5-2] Turn off the Windows 95 Start-Up Logo [5-3] New designs for the Log Off screens [5-4] Edit essential folders [5-5] Boot to MS-DOS 7.0 instead of Windows 95 [5-6] Quickly clearing the Recent Documents Menu [5-7] To change font size on Taskbar buttons [6] Problem Solving in Windows 95 [6-1] If an application cannot find its' Help File [6-2] A tip for Multi-Boot users [7] Registry Tricks [7-1] Speed-up the Start Menu! [7-2] My city isn't on the time zone map!!! [7-3] Editing the Windows TIPS at start-up [7-4] Friendly "Short" Names [7-5] 3-D Objects: Highlights and Shadows [7-6] Reappearing values in the Registry? [7-7] Adding sounds to application events [8] Windows95 Registry Binary Value Reference List [8-1] Control Panel [8-2] Printers [8-3] Recycle Bin [8-4] My Computer [8-5] Dial-Up Networking [8-6] Network Neighborhood [8-7] Inbox [8-8] Desktop [8-9] Shortcut [9] Registry Editor Command Reference [1] Legal Mumbo Jumbo . . . . [1-1] DISCLAIMER: Use this FAQ at your own RISK!!! This FAQ is intended to help inform the public about the Windows 95 Registry, and about how to edit the Registry files. In no way should this provoke you to actually edit the Registry. The information contained herein is offered without warranty and/or liability. In other words, if you use this information, you are on your own. Additionally, Kent Daniel Bentkowski and WindoWatch claim NO responsibility regarding ANY activities relating to this FAQ, either directly or indirectly. The information contained in this FAQ reflects Microsoft Corporation only indirectly, and questioning it regarding any information in this FAQ is not recommended. EDIT THE REGISTRY AT YOUR OWN RISK!! Microsoft Corporation is not supporting the Registry as part of their Windows 95 end user technical support. BEFORE you proceed, please have the good sense to read the section of this FAQ regarding the back-up and restoration of the Registry files.[Editor's Note: Also look at Microsoft's help for the Regedit program. [1-2] TRADEMARK INFORMATION: All rights reserved. This document is provided for informational purposes only, and neither Kent Daniel Bentkowski, Perfik Graphix, WindoWatch or Microsoft Corporation makes any warranties, either express or implied, in this document. The entire risk of the use or the results of the use of this document remains with the user. Companies, names, and data used in examples herein are fictitious unless otherwise noted. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of Kent Daniel Bentkowski and Perfik Graphix. All specific names included herein are trademarks and are so acknowledged: Windows 95, Windows 3.11 For Workgroups, WFWG, Windows 3.1, MS-DOS 6.x, MS-DOS 7.0, Windows 4.0, Microsoft, DoubleSpace, Microsoft Press, MS, and Win32 are registered trademarks, and DriveSpace, Microsoft At Work, Natural Keyboard, SQL Server, and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the USA and other countries. [1-3] COPYRIGHT NOTICE: This FAQ is Copyright 1995 by Kent Daniel Bentkowski and Perfik Graphix. All rights reserved. You are granted the following rights: I. To make copies of this work in original form, so long as (a) the copies are exact and complete; (b> the copies include the copyright notice and these paragraphs in their entirety; (c) the copies give obvious credit to the author, Kent Daniel Bentkowski; (d) the copies are in electronic form. II. To distribute this work, or copies made under the provisions above, so long as (a) this is the original work and not a derivative form; (b) you do not charge a fee for copying or for distribution; (c) you ensure that the distributed form includes the copyright notice, this paragraph, the disclaimer of warranty in their entirety and credit to the author; (d) the distributed form is not in an electronic magazine or within computer software (prior explicit permission MUST be obtained from Kent Daniel Bentkowski); (e) the distributed form is the NEWEST version of the FAQ to the best of the knowledge of the distributor; (f) the distributed form is electronic. You may NOT distribute this work by any non-electronic media, including but not limited to books, newsletters, magazines, manuals, catalogs, and speech. You may not distribute this work in electronic magazines or within computer software without prior written explicit permission. These rights are temporary and revocable upon written, oral, or other notice by Kent Daniel Bentkowski. This copyright notice shall be governed by the laws of the state of New York, and of the United States of America. If you would like additional rights beyond those granted above, write to the author at "KentDB9438@aol.com" on the Internet. [1-4] Suggestions, Contributions, and E-Mail: If any reader of this Windows 95 Registry FAQ would like to send the author comments, corrections, updates, or suggestions, please follow the procedures listed below. It is the ONLY way that we can process the vast amount of mail that this FAQ may generate. Any mail that relates to this FAQ must be sent to the FAQ's e-mail address, which is "regeditFAQ@aol.com". Any e-mail that is sent to the author regarding issues of this FAQ, cannot be answered. Please save us both some grief, and send your e-mail to the FAQ directly. How your mail will be dealt with will depend on what the Subject line reads. Please follow these simple steps: MAIL Send ALL MAIL to the FAQ at: regeditFAQ@aol.com SUBJECT LINE Please place one of the following commands in the SUBJECT line,depending on the nature of the message. COMMENT - If you wish to tell us how you like the FAQ. CORRECTION - If you discover that information in this FAQ is incorrect, please tell me. I am only human, and will make a few mistakes. If you are able to verify your correction, I will acknowledge your contribution in the next update of the FAQ. SUGGESTION - If there is something particular you would like to see covered in this FAQ, send us a suggestion. If we incorporate it into a future edition of the FAQ, you will become famous by seeing your name in print here. TIPS & TRICKS - If you know of an undocumented feature or discover one of Windows 95's many well hidden secrets, please give us a holler! If your TIPS & TRICKS submission is used,you will receive thanks and acknowledg-ment in a future FAQ. Any e-mail that doesn't follow these simple guidelines will be returned unread. I am expecting a high volume with this FAQ, and this is the ONLY way to correspond with us. You can download this article from the WindoWatch Home Page or other places as indicated by the author. Thank you in advance for your compliance . . . [2] INTRODUCTION [2-1] A Word From The Author Try mentioning the word Registry on the Windows95 Technical Support telephone line, and the support technician will tell you in no uncertain terms that Microsoft isn't supporting that feature to end users. Additionally, they will try to convince you that you'll trash your entire system if you try to edit one single Registry entry! Nonetheless, it is the single feature in all of Windows95 that brings total system control to the user. If only they would tell us how it works! The Windows95 Resource Kit, which is a powerhouse technical manual the size of a phone book,contains a scant eighteen pages on the Registry. Believe it or not. However, the Resource Kit contains nearly as much information about their new online service. Accepting the challenge, I plugged in the Configuration Backup utility that comes with the Resource Kit, and began poking and prodding the various Registry entries. I discovered small and mundane techniques, like renaming the Recycle Bin, remapping icon files so that the corresponding bitmaps are displayed instead, and the secret to removing the Exchange Inbox from the Desktop --and more! But still, no official documentation to speak of, until now, that is. Enjoy! But be careful. [2-2] About the Windows 95 Registry FAQ The Windows 95 Registry FAQ is my attempt to fill in an enormous void of information from Microsoft. This is the first version of the FAQ, with much more to come. Among my future plans are to get the complete Registry API Command Reference, and rewrite it into English, so that many more people can understand this gibberish. Be sure to read this entire document so that you do not trash your system. There are plenty of warnings and instructions to prepare you for the task at hand. Take heed of these warnings to prevent a terrible mess, loss of data and time. Updates to the Registry FAQ will be released approximately once every thirty days. As soon as the Windows95 Registry FAQ Home Page is finished, I will post the URL widely. [2-3] Getting the Windows 95 Registry FAQ Until further notice, send an e-mail request to the following address, to receive the Windows95 Registry FAQ: regeditFAQ@aol.com This document is freeware for the time being or until the book is published. Until then,those who wish to post this FAQ to their World Wide Web home page, FTP site or BBS, please do so, with my blessings. However, PLEASE send an e-mail to the address listed above so that I can compile a list, and keep it up to date. [2-4] Adding to the FAQ For complete information on how you can submit information to be included in the Windows95 Regi-stry FAQ, please refer to section [1-4] Suggestions, Contributions, and E-Mail.It is there you will find the procedures that you must follow to add your voice to the Windows95 Registry FAQ. [2-5] Acknowledgments The following people privided intellectual leadership, help, and general all-around support in the creation of the Windows 95 Registry FAQ. A project of this scope would not have been completed without them. Bill Gates "billg@microsoft.com" Thank you for having the dream of a computer on every desk and one in every home. Rob Maciok "Delphiwiz@aol.com" For getting me started on this whole fantastic journey in the first place! My life hasn't been the same ever since! Thanks for everything, boss! Andy Satori "KangaDru@aol.com" Without a doubt, one of the most knowledgeable programmers that I've ever known. Answers all questions with a smile! Glenn Stewart "s2156495@cse.unsw.edu.au" My BEST FRIEND from down under! It is Glenn who actually gave me the idea to write the FAQ in the first place, by his listing a small list of Win95 tips on the Internet. Since he is busy at Uni, I had the time, so I did the work, and brought out this FAQ. Thanks for the inspiration, Glenn!! Brian Livingston "brian livingstone@InfoWorld.com" For the indispensable advice in his excellent weekly Window Manager columns, which I NEVER miss! A double helluva thanx to Brian for writing the excellent and also indispensable book, "Windows 95 Secrets" published by IDG Books. [2-7] Technical Support? Surely, you jest . . . ! Please be forewarned that neither Microsoft or the author of this FAQ is offering end-user technical support on the Registry at this time. Don't waste your time or money calling Microsoft Technical Support with questions regarding the Registry. They will REFUSE to offer assistance OF ANY KIND. Please DO NOT send any e-mail to the author asking for advice concerning technical support issues regarding the Registry and the editing thereof. Any such e-mail will go unanswered, and will be immediately discarded. Neither Kent Daniel Bentkowski or Perfik Graphix is offering Windows 95 Registry Technical Support!!! Having said that, if you insist on venturing into the uncharted waters of the Windows95 Registry Editor, please use common sense and do the following before you begin EACH ONE of your editing sessions: 1. Take two formatted 3.5 floppies, and make floppy-based back-ups of the Registry files: SYSTEM.DAT SYSTEM.DA0 USER.DAT USER.DA0 It is a good idea to update these back-ups immediately preceding each and every Registry editing session. That way, if a problem occurs, you have a safe back-up. DO NOT USE the Windows95 BACKUP.EXE TO MAKE THESE BACK-UPS!!! Simply copy these files to a floppy directly from Explorer. That way, you can quickly and SAFELY return to the configuration that was last working properly. If you have the Windows95 Resource Kit, make sure you have the Configuration Backup installed in your system, and that it is used on a regular basis prior to each editing session. As a final warning, you are completely on your own. Be careful and best of luck to you! Enjoy! [2-8] Conventions used in this FAQ In the creation of this document, certain abbrev-iations and symbols are used in place of the long form name. You should have little problem figuring this out. However, there are several commands that pertain to the mouse and keyboard where I've used an alternate form to save space: Abbreviation and What They Mean! d.click Double click the mouse r.click Click the right mouse button shift+click Press the shift while clicking the mouse shift+r.click Shift and clicking right mouse button Right-Shift Shift and right mouse again CTRL+D/r.click Press CTRL, D, and r.mouse all at once r.mouse Right Mouse button l.mouse Left Mouse button keypad Refers to the numeric keypad on the side of the keys, not across the top of them ARROW keys These are the directional arrow keys Parent The main window or folder in a group Child The window within a window in a group [3] Registry Architecture [3-1] What exactly is the Windows 95 Registry? The Registry is a central database that is created by Windows 95 during installation. The entries in that database consist of the hardware, software, users, and preferences data for a single PC, or any PC on a network. Whenever the user makes changes to the Control Panel settings, File Associations, System Policies, or installed soft-ware, the changes are reflected in the Registry. These Registry settings can be viewed with the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE), which is installed in the Windows\System folder ONLY when Windows 95 is installed from CD-ROM. By default, REGEDIT.EXE will NOT appear on any of the system's menus, or in the Start menu. You will have to add your own shortcut, or you can use the START button, select RUN, type REGEDIT and press ENTER. If the Registry Editor is installed on your system, it will appear ready to use. The Registry replaces the dreaded INI files from Windows 3.1, and because the information is pre-sented in hierarchical form, the Registry supports nested folders, which .INI files do not support. One of the many benefits of this is that in a net-work environment, users can log onto any PC in the network, just as it were the PC on their desk. In addition, several users can store configuration data on a single machine. POWER TIP You can add an icon shortcut for the Registry Editor to your desktop by using the right mouse button to drag the file REGEDIT.EXE from Explorer to the desktop. Registry Editor displays the contents of the Registry in six subtrees called Keys. Keys can contain data strings, as well as SubKeys. Each of these six Keys begins with Hkey_ which indicates it can be used by a program to access resources. When you first look at the Registry Editor, this structure looks complicated. Think of the Registry Editor as another type of Windows Explorer, only this one ventures into the uncharted waters of your system's configuration! [3-2] Recovering Registry Data In Windows95, data is written to the Registry only when a flush occurs - that is, when something happens after changed data has aged more than a few seconds or when an application intentionally flushes the data to the hard disk. Each time Windows95 successfully starts, the oper-ating system backs up the Registry by copying the current SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT files to SYSTEM.DA0 and USER.DA0, respectively. If Windows 95 fails to start, the backed-up Registry from the last successful startup can be copied over the current Registry. This method recovers the last successful settings after a system failure. If the Registry should ever become damaged, it can be salvaged WITHOUT reinstalling Windows95. All you have to do is look for a hidden system file called SYSTEM.1ST in the root directory of the drive on which Windows95 is located. This file is a copy of the Registry that was created when the Windows 95 setup was first deemed successful. However, you must change the file attributes of the file by locating it in the Windows95 Explorer, and right clicking on it. Choose properties and the General Properties dialog appears. Change the file attributes from READ-ONLY and HIDDEN to ARCHIVE and copy it to the Windows95 subdirectory. You must then, rename the file from SYSTEM.1ST to SYSTEM.DAT, over writing the corrupt file, and replacing it with workable system profiles. POWER TIP You can also maintain back-ups of the Registry with the Configuration Backup utility on the Windows95 Resource Kit diskette To Restore the Registry 1. Click the Start button, and then click Shut Down. 2. Click Restart The Computer In MS-DOS Mode, then click "Yes". 3. Change directory to your Windows directory. 4. Give the following six commands. (Note that SYSTEM.DA0 and USER.DA0 contain the number 0.) attrib -h -r -s system.dat attrib -h -r -s system.da0 copy system.da0 system.dat attrib -h -r -s user.dat attrib -h -r -s user.da0 copy user.da0 user.dat 5. Restart your computer again, this time in Windows. This procedure restores your registry to its state when you last successfully started it--before you made the changes in the registry. For additional safety, there is the file named SYSTEM.1ST mentioned above. You can change its attributes from read-only and hidden to archive and copy it to SYSTEM.DAT. [3-3] Configuration Backup It is sheer suicide to attempt to edit the Windows 95 Registry without backing up the necessary files before you begin. There is a little life-saver of a utility that comes with the Resource Kit called Configuration Backup (cfgback.exe). It not only lets you backup the Registry data, but also allows the complete backup, restoration, and storage of up to NINE SEPARATE system configurations! Before you edit the Registry, I strongly recommend also backing up your present configuration. Name it something meaningful, so that you can recognize it in case it needs to be restored at some point. Then, if a mistake is made in editing the Registry, or if your changes lead to undesirable or disastrous effects, you simply open up the Configuration Backup and select RESTORE. When you reboot your machine, the restored configuration returns your system to the settings just BEFORE the problem occurred. The result is that regular use of this utility minimizes the danger involved in editing the Registry, and lets you return to an earlier configuration of your choice. [3-4] The Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE) The Registry Editor is a powerful tool that con-figures and edits your Windows 95 system settings. It can be used to view or modify a Registry on a local computer or on another computer on the net-work. However, both the administrator's computer and the remote computer require the Microsoft Remote Registry service to have remote Registry access. When you run the Registry Editor, it displays its' data in two panes. On the left side, you have the six Keys, which are shown as folders in "My Computer." Each key can have a set of values. Each value entry is comprised of three parts: the name of the key, its' data type, and the value itself. The Registry Editor stores this information in .REG files, which are essentially text files containing the data in a specific format. If there is a small plus sign next to a key, then it will have further data below called a SubKey, more commonly known as nested folders. This simply means that folders can themselves contain other folders. The value entries in the right hand pane are associated with the selected key in the left pane. A value entry has three parts: the data type of the value (which appears as an icon), the name of the value, and the value itself. A value entry must limit itself to 64k or less, while the size of the actual total Registry is dependent on available hard disk space. Data types can either be Binary numerical data or readable text. Most of the hardware information is stored as binary data, and can be displayed as either binary or hexadecimal information. Right-click anywhere in the Registry Editor, and you can create a NEW Key (or subkey), string value, binary value, or DWORD value. [3-5] The Six Hkey_ handles [3-5-1] Hkey_Local_Machine Contains computer specific information about the type of hardware, software, and other preferences on a given PC. This information is used for all users who log onto this computer. [3-5-2] Hkey_Current_Config This Key points to a branch of the Key Hkey_Local_Machine\Config containing information about the current hardware configuration. [3-5-3] Hkey_Dyn_Data This Key points to a branch of Hkey_Local_Machine that contains various bits of information regarding the system Plug and Play configuration. This information is DYNAMIC, meaning that it may change as devices are added to or removed from the computer. [3-5-4] Hkey_Classes_Root This Key points to a branch of Hkey_Local_Machine that describes certain software settings. It contains essential information about OLE and drag and drop operations, shortcuts, and core aspects of the Windows95 GUI. [3-5-5] Hkey_Users This Key contains information about the users who log onto the computer. Both generic and user-specific information is used, and each user of the system has their own Subkey. [3-5-6] Hkey_Current_User This Key points to a branch of Hkey_Users for the user who is currently logged onto the system. [3-6] SubKeys of the six Hkey Handles [3-6-1] Hkey_Local_Machine may contain the following Subkeys SubKey Description Config - A collection of configurations for the local computer. Enum - Information on the system's installed hardware devices. Hardware - Info on the ports and modems used with HyperTerminal. Network - Information created when a user logs on to a networked PC. Security - Information on network security and remote administration. Software - Information about software and it's configuration on a system. System - Database that controls system start-up, device driver loading, Windows 95 services, and OS behavior [3-6-1.1] Hkey_Local_Machine\Config This subtree contains information about alternate hardware configurations for the computer. For example, it can contain information about multiple configurations to be used when the computer is connected to a network, and when it is undocked from a docking station, etc. Each alternate configuration is assigned a unique identifier, and this configuration ID has a subkey under the Config key. Each configuration appears in the list of hardware profiles in the System option in the Control Panel. When Windows95 checks the hardware configuration at system startup, one of three things occurs. ==> In most situations, the configuration ID is mapped to a unique configuration. Windows 95 selects the appropriate one automatically, and the settings for the related Config subkey are used for system configuration. ==> If the computer is started for the first time with new hardware components, Windows95 creates a new configuration for the new configuration ID, and a new Config subkey is added to the Registry. ==> If the configuration ID is mapped to more than one configuration (for example, because Windows 95 cannot distinguish between two configurations), the user is prompted to choose which one to use. [3-6-1.2] Hkey_Local_Machine\Enum Windows95 bus enumerators are responsible for building the hardware tree. This includes assign-ing an identification code to each device on its bus and retrieving the device's configuration information, either directly from the device or from the Registry. For more information about the hardware tree and bus enumerators, see Introduc-tion to System Configuration, and Windows95 Architecture. Bus enumeration information is stored in the Hkey_Local_Machine\Enum subtree. For all types of devices, subkeys contain information such as device type, assigned drive letter, hardware ID, and device manufacturer, plus driver-related information for network components. The following table shows which devices are enumerated in typical subkeys. Subkey Device enumeration ESDI Fixed disk devices FLOP Floppy disk devices ISAPNP Plug and Play devices on an ISA bus Monitor Monitor devices Network Network protocol, server, and bindings Root Legacy devices [3-6-1.3] Hkey_Local_Machine\Hardware Information about serial ports and modems used with the HyperTerminal program. [3-6-1.4] Hkey_Local_Machine\Network Network information created when a user logs onto a networked computer, including the user name, primary network provider, whether the logon was validated by a server, and information about the system policies processor. [3-6-1.5] Hkey_Local_Machine\Security Information about the network security provider and remote administration capabilities. [3-6-1.6] Hkey_Local_Machine\Software This subtree contains configuration information about all installed software that can write information in the Registry. The entries in this key apply for anyone using this computer, and include definitions for file associations and OLE information. The software subkey contains, for example, the information you add when registering an application to use a specific filename extension and information added during install-ation of Windows-based applications. This subtree also contains several subkeys, including the Classes subkey, plus description subkeys for all installed software that can write to the Registry, as described in the following sections. [3-6-1.7] Hkey_Local_Machine\System The data in this subtree is organized into control sets that contain a complete set of parameters for device drivers and services that can be loaded with Windows95. All data that controls startup is described in the CurrentControlSet subtree under this key. This control set has two parts: ==> The Control key contains information used to control system startup, including the computer's network name and the subsystems to start. ==> The Services key contains information to control the loading and configuration of drivers, file systems, etc. The data in the Services key also controls how these services call each other. The following will be included in future versions of the FAQ. [3-6-2] Hkey_Current_Config may contain the following Subkeys [3-6-3] Hkey_Dyn_Data may contain the following Subkeys [3-6-4] Hkey_Classes_Root may contain the following Subkeys [3-6-5] Hkey_Users may contain the following Subkeys [3-6-6] Hkey_Current_User may contain the following Subkeys [4] Customizing Windows 95 4-1] Creating Icons from the actual bitmaps Did you know that you can make the icons of bitmap files from the actual bitmap? With OLE 2, they can also automatically update themselves, as they are edited. Here's all you have to do: 1. Run the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) 2. Open the HKey_Classes_Root key 3. Open the Paint.Picture folder. 4. If there isn't a DefaultIcon folder, you will have to create one. You can do that by selecting the Key Paint.Picture, and right clicking on it. Select New, and then select KEY. What will happen next is that new folder will appear under the Paint.Picture folder. 5. Rename this new folder "DefaultIcon". 6. Open the new DefaultIcon folder that you just created. 7. Double-click on the "default" item. 8. Change the value to "%1" 9. Exit the Registry Editor. That is all there is to it! Now you have some KILLER .BMP icons! They may display a little more slowly than regular icons but the effect is stunning. The files are lots easier to identify when you are in Windows95 Explorer. Try it and see for yourself! [4-2] Drag shortcuts onto Desktop Any OLE 2.0 compatible application, that lets you drag text or other objects, will let you drag onto the Windows95 desktop. These shortcuts appear as icons on the desktop. Shortcuts can be dragged back into any OLE 2.0 application. The result is another way of cutting and pasting that is very easy and very handy. You can have as many shortcuts on the desktop as you like. You can have shortcuts to files, folders, disk drives, printers, help files, programs, just to name a few examples. [4-3] Change the Desktop Folders Default.Icon In the registry find this Key: HkEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\DefaultIcon The default value should read something like this example: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\shell32.dll,3 This value points to the 4th icon (0,1,2,3) in the file Shell32.dll. To change this you need to replace this default value with the full path to the icon file. If the icon is imbedded in a .dll like the current icon, you need to know its placement in the sequence. The first icon in a dll is always 0, the next is 1, etc. [4-4] A simple way to add the Control Panel to the Start Menu All you have to do is drag a shortcut to the control panel onto the start button. The result is that the Control Panel will appear as a selection on the start menu. It is a very nice trick but it is extremely limited and inconvenient. [4-5] Control Panel Power at your fingertips! The above tip requires you to go through the Start Button, select Control Panel, and click your way through any number of Properties Dialogs and Settings tabs. You have only created a shortcut to the Control Panel, a pointer that opens a regular folder window from which you still must choose a Control Panel applet. With this second technique, you'll get a cascading menu off the main Control panel item. Here, all applets are presented as choices in this submenu. When in the normal main Control Panel window, you cannot select which applets you'd like to display (or even remove), while here the choices are completely customizable. I suggest that you try both, let the menu selections coexist, and see which is a better for you. I'm pretty positive that you will agree that the second idea is the way to go. 1. Right click the Start Button. Choose EXPLORE. 2. Explorer opens with a view of the Start Menu. 3. Right click in the right-hand pane. 4. Left click "New" and then "Folder". 5. This will create an icon called "New Folder". 6. Type the Binary I.D. # for Control Panel to create a name for this new folder, including brackets and hyphens. ControlPanel{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} 7. When finished, press ENTER. 8. Open up this new folder and copy the shortcuts to the Control Panel applets that you want to appear on the cascading menu. Place them in this newly created folder. 9. Close Explorer. 10. The next time that you click on START, the Window95 Control Panel applets appear ready to use in a cascading menu! Very nice! You can use this same technique to do the same with the My Computer, Printers, disk drives, and Dial-Up Networking folders. Just make sure that you have the proper binary I.D. for the cascading menu that you are trying to create. Printers {2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} The Control Panel is a special kind of folder in Windows95. Executables such as Control Panel and other resources have their own unique IDs in the Windows95 registry. To see these, click Start, Run, type REGEDIT and click OK. In the Registry Editor that appears, click Edit, Find and search for 21EC2020. This takes you to a section that identifies Control Panels' ID number and that of many other resources. [4-5-1] Still More Control Panel Power! The ONLY problem that I ran into when I tried out the technique above, was that the menu choice that was created was that item's binary data string, instead of simply Printers. I figured that at least the cascading submenu would reveal what choices were available . . until I was sent the correct answer. The steps below will create a cascading submenu off the Start Menu. Try BOTH tips, [4-5] and [4-5-1], and see what I mean by the differences between them. [4-5-2] Start Menu Cascading Folders 1. Right click on the Taskbar Start Button. 2. The Context Menu appears. Select Open. 3. A window displaying the contents appears. 4. Right click on any unoccupied area of window. 5. Another context menu appears. Select New Folder. 6. The name you give this new folder will also be the menu selection on the Start Menu. 7. Open up this new folder, and create new shortcuts or simply copy existing ones. You can also add folders, which creates another cascading menu off the new submenu you are creating. 8. You'll know you're in business when you see that your new folder, along with its' right pointing arrow appears on the Start Menu. 9. Close whatever windows or folders are open. [4-6]What you need to know to edit the Recycle Bin Start the registry editor. Highlight the entry HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT Now use Find to locate the recycle bin entry by clicking on Edit, then Find. For the Find what entry use recycle. The result is an entry on the right hand side of the screen that looks like this: NAME DATA [icon](Default) "Recycle Bin" Highlight Default and right click, choose modify. For Value Data, type in whatever name you want for the recycle bin. Close the registry editor and restart Windows. Your Recycle Bin will now have whatever name you chose Changing the icon: If you want to change the default icon for the Recycle Bin, just look for the Key DefaultIcon when you are at the SubKey above. There are two default icons for the Recycle Bin, one full and the other empty. The defaults are listed below: Empty Recycle Bin - SHELL32.DLL,31 Full Recycle Bin - SHELL32.DLL,32 Default Recycle Bin - same as empty When Windows95 starts, the Default Icon for the Recycle Bin is briefly shown while the system determines whether the Bin is either full or empty. In either case, the value for the Default Icon is dynamic; meaning that the current status of the Recycle Bin (empty or full) is always written into the Registry to keep it up to date. If you want to change the Recycle Bin icons, all you have to do is enter the path where the icon is located. If the path is to an .ICO file, you don't need the number indicating the icon's position in the .DLL file. Remember the Default is always equal to Empty. Make sure the recycle bin is empty before you edit the icons. That way, there will be no confusion as to the value of the default. [4-7] Removing unwanted items from the Desktop When Windows95 is installed, it places several icons on the Desktop, including My Computer, Recycle Bin, Microsoft Exchange and Network icons. You will find that no simple way is provided to remove any of these objects but there is an undocumented trick that works every time. 1. Go to the following Key in the Registry Editor: Hkey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows \CurrentVersion\explorer\Desktop\NameSpace 2. You will find there a list of the icons placed on your Desktop. 3. All you have to do is delete the item that you want off the Desktop. INBOX - {00020D75-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} 4. If you wish, the Recycle Bin can be removed this way as well, although why anyone would want to delete this helpful utility is unclear. [4-8] How to change the My Computer Default icon 1. Search for My Computer. (This will be a string's value and be on the right) 2. Tab to go to the hex name of My Computer. 3. Under this hex name key, find subkey default icon. 4. This contains the "file name, and number of the icon in the file(starting from 0)" 5. Change this to any "icon file, number of icon" 6. BE CAREFUL [4-9] Renaming "My Computer" In Windows95, an icon on the Desktop is named "My Computer." Yuck----! Couldn't this be something more realistic--"486/66 DX-2"? The answer, of course, is YES! There are actually TWO ways to do this; one is done right on the Desktop using the standard technique while the other involves use of the Registry Editor. 1. Open up Registry Editor, and go to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID 2. Locate the binary data string that identifies the My Computer entry: MyComputer {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} 3. In the right pane, right-click Default Name. 4. Choose MODIFY, and the Edit String dialog appears. 5. Type in the new name in Value Data, and choose OK. 6. Close the Registry Editor, and reboot your machine. [4-10] Dragging "Scraps" to the Desktop With Windows95, you can drag "Scraps" from your documents to the Desktop, or to folders, to create Document Scraps. With these scraps, you can archive elements of your documents for later use or for sharing them. I only tested the technique in WordPad so you might wish to experiment with it see if it works with other file types and applications. If you discover more about Scraps, please submit inform-ation to this FAQ as outlined in section [1-4]. [4-11] Change the Desktop's default folder 1. Go to the following Registry SubKey: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\DefaultIcon 2. The current default icon points to the file shell32.dll in the Windows 95 System folder, and to the fourth icon in the series, which is actually 3. 3. You can change the .DLL file and the icon to whatever you would like to see on your system. For example, PC Tools For Windows 2.0 has a DLL file called FOLDERS.dll containing about 100 variations of the folder. 4. Make sure that you follow the following syntax: C:\Win95\System\Shell32.dll,x Where "x" is the number of the icon in the DL that you wish to use to replace the default. 5. Close the Registry Editor, and reboot your machine. [5] Fine Tuning Windows95 [5-1] New design for the Start-Up screen Tired of that advertising come-on for a product you already own or do you have some other reason for wanting to change it? I am referring to the "You are now starting Windows 95" splash screen. Perhaps you might like your favorite spiritual quotation to appear in its' place? Or maybe Beavis and Butthead huh-huh-heh-ing your way into Windows 95 is more your style. Your call! All you have to do is the following: 1. Create an alternate screen using LOGOW.sys as a template. You want to use this particular file as your template to assure that you are getting the color depth and aspect ratio correct. Otherwise, the system might not display the colors properly or crash. 2. Save it in .BMP format, and make a copy of it and call it LOGO.sys, placing the file in your root directory (i.e. C:\). Also make sure that the replacement logo isn't larger than 127k in size. 3. Go to the Start Menu, and select Shut Down. 4. Reboot your machine, and you will see your own artwork. [5-2] Turn off the Windows 95 Start-up Logo 1. Open the file msdos.sys in the MS-DOS Editor. 2. Find the [Options] section in this file. 3. Add this line to the [Options] section: Logo=0 4. Reboot your computer and there will be no logo on start-up! 5. The default setting is: "Logo=1" which gives you the animated Start-Up Logo. [5-3] New designs for the Log Off screens Many Preview Program participants who have young children have complained that the two 95 Log Off screens look so similar that they confuse someone who cannot yet read the words. These can be easily modified to a design that is more suitable for use by the youngsters. Or you may just want to change these screens for your own reasons. There are two files involved which correspond to the "Wait while shutting down" and "You may safely turn off" screens displayed during this sequence. They are LOGOW.sys and LOGOS.sys (notice the W & S, for wait and safe?!) and can be found in the Windows95 root directory. Even though both have a .SYS extension, they are normal .BMP files. Before editing them, make backup copies and save them to another directory, renaming them so that they have .BMP extensions. Now, you can use a program like MS-Paint, or Corel Photo-Paint. Edit them but make sure to change nothing which affects the files' resolution or color depth. When you finish (1) make backups of the new modified files (2) then rename these edited files back to the original names of LOGOW.sys and LOGOS.sys, (3) copy them back into the Windows 95 root directory, and reboot your computer. If all works the way it SHOULD, the next time you Shut Down, you will see your custom Log Off screens! POWER TIP If you have children who operate your PC, you can change these screens to something like a stop sign, a green light, or even the child's favorite cartoon hero! [5-4] Edit essential system folders To change the name or location of any of these folders (such as Desktop, Fonts, Programs, Send To, Start Menu,) open the Registry Editor, and go to the SubKey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows /CurrentVersion/Explorer/ShellFolders Simply edit the data to make your changes. [5-5] Boot to MS-DOS 7.0 instead of Windows 95 If you prefer Windows 95 boot up in a MS-DOS session instead of the GUI: 1. Open the MSDOS.sys file in MS-DOS Editor. 2. Find the line "BootGUI=1" and change it to "BootGUI=0" 3. Or if this line is not in this file, simply add the line "BootGUI=0" near the top. 4. Save the changes, close the editor and reboot. [5-6] Clearing the Recent Documents Menu quickly The DOCUMENTS cascading menu off the Start Menu is always getting too long or filled up. To empty it, you have to play click-click-click with the Start Menu. Wouldn't it be easier to have a Desktop icon to do this? Okay, pull up a chair. And listen carefully. 1. Create this batch file: echo y| del \windows\recent\*.* 2. Save it in a convenient directory and create a shortcut to it on the Desktop 3. Right-Click on the shortcut and choose Properties. 4. Select the Program tab. 5. Under RUN, choose Minimized. 6. Check the CLOSE ON EXIT checkbox underneath the RUN box. 7. Click on OK, and close the dialog. To empty the Most Recently Used Documents Folder, just double-click on the shortcut. [5-7] To change font size on Taskbar buttons 1. Right-click anywhere on Desktop and context menu appears. 2. Select Properties, then the Appearance tab. 3. Select "Active Title Bar" in Item: drop down list. 4. Adjust font size and select Apply to see what it looks like. 5. Select SAVE AS. Choose a name for your color scheme in the Save Scheme dialog box. 6. Select OK to close Display Properties. This selection not only changes the Taskbar button font and size, but also the Active Title Bar in all of the programs that you run in Windows95. So choose a font that looks acceptable and readable in both places. [6] Problem Solving in Windows 95 6-1] If an Application Cannot Find its' Help File If you have an application that is having trouble finding its' Help File, you can add its' file name and full path to the following key: Hkey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Help There should already be several examples listed so add to them! [6-2] A Tip for Multi-Boot Users If you are tired of hitting F8 every time you boot your PC, here is a quick fix that will present a "Boot Menu" every time you start your machine. 1. Open up your MSDOS.sys file in the MS-DOS Editor. 2. Add the following line to the [Options] section: BootMenu=1 3. Save changes, and exit MS-DOS Editor. 4. Reboot and your new Boot Menu will appear. 5. You can also add the following line to the [Options] section of the MSDOS.SYS file: BootMenuDelay=(number) "Number" stands for how many seconds you want your machine to pause on the "Boot Menu." If the timer goes to zero before you act the BootMenuDefault is loaded. [7] Registry Tricks [7-1] Speed up the Start Menu! Create a new string value under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\desktop named MenuShowDelay and set it's value to a number from 1, the fastest, to 10. [7-2] My City Isn't on the Time Zone Map !!! Highlight the section on the world map that con-tains your city. Write down the string of cities. An example is "Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney" Open Registry Editor, search for and then edit that string. You have easily edited a string that was not meant to be edited but with Windows95 you are given the option to edit nearly all strings. [7-3] Editing the Windows TIPS at Start-up You can edit those tips and add your own to the Welcome Dialog Box that appears at system start-up. 1. Go to the H_KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\explorer\Tips key of the Registry Editor. 2. Go to the above Key in the Registry Editor. 3. Go to the end of the list of existing UserTips. Fifty tips are pre-loaded. 4. To add a new String Value, right click with your mouse at the end of the list. 5. Select NEW. 6. Type the next highest number from what' listed directly next to the ab. 7. Press ENTER. 8. Right click again on the number value just created. 9. Select MODIFY. 10. In the box marked VALUE DATA, type a new User Tip. 11. When you are positive that you have what you want select OK. When you restart Windows 95 you will see the new Tips when the Welcome dialog box appears. This could be helpful, e.g., for new Win95 users on a network or as a handy dynamic tutorial list for you including important things easy to forget. POWER TIP At the very beginning of your VALUE DATA, you might want to begin the Tip with, e.g., "My Tips" to remember with the ones you added. [7-4] Friendly "Short" Names One of my favorite features in Windows 95 are the Long File Names. At last, we can leave eight-dot-three in the dust. There is the problem though if I have a program like Microsoft Office Professional 4.3, the 16-bit short file name edition. In Explorer, I can save a file as "1995 Income Tax Returns". But when I open that file in Excel, I will find something like "1995In~1.xls". If you wanted to save several files with the prefix "1995 Income Tax" you would soon have a mess on your hands and be unable to decipher the short names. Complete the following steps. 1. Open up the Registry Editor. 2. Open the SubKey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ Control\FileSystem 3. Right-Click the right-hand pane of the Registry Editor window. On the context menu, select NEW, Binary Value. 4. Type in NameNumericTail and press ENTER. 5. Double-Click the entry you just created, and type zero (0) as the complete binary value. 6. Click OK, close the Registry and restart Windows. This undocumented technique will assure that the short file names will resemble the long file names as much as it is possible. Windows95 will make sure that no two files will have the same long or short name. [7-5] 3-D Objects: Highlights and Shadows 1. Open up the Registry Editor. 2. Go to the SubKey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors 3. You will find a list of various system items, such as buttons, active title bar, etc. The list adds to the information that can be edited in the Control Panel's Display Properties dialog Appearance tab. 4. The information is presented as RGB data, which means that each color is represented by three values to simulate the various colors that will be displayed on your screen. The three values are Red, Green, and Blue. Each can have values between zero (0),representing black, and 255, representing white. EXAMPLE: 0 0 0 represents black 255 255 255 represents white all other colors are somewhere in between 5. The RGB Color Model is an additive model that is used to determine how colors are displayed on computer monitors. 6. RGB values for the various colors can be found on your system under: Control Panel, Display, Properties, Appearance, Color, Other . . . In this dialog, the RGB values are found in the lower right corner. Write down the values of your favorite colors, so they can be changed easily. 7. Knowing all this, you are ready to further customize the shadows and inverse colors of 3-D objects I in the Windows 95 system. [7-6] Reappearing Values in the Registry? If after several editing sessions in the Registry Editor, you discover that several entries and values that you deleted seem to reappear, it is NOT a problem with the Registry, the Editor, or your mind. To keep that data from respawning, simply remove the offending items from your WIN.ini file! [7-7] Adding Sounds to Application Events You can add sounds to quite a few system events. Those can be located in the Control Panel Sounds dialog. But did you realize that, with the Registry, you can also add sounds to APPLICATION events? 1. Open up the Registry Editor. 2. Go to the SubKey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps 3. You will find two SubKeys .Default and Explorer. 4. Right-Click on the SubKey APPS, choose NEW KEY. 5. The new value should be the name of the application for which you wish to create event sounds. 6. Right-Click on the new SubKey, and select NEW KEY. 7. An example to get you started: Key: Open Then, create another SubKey called Close. 8. Go to the Control Panel Sounds, and the Application Event SubKeys you just created will now appear in the list that is displayed in the Sounds tab. 9. Add whatever sound files you wish for these events. 10. The next time that you Open and/or Close that particular application, the sounds will play. 11. For each and every application on your system, you can add sounds to all these standard events: Close Open G.P. Fault RestoreDown Maximize RestoreUp MenuCommand SystemAsterisk MenuPopup SystemExclamation Minimize SystemQuestion There may be other events possible, but that depends on the particular application events that are used in any given Windows application. HINT: Button and Icon bars are NOT such events! [8] Windows95 Registry Binary Value Reference List [8-1] Control Panel {21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} [8-2] Printers {2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} [8-3] Recycle Bin {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} [8-4] My Computer {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} [8-5] Dial-Up Networking [8-6] Net.Neighborhood {208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D} [8-7] Inbox {00020D75-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} [8-8] Desktop {00021400-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} [8-9] Shortcut {00021401-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} As I was getting deeper and deeper into the Registry, I was beginning to notice more and more that quite a few of the data strings were listed in some sort of binary HEX mumbo jumbo. I also noticed that some of these binary data strings remained constant throughout the entire Registry, from Hkey_Local_Machine all the way down to Hkey_Current_User. I originally compiled this short list for my own personal reference. But, again and again, I was reading from the various newsgroups on the Internet, that people wanted to know the same information that was on this little slip of paper on my desk. So, I added this to the FAQ for general reference purposes. It should save you from having to use the FIND shortcut in the Registry Editor to look up these very same values,which remain constant, no matter whose system they're on. [9] Registry Editor Command Reference A promise for the future version of this FAQ. Kent Daniel Bentkowski has a bunch of postive attributes going for him. First of all he really knows how to organize a very complex subject into a concise and to the point fashion. He is writing about very important issues that many of us feel the need to master. And, finally, he hails from my home town. What more could an editor want? He has been involved in the publishing industry for better than fifteen years and has been associated with computers for almost as long. He is currently a member of the Microsoft Developer Network, and was a Windows 95 BETA tester. It was that experience which lead to the writing of the Windows95 Registry FAQ. As an experienced BETA tester, he has tested several software applications, as well as games. Among them are; Windows 95, Windows NT, Complete Communicator, and PowerTools and PowerMail for America Online. Some of the games that he has playtested are; Bolo and OXYD, which are two games from Dongleware, LINKS 386 CD by Access Software. Currently Kent is playtesting the Network version of Battle Beast by 7th Level. ww Alice Writes! Copyright 1995 by Peter Neuendorffer To Whom it May Concern: Alice has decided to write her own column this month as I am suffer-ing from sleep debt and exhaustion. She is typing away, exclaim-ing "Aha!" And "That's it," "Yeah, so what now? " I now give you Alice: At first I couldn't think of a thing to say. No new inventions this week, and my mail has consisted of two chain letters, two preapproved Mastercards, and another free time-disk for a major online service. Ever know someone who keeps a journal? They take great care to choose the blank volume, and some even use wet ink to carefully inscribe their deepmost thoughts. The artist Saul Steinberg was very aware of the connection of writing to materials, his drawings gracing the covers of The New Yorker for many years. A single line became variously the pavement viewed from up high, a tight rope, a mountainscape and so on. Letters and numbers rained from the sky, and a distorted view of the globe showed New York City in grand relief, with a sliver of ocean and England peeking out the other side. A city-scape was infested with subway stairs reaching up from the depths. Peter surely has the worst handwriting in the world, and the keyboard is a Godsend to him. A brief attempt to make him right-handed in grammar school has produced a calligraphic idiot. Graffiti artists are most interested in producing only their signature, and retired baseball players jealously guard the rights to their Nom de Plume appearing on baseballs. Is the printing press the primary invention of mankind so far? The broadside - which still may be found today on light poles - led to the journals and public newspapers. Today anyone can read yesterday's world news each morning for less than the price of a cup of coffee. That is anyone where there is freedom of the press. The power of propaganda, though ever present can strangle the beliefs of entire cultures. Today I will type this article and send it off over the wire, where it will be picked up in West Virginia, edited and included in an electronic document available world wide. The words will have never touched paper, becoming digital pulses and video flares. Certain documents have sparked revolutions in culture, while personal letters have changed the course of people's lives. A note between Romeo and Juliet was not delivered in time and the protagonists ended up dead. A letter from Einstein to President Roosevelt warned of the possibility of Germany building a nuclear bomb, leading to the mammoth secret Manhattan Project. Peter's mother is a person of letters. Peter always brightens up when he gets one from her. News of Dad's garden, and their retirement excursions such as a trip to Sturbridge historical village take on worldly importance. Occasional letters by Peter to his U.S. Senator always return a "Thank you for writing Senator..... He is always interested... blah blah ....It is because of people like you... blah blah blah." Peter is currently awaiting a rejection slip from the New Yorker, and tries to pretend he is not waiting, as a watched pot never boils. One's signature seems to be increasingly a function of the magnetic strip on a credit card, or ATM card. You are not Okaying the transaction, a program on a computer is. As I am an imaginary person, I always pay in cash. Corporate logos seem to be a signature, with forgery a big concern among jeans manufacturers, the jeans worth is in the brand name. One would think that some products, since they are a household word - like jello or baking soda - would sell them-selves. Apparently not, as both are currently advertised on television. Well, this has been a brief discussion of writing, and I hope you will call your family together after the dishes are loaded in the dishwasher and before ER to each write a conclusion. Who knows, you might have a writer in the house. Unfortunately Alice was completely disinterested when we offered her a regular column with a by-line and all the other perks that WindoWatch routinely provides for their fine writers. She sniffed at me in great disdain and stomped off. Peter has spoiled her rotten. ww ww Programming Notes A WindoWatch feature Window Aspect: A Scripting Language A Tutorial: Part Eight Ghost BBS v3.20 Copyright 1995 by Gregg Hommel You've written the ultimate script for PCP/Win! But you face a dilemma: If you release the source code to the public, with the WAX file, people will try modifying that source code, and when it doesn't work, will be contacting you for help in fixing their altered code. Depending upon how complicated the source code might be and let's assume, very, such user modifications and the resulting problems might result in taking more of your time to handle than legitimate support of your own original code. Nonetheless, you want people to be able to customize the operations of your script and to change the operation into something more suited to their needs. Whether it is to display an alternative set of information, or dialog boxes, or whatever, how can you satisfy both their needs and still support your original code? If you haven't already guessed that the answer is via an INI format file, then you haven't been reading the previous columns! I hate to keep using GHOST BBS as an example for this column, but it is something I am intimately familiar with, and it provides convenient examples of some of the issues I want to discuss here. GHOST BBS uses a basic INI format file (GHOST.INI) for a variety of system information. We've already discussed that file to a fair degree, not only in terms of the more standard things contained in the file, but also with respect to some of the less normal items. However, there are still obviously more ways that GHOST uses INI format files, or I wouldn't be writing this. I think perhaps, the best way to see how GHOST uses various INI format files is to follow what happens when GHOST is running, and a remote user calls. We'll begin after the two modems have negotiated a connection, since that procedure has nothing to do with our discussion here.... When you call a GHOST BBS system, the first thing GHOST has to know, is which of the multiple languages it supports and which one you, the user, wants displayed. If there is only one language set up, than, obviously, this is not necessary. The first thing GHOST does is checks the GHOST.INI file for a setting which tells it how many languages the system is set up for. If it is just one, then we simply continue on. However, if it is configured for multiple languages, GHOST then checks the GHOST.INI file to get a description of those languages in order to display a numbered list for the user, -you- , to opt for. GHOST takes the language number requested, reads the GHOST.INI file for a base prompt file path and name, adds the language number and the extension .PMT to it, and now knows which file it needs to read for the various prompts it will be displaying. The fact is, that the .PMT file, in spite of the extension, is nothing more than another INI format file which is used immediately by GHOST. The next item required from the user is whether or not they wish to have ANSI graphics displayed. Note. This should be displayed in the language which the remote user has just chosen. Therefore, GHOST accesses the PMT (prompt) file which it has just determined should be used, and locates the prompt asking the user which graphics mode he wishes, using standard INI format file read commands i.e. profilerd. The user response to that prompt tells GHOST to use ANSI where an integer value of 1 is set or not where an integer value of 0 is set. This is important, as a large number of GHOST entries in all INI files depend upon that integer value to tell GHOST where to look for something, or what to display. For that matter, GHOST uses it immediately to determine the next prompt to display. The PMT file actually has two main sections, [Prompt0] and [Prompt1]. I will leave it up to you to determine what each section is for (Hint: remember the value of the integer used to indicate whether or not to use ANSI displays?) GHOST now goes to the appropriate [Prompt#] section, of the already determined PMT file, and gets the prompt to be displayed asking for the remote user's name. It is here where we come across two other INI format files used by GHOST to store data..... 1. The first one, GHOST.USR, contains quite simple entries. Because GHOST can use multiple user record files, and has to, to over come the 64K size limit on INI format files imposed by Windows, GHOST needs to know where a particular user's information is located. This is where GHOST.USR comes in with each entry in the format of... [USER NAME] UserData=x:\path\filename.ext When a user types his/her name upon entering GHOST, it is checked here to determine the name of the single file which contains the data for that user. And this brings us to the second INI format file used here... 2. USER#.REC (where the # is a number from 1 to ?) which is still another INI format file which contains all data for a given user. What if the user is not listed in the GHOST.USR file, you ask? The answer to that query is simple, yet, at the same time, not quite as simple as it first looks! If the user name entered is not in the GHOST.USR file, GHOST assumes that it is a new user, and confirms this with the individual, using another prompt pulled from the previously mentioned PMT file. When the user confirms that they are new, GHOST has to go through some hoops to determine what to do then. As mentioned above, Windows imposes a size limit of around 64K on any INI format file. GHOST takes a slightly more conservative view of INI format file sizes, at least, when it comes to the user record database. There are two reasons for this... 1. Although the theoretical limit is 64K, in practical terms, problems begin developing with INI files that are slightly smaller than that limit. 2. Each upgrade version of GHOST has, until recently, added more data to the user record information stored. The upgrade scripts in GHOST have taken care of this by writing the new user information to the REC files if and when necessary. Theoretically, it is possible for a GHOST BBS upgrade to push a user record database file over the 64K limit, unless there is some leeway available to update the records without reaching that limit. As a result, when it comes to GHOST user records, an internal file size limit of 55,000 bytes is imposed by GHOST. As a result, the first thing done by GHOST is to read the GHOST.INI file to determine the name of the REC file currently in use, locate that REC file, and check the size of it. If it is less than 55,000 bytes, a new record can easily be added without approaching that Windows imposed INI format file size limit of 64K. However, if the file in question already is greater than 55,000 bytes, GHOST won't use it. We can't/won't tell the user he can't log on, so back we go to GHOST.INI, to check two things.. the name of the base file to read for user records, and the number of the file currently in use, both of which are stored there. Using that information, GHOST increments the index number it got by 1, adds that to the base file name it read in GHOST.INI, and then adds the REC extension. As example, let's assume the current user file is M:\GHOST\USERS\USER4.REC The GHOST.INI file will tell GHOST that the base name is M:\GHOST\USERS\USER, and the current index is 4. GHOST increments that current index to 5, adds it to the base file name, and then adds the extension which results in a new user record file of M:\GHOST\USERS\USER5.REC Once the new user has entered a password, and verified it, GHOST uses a PROFILEWR command to record the basic information for the new user, and that PROFILEWR command automatically creates the new USER5.REC file. We discussed this automatic creation of an INI format file earlier, as it is one of the nice features of the PROFILEWR command. From here on, the inner workings of GHOST are not at issue in this column, so we'll drop our imaginary GHOST user at this point, and review what we have discussed so far. 1. INI format files can be used to store all kinds of information needed by a script while it is in operation. 2. INI format files do not need to use the INI extension. They can have any extension which you like. It is the format of the file content which is the critical issue. 3. INI format files need not be stored in C:\WINDOWS. They can be stored wherever they are most appropriate. I prefer to keep them, as much as possible, with the files they apply to. 4. Reading from or writing to an INI format file is much simpler than doing the same thing in a non-INI format file. It involves one command to read, and one command to write - with the write command resulting in the creation of the file if it doesn't already exist before the write command is invoked. But how does this relate to your ultimate Wasp application? An INI format file can be one of the most useful tools you have at your disposal. It is not only useful for the storing of configuration inform-ation, but for the storage of any application data that you may need. This includes information which may be optional to the application, or cause the application to branch to a different path if set. Additionally, the information in the INI format file can be set on the fly, which makes it useful for modifying application operations also, and on the fly. There is also another way that an INI format file can be most useful. Using it can help eliminate one of the few drawbacks to the Wasp language and that is the inability to pass a start up argument, singular or multiple, to a script. If you have done any Wasp programming at all, you may have run across this. One thing which cannot be done in Wasp and which should be fixed as soon as possible, is to start a script with arguments on the command line. When a script starts running under PCP/Win, it begins...period! You can't modify how it begins through the use of command line arguments, a normal procedure in most programming languages. This kind of a procedure can be extremely useful in modifying how a script operates when it is run. Fortunately, in Wasp, there are three ways to work around this limitation... 1. If you spawn one script from another, you can use the Wasp internal global system variables (S0-9, I0-9, etc.) to pass start up arguments to the spawned script. The drawback when doing this is that you are limited to 10 arguments of each type. Additionally, the global system variable can be inadvertently modified by a script run before starting the one you want the argument passed to. 2. You can store start up arguments in a text file to be read by the script. The drawback here is that, in order to use the file, you have to locate it, open it, read it line by line, and locate the line that you need within the file using STRCMP and other commands. In other words, this can be a lot of work. 3. You can use an INI format file to store the arguments. This eliminates the drawbacks of the system variables, since you can store as many arguments as you like, within the 64K file size limitation. The script has to explicitly change the entries in the file making an inadvertent change to the value much more difficult. It also, eliminates the drawbacks of using a text file, because an INI format file never has to be explicitly opened as the PROFILERD command does that automatically. Additionally, you don't have to read in the file line by line using string manipulation commands to locate what you want. Again, the PROFILERD command finds the exact line you ask it for, quickly, and without error or string manipulations. The next column will be in the New Year. For us, this isn't going to mean something completely new, as we are going to go back to our old friend, George, whom we have left hanging for the past couple of columns. The poor guy has been sitting there, logged on, and staring at a blank screen, for all this time, while went exploring elsewhere. So we are going to drop back in on him, and get him past the blank screen, and help him write a script that goes beyond a simple log in. One last thing... I have found an ISP, and thus, now have a new email address, and even a Home Page of my own. Should you have any reason to contact me, my new email address is gregghom@ophelia.waterloo.net or, you could browse to my Home Page, where you can download a copy of either GHOST BBS or PCB Freedom, and by the time you read this, even download my original Wasp 1.0 Tutorial, or my columns from WindoWatch. The URL for my homepage is http://www.waterloo.net/~gregghom/ Gregg Hommel is a much respected Aspect script writer and programmer. He is well known on the various nets hosting any number of conferences. He is applying his considerable programming talents to the construct of his own homepage and ours. Gregg sits on our Editorial Board and is a regular WindoWatch contributor. ww The Cat's Out of The Bag! The Twenty Pound Black and White Furry Windows Expert! Copyright 1995 by Bob Miller Bob Miller's Stanley Does Windows Purrfectly Yours by Stanley Dear Stanley, I've just switched to Windows 95 and I'm bewildered. Do I still need to use SmartDrive? What about Memmaker? Dear Bewildered, SmartDrive still serves a purpose for sessions being run from a prior DOS version or in SAM but is counterproductive when '95 is running. Memmaker still works, be absolutely certain, though, that you use the 95 version and not the old one. It's not needed by most folks! Dear Stanley, The swap file is using a HUGE amount of space on my hard drive. Should I change it? How? Dear Space conscious, You didn't say which version of Windows you are running. If '95, leave it alone. '95 uses a dynamic swap file that is much brighter than you are. However, if you are running an older version of Windows, you have encountered the brain dead algorithm that determines the size of the PSF. It is always too large. Most people find that a 4 MB PSF is just about purrfect. Dear Stanley, How come you know so much? Aren't you just a cat? Dear dumb-dumb. Just a cat indeed! Cats were once worshipped as Gods and we have never forgotten it. We have spent thousands of years domesticating you poor humans and, clearly, still have a ways to go. But, to answer your question, I started with Windows 1.0 and have used and tweaked every version since. I also get and read four national on-line message nets every day that are devoted to Windows. But there is no substitute for trying things yourself. Just make sure that you have a current backup of all your important files. Dear Stanley, I started my system today and got a corrupt group message. What happened and how do I prevent it from happening again? Dear Corrupt, Usually, this is caused by shutting off Windows while it is still running instead of exiting to a DOS prompt first as you should. But, sometimes, it just happens. It is easy enough to recreate the lost group (Program Manager, File, New, Program Group) but it is better to have copies of all your .grp files (and .ini ones too) safely stored so that a rebuild is nothing more than a copy job. The .grp files are stored in Progman.ini. Dear Stanley, I have 16 megs of ram and 606 free when Windows starts but, when adding a new program, I get very low on memory messages or all my icons turn black. What is causing this? Dear Hi-color user, You are running afoul of the maximum limit of icons per group window. This number is directly proportional to the depth of color you are using. At 256 colors, you can have 50 icons, at 65k colors, 27 and at 16.6mm, 16. No way around this so either reduce your color depth or use more groups. BTW, you are limited to 40 groups no matter what. Dear Stanley, I find Explorer hard to use. I wish Microsoft had left File Manager behind. Can I use my old one? Dear Missing, You don't need to. There is a new, but not improved, version in '95. Just use the RUN command to start Winfile. Dear Stanley, What is the true meaning of life? Dear True, 42. Tuna fish is also acceptable Purrfectly yours, Stanley We understand from our sources, with the understanding, of course, that confidentiality will be preserved, that a special friend of Stanley's paid him a call over the Thanksgiving weekend. His handlers have leaked the news that Turkey is an acceptable substitute for tuna and can be sent in lieu of an honorarium to his human bob.miller@msn.com The Butterball brand is one of his favorites. ww The Many Faces of Santa ...A Xmas Greeting Santa's Holiday Greetings Copyright 1995 by Derek Buchler Santa is a System Administrator: I was musing on similarities between Santa Claus and system administrators. Consider: 1. Santa is bearded, corpulent, and dresses funny. 2. When you ask Santa for something, the odds of receiving what you wanted are infinitesimal. 3. Santa seldom answers your mail. 4. When you ask Santa where he gets all the stuff he's got, he says, "Elves make it for me." 5. Santa doesn't care about your deadlines. 6. Your parents ascribed supernatural powers to Santa, but did all the work themselves. 7. Nobody knows who Santa has to answer to for his actions. 8. Santa laughs entirely too much. 9. Santa thinks nothing of breaking into your $HOME. 10. Only a lunatic says bad things about Santa in his presence. Buchler goes on to assert: Seasons Greetings! The recent announcement that Donner and Blitzen have elected to take the early reindeer retirement package has triggered a good deal of concern about whether they will be replaced, and about other restructuring decisions at the North Pole. Streamlining was appropriate in view of the reality that the North Pole no longer dominates the season's gift distribution business. Home shopping channels and mail order catalogues have diminished Santa's market share and he could not sit idly by and permit further erosion of the profit picture. The reindeer downsizing was made possible through the purchase of a late model Japanese sled for the CEO's annual trip. Improved productivity from Dasher and Dancer, who summered at the Harvard Business School, is anticipated and should take up the slack with no discernible loss of service. Reduction in reindeer will also lessen air-borne environmental emissions for which the North Pole has been cited and received unfavorable press. I am pleased to inform you and yours that Rudolph's role will not be disturbed. Tradition still counts for something at the North Pole. Management denies, in the strongest possible language, the earlier leak that Rudolph's nose got that way not from the cold, but from substance abuse. Calling Rudolph a lush who was into the sauce and never did pull his share of the load was an unfortunate comment, made by one of Santa's helpers and taken out of context at a time of year when he is known to be under executive stress. As a further restructuring, today's global challenges require the North Pole to continue to look for better, more competitive steps. Effective immediately, the following economy measures are to take place in the "Twelve Days of Christmas" subsidiary: The partridge will be retained, but the pear tree never turned out to be the cash crop forecasted. It will be replaced by a plastic hanging plant, providing considerable savings in maintenance. The two turtle doves represent a redundancy that is simply not cost effective. In addition, their romance during working hours could not be condoned. The positions are therefore eliminated. [The three French hens will remain intact. After all, everyone loves the French.] The four calling birds were replaced by an automated voice mail system, with a call waiting option. An analysis is underway to determine who the birds have been calling, how often and how long they talked. The five golden rings have been put on hold by the Board of Directors. Maintaining a portfolio based on one commodity could have negative implications for institutional investors. Diversification into other precious metals as well as a mix of T-Bills and high technology stocks appear to be in order. The six geese-a-laying constitutes a luxury which can no longer be afforded. It has long been felt that the production rate of one egg per goose per day is an example of the decline in productivity. Three geese will be let go, and an upgrading in the selection procedure by personnel will assure management that from now on every goose it gets will be a good one. The seven swans-a-swimming is obviously a number chosen in better times. The function is primarily decorative. Mechanical swans are on order. The current swans will be retrained to learn some new strokes and therefore enhance their outplacement. As you know, the eight maids-a-milking concept has been under heavy scrutiny by the EEOC. A male/female balance in the workforce is being sought. The more militant maids consider this a dead-end job with no upward mobility. Automation of the process may permit the maids to try a-mending, a-mentoring or a-mulching. Nine ladies dancing has always been an odd number. This function will be phased out as these individuals grow older and can no longer do the steps. Ten Lords-a-leaping is overkill. The high cost of Lords plus the expense of international air travel prompted the Compensation Committee to suggest replacing this group with ten out-of-work congressmen. While leaping ability may be somewhat sacrificed, the savings are significant because we expect an oversupply of unemployed congressmen this year. Eleven pipers piping and twelve drummers drumming is a simple case of the band getting too big. A substitution with a string quartet, a cutback on new music and no uniforms will produce savings which will drop right down to the bottom line. We can expect a substantial reduction in assorted people, fowl, animals and other expenses. Though incomplete, studies indicate that stretching deliveries over twelve days is inefficient. If we can drop ship in one day, service levels will be improved. Regarding the lawsuit filed by the attorney's association seeking expansion to include the legal profession thirteen lawyers-a-suing action is pending. Lastly, it is not beyond consideration that deeper cuts may be necessary in the future to stay competitive. Should that happen, the Board will request management to scrutinize the Snow White Division to see if seven dwarfs is the right number. Derek Buchler is a systems administrator. To our mind, a strange but compelling marriage of computer knowledge, creativity, and chutzpah. This is Derek's second holiday season with WindoWatch. ww Word vs. Word Pro WordProcessing and the Suites Copyright 1995 by Frank McGowan About a month ago, I broke down and purchased the Lotus Smart-Suite - the Lotus answer to Microsoft Office Professional. While I haven't given all its components a real workout yet, I have had a chance to play with Word Pro. What follows are my impressions of the software while keeping in mind that I am an admitted Word bigot. This fact has caused a few teeny moments of domestic discord, since Sue, my wife, is a devotee of WordPerfect. Installation This process should be done just as Lotus says to do it: Because it's always worked before, I attempted my usual ploy of inserting the diskette, opening File Manager, then double-clicking the installation executable file. I had installed about thirty disks, losing count after twenty-five, when I got an error message telling me that a certain DLL file wasn't available because it was already in use by another task. The only other task running was File Manager, so... I got to play disk jockey all over again, this time with a few muttered imprecations, but the installation went swimmingly thereafter. With the SmartSuite toolbar onscreen, I opted to take Word Pro out for a spin. My initial misgivings aside (the screen looked odd to my Word-oriented eyes), I must say I'm impressed. This word processor has features similar to those of Word for Windows (no big surprise), and was a bit easier to use in one or two instances and a little quirky in one or two others. The Word Pro screen, as I said, is significantly different from Word's, and a little disconcerting at first, even though I quickly adjusted to it. For one thing, there are fewer menu choices on the menu bar, which means that each menu contains more features. Once you've gotten used to Word's menu bar, Word Pro's looks almost barren. This means that it is not possible to guess what each menu contains, a fault shared with Word, but exacerbated by having fewer categories. Why, for instance, is User Setup found in the File menu? And why doesn't the manual point me there to clarify the mysteries of the Undo feature? But I digress! More on the topic of documentation below, for those of you who can't wait for my brilliant insights and want to skip ahead. Features As for features, I looked at general ease of text creation and modi-fication, Spelling, Grammar, AutoCorrect (SmartCorrect), Help, and Mail Merge. Text Creation and Modification There's no perceptible difference between Word Pro and Word for Windows in the area of creating a text file. It's very straightforward. Worders will experience no discomfort here. Things change a bit when you get to editing, however. For one thing, triple-clicking on a word doesn't select the paragraph in Word Pro. It simply toggles off the word's selection. To select a paragraph, you open the Text menu, then Select, then specify the unit of your choice. As someone who's gotten spoiled by Word, this seems very cumbersome. Nor does there seem to be a line select capability or, for that matter, any selection area in the left margin at all. But I do like the fact that the current text selection is extended when you hold down Shift and click the mouse button. Still another difference, the Case Change feature in Word (Shift-F3) produces something quite different in Word Pro - you change fonts instead. The unanticipated change from Times New Roman to Algerian was quite a surprise! However the Markup Edits feature is really neat! This feature changes the color of the onscreen font to indicate changes you have made to a file making it easier for co-workers to see your proposed revisions when they get the file to work on. You can do this in Word, but it means selecting a color from the color palette, and then using that color when you type in the new text. In fact, Word Pro is much more geared to the work team concept than the standalone worker-bee paradigm; much more so than Word. That would appear to be the major differentiating factor between them. Spell Checking I really like one particular feature of Word Pro's spell program: It shows you on screen, in the file, which word(s) it suspects of being misspelled, so you can decide in advance whether to skip over them, or make the correction before the flag goes up. There are not many differences between them except this one. Grammar Checker The grammar programs of Word and Word Pro are also quite alike. Both nag you about things like passive construction and highlight words you might have mistakenly used in place of similar-sounding or appearing words. Doesn't this come under the rubric of diction? All in all, this is probably a good thing. One I'd suggest is that loose be confirmed, since it's so often used when lose is the proper choice. Sue, my beautiful and brilliant wife would add everyday; as an adjective, or a fine everyday occurrence, but not in something like We work hard everyday. [sic] If you'll pardon a personal anecdote, I was reminded of an announce-ment by a major computer manufacturer a few years back, proudly proclaiming their latest gift to writers everywhere: the Grammer [sic] Checker. Oh, well...Word Pro's Grammar checker also produces the same measurements of readability, letting you know whether someone needs to be a rocket scientist to understand your prose, or whether it's intelligible to little Johnny, the third-grade class clown. I have doubts about the validity of such measuring devices, probably because my writing is invariably deemed too advanced. I have more faith in my readers than I have in Rudolph Flesch, however. Automatic Correction Word Pro's answer to AutoCorrect is called, what else, SmartCorrect. It seems to have a more extensive set of corrections already built in than does AutoCorrect. One of my pet peeves - alot in place of a lot is one that chafes me, for example. I was also amused to see that the word potatoe will be replaced automatically by potato. I must carp at a few inclusions, as well as some exclusions, however. For one, the version of accommodate they replace is acomodate. It's been my experience that most people misspell this as accomodate. For another, the misspelling accidentaly is included, but not the much more common accidently. And why is rasberry [sic] included? Is this a word that crops up often in word processing jobs? As for exclusions, I'd add kernal (kernel), which shows up all over computer writing, especially when the topic is UNIX. Also, how about some of the so-called stumpers, as long as we're being whimsical, like moccasin, exhilarate, and mayonnaise? Help I must confess that I'm not wild about Word Pro's Help system. Bringing me to a screen full of not-intuitively-obvious icons and telling me to select the one that will most likely lead me to the subject is not terribly helpful. I'm still tied to text, I guess. Once I got past the icons, however, things smoothed out nicely, and I was able to find what I was looking for without undue difficulty. Mail Merge Maybe it's because I've learned two different versions of this feature in Word v2.0 and v6.0, but when I got to Word Pro's, it seemed like an utter snap. I mean, as in no sweat, no strain. I'm not sure whether it would seem that easy to the uninitiated, but I have to give them high marks from what I saw of it. For once, this process really seemed obvious and simple. This is quite different from just saying it IS obvious and simple, which leads to an even higher level of frustration when the user can't seem to get it. User Manual Maybe we need a new term for user manuals, like off-line documentation? Whatever. My first impression of the user guide titled EXPLORING WORD PRO; what is this, a safari? It is small enough to be unintimidating, but big enough to have the information you need. Well, maybe... As I discovered as I explored the topic of Undo, it ain't necessarily so. I just wanted to compare Word Pro's Undo with Word's. Naively, I went to the index, which pointed me to Online Help, which I took to refer to the topic of Online Help described in the book. Sadly, I was misled: what the index was pointing to was the Online Help files them-selves which I finally figured out after a fruitless search of the manual. I can almost hear the person who created the index screaming that the asterisk would have led me to the note telling me about this, but my response is "I don't do asterisks; spell it out for me right there." Altogether, a typical lazy reader! If I understand what I was able to uncover about Undo, there is a virtually unlimited level of undo's you can perform with Word Pro while Word is limited to a measly 100. But I'm just surmising, since I was unable to locate anything specific. I confess to giving up trying after a few minutes because I have better and more interesting things to do. And, apropos of nothing except preserving my mother tongue: Who made up the term versioning? Why does he/she still have a job in documentation? I suspect this was crammed down the writers' throats by an overbearing engineering honcho. Summary What I have seen so far leads me to conclude that Word Pro is an excellent product, especially for those in a work group situation where file sharing is of paramount importance. For lone wolf types, my preference is still Word for Windows, however. Just an opinion! Frank McGowan is a teacher, a science writer and computer consultant and is a regular WindoWatch contributor. This is the first in a series of articles evaluating this pair of very popular suites. ww A Trip to all Points...Everywhere! What Will You Do On the Internet? Copyright 1995 by Kyle Freeman It is a given that you've got to be connected to the Internet! After all the advertising you've seen calculated to make you feel like a troglo- dyte just 'cause you aren't wired for the global party everyone else is having, you have to sign up You must, if for no other reason than to keep your self-respect. Once you're a proud member of the brother-hood of hip souls who know where the action in the 21st century is going to be, what will you actually do on the Internet? Well, perhaps not as much as first imagined. Here's an account, for what it's worth, of what I do on the Net. I don't pretend to think my experience is typical because I don't think there is such a thing as a typical user. But I suspect the shape of my experience is common to many and may well preshadow your own. First of all, unless you're reasonably lucky, you're more than likely going to struggle with setting up your connection. You have to worry about things like a TCP/IP stack, and winsock, and trumpet, and IP addresses, most of which will be completely new to you, even if you're an experienced computer user. Unless you get very good step-by-step instructions with your software, or as is more and more likely these days, your Internet provider sends you software already configured with its address, your ardor to get on the Net straightaway will run into that sphinx you've met elsewhere too many times in Computer Land that simply won't let you get past a certain sticking point until you answer what seems to you like riddles. If you want to understand all this stuff, by the way, you can read an excellent article in WindoWatch Vol.1 No.2 by Harry Kriz. But then again you may be lucky enough to get past this step without any trouble. When you finally get everything right, your new found fervor to get on with it, may be thwarted if you first set up your software under Windows3.1 and then upgraded to Win95. Some Internet providers, The Well is one, send you software that works fine in Windows3.1 but suddenly won't work at all under Win95. They have workarounds, but again it's something you'd never figure out by yourself without the multipage set of instructions they'll send you after you've pulled out most of your hair and called them for help. So before you sign up, ask if the provider's software runs under Win95. By now, providers are aware of the need to make their software compatible with Win95, so this particular hassle should soon, like old soldiers, just fade away. But save yourself some prolonged grief by checking to be sure. I first got on the Internet with NetCom's NetCruiser, which I still use as my basic connection. NetCom provides all the basic Internet services in workable, though not state of the art, applets. It's easy to set up and requires no fiddling for Win95. The first thing I wanted to do was explore the World Wide Web. There are of course a zillion places to visit on the Web, but its very size makes it as exhausting as spending a day in the Louvre. And not every site is a masterpiece, either. I found that just touring around by following hypertext links can waste whole weeks of your time. I went first to the White House home page (www.whitehouse.gov) to see lots of pictures of its various rooms, a full account of President Clinton's inauguration, sounds of the bells that rang across the country on that night, as well as the sound of Sox the Cat's meow. You can leave a message for the President, too, if you're so minded. My brother wrote a note commending Bill on something or other and received a letter of thanks signed by the President's very own signature machine. Of course if you think of the President as Slick Willie, the nation's chief villain, you can write that, too. You'll also get a letter in response: from the IRS. Just kidding; Nixon's dead. There are all sorts of places you'll want to visit before the novelty of the thing wears off. You can see a map of the Paris subway, enter a starting and a destination point, and be advised on the best route to take. (http://wings.buffalo.edu) I believe it is from that same site that you can view and download images of Paris, from the Eiffel Tower, of course, to moody scenes along the Seine, to L'Arc de Triomphe, and all sorts of street scenes. If you've ever been to Paris and loved the place, you might want some reminders of it on your desktop. While still on the Web, let me mention two other sites that might interest someone who cares about art. At www.christusrex.org you can get a complete set of all the art in the Sistine Chapel. Not only can you get the Michelangelo ceiling panels, in groups and individual paintings, you can retrieve the Last Judgment on the back wall and all the tapestries on the side walls done by other artists. You can download more than three hundred images, with thumb nail sketches of each one so that you know what you're getting before you spend a lot of time downloading the wrong picture. You can also visit the Louvre, where you can download JPEG images of much of its art. There are several ways to get there: http://sunsite.unc.edu/ is one; http://mistral.enst.fr and http://www.emf.net are two more. I don't know what use it serves to have a Botticelli painting in your computer, but I like having La Primavera in mine. If you ask do I really need such things, I'd say "No, of course not." But I'd also agree with the sentiments of King Lear: "Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's." So if you can find a use, the paintings are there just waiting to visit - a screen near you. Last, many of you may know the work of the Limbourg Brothers, who painted a series of calendar illustra-tions in the 14th century known as Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. The image to the left is January. These can also be found on the home page of the WebMuseum, along with the scenes of Paris I mentioned above. They would make classy cover pages for news-letters that use calendars or great pictures to decorate notices of parties. After spending lots of time pursuing such butterflies, I now use the Web only for specific tasks, mostly to get software upgrades from manufacturers' sites. Being a tourist, either in foreign locales or on your computer screen, finally gets tiring and even boring. I predict that, like me, you'll find you'll use the World Wide Web only when you have a specific purpose. Long before I got on the Internet, I used to monitor an Internet Usenet group from my local BBS, which carried a select number of such groups. This group, comp.archives.msdos.announce, lists all the shareware uploaded to two of the biggest shareware depositories, SimTel, which used to be part of the defense department, and Garbo, a site at the University of Wasa in Finland. Once on the Net, it's possible to use ftp to retrieve files from these sites. SimTel is at ftp.coast.net but has many other mirror sites around the world, and garbo can be found at garbo.uwasa.fi. Each has scores of directories of shareware files of all sorts, including, at least at SimTel, many Windows programs. SimTel, by the way, has a whole directory devoted to WindoWatch, where you can download all the back issues, the essential Acrobat viewer to read them, and a zipped file (calend12.zip) with all twelve of the calendar illustrations....much to large to publish here. Each site has an index file to help you can find what's available in their archives. Getting files is quicker using ftp than the Web simply because you don't have to wait for all the graphics to load on a home page. If you're new to modeming, the chances are good that you'll be struck with Downloading Fever once you see all these programs and images you can get with a few keystrokes. Even if you're a BBS veteran and have already shaken off that delirium of grabbing every nifty looking program in sight, you may still fall prey to it for a while once you have a whole new quarry in view. But still, every fever runs its course, and once you've glutted your hard drive with more goodies than a greedy child on Halloween, you'll find, like I did, that you'll seldom spend much time downloading files, and then only when it's an important file you've read about somewhere else. I now spend my ftp time at either Microsoft's ftp site (ftp.microsoft.com), getting McAfee's latest virus scanning programs (ftp.mcafee.com), or getting program updates, such as Colorado's latest free upgrade for its Windows 95 tape backup program (ftp.hp.com). Another Internet tool you'll get from a full provider is Telnet, which lets you operate other computers as if you're in front of them. I amused myself with looking at the card catalogues of the Library of Congress and the Harvard On Line Library Services looking for specific books. Unless you really need to know what's been published, or expect to take a trip to either place to look at a rare book, chances are you won't use it much either. I know there are many other places that have Telnet sites, but have limited needs so rarely ever use them. Of course the most popular feature on the Internet is e-mail. You can send messages across the country or the world, knowing they'll arrive in seconds. It may well be the thing you use most on the Internet. Of course even the joys of e-mail have been hyped to some degree. Your friends in Paris won't get your messages right away unless they dial up their provider within a few minutes of time from when you send it. You won't get theirs, either, without doing the same. Many BBSes provide Internet e-mail far less expensively than the $20 a month you're likely to pay for your access. Still, it's certainly quicker than letters, easier than writing something on paper or trundling it off to the mail box. Last, I suppose I should mention what may motivate some to get on the Net. You no doubt saw news stories about hearings in the Senate about all the pornography infesting the Internet. To hear them talk you would think you couldn't spend ten minutes online without being exposed to scenes of unimaginable depravity. Of course there are such scenes, but you really have to go looking for them to see anything remotely deviant. And if you do spend the time to download any of the stuff, what you end up with are pictures you see on a computer screen, not nearly as clear as photographs or video tapes, which is where most of them were scanned to start with. Like everything else on the Internet, it sounds more titillating to hear Senator Helms rail against bestiality and lesbian nuns or whatever, than to actually see the often grainy images uploaded by some over active teenager. You've had to notice a theme running through this account. You'll be excited when you first log on to this vast new venture, and you should be. It's undeniably exciting to reach across the world to hear the President greet you at your desktop, to send messages thousands of miles in milliseconds, or to meet people with similar interests. But like all novelties, the excitement wears off. You'll spend less time online, but you'll be equipped to do far more things much more quickly than you ever did them before. You'll become one of the citizens of cyber-space, cruising down the Information Superhighway. After a few joy rides, your modem will stay in the garage most of the time. But like your car, your modem will be a vehicle for freedom, ready to trans-port you across the world at a second's notice. You'll make friends, find jobs, get news, play games, and of course, feed your computer all the software it demands. It will become another of those life-changing technologies that change your life, like radio, telephone, TV, automo-biles and jet travel once did. And like them you'll come to take it for granted as a fact of life. Kyle Freeman is a regular contributor to WindoWatch. A former teacher, he now practices his computer craft in San Francisco as a consultant. I asked him to take us on a tour of the Internet and this visual feast is the result. ww Surfing the Net From the Sticks! Rural Access to the Internet Copyright 1995 by John M. Campbell The big online service brag is that over 90% of the population is just a local call away! So - what about the rest of us? I live in a rural area, where CompuServe (CIS), America Online (AOL), Prodigy, Pipeline, etal. require a long distance call. The WindoWatch editor lives even further out in the boonies - about thirty miles from me. How do we rural folks, and more specifically business, teachers, parents and students access the urban riches offered by the major online services and the Internet? The answer, for many of us, is an enterprise that has been making its way into smaller areas - the Local Internet Service Provider. These businesses are now springing up in the most unlikely places as the thirst for Internet access increases. Typically, ISPs are relatively small business operations having local servers and high-speed connections to a distant mainframe computer that, in turn, has a direct Internet connection. For example, my ISP uses a host MicroVAX mini-computer, connected to a Bell Atlantic 56K frame relay link to MountainNet Integrated Services, a commercial Internet provider for business and education located 70 miles away in Morgantown, WV. What's a Deal and What's the Best Deal? When there are several local ISPs in an area, it becomes important to examine the services each has to offer. Even when only a single ISP is within a local calling area, certain questions should be asked before deciding whether to subscribe, since some services may be too limited to be worth the subscription fee. Important questions to ask before signing on are: 1. What services do I get for my money? Most providers offer at least an email address and usually, limited storage space on their server for incoming mail. The provider should have a POP3 server for incoming mail, and a SMTP server for out-going mail. Its a good idea to inquire whether the provider plans to allow each user storage space on their server for a personal Web page. If so, consider this a value-added service. Of course, some sort of Internet connection is the primary attraction. This connection may take the form of SLIP, PPP, SHELL, or some combination of these. When available, a PPP connection is the most desirable, since it is usually the easiest to configure on one's computer. SHELL connections, once the rule, are to be avoided. With only a SHELL account, one is dumped at the UNIX prompt, and most Windows-based Internet software becomes unusable. It then becomes necessary to obtain, and learn to use, UNIX-style text-based utilities. This is very uncool for the average person because the language is completely unfriendly and becomes part of a struggle for the new user trying to learn online skills. There is a joke to the effect that the Berkeley campus at the University of California is best known for two exports, UNIX and LSD, and that this combination is not a coincidence. An Internet provider should provide 28.8K modem lines - the more the better. Anything less that an 28.8 connection slows Web browsers to a crawl, and some of the newer technologies, such as the Cuseeme video conferencing scheme, won't work at all at lower modem speeds. A sufficient number of lines is required to meet the demands of sub-scribers. If the user too often is greeted by a busy signal, the service might as well not exist. Ask if the provider provides customer support. Setting up a SLIP/PPP connection on a computer is not easy. Regardless of what dialer/Winsock is employed on the user's machine, there are a number of settings that must be configured properly. Does the provider furnish connection scripts for Trumpet and Windows 95? Is a user manual available? The provider can't be expected to teach basic computer operation, but there will be questions to be answered, especially during the initial setup. Another question that should be asked is whether the provider furnishes the basic tools needed for Internet access, such as shareware Winsocks, mail readers, FTP utilities and Web browsers. While these can be obtained from other sources, the provider who makes them available to customers is performing an extra service. 2. What will it cost me? Normally, ISPs will charge a monthly fee for their services. In addition, there is often a one-time setup fee. The provider may levy add-itional charges for time used over and above a stated monthly allow-ance. Storage space for your own Web page may be an extra cost item. My ISP currently charges a $10 setup fee, and $25 per month for combined SLIP/PPP Internet access and a SHELL account. They do not set a time limit. This pricing probably is on the generous side, but other providers should be in the same ball park, price-wise. If you can comparison shop, find out about down-time. Ask customers of competing local ISPs what their experience has been. A lower rate is not a bargain if the provider has considerable down time, or lacks an experienced technician(s) to provide customer assistance. Also, you should compare the cost of a local Internet connection with what you would have pay to reach your favorite online service, or major Internet provider, by calling one of their own nodes long-distance. Consider how frequently you use the Internet. PSI Pipeline offers unlimited Internet access for only $20 per month. Add to this basic cost, whatever you must pay the phone company for long-distance calls. If you don't cruise the Net that often, the $25 or more you would have to pay a local ISP monthly may not be such a bargain. On the other hand, an ISP may make sense even if you live in an area where an online service has a local node. The last time I checked, CIS offered only a 2400 bps node in Charleston, WV. A person living in that city might well be ahead to pay a local ISP for a higher speed PPP connection to CIS in preference to the slow local node. There are many factors to consider in determining cost-effectiveness. So now you have chosen a local ISP, and you have managed to con-figure Trumpet or Windows 95's Slip/PPP module (congratulations - not an easy task) to connect with the service. What tools do you need, and where to find them? The Internet is information. To access that information, you will want to consider the following tools: 1. A Web Browser 2. A Usenet News reader 3. Telnet capability 4. An FTP utility 5. An Archie utility 6. An IRC utility 7. An Email reader The first decision to make is whether you want all of the above, and perhaps other capabilities available under a common interface, or as separate software packages. The first approach is probably the best for new users, and there are an increasing number of pre-packaged Suites on the market. Of course, the major online services offer Internet access via the same propriatory front-end software that connects the user to their own services, and that software can be used via your local Internet provider. But this route to The Internet can be expensive. In effect, you are paying Compuserve, Prodigy or AOL to provide you with much of what you already have access to, at no additional cost, by virtue of your ISP. Before going this route, investigate the Internet suites that are available. Examples of the newest include CyberJack (Delrina), Emissary (Wollensock), and the Internet Suite from Quarterdeck. I have used trial versions of all of the above, so I know that they offer a Web Browser, Telnet, News, Email, FTP and IRC, and can be used via a PPP connection provided by a local Internet provider. The only additional service that might be needed is access to a Usenet news feed. (More on this later.) These products do differ in interface and ease of configuration. I can offer no guidance as to which is best. What is right for one user may be wrong for another. My advice is to seek out others who are using these tools, and ask questions. Or, find out what others consider the strong and weak function of each program by hanging out on the online conferences devoted to such issues. The greatest flexibility is offered by separate Internet utilities, each devoted to a single purpose, or in the case of Web Browsers, several uses. Many of these separates have the added virtue of being freeware or low-cost shareware. The most popular Web Browser is Netscape. The latest beta version is free, and the program is updated frequently. If you want the latest, greatest, cutting-edge technology, Netscape is really the only choice at the moment. Various flavors of Mosaic are also popular. The most popular browsers also offer email and news capability, although these functions are not the equals of separate mail and news programs. FTP is a given with browsers. Telnet capability, so far, requires a helper application. (see below.) People have a tendency to defend their choice of email and news readers with a ferocity one normally associates with baseball fanatics at World Series time. You should look for programs that handle both reading and posting mail and news offline. It doesn't make sense to tie up your local providers lines with tasks that can be done offline. In this regard, be wary of the suites and Net Browsers discussed above. Some have email and news modules that only operate online. Here, I am going to give some advice. Look at Forte's Agent and its less capable but still excellent free version (Free Agent). It's an excellent Usenet news program, and the commercial version ($30) does a decent job with email, thus killing two birds with one stone. Before proceeding to other Internet tools, it's time to consider the problem of finding a decent Usenet news provider. In many cases your local ISP makes a nearby news source available at no extra charge. However, most local Usenet sources only carry selected groups, and their feeds often are delayed by several days, or longer. There are over 30,000 newsgroups out there. If the ones you want aren't available through the local provider, or are outdated when you receive them, you must look elsewhere, and be willing to pay extra. I discovered that, surprisingly, information about the locations of Usenet providers is difficult to find. A Web search only yielded a few commercial outfits, along with numerous public access sources. I take public access to mean free. I suspect that many of these are not reachable through a PPP/Slip connection, and those that are probably do not carry the full Usenet feed. What about commercial news pro-viders? I finally tracked down some through dfw.internet.providers news group. I'm not going to name those I did uncover, since some of the smaller providers do not appreciate publicity that might bring hordes of new customers they are ill-equiped to handle. Expect to pay $10 to $30 monthly for a subscription to one of these commercial Usenet servers. After you locate one, but before committing yourself, ask how many groups they carry and how current their feed is. Remember, subscribing to a major online service, like AOL, gives you access to most of the Usenet groups. The downside is that you are limited to using the service's front-end software if you connect via PPP/Slip from a local ISP. You can't use your choice of news readers unless you connect with the service by dialing one of it's own nodes, where user names and passwords are checked before the Internet connection is established. Doing this, of course, negates the notion of saving long-distance charges by subscribing to a local ISP. More information about Usenet providers can be found on the Web at: http;//library.usask.ca/hytelnet/sites2.html You probably will want a Telnet application. There is a popular pro-gram called Ewan, and its free. But Ewan, like some other freeware Telnet applications, lacks the ability to upload or download anything from the system you connect to. It only permits looking at the remote screen, making it rather useless for connecting to, say Channel1. Make certain any such app you consider does allow file transfers. One that does meet this requirement is a shareware program NetTerm. Another is QmodemPro for Windows 95. This is a commercial communications package that offers about all of the Telnet bells and whistles one could ask for. Archie and FTP utilities work together. The first searches the Internet for files; the second retrieves them. There any number of good ones available. If you like the idea of using the Internet as a CB Radio, you will also want to investigate IRC utilities. I have no advice to offer here. The best place I have found to learn about what's available in the way of Internet utilities is the excellent Shroud's CSWApps List, on the Web at: http://cwapps.texas.net Another good source on the Web is The Ultimate Collection of Windsock Software, at: http://www.tucows.com/ Between these two sources, you will find a gold mine of Internet applications and other goodies. Shroud provides complete descriptions and ratings, as well as links to the sites from which the programs can be downloaded. Hopefully, this article has provided some insight into the Internet solutions that are now available for those of us who live in places that were deemed unprofitable by the big online services and Internet providers when they chose where to place local nodes. We may not ---have to continue enriching AT&T, MCI et al. to surf the net. The local Internet provider is a resource well worth investigating. John M. Campbell, a regular contributor to WindoWatch, is the author of a number of informative and humorous articles which have appeared in WindoWatch. He is employed as the Manager of the Elkins, WV Unemployment Compensation office. ww DriveSpace 3 DriveSpace 3 - The Advanced File System for Windows 95 Copyright 1995 by Jim Gunn Okay, you were a Doublespaceaphobiac, and a Stack monster ate your disk - er...maybe, and DriveSpace brought aliens from the planet Gumupenderworks through a weird void and destroyed all your data! I guess there are other popular myths about computers too. But really, compression routines have matured. We now have version three of the Microsoft compression gadget. This new kid on the block is included with the PLUS! pack. Its name is DriveSpace 3 and there is a lot to it - a whole lot! Now before you yell compression - arrgh, read on and feel free to try it a bit at a time until you have the security blanket comfy up under your chin. Personally, I've been using this beastie for months, and would never go back to plain old FAT. * First of all, a wonderful feature of DriveSpace 3 is that you don't have to compress any data at all to take advantage of its major but unpublished features. * Second, and very important, the old myth about slow performance has a number of new twists that are really worth looking into. * Third, this is the advanced file system that Windows 95 deserved only the authors didn't realize it at the time. * Fourth, the hue and cry about the 110K driver business is easily rectified. DriveSpace 3 requires that you put all of your data into a single file, known as a CVF, or Compressed Volume File, just like the DoubleSpace/DriveSpace shipped in the past. If you lost the FAT entries on the host, or uncompressed volume, this file would be gone. How often does that happen? People who whoop and holler about that seldom seem to have remembered to make a backup. Nor do they consider that if their FAT is destroyed, all their uncompressed files are gone bye-bye anyway. The net result is the same. This all in one basket CVF does buy us something extremely signi-ficant. There is no longer a slack factor. There are no such things as clusters, allocation units or even the simple minded old sector to deal with. Once in a CVF, data is data, and all of that old DOS gibberish is history. Data simply lives where it lands, and the old bugaboo about a 10 byte file taking up a whole allocation unit is totally history. Even better, that ten byte file no longer even takes up even a single 512 byte sector, but now takes up simply 10 bytes, -period! The whole mess about clusters is simply gone. Now all of this part is strictly internal. DOS, Windows, and every-thing external to the CVF swears that you have 32K clusters and all the slack overhead of the FAT system. This is a pleasant lie and is simply for compatibility because the old FAT system requires it. Rest assured, it is nothing more than humoring the old way of doing things. And unlike previous versions of compression programs, this one deals with up to 2GB per CVF. It has no 512KB limitations. But now, let's look at the actual compression part. As mentioned earlier, you don't really have to compress anything in order to take advantage of the allocation units are history part of DriveSpace 3. But what if you (shudder!) do? Well, if you let it do what it calls normal compression you will achieve something on the order of 1.9:1 compression. That's way kewel, as my kids would say, but there is a significant performance enhancement to be had here, too. It seems that if you are on a Pentium class machine, the processing overhead required to do the dreaded decompression/compression deed is way less than the physical transfer time of the uncompressed data through the normal system bus. The net result is improved through-put. On a 486 class system, throughput is about the same. But in either case you still get the space savings of both compression and the elimination of the FAT system allocation limitations. Compression varies with the file type and content, of course. A .ZIP file simply isn't going to compress as well as a text file. There are four classes of compression in DriveSpace 3 and the ratios are simply averages of testing with various file types: 1. None 2. The ever popular Normal (about 1.8 or 1.9:1) 3. Hi-pack (roughly 2:1) 4. Ultra-Pack (over 2:1) A nice feature is that these can be mixed and matched. Unlike prev-ious compression schemes, DriveSpace 3 comes with a gizmo called Compression Agent. When you set it up, you can have a default compression scheme specified. Then periodically, you can run Compression Agent and have it make adjustments. A classic example is to have normal compression be your default and yet have Compression Agent detect any file that has not been accessed in more than 30 days and compress those files using Ultra-Pack. If one of those files eventually gets accessed, using this example, the next time Compression Agent is run, it will convert it back to Normal compression. It displays a screen which keeps tabs on how much space is being compressed and how much is being uncompressed or altered to a different scheme. Compression Agent is slow. At its best, it can take an hour or so per gigabyte just to do a scan, even if no real activity is required. If there are lots of changes to be made this can stretch out considerably. Obviously, drive speed, controller type and throughput vary from system to system and affect this part significantly. Another consider-ation is that every time anything at all changes on the disk, that Compression Agent itself didn't do, it starts over. Therefore it is not suitable for running in any mode other than stand alone. To the rescue comes another product included in the PLUS! pack. This one is known as the System Agent. Among other things, it can be used to schedule Compression Agent to run at off-peak times (computer jargon for the middle of the night). This way, you can have it scheduled to do the compression thing at say, two AM on Saturday mornings and all you have to do is remember to leave the system running on Friday nights. You pick the times that are suitable for your usage. A justifiable complaint about DriveSpace 3 is the amount of memory required in the lower 1MB to hold its real mode drivers. Let me tell you how to avoid that problem all together. It seems that the default installation updates your CONFIG.SYS file to include the line: DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\DRVSPACE.SYS /MOVE This is a holdover from the original DoubleSpace/DriveSpace and is an oddball thing. Even though the program is named with a .SYS extension, it really never was a driver. All it ever did was determine the location of the DBLSPACE.BIN or DRVSPACE.BIN file in memory. The /MOVE parameter told it to locate it in upper memory, if available. After this statement is executed, DRVSPACE.SYS goes away and no longer exists. But, what happens is that the .BIN file still exists, and so do the real mode drivers, until Windows 95 cranks up in GUI mode. At that point, it replaces the real mode drivers with virtual equivalents. This all sounds great in theory. The problem is that since some or all of this stuff has been placed in upper memory (UMB space). When the virtual drivers finally arrive on the scene, they can free up whatever portion was loaded in conventional memory but cannot touch the parts that made it to upper memory. This then becomes wasted space. Another aspect of this problem is that when booting to the Command Prompt Only part of Windows 95, none of the replacement of real mode vs. virtual drivers has taken place yet. You are out up to 110K of this precious limited lower 1MB memory. In either case, some memory is totally wasted. It simply depends on the particular configuration, what else is loaded in upper memory and all that stuff. But, this is not a desirable situation. Once more, help is on the way, and you read it here. The solution is to let the installation part do its thing. Now edit CONFIG.SYS and (drum roll) comment out or remove the entire line referencing DRVSPACE.SYS. Now reboot and that's all there is to it! What now happens is that since you are no longer telling it to relocate the .BIN file into upper memory, none of that gets done. Because of that, there is no need for the real mode drivers. Instead, the common sense thing happens. The virtual drivers load themselves into extend-ed memory -where they belong and would end up anyway- at boot time. You will find no trace of anything dealing with DriveSpace 3 in the first megabyte. You can even dual boot to a previous version of DOS and it will be able to access your compressed volume with no trace of drivers. The entire 110K is history as far as you are concerned. True, it still exists somewhere in extended memory, but I'll guarantee that you have a whole lot more stuff loaded there than you would care to know about, so the 110K part enters the world of who cares? pretty quickly. You can't see it, smell it or touch it and it just melts quietly into the swapfile somewhere or other. This is a very flexible and functional product that reaches far beyond its original intent. Even if you couldn't care less about compressing anything, in essence, it provides the advanced file system that every-one wishes Windows 95 had included, while still maintaining the complete FAT system compatibility that we all need. I find it interesting that the compression part of a compression program is simply an added bonus to its otherwise unheralded features. And don't forget to let it Ultra-Pack those files untouched in 30 days or more, no matter how much physical disk space you have. It's the principle of the thing. Jim Gunn is president of Sterling Consulting in Salt Lake City, Utah and a regular WindoWatch contributor. He publishes the Salt Puddle Pointless for those lucky enough to get on his list. Jim can be reached at 72731,115@compuserve.com ww Why Wizards Aren't So Wonderful ! Windows95 Applications and Human Learning Styles Copyright 1995 by Robin Mabry I've spent the last three months, on and off, trying to learn three Microsoft Windows 95 applications: MSN, WORKS and MONEY. I've been writing, using and testing software for twenty years -- so I'm no novice. Up until now, I've felt pretty good about my ability to take on new software with even the most badly written documentation and become a power user within a day to a week. The truth is that the new Microsoft Windows95 applications have knocked me off my throne. There is no documentation, - not even poorly written documentation - - and there lies the problem! Take the Microsoft Network. Its' poor, confusing and hodgepodge design cries out for a road map. Since one is not provided, bring along some string. Tie the string securely to your starting point and use it to guide yourself back out of the maze. Should you find a place you might want to visit again, mark your trail well or you'll never find it again. WORKS ? Other than writing this column, I have not successfully completed any project including trying to write a letter and have the return address automatically inserted, to creating mailing labels, to just creating one sided post cards! I know my old 16 bit Windows applications like Print Shop and Word Perfect may not be sexy but they are easy to use. As for MONEY, all I wanted to do was create a budget so I could easily change numbers and then print it all out. After a couple of tries, I did manage to get my online electronic pay ent application completed and printed but as for the budget, a few days ago I went back to paper and pencil! While I am approaching middle age, I still have a few functioning brain cells left and after giving this quite a bit of thought, I've decided the problem is them and not me. In the brief period of time that personal computing has been around, some software vendors like Microsoft have gone from providing nice, thick manuals telling you more than you'd ever wanted to know about their product to telling you nothing. Because, they claim that their products are so easy to use, who needs a manual? Well I do and more than likely so do you! Why? For most of us frustrated users, the Help Screens don't seem to help and Wizards just whiz right by us without leaving a hint. This is not because of lack of intelligence on our part but rather because we are human. Being human speaks to diverse learning styles and needs. My recent experiences with Microsoft's Win95, Microsoft Works for Win95, Microsoft Money for Win95 and the Microsoft Network have convinced me that a return to the policy of including a good, thick manual is just what the user, friendly doctor ordered. Readers may remember when software applications came with two and sometime three books. The first was the USER MANUAL -- preferably, a nice, friendly and personable book on how to use the software to do everything from A - Z. Good USER MANUALS included many examples and tutorials. And some USER MANUALS incorporated an informal style as though the writer was talking directly to the reader including humor, tips and off-subject tangents. The second was the REFERENCE MANUAL which got into the nitty-gritty details of how and why things worked so that if the instructions in the USER MANUAL didn't work one could try to concoct various solutions from information provided in the REFERENCE MANUAL. The third book was the INTRODUCTION GETTING STARTED booklet designed for those who don't need no stink'n manual; - just let them at it. Current thinking, at least by Microsoft is to just give us the GETTING STARTED and ignore all evidence that humans do learn differently. A good USER MANUAL allowed for the differences in learning styles. About a fourth of us are kinetic -also called tactile- learners; we learn by doing. Task Wizards of which Microsoft has become overly fond, can be quite useful to kinetic users because they are actually doing something as the Wizards walks them step by step through a process. The problem is that there is no manual to explain what commands were used to obtain the given result. That could mean that many are forever doomed to live within the pre-designed templates of the Wizard. They can't take the hands on learning and combine it with written instructions to create their own projects. The examples and step by step instructions of good USER MANUAL addressed this need. Next we have auditory learners or those who learn by hearing. The prevailing wisdom for much of human history is that we, particularly children, learn by listening. The teacher stands before us lecturing on and on and we soak it up via our ear drums just like sponges. For about a fourth of us, this is true. A personable, friendly often humorous teacher talking directly to the reader, as a writings style, addresses auditory learners. Whether the reader reads aloud or can hear the writer voice in their head, the goal of talking to the learner is met. Many third party USER MANUALS such as the Dummies and Idiots series use this approach in addition to step by step examples. Visual learners learn by seeing. If you can show them an example, a picture or an object, they can make the leap. This is why teachers and instructors write on blackboards, use posters and other visual aids. A good USER MANUAL includes pictures of what each step should look like on the screen as well as the end product. The little eighty-five page booklet included with Microsoft Works had lots of great pictures of the most common screen setups and of many types of documents the Task Wizard could help you create. In terms of step by stop photos of how to do a series of tasks, the booklet regularly referred to the text based unhelpful Online Help. Online Help are designed for the remaining quarter of the human population including me, or abstract learners or thinkers. Abstract learners like to read the instructions, usually in great detail, think about them and then apply them. Help Screens are notoriously short on details but an even larger shortcoming is the reader has to pick the right keywords to get appropriate help. This is a lot more difficult then it seems. With a good USER MANUAL, a user can begin with either the Table of Contents or the Subject Index as starting point. Thumbing through the pages and skimming paragraphs and examples until, in all likelihood, the user finds the explanation they need. Help Screens tend to be circular leaving the frustrated user right back where they started and no more enlightened. Details in the help screen are sketchy and don't give one much to think about or move forward with -- especially if you want to do something slightly different or more than the Help Screen was designed to explain. All of us, barring any physical disability, have the ability to use all learning styles but we do have a preferred and dominant learning styles. We now know that a good teacher tries to address all learning styles. My two favorite windows applications are Print Shop Ensemble and WordPerfect. Both come with substantial USER GUIDES and I think that in turn reflects in their general ease of use. As one who has written complex computer programs and the accompanying manuals, the writing of the manuals can be quite helpful in spotting problems. At one point, we were required to write both a USER MANUAL and a PROGRAMMERS REFERENCE GUIDE. USER MANUALS are extremely useful in verifying whether a feature is really easy to use or self-evident in its purpose. The PROGRAMMER GUIDE tended to illuminate technical problems such as sloppy coding or poor system design. The growing market of computer program documentation is evidence there is strong user demand for good, solid, substantial documentation. So why don't software vendors do themselves a favor and return to writing user documentation? Look at it as quality control and beta testing. If your writers can't explain or get others to make features work from their written instructions, its a good bet this undocu- mentable feature is another bug. For additional information about learning styles, try these web sites: Discover Your Own Learning Style http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/hccinfo/facdev/lsi.html New Students - New Learning Styles http://web.gmu.edu/bcox/Academia/KierseyLearningStyles.html (25k) Learning Styles - How People Learn http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/hccinfo/facdev/8.html (1k) Seven Styles of Learning http://www.wordsimages.com/ewinters/styles.htm(5k) Exploring Technology and School Reform http://k12.cnidr.org:90/resource.cntnts.html Learning Styles Network Newsletter (back issues) gopher://sjumusic.stjohns.edu:70/1-GOP/@lsi%3Anews.menu Robin Mabry has a varied and strong background in both teaching and programming. She is a WindoWatch contributor and brings a wealth of hands-on experience to her writing. ww A WindoWatch feature IDIOTS-REDUX Copyright 1995 by Bob Miller Once again, we dive bravely into that uncharted wasteland that passes for their brain cells as we attempt to understand how professional computer magazine writers can produce inane, moronic and silly drivel month after month after month. This month, we start with that horror called the 2,000 tips! Windows Magazine (11/21/95) Leaving aside the fact that they got to the 2,000 number by including quantities of useless tips and repeated some three or four times, some times on adjacent pages, they also included: [on 3.x] Remember to close all open applications and then Windows itself before reaching for the power switch. Really? My Windows programs always close themselves properly when I close Windows. They even prompt me if I have an open file that needs saving. [add SUBST F: D:........] People who use SUBST under 3.x are the same ones who enjoy Russian Roulette. If you are removing a Program, don't forget to remove its icon. Choose the icon and select File/Delete in Program Manager. Hitting the delete key is faster and easier. If you have a new hard disk that is faster than the old one, put your swap file on it. [That is correct]. Specify the drive and directory for the file on the Swapdisk= line in ... SYSTEM.INI. Only if you are a big fan of Corrupt Swapfile messages. Human beings use Control Panel, 386enh, virtual memory, change. Windows uses a program called VSHARE to do the same job. No it doesn't, dumb-dumb. WFWG does but this section is on 3.x. Your permanent swap file must be no larger than the largest contiguous free segment on the specified hard disk. Try HALF the largest ......... If you have less than 4MB of RAM and use Windows 3.1, or less than 8MB and use WFWG, the swap file should be around 8MB and 16MB respectively. Only if you really like rotten performance. Try 4-6 and 4 respectively. Fill a 16MB PSF and your 486-100 will perform like a 386-16. If you are having trouble with drive letters, make sure that your LASTDRIVE= is set high enough.... Unless you are using a Novell network, setting it to Z should fix any problems. Gee, the Novell systems I see all have an =Z line. Guess I'd better go delete it. Avoid dropped characters on high speed connections by using the Xon/Xoff protocol for your transmissions. He must really love CRC errors and download aborted messages. People with IQ's higher than potted palm trees, however, use CTS/RTS not Xon/Xoff. Some transfer protocols just work faster than others. The fastest we've encountered is ZModem. May I introduce you to YModem-G? [on Win95] Windows 95, unlike 3.x, does not use a permanent swap file but you can make the swap file a fixed size. This is true. And you can compute with your monitor turned off to save electricity too. They are equally useful tips. 95 uses a dynamic swap file and it should be allowed to manage it by itself. From the regular November issue. I'd like to be able to open desktop objects without closing my open applications. Two options come to mind [followed by how to create a shortcut to the desktop and assign it to a hot key and using Run desktop] Right click on the task bar and choose minimize all is too difficult for you? [on the P-6 or Pentium Pro] Although the Windows 95 users who employ true 32 bit applications will see speed gains............. No they won't. If you had really used the Pro instead of just gushing over it, you would know that it actually runs 95 slower than a Pentium. It is the OS that matters most. [it] should replace the Pentium as the desktop standard sometime in 1996. Fat chance. Since it's a 386SX, it has no math co-processor. Really? While a 486SX has no co-processor, a 386SX may or may not since the SX refers to the data bus on that chip. CD-R is the best way to back up your hard disk. $20 a piece, single use disks (although you can put more than one backup onto a disk) combined with $1,000+ CD-R drives is better than a $200 tape drive and $10 tapes that can be used over and over again? I don't think so. [Win95 tips of the month - same issue] Before you install Win95, uninstall any antivirus programs you have. Why? Sure, you should disable them but disabling does not equal uninstalling. Copy, Cut, Paste. CTRL+C copies, etc. This is a 95 tip of the month? We were doing this in Windows 2.0 seven years ago. PC Magazine, October 10. Don't push too hard for cluster-size economies, though. I would chop a 2GB drive into three logical drives - at most and a 4GB into five. Nice for you since you don't pay for your new drives. But we might not like a one line batch file or a single icon to use 16k of hard drive space. Normal people use 512MB as the maximum size for a single partition. From our Idiot's Hall of Fame charter member, John Dvorak. Microsoft has gone berserk with Word file formats. Really? WinWord 7.0 uses the same format as 6.0. 6.0 can read 2.0. There is a free filter to allow 2.0 to read 6.0. This is berserk? PC Mag, November 21. Dvorak again. Team OS/2 is on virtually every forum passing around rumors and outlining flaws in Windows 95. [followed by a bunch of dirty tricks that they are doing] I blame Microsoft......... So, if you are mugged on the way home, it is your fault for having something the mugger wanted? Do you always blame the victim? Bill Machrone's lead column - same issue. Ever heard the phrase "grew like Topsy"? ... Actually Topsy was a fabulously successful race horse.. Of his parentage and lineage, his trainer said "He don't have no lineage. He just growed". 1) The actual quotation is "I 'spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me". 2) The source is one of the most important books ever published - Uncle Tom's Cabin". 3) Topsy is a major character in that book - not a racehorse. 4) Harriet Beecher Stowe , "little lady that started this great war" in Lincoln's words, was not a horse trainer. 5) You, sir, are a barbarian ! [from a review of ViewScan Color 16M] Recognita's OCR program, Go-CR, produced garbled text from the clearest of documents...Also, on several occasions Go-CR caused the scanner to stop working altogether.... The ViewScan Color 16M give hand-held scanners a new lease on life. Oh, boy. Now, suppose, given the above comments, you explain just why I would want a "new lease on life" with such a product? PC Computing, November 1995 I wouldn't even think of running Windows 95 without the System Resource Meter. I would. I've loaded it twice in two months. I may never bother again. [from CD-MOM 95 the Mother of all Windows 95 books-Same Issue] Finally, you'll want to get rid of your LASTDRIVE setting......remove the whole line. The letter on the end may be an f or a z. Don't worry about it. Zap out the entire line. Why do I think that anyone on a Network might have just the slight-est problem with this? You might think that you can reorder the icons in the Start menu's Programs folder of subfolders. But you're wrong. Microsoft mounts your programs as menu entries in alphabetical order. and, while that is as good a default as any, defaults are meant to be customized to a user's liking. I've been hinting around for a workaround for quite some time and haven't found one. This is, of course, a really difficult one so it is no wonder that it was beyond his ability. I want \FOO to be the first item so I renamed it \1FOO. Boy, that was so hard I'll need to take time off to recover from all the effort. Chicago Sun Times-Don Crabb's computer Q&A column Sun. Nov 12 Q - How often should I defrag my hard disk? My friend tells me I should do this every week. A - Defrag your hard disk every week only if you want to lose your data regularly and you like to waste time on computer trivialities... I sent him E-mail and asked him what his basis was for this. I mentioned that the correct answer would be "It depends on how often you add & delete files..." I mentioned that I have never lost data during a defrag, even when power was lost during the process. His response was basically "You got lucky" 2) Windows Sources - Matthew Klare - "Storage" page 190 Para 3 "...Opting for a permanent swap file (ideally about 20MB)... I thank John Pindelski for bringing these two to my attention. The parenthetical comment above is from him. No further comments from me are needed. Infoworld, 10/30 Q. After an upgrade to Win95, does it make any sense to run MemMaker? A. Yes. Just as with DOS and Windows 3.x, a system running Win95 first boots a version of DOS. After Autoexec.bat runs, the GUI takes over........a memory manager and optimizer are still helpful. I also recommend that you invest in a third party memory manager - one designed for Windows 95. Well, since I don't have an autoexec.bat file, I guess my GUI will never run. For 99 44/100 % of people, any memory manager in Win95 is as useful at teats on a bull. To suggest that people spend $50-100 on a third party memory manager is ludicrous. PC Computing is always good for a few entries here (at least until my subscription runs out) and the December issue is no exception. From the Letters column. Reader: Please stop putting shareware programs in your Free Stuff listing. Shareware is reasonable but it is not free. PC: Not Quite. Shareware is not for sale. It's freely available, and you're not obligated to pay. But it works on the honor system. If you use an application, you're expected to make a small donation $5- $15. I assume this answer was intended to be your submission in the Proctology Journal Of America Centerfold of the Month contest. You have a LEGAL obligation to pay if you continue to use the program. Shareware prices are set by the people whose sweat and efforts went into creating it - not by your absurd $5-15 statement. Some, of course, have $79-99 registration charges. And to put an answer like this into a magazine that is geared for new to moderately experienced users is little short of criminal. You should be ashamed. The next three entries are from the same issue in the Windows95 Buyer Guide.....software guide to essential -- and entertaining -- home and office applications. Formbuster 2.1. Cons: Windows 95 version is still in the works. Gee - then what is it doing in a review of Win95 software? OfficeBlox for Windows 95. Con: OfficeBlox works under Win95 only. So what? What was the heading of this section again? PageKeeper 2.1. Cons: ...there's no voice-mail support. Hey, dodo, this is an OCR and indexing program. It doesn't walk the dog or do the dishes either. Why should it do voice-mail? Bob Miller does know how to turn a phrase! He supports the BBS nets with his time and expertise. He is host or co-host of many of the Windows or Windows related conferences on RIME and Ilink...too many to mention them all here. He is a regular WindoWatch contributor. ww Another Alice Adventure! Alice's Doors Copyright 1995 by Peter Neuendorffer Alice is working on Doors, a step to advance the paperless office. Alice, the noted designer, and my friend, sat across from me in front of her new desk. Our reflections grinned back at us from the vast smoked glass desktop. Across the room, a wall hanging glowed a dim grey, with the word ready flashing in the top left. A microphone hung from the ceiling. Alice pushed some buttons, and the middle of the desk glowed, as though a monitor was underneath it. She brought up other patches of light. The entire desktop was a touch screen, and the patches could be switched around with a tap. She could also write on these patches with a light pen, or use a virtual keyboard - like an air guitar - or in more mundane terms, a standard keyboard or mouse. From one program she printed a report. When she touched the corner of that patch, it opened up slightly so she could remove the report. Any patch could be propped up perpendicular to the desk top for easier reading. The wall hanging was a literal image of the entire desktop. Alice used a pointing device attached to her finger, which she waved about to manipulate the cursor. Also, when taking voice dictation, she could edit the text as it appeared. Various places on her easy-chair were pre-programmed to cause commands when tapped. Both the desktop and the wall hanging had Zoom In features. "It retails for $999.00" she said, and turned off the screens so we could see our reflections once more bobbing in the ether. Peter Neuendorffer and his friend Alice bring us brief glimpses into their world, where the impossible can become plausible. Peter is a Windows programmer and is a regular contributor to WindoWatch. ww A Xmas List Copyright 1995 by Leonard Grossman Dear Santa, In the words of the Oliver J. Dragon, "All I want for Christmas is ." The holidays are upon us so it's time to begin my wish list. It should be easy to do with so many new computer toys. A P5 with 16 meg of RAM would be nice with at least a gig hard drive and multimedia of course. Make sure the modem is a 28.8 and you might throw in a flat bed scanner so I can upload some graphics, fax forms and docs through the machine. While I'm at it why not an ISDN line until the cable modems hit the market. Of course, that's for the house! I will need a laptop with an active matrix screen with no less than 8 meg of RAM and a 28.8 PCMCIA modem so I can take the Internet on the road. A cellular modem? No, that can wait until next year. But please, don't forget the extra batteries. For the family, there are great CD's: cook books, planners, graphics, prep programs for the SAT. An e-mail box for my wife (daughter Sarah already has her own). Of course when I get the P5 Sarah gets the pawn shop special so she benefits from the P5, too. Maybe we need a third phone line or possibly a fourth. And we still don't have cable. While we're at it, how about a big screen tv--with surround sound. Of course, that'll mean new speakers! Better get new book cases for the living room...and a new sofa. Wait a minute. Something is missing here. Maybe Ollie had a point. I don't need my two front teeth, but maybe we need to be a little more introspective. Maybe there are other values at this time of year. Those who agree raise your hands and say - Fran! Happy Holidays! Your good friend...the ModemJunkie Leonard Grossman ww Jim Gets His Dream Machine! PC-NFS and Win 95 Copyright 1995 by Jim Plumb Some background At work I recently received shipment of a new Pentium-based PC bundled with Windows 95. The Network: Sun machines running Solaris 2.4, a Unix operating system from Sun Microsystems, as file/print servers. The production environment includes Macs, PCs and Suns; the printers - various laser printers and imagesetters On the PC side we need Network File System (NFS)software or client to access file and print services on the Suns which is not included in Windows 95. Solaris has a built-in NFS server which handles the sharing of network resources. Also running is pcnfsd, a daemon, similar to a DOS TSR, to allow for user login authentication, and file and printer browsing. This piece of software is now in the public domain and many of the PC-NFS clients use it. Also needed on the PC side is a TCP/IP stack, which is basically the underlying communications protocol between the PC and the Sun allowing the user to run software like FTP and Telnet. As you may or may not know, this IS included in Windows 95. Our PCs have been running various versions of Sun's PC-NFS and PC-NFS Pro. PC-NFS is DOS-based using TSRs while PC-NFS Pro is Windows-based, that is, the drivers load when Windows loads. PC-NFS uses its own TCP/IP stack, however Win95 already has its own TCP/IP stack. On the Sun, you specify which resources (file systems) are available to network users. Depending on your version of Unix, this is called exporting or sharing. Your NFS client lets you mount or map exported network file systems as local drive letters and maps network printers to LPT ports. Currently there are several vendors with mature NFS clients that run on Win 3.xx platforms and specialize in PC/Unix connectivity. On the other hand NFS support for Win 95 is in its infancy, as I found out. I figured that PC-NFS Pro, with its purely MS-Windows inter-face would work very well with Win95. I figured wrong. Too Many Trials and Tribulations After I got my new Pentium box up and running, I decided to get it onto our corporate network using Sun PC/NFS-Pro. Unfortunately, when you get bundled software (Win 95) you don't get much in the way of documentation. What you do get is practically useless beyond the most simple usage directions and, of course, nothing about setting up network connections. Eventually I discovered the network setup was in the control panel. I also learned that Win95 had discovered my network card and had installed the basic Microsoft network: the Microsoft Client and the IPX/SPX Protocol and the NetBeui Protocol. I didn't think I'd need them, so I deleted them and looked around for something familiar. Under the Add button, under Client I did find Sun PC-NFS Client but not the Pro client. I installed the PC-NFS client, said okay and exited. The Network setup box asked for the PC-NFS disk to install. Which one I wondered. I tried them all, but none had the *.inf files Win95 was looking for. I hoped that maybe I didn't need to load it and looked around for other mischief to get into. Aha! Under Add , Protocol and Microsoft I found TCP/IP Protocol. I know how that works. So I proceeded to set that up and filled in all the addresses, servers and gateways and such. I exited and was told to reboot. I did and tried to mount a network drive. Computer name does not exist is what I was told. I thought that maybe I could get away with just using TCP/IP. Then I remembered reading some-where that you needed an NFS client unless you were using a Microsoft type network, which to me meant so mething like Netware. I decided to do a regular install of PC-NFS Pro. That went fine until I got to the part about which kind of network card driver to choose. My choices were NDIS drivers or packet drivers and I didn't know what an NDIS driver was! I had been using packet drivers, but there were none listed for my card, except for one that was similar. You guessed it. I used that. I filled out some more configuration stuff, more addresses, server names and when done was told to go into Windows setup and specify PC-NFS Pro as my primary network. Okay I clicked. Cannot find Windows setup said my machine. Okay so I went back to the network control panel to Add, Client, Sun, PC/NFS-Pro, except it wasn't there! So I just selected PC-NFS again and did what I could to set it up. I exited, rebooted, and I began to see the PC-NFS Pro Login startup until I got an error message to the effect that Windows couldn't initialize my network card! Of course I went through the configurations many times looking for an elusive typo I must have made. Nope! Pretty frustrated at this point it dawned on me that perhaps I should check the Sun Forum on Compuserve, for someone else who has tried to do this. And of course I discovered dozens of others who had been beating their heads against the same wall. I confess to relief when I found out it wasn't just me. I also learned that Sun "has been waiting for Win95 to gain a larger market share before upgrading NFS for Win95" said the forum spokesman. In the meantime they have a neato workaround! I must download a patch and proceed with some specific setup instructions and it should work like magic - a direct quote! Part of the patch were two *.inf files to copy into Win95's \windows\inf directory. Of course, with my lack of documentation I didn't know that the INF directory is hidden. Eventually, it dawned on me that it was and accomplished this challenging task! The *.inf files tell Win95 w hich files are needed for setup and they also add the items PC/NFS-Pro under Add, -Client in the Network control panel. Other parts of the setup included disabling the Win95 TCP/IP stack and configuring Pro to use a packet driver but instead of supplying real commands to run the driver, users were to put the words Echo I am not a packet driver into the configuration window. I read through all the messages in the PC-NFS forum. Some people got it to work, others didn't. Others suggested alternate NFS clients. I couldn't get it to work! After a day of toil, I decided to reload windows 95 and network software from scratch. Maybe the OEM hadn't loaded it right. Another day spent loading, getting drivers right, and reloading Pro. It still didn't work. I gave up and then tried an alternatives mentioned on Compuserve, - FTP Software's Interdrive 95. If this one didn't work there were several others mentioned as well. Interdrive95 was found on FTP's web site at http://www.ftp.com where they have a section just for evaluation software. I downloaded the file and ran its install program very easily. The only thing Interdrive required was a working TCP/IP stack and uses Win95's built-in one. It gave some instructions on mounting network drives and it worked! I could access a network drive. Absolute elation. I then tried to setup some printers but printing - ha!- was not supported in the beta version. Crippleware? I tried two other alternates, both free betas. One was Integraph's DiskAccess and the other was Locus Computing's PCI. DiskAccess was easy to install, but sparse on documentation, forcing me to figure out the setup by reading the bug fixes. I was only able to load network drives from a DOS window, but again no printers would load. The Locus product, I was to learn, didn't use the pcnfs software on the Unix end but required its own proprietary NFS server. The cost, $255. Too much, considering that three name-brand products using the public domain pcnfsd server couldn't do the job. (Note: at this time Locus does have an NFS client which supports the use of pcnfsd. There is a free eval copy at their web site, www.locus.com). So there I was, back at the drawing board. I kept checking Compuserve for any new developments and downloaded everything pertinent from comp.protocols.nfs for some insight into this problem. I removed my network software and card and tried again. This time I used a previous version PC-NFS 5.1, using DOS TSR's to load the network drivers. And it still didn't work. Probably just as well, because I didn't like having all those TSRs running anyway. I wanted a better solution and I decided I was going to get Pro working, whatever it took! I'm not sure what I did differently than the first time out but I did finally get Pro to work. I was able to mount drives and got sporadic printing to occur. However, I did make a big mistake. I setup Dial-Up networking to access the Internet. I wanted 32-bit browsability and I had to setup TCP/IP to do this. Needless to say I lost the ability to use Pro. Setup everything again with no dialup and was not happy. The time for evaluation was over, got a out a purchase order and purchased Interdrive 95 from FTP Software. Jim Gets on the Network This software is really easy to use. It's a subset of a networking suite for Windows 95 called On Net. Interdrive comes on one disk and sets up in minutes. You need to get Microsoft's TCP/IP up and running. You can tell if it's running if you can ping another host on the network. There is an online FAQ available at http://www.aa.net/~pcd/slp95faq.html recently updated 19 Nov '95 for setting up your TCP/IP stack as well as an article by Phil Leonard in Issue 8 of WindoWatch. Interdrive 95 has two functions: Mapping Unix file systems to drive letters and defining network printers. Mapping Unix File Systems Let's assume that you have a Unix machine with the host name of silver which has a disk partition with a path of /ext1/tech_manuals/review and another path of /export/home/users which you wish to access from your pc. The person in charge of the Unix machine has properly allowed these directories to be shared over the network. There are several ways to mount these directories. I usually do it from the file manager. Under Disk, select Connect Network Drive. You will need to know the directory on the Unix end. Dialog box will present you the next drive letter available to mount. You can select any available drive letter. In the space below the drive letter type in the directory preceded by the Unix host name in this fashion: \\servername\/directory/sub-directory. To mount the two directories to drive E: and F: we'd be defining them as \\silver\/ext1/tech_manuals/review and \\silver\/export/home/users. Another way to mount Unix directories is via Network Neighborhood. As you browse through the Neighborhood, the Unix machine you select will display its network resources: directories and printers. You can select which directory you want, and map to an available drive letter. Shown below are my servers with a display of comp4's exported directories and printers. An interesting item in Network Neighborhood: As you browse your way down to your work, I found that you can access your files there without manually mounting any drives. One problem is that these files can only be accessed with Win 95 applications. I could access a Word document with Word 7 but could not open a WordPerfect 5.1 docu-ment or a Pagemaker 5.0 document by double-clicking the document's icon in Network Neighborhood. Nonetheless, it's a decent start! Connecting to Unix Printers You can connect Unix printers in various ways: hardwired via serial/parallel cables or networked through Appletalk or TCP/IP protocols. However they are configured on the Unix end, you will see them as printer names in the Network Neighborhood (see screen above). When you double click on a printer in Network Neighborhood, you are asked if you want Windows to setup the printer and if you say Yes, you will start up the same dialog as when you click on Add Printer in the Printers applet of the Control Panel. You will be asked for the path to the network printer. You do so in this fashion: \\servername\/printername. If we had a printer called LaserWriter configured on our Unix machine silver, we would type in \\silver\/LaserWriter. From there you follow the printer setup as you normally would. Summary The lesson to be learned in all of this is that Win95 is new and there isn't a lot of proven system software out there that supports it, - yet! In polling members of the comp.protocols.nfs newsgroup about the PC-NFS/Win95 situation, I found nearly all were in the same boat as myself. There was a lot of hustling about to resolve the situation, and nothing quite worked as well as it should. One suggestion, not tried as yet, was to use a public domain program called Samba. This runs on the Unix end and emulates a Microsoft network server allowing you to use the Win95 Microsoft client. This is on my list. Hopefully, in the next six months we'll see more NFS support for Win95. After all, I'll be upgrading our departmental computers and eventually the company's office machines as well. I need something solid. Hey Bill, why not include a built-in NFS client for Windows 96? Jim Plumb is a regular WindoWatch contributor and the author of many articles in- cluding an Acrobat tutorial. He was the original Home Page Editor and literally put WindoWatch on the Internet map. He is in the process of being promoted to Systems Administrator for his company. We wish him well! ww A Sampling of 32 Bit Windows Software for '95 The In-Touch Sampler for WindoWatch Copyright 1995 by Lance Jones This mini digest for WindoWatch is a smattering of interesting, high-quality Win95 32-bit shareware and software recently made available on the World Wide Web. Information is gathered by visiting websites, by monitoring Win95 related newsgroups and by reviewing email from shareware/software developers or other interested parties. ALL OF THESE FILES CAN BE DOWNLOADED FROM THE IN-TOUCH WEBSITE LOCATED AT <http://www.islandnet.com/~sword/digest.html> Name: VRWeb For Windows 95 Version: 1.0 Beta 4 Size: 610 Kb Download Time: Approx. 10 minutes with 14.4 modem Developed By: Gerbert Orasche, Michael Pichler Registration: Freeware Beta File Location: ftp://ftp.utdallas.edu/pub/Hyper-G/VRweb/Windows/vrw_nt.zip Description: VRWeb is a fresh new entrant into the Virtual Reality Modelling Language browser market. This beta incorporates many of the best features of "WorldView" and "WebSpace", including auto-matic launching from within Netscape and Mosaic, fly-by, walk, and zoom navigational tools as well as multiple rendering options. Naviga-tion could still be improved, but overall this is a great application. Name: Forward Mail Version: 1.0 Size: 1.57 Mb (with VBRUN400.DLL), 148 Kb (without VBRUN400.DLL) Download Time: Approx. 24 or 3 minutes with 14.4 modem Developed By: Frank Sidon Registration: Freeware File Location: ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/win95/sysutil/fwdmail.zip-(1.5 Mb) ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/win95/sysutil/fwdmails.zip (148 K) Description: Forward Mail is a small, effective program which scans your E-mail inbox for all incoming messages (including faxes or any other MAPI compliant E-mail that lands in the inbox), and forwards it to a person of your choice. This may apply to someone on an internal E-mail system, another fax or any valid MAPI recipient. Nice job, Frank! Name: Dunce Version: 1.2 Size: 30 Kb Download Time: Approx. 45 seconds with 14.4 modem Developed By: Vector Development Registration: Freeware File Location: http://www.cjnetworks.com/~vecdev/vector/dunce1.2.zip Description: Dunce (Dial-Up Networking Connection Enhancement) allows for much easier dial-up networking than Win95 currently provides. The program will automatically press connect for you on the Connect To dialog box, redial your Internet Provider indefinitely, even from another app;auto- reconnect if you get unexpectedly dropped. Lance Jones is the owner and keeper of the In-Touch Newsletter. He's taking the Internet by storm. Watch his smoke! ww Computers and Israel A Report From Israel Copyright 1995 by Stanley Kanner Here in Israel people take to new electronic gizmos as if in a feeding frenzy. It is striking to see the ancient setting of Jerusalem in a surrealistic mix with technology everywhere you look. Hasidim with their long beards, gabardine coats, peayot (curls of hair that never get cut), and cellular phones held to their ears. I had a meeting with an internet provider, Net Media, two weeks ago. It was at 4pm when suddenly an announcement was made alerting everyone that it was time to stop work in order to have the evening prayer. Computers are big here... very big! The Ministry of Education has started a program to give every teacher in the country their own PC. There are many educational and just for fun BBSs. Internet prov-iders are springing up left and right and are instituting price wars to get their share of an ever expanding Israeli market. In fact, the Internet seems to be the slice of personal computing most enticing to Israelis. It is talked about as if it were synonymous with computers. Not much different in the US! There seems to be very little movement towards Windows 95. It doesn't appear that the advertising blitz which was fired up in America occurred here at all. I'm not absolutely sure of this since I arrived in Israel just this past September. My sense, however, is rather low interest and slow movement toward Windows95. I recently spoke with Itamar Afek who is the Internet Librarian for the Ministry of Foreign affairs. Itamar knows the ins and outs of Windows applications. He has started a side business to set up his customers' computers so that they will be able do a range of Internet functions (internet phone, etc.). One of the problems Itamar is working on is the use of Hebrew on the web. Without Hebrew fonts loaded in Windows, the aleph bet appears on the screen as garbage characters. Hebrew text can be seen when used as a graphics file, but it is difficult to get links working from these files. Right now Itamar is experimenting with the use of mapping programs. A scan of the Hebrew used on the net shows that nobody has yet been able to perfect the system of links from a Hebrew character set that can be used by computers without the Hebrew fonts. I have personally had trouble with Hebrew word processors. Not having the Hebrew windows version limits me to a program called Dagesh. Dagesh brags that it has thirty keyboards. This is a bit of an exaggeration, as there really is not a whole lot of difference between British, Australian, Canadian, and American English. Its fonts for Hebrew are limited, and I like the ones that I have on my old DOS Hebrew text editor better. Dagesh also has very limited graphics manipulation. You pretty much stick a graphic somewhere and then decide it's much better to keep it where you originally placed it. Again the unusual mix of the old and new! Perhaps it is the small size and sense of isolation of this place that drive people out on the net. Surrounded by countries that are at best neutral toward it and at worst openly calling for its destruction, Israelis have always felt confined within the borders of this tiny country. The urge to travel has always been great here. The Internet is the technological extension of that desire. So, if you meet one of the many Israelis out on the net, the most important Hebrew word to know is Shalom. It means Peace. It is also used for Hello and Good-by. If you want to get more advanced, ken means yes and lo means no. But, for now shalom will do. Shalom! Stan Kanner is the founder of CompuEd, the online high school. We hope that he continues to provide us with insight into the Israeli society's preoccupation with technology. A number of American chip companies have created an Israeli presence where bleeding edge computer research is taking place.. Stan is a regular WindoWatch writer and can be reached at stankan@netvision.net.il Jim Plumb Reports on What's New With Acrobat 2.1? Whats's new? Mostly good news for people on NT and Sun plat-forms. The Adobe Acrobat Reader v2.1 can now be run on the following: SunOS(TM) 4.1.3 & 4.1.4 Sun SPARC Solaris(R) 2.3 & 2.4 Hewlett Packard HP-UX 9.03 and above Windows NT 3.5 (or later), Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 OS/2 2.11 or later in Windows compatibility mode. One thing you should know is that release 2.1 does not change the format of PDF files. Exchange and Reader 2.0 can open and view PDF files as before, but some functionality has been added to the Reader to enable some Plug-ins to work with it (see below). At this time I do not know if there is anything new with Exchange or Distiller in Release 2.1. Once I get any information on that I will pass it on. Some info gleaned from Adobe's Acrobat Web area: Adobe's ATM technology for rendering Type 1 fonts has been built into Acrobat Reader 2.1 for Windows so it is no longer necessary to install ATM on Windows systems. Previously, you needed ATM running to be able to use the Reader. Acrobat Reader 2.1 accepts some specially enabled plug-ins, such as Weblink and Movie. This allows Acrobat Reader users to take advantage of new capabilities in PDF files created with Acrobat Exchange, for example following WWW URL links or viewing QuickTime and AVI (Win only) movies within a PDF document. Although Reader 2.1 is Win95 compatible, it is not yet Win95 logo compliant. This means they will run under Win95 but may not meet all of Microsoft's guidelines for complete Win95 compliance, such as various user interface elements, long filenames, etc. A Win95 logo-compliant verions of Acrobat Reader is scheduled for early 1996. For those with HP III printers (PCL) you should upgrade your printer driver. You need the file HPPCL5.EXE available on CIS and from Microsoft's download service (206-936-6735). Adobe is also offering a several new FREE plug-ins for use with the Acrobat Reader 2.1 and Acrobat Exchange 2.x See the Acrobat Web site for details (http://www.adobe.com/Acrobat) ww The Diversity of 'Twas! 'Twas the Night Before Contributed by Derek Buchler As written by a technical writer for a firm that does Government contracting... 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anti-cipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas. The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof. Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power traveling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen - "Now Dasher, now Dancer..." et al. - guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities. As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was per-forming a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost celerity and via a downward leap - entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle. His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his sub-maxillarydermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurten-ance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water. Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose gray fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemi-spherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless. Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the a forementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by reneg-otiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn. And there's more holiday nonsense. If you don't understand Yiddish, you may not find this funny. The Night Before Chanukah 'Twas the night before Chanukah, boichiks and maidels Not a sound could be heard, not even the dreidels The menorah was set by the chimney alight In the kitchen, the Bubbie was hopping a bite Salami, Pastrami, a glaisele tay And zoyere pickles mit bagels-- Oy vay! Gezint and geschmock the kinderlach felt While dreaming of taiglach and Chanukah gelt The alarm clock was sitting, a kloppin' and tickin' And Bubbie was carving a shtickele chicken A tummel arose, like the wildest k'duchas Santa had fallen right on his tuchas! I put on my slippers, ains, tzvay, drei While Bubbie was eating herring on rye I grabbed for my bathrobe and buttoned my gottkes And Bubbie was just devouring the latkes To the window I ran, and to my surprise A little red yarmulka greeted my eyes. When he got to the door and saw the menorah "Yiddishe kinder," he cried, "Kenahorah!" I thought I was in a Goyishe hoise! As long as I'm here, I'll leave a few toys." "Come into the kitchen, I'll get you a dish Mit a gupel, a leffel, and a shtickele fish." With smacks of delight he started his fressen Chopped liver, knaidlach, and kreplach gegessen Along with his meal he had a few schnapps When it came to eating, this boy sure was tops He asked for some knishes with pepper and salt But they were so hot he yelled out "Gevalt!" He loosened his hoysen and ran from the tish "Your koshereh meals are simply delish!" As he went through the door he said "See y'all later I'll be back next Pesach in time for the seder!" So, hutzmir and zeitzmir and "Bleibtz mir gezint" he called out cheerily into the wind. More rapid than eagles, his prancers they came As he whistled and shouted and called them by name "Come, Izzie, now Moishe, now Yossel and Sammy! On Oyving, and Maxie, and Hymie and Manny!" He gave a geshrai, as he drove out of sight "A gut yontiff to all, and to all a good night!" And then there were the people who toil every night until dawn: `TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CRISIS `Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house, Not a program was working, not even a browse. The programmers were wrung out, too mindless to care, Knowing the chances of cutover hadn't a prayer. The users were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of inquiries danced in their heads. When out in the lobby, there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a super programmer, oblivious to fear. More rapid than eagles, his programs they came, And he whistled and shouted and called they by name; On Update! on Add! on Inquiry! on Delete! On Batch Jobs, on Closing! on Functions Complete! His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean, From weekends and nights in front of a screen. A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, Turning specs into code, then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger on the `ENTER' key, The system came up and worked perfectly. The Updates, updated, the Deletes, they deleted, The Inquiries, inquired and the Closing completed. He tested each whistle, and tested each bell, With nary an abend, and all had gone well! The system was finished, the tests were concluded. The client's last changes were even included. And the client exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt, "It's just what I asked for, but it's not what I want!" ANONYMOUS ww Musings on Netscape 2.0 and other ponderings.... Reflections of a ModemJunkie Copyright 1995 by Leonard Grossman I've been thinking lately that perhaps I should change the name of this column. I talk about other things from time to time: Everything from new software to the state of the world. And besides, I thought, I'm not really addicted to communications. And then something happened! I did a little outside work and had a couple of hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket, and after all, I only had a 14,400 modem. It was a proud possession only a short time ago. Was it really that long ago that I upgraded from 1200 to 2400 bps? So after doing a little, but probably not enough research on line, I began my search for a new modem. I went to Computer Central, the huge computer flea market at the College of Dupage. But no one had anything under $200, except for the vendors from Cleveland... After having been burned before I have rule: Never, NEVER, buy from a Cleveland vendor unless, of course, you live in Cleveland! I was determined to buy an external modem because I'm frankly lost without those lights. My choices were between the USR Sportster, the Supra and the Cardinal. Calling around, I found a certain computer mail order house (let's call it "ABC, Co." to protect the innocent) which had the Sportster for $199. Their home office is in a Chicago suburb where they have a huge showroom. So off I went as it's only a 45 minute drive. No Sportster 28.8s were on the shelf. The sales person said they were out of the Sportsters and offered me a "great buy" on a USR Courier which was, of course, well over my budget. After a few minutes, when he realized that I wasn't going to jump at the Courier, he looked at his computer screen again. It's interesting to note that the customer can see the screen through the glass in the counter, but its too blurry to read from the customer's angle. "I must have been looking at the Macs," he said. "I do have a Sportster in stock." I didn't know there was a difference between modems for the different platforms. I have switched my old modems between Macs and PCs with no problems. But it wasn't until I got home that I thought I might have just escaped being a victim of a bait and switch. Anyway, he knocked a dollar off of the price and I took the Sportster home for $198 or $2 below budget. Perhaps the difference is in the free software in the box not in the modem... Would it really have made a difference if I got Mac disks for America Online, C$erve, Genie, and Netcom to add to my DOS/WIN coaster collection? As soon I got home I hooked it up, logged on to the Internet and found the comp.dcomp.modems news group which is something I should have done first. Guess what? That afternoon USR announced a firmware upgrade for the Sportster (V.34+ 33,600). I quickly learned I hadn't asked the right questions either. I had asked if the Sportster was upgradable, I didn't specify flash ROM. So here I was with a brand new modem... and already it was out of date. USR was making the new chip available for $25 and shipping. I called first thing Monday morning. Tech support hadn't even heard about it yet, but assured me they could ship overnight. They wouldn't let me pick it up at the plant in Skokie which is only half as far from my house as is ABC. "Let me think about it," I said. After all, with shipping it would now be $30 over my budget while later purchasers would find the new chip installed without being required to pay extra for the chip. And besides, some contributors to the usenet group had already found that they had purchased boxes with the new chip off the shelf-- there is no way to tell from the box. I felt rooked. But I gave in.. after all I wanted the latest and the fastest. So I called back.. forty minutes to get through (that's what speaker phones are for), only to learn that the overnight delivery had now turned into at least a thirty day wait. Heck, I could return my unit and wait a month and probably buy it off the shelf by then. So I said no. I'll stick it out. Most of my connections seemed to be at around 21 or 24 k. Even though the carrier rate never reached 28.8, transfer rates were going much faster than before. I was also learning just how much time on the Internet is spent waiting for something to happen on someone else's server. Faster modems can't change that. Remember how your floppy drives seemed to slow down as you got faster processors? The faster transfer rates just exaggerate the waiting time on the Net. For a week I played and tuned, trying different initialization strings to see if I could get faster data transmissions with greater frequency. I was determined to go back to the store on Friday and trade for a new machine. Maybe by then the new faster chip would have reached the shelves. Friday morning, before returning to ABC, I tired one more change to my Telix communications program setup. Voila!! After five years of uninterrupted use of Telix, except to upgrade, I had blown the config. It would no longer connect. Sometimes it wouldn't even dial. What had I done? Frustrated by my inability to regularly connect at 28.8 and now having trashed my old DOS friend, I went back to ABC... But they didn't have any Sportsters in stock. The didn't have the Supra either (due in a week, they said). But there was the Cardinal for only $164 and it was flash rom upgradable. (BTW: ABC was very cooperative on the trade in...I may have to take back those thoughts about the bait and switch.) So I have $38 in my pocket (including refunded sales tax) and the Cardinal is hooked up. It is flash upgradable, but there is no sign that Cardinal is going to go upgrade again at this time. The unit I bought already has the latest upgrade. So what good does the flash do me? Unfortunately the Cardinal uses a slightly different version of the Hayes command set so I have spent several days trying to find the right modem string. My SLIP connection to the Internet is fine but I haven't been able to get Telix functioning yet. Fortunately, the Sysop on my home BBS (Chicago Syslink) has something called Banana Com online for quick download. I had recently d/ld a copy for a friend. It's a simple com program-- already configured to dial Syslink.. So I can get through again and play BBS King. But its been frustrating. Should Powell have withdrawn? Should Gingrich and Clinton be taken to the woodshed for the poker game they played with the budget? I don't know. There are more important questions in the world. Should I have waited for the upgrade chip.. or saved my money for the Courier, or waited for the Supra with the helpful external display? These are the earth shaking questions. Did I say I was thinking of changing the name of this column?? Maybe I was premature. And did I tell you?? My last connect was at 28.8!!. Now if only I could make that constant...and if only I could get Telix connecting again. After completing the first draft of this column, I tried some alternative phone numbers from my ISP. At two of the sites I now regularly connect at 28.8. If I had tried those at first, I probably would have been satisfied with the Sportster. As to Telix, I finally deleted the telix.cnf file and reopened the app. I don't know what I had done wrong but it's working again. Whew!! Now I can get some sleep. But wait-- today I received notice of a Telix upgrade to v.3.5 from DeltaCom... See you online... Leonard Grossman is a lawyer for the Department of Labor. He is a regular WindoWatch contributor and can be reached at leonard.grossman@mcs.com Leonard makes the rest of us feel much better about our own puny computing skills. The great service he performs is by making the rest of us heave a sigh of relief for not being the lone knucklehead left in the online world. All of this has a too familiar ring! ww The Last Word A WindoWatch Feature Web Surfing Anyone? Copyright 1995 by Ben M. Schorr If you're reading this column you are obviously already familiar with the underlying concepts of on-line communication. There has been a lot of talk in recent months about the future of the Internet, parti-cularly as it relates to the proposed $500 Internet-Box that some people are seeing as the future wave of Internet computing. Until fairly recently, today in fact, I was one of those people who firmly believed that in the not-terribly-distant future we would see a proliferation of cheap boxes with monitors, modems and mice that we would use from our homes, and some offices, to access and surf the web. Various applications being provided via the Internet on a subscription basis, perhaps even a link to your local Kinko's to do full custom and color printing of your documents thusly created. However, today I ran head first into what I believe will be the greatest obstacle to the Internet's success as a global network for serving more than basic information. In a word it is BANDWIDTH. Yes, as I sat here at my desk waiting for a connection to Yahoo...and waiting...and waiting (and playing a spirited game of Solitaire while I was waiting) it took literally more than five minutes before I finally gave up and went to do something else, but nearly everywhere I turned I found sluggish response. I have a machine well suited to Web surfing (a Pentium with 16M of RAM, accelerated video card and 28.8Kbps modem) but still I found the poor performance unbearable. I certainly don't see people enduring that to receive applications or more than basic information. If the web is going to be truly useful it has to be reliable and that means that when you click on a link you shouldn't have to wait more that a minute or so at the MOST to get your connection and be ready to move through that page. Now don't get me wrong; I use the Internet on a daily basis. I send and receive E-Mail in huge quantities, I regularly go to Web and FTP sites to get information from vendors and download the latest patches and drivers. But rarely is that a time critical circumstance. If the response is sluggish I can wait or call back later. If, on the other hand, I get my Word Processor from Lotus via on-line subscription, that sluggishness will be unavoidable and intolerable. The critical word is bandwidth. We need to find and expand upon ways to deliver Internet access more rapidly. We need to continue the growth of ISDN deployment. In fact, those $500 boxes may need to have a $750 big brother with an ISDN connection. We need to continue to develop more robust and powerful Web servers and Web server software. Smart Design Anyone? Part of the problem is that some web pages aren't very intelligently designed. There are still a lot of people using 14.4Kbps modems for access and to force them to download huge graphics is to discourage them from accessing the net at all. Even at 28.8Kbps there are some pages that take forever and longer to load. The design solution is to use less graphics. Keep them simple, don't use every color in the palette and test your pages. Insert Text Links for those who just want to navigate the page quickly without waiting for the 80K JPEG of your new office building to load. Give the user the option of seeing the graphics or not. When you test your page, test it with a 14.4Kbps modem and a moderately configured PC with just 8M of RAM, an ISA video card, etc. Make sure the pages load within an acceptable period of time. More Design Tips E-Mail is a fabulous tool. I use it whenever possible to communicate with vendors and manufacturers as well as friends and clients. It never ceases to amaze me that companies will deploy elaborate web pages with no obvious way to send them E-Mail. Insert a link so that the user can click on it and send you a quick E-Mail message. Make it easy to find, perhaps at the bottom of each page. If you have an FTP server, consider having a README file in each directory that gives a one or two line description of what each file in the directory is. Don't expect users to know that 121HGTP4.EXE is your company's latest video driver for Windows95. Consider posting links to companies that provide complimentary products and services. Ask them to return the favor. If you have a special section for limited access, make the process of registering for that section easy and make the verification process reliable. A major computer magazine requires you to be a print subscriber to gain access to their on-line forums. I am a print subscriber and after completing what seemed like an easy registration process I was chagrined to discover that my numerous attempts to enter the forums were only successful just twice. The rest of the time the system returned an error indicating that my username and/or password were incorrect. Occasionally it will return that error before even prompting me to ENTER my information and then leaves me with no way to enter it! I type this username and password pretty often, so it's unlikely that I could make that many mistakes on it. More likely, I think that their security measures are just unreliable. To date, E-mail sent to that publication trying to get the issue resolved has met with only a lukewarm response. The Internet is a great tool with a lot of promise, but we're already starting to run ourselves into the ground with it. As usage increases and the graphic designers start taking control away from the computer people, the web is going to get slower and more cumber-some. Prettier, yes. But slow; and I've played about all of the Solitaire that I really care to today. If you have any design tips for web pages or pages that you either love or hate, drop me a note at ben.schorr@bcsbbs.com- Ben Schorr is the Host of the Ilink Consultants conference and the Director of Operations of Watson/Schorr Consulting of Canoga Park, CA . Ben's consulting practice keeps him very close to what is happening and being said on the street. He is a regular contributor to WindoWatch. ww The WindoWatch homepage URL has been changed to http://www.windowatch.com H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S E A S O N ! Who we Are and Where to Find us: EDITORIAL Editor Lois B. Laulicht Contributing Editor: Herb Chong Home Page Editor Paul Kinnaly Associate Editor Kyle Freeman Business Manager * Bob Miller Contributing Writer s: Derek Buchler, John M. Campbell, Leonard Grossman, Jim Gunn, Gregg Hommel , Stan Kanner, Jerry Laulicht, Phil Leonard, Robin Mabry, Frank McGowan, Peter Neuendorffer, Jim Plumb, Ben Schorr, Paul Williamson EDITORIAL BOARD Herb Chong, Gregg Hommel, Lois Laulicht, Paul Williamson. Paul Kinnaly SUBMISSIONS and REQUESTS Email using Internet lois.laulicht@channel1.com windowatch@ins.infonet.net winwatch@user1.channel1.com Editor WindoWatch Valley Head, WV 26294 Submissions remain the intellectual property of the author. Manuscripts will NOT be returned if not used. Electronic File Access FTP>ftp.channel1.com/pub/WindoWatch FTP>oak.oakland.edu/pub3/Simtel-win3 /winwatch WindoWatch is found on Channel One in several formats by calling 617-354-3137 (28800) or 617-354-3230 (9600 and 14.400). We publish in a Windows compatible format and in HTML on our home page. The DOS format uses ReadRoom (*.TOC) One can also read online from the Reader Room itself - Door 48. Non-members of Channel One can download the latest WindoWatch issue by typing J Free from the main board prompt Annual shareware subscriptions at $20 per year for electronic delivery of the ASCII or Acrobat edition. Sponsorship and contributions at various levels. Comments, letters, and requests can be sent to us at various locations. Postlink to Lois Laulicht ->15 tagging the message "receiver only" and on the Internet lois.laulicht@channel1.com WindoWatch (c) 1995 all rights reserved, is the property of Lois B. Laulicht and CCC of WV Valley Head, WV 26294 * We are saddened that this will be the last issue that Bob Miller contributes to. ww ww