Who needs QuickDex, DAtabase, Rolodex or QuickFile? Not if you have Gofer DA. Using Gofer, you can search on a name (or any word or words) and let Gofer look through whatever document you want to store addresses in. Gofer will show you the searched-for word in complete context, so you can scroll and see many lines either side of the “find.” You can also Copy and Paste the address or other information from Gofer to your active document or the Scrapbook.
Both Affinity and some reliable reviewers say that Tempo II uses only 79k under Finder and 25k under MultiFinder. So don’t let anyone tell you about Tempo II’s “huge memory needs.”
You should remove old versions of DAs before replacing them with newer versions. Font/DA Mover 3.8 crashes if you don’t.
Find the CreateText DA on the bulletin boards. This jewel lets you create a DA from a text document. You can build your own handy reminder files of shortcuts, etc. and have it pop up as a DA. If memory serves me, there is a similar utility called DAMaker which does essentially the same thing, except that it uses the Clipboard, meaning you could construct a DA which included both graphics and text (make it in MacPaint and Copy it to the Clipboard).
Hardware Hints
If you have had floppy drive problems, consider buying only high-quality name-brand disks. Several victims have identified low-quality floppies as a possible cause of their drive problems.
If a disk is hopelessly not holding data, or not verifying, a last ditch repair is to wet a Q-tip with alcohol. Slide the disk shutter back and carefully rotate the magnetic media using the metal spindle on the back of the disk. (Don’t touch the media with fingers.) Look for blemish spots and carefully touch them up. Use a dry Q-tip before moving to the next blemish. If there are no actual scratches in the media, this may get you back up and running. Don’t ever rely on this disk for important data again.
If your disks sit in containers with the edge facing you, and if you use “fold over” labels which cover the spine or edge, consider writing the name of the disk vertically down the edge. This trick saves me plenty of time when I am looking for a specific disk. Of course it helps that I have assigned the color coded Sony labels by color -- red for DAs, blue for Utilities, yellow for Graphics, and so forth.
We’re not out of mousepad ideas yet! Tom Pittman reports that he uses the cardboard backs of paper tablets. One plus for this method is that the cardboard is just porous enough to pick up a lot of the oils from the palm of your hand, which would otherwise be picked up by the mouse ball and carried into the mouse’s stomach, intestines and heart.
Seikosha printer owners can get a cheap carrying case by buying a Radio Shack model EMP-130 or 132 case. Also, there is a technical support number for Seikosha. It is 1-800-422-7768. Seikosha’s SP1000-AP dot matrix printer is a $169 to $229 replacement for the ImageWriter. The only three complaints I have heard about the SP1000-AP so far are 1) it is slow, 2) it doesn’t like Word 3.0X too well (something to do with the un-Maclike [again?] way Word talks to printers) and 3) the manual is pig-Japanese/English, if you know what I mean.
General Hint Locker
Apple warns you not to use the Desktop Management INIT from Apple Share outside of AppleShare. It is not robust enough, according to Apple. It is tempting to try, because it speeds up your Mac some.
When you UnStuff an application with Stuffit, be sure to move it into a new folder, or out of its current folder and back in again. That’s so the Finder will know it is “on board.”
If you can’t Paste to the Scrapbook in MultiFinder, try opening the Scrapbook with the Shift key held down. That will load it into the current application where Paste will now work.
Once in a while I may repeat a hint. Provided that it isn’t just old age creeping up on me, you know it’s because the hint is important. One more time, do you have CopyScreen FKEY (sometimes known as ScreenToClip FKEY) installed? Why not? This little jewel gives you a cursor to draw a marquee around any part of the screen you like. The minute you finish the rectangle it is automatically taken to the Clipboard. How do you people live without it? I can’t!
If you are INIT-crazy, once in a while look over your collection and toss out those that are not really getting used. This applies to cdev’s too. Loading these little suckers adds to boot up time, and the more INITs installed, the greater the chance of some kind of conflict.
Finder Folio of Freebies
If you keep getting ID=10 bombs when quitting applications, that is a sign that the Finder, which should load now, is having trouble. Restart your Mac with a fresh System disk. Replace the Finder (that’s all you need to replace) on your normal startup disk or drive. You have to start with the System you are using as source for the Finder, since your Mac won’t let you replace the Finder (or System) on a disk which is currently “in charge.” (Thanks, Gold Coast Mac, Miami, FL.)
The Desktop file is experiencing severe problems with very large hard drives. The Mac’s Finder wasn’t programmed with 60 to 100 meg and up hard drives. Meanwhile, clean unused junk off your hard disk and rebuild the Desktop file frequently by holding down the Command and Option keys while you boot. Say yes when asked if you want to rebuild the desktop. The longer it takes, the worse you needed it.
GetInfo comments are seemingly harmless. I have remarked in the past how they don’t seem to add any bytes. That’s because they are clogging up the Desktop instead, gradually slowing you down. See if you can’t get along without them. Keep them on your master disk copies of things, but delete them as you move them to your hard disk. If you must have comments, use DiskTop’s comment facility, which creates its own file for comments.
If you handle your trash right, you can keep your Mac perking at top speed. Establish a folder called Trash next to the trashcan. Toss things into this folder instead of into the trashcan. Only empty the Trash folder into the trashcan when you need the space or before you shut down.
So you can’t erase a damaged disk. Naturally you have already held down the Command and Option keys and attempted to rebuild the disk’s desktop file. One other thing you can try is to reboot while holding down the Tab, Caps Lock, Shift, Option and Command keys. Your Mac should at least let you erase the disk now and reformat it correctly for you.
Do NOT discard used folders. Just toss away the contents. Rename the folders Empty Folder XXX, where the XXX is a number in a series of folder numbers. When you need a New Folder, get one from this stash and rename it. For some reason, this way of handling folders keeps your Desktop from slowing down. Can some hacker tell us why?
Would you like a quick way to get into MultiFinder? Use ResEdit, DiskTop or anything which can change the type of MultiFinder from ZSYS to APPL. Now use QuicKeys, which can recognize MultiFinder as an application with the APPL type, and assign a keystroke to open up MultiFinder. Finally, go in an change MultiFinder’s type back to ZSYS. The QuicKey will still work OK. Leave MultiFinder out on the Desktop or put it in OnCue for easy callup.
New Goodie Arrives on Scene
The new DAtabase™ DA is a screamer. It can build data bases in any format you wish. It will store clip art with searchable keywords. You can build an invoice form or a letterhead and print out letters and invoices from within any other program. You can import Scrapbooks full of clip art. You can convert your existing data bases into DAtabase format. You can import FKEYs and HyperCard buttons into the design of your database.
Here is a handy DAtabase tip to help you get a correctly proportioned “full page” database form (8-1/2x11 inches). Go into MacPaint. Don’t enter any data. Go to ShowPage, select the selection rectangle and click it twice to select the entire blank MacPaint document. Paste this blank page into the Scrapbook. Now, using DAtabase Builder, bring up a new blank database form. Specify New Background Picture.
If your blank MacPaint page is still on the Clipboard, it will paste into place, giving you a perfect 8x10 size blank page. If it isn’t on the Clipboard, go to the Scrapbook and copy it, then call for a New Background Picture. It will automatically paste. Once this trick has sized your database form, ignore the blank page. Just create text, fields, pictures, labels, etc. wherever you need them. To move down the screen and see the bottom part of the form, hold down the Command and Option keys and a four headed arrow appears and you can move the screen.
HyperCard Helpers
Do you want full-screen HyperCard? Or color HyperCard? Look for SuperCard from Silicon Beach, Plus from Foremost Software in West Germany or Apple’s next version, which should contain some stunning enhance ments.
Here’s a button which travels across the screen whenever nothing else is happening (idle condition). Create a new card button. Name it MOVER. Choose a suitable icon for it (I used a shark’s fin, which makes the shark swim ominously across my screen). Set the button to transparent and turn off the “show button name” checkbox. Now go to the card’s script and enter this script:
on idle
put the loc of button "MOVER"¬ into newLoc
put item 1 of newLoc into¬ newSpot
-- item 1 is the horizontal
-- location on the screen
if newSpot < 528 then
put newSpot + 3 into item 1¬ of newLoc
else
put -16 into item 1 of¬ newLoc
end if
set the loc of button "MOVER"¬ to newLoc
end idle
To make the button move faster, use a larger number in the “newSpot + 3” statement. To move the icon vertically, use item 2 of newLoc instead of item 1, and use 358 instead of 526.
By the way, the 526 is the number of pixels across the screen plus half the width (16) of an icon. The 358 is the same vertically. (Thanks, MacFUG News, University of Utah MUG.)
Here's a simple way to have a “popup” note in HyperCard. Create a New Button. Give it a name for the note you are going to write. Open this button's script editing window. Write yourself a nice long note. Now skip a few spaces and type this script:
on mouseUp
edit script of me
end mouseUp
Now, when you click on this button, your note appears. Notice that you didn't have to use double hyphen (--) in front of the note. HyperCard thinks you want to edit the script of the button whenever it is pressed. So it opens up and reveals your note. Fooled you, HyperCard!
There are a lot of HyperCard books out there. Which one should you buy? A couple of often repeated recommendations are for Danny Goodman's “The Complete HyperCard Handbook,” and for Carol Kaehler’s “HyperCard Power Techniques.” If you don’t want to buy a HyperCard book at all, print your own. What does that mean? Print out the HyperCard Help stack. It is a great resource for new HyperCard users.
Exactly what does HyperCard do during the infamous “idle?” It cleans up RAM, making sure the disk and RAM copies of what you are working on are identical. That means that when “La Bomba” comes to visit, you won’t lose much of anything. (Thanks, MadMacNews, Madison, WI MUG.)
Do you have any DAs with the same name as HyperCard menu items? Watch out! If you select a DA that has the same name, HyperCard will open, not the DA. It is time to rename the DA!
There are at least five ways to write protect a stack.
• put it on a CD-ROM disk
• lock the tab on the floppy containing the stack
• put it into a “read only” AppleShare folder
• check the lock-box in GetInfo...
• set the Can’t Modify in a stack script or in the Protect Stack dialog box.
If you developed your HyperCard stack with version 1.2.1, it will take at least that version to run the stack.
Try multiple visual effects in your “go to” scripts in HyperCard. Experiment! Here is one that looks nice:
visual dissolve to black
visual dissolve
Guess what? Command/Tab in FatBits in HyperCard chooses the browse tool and returns you to your full screen. Thanks, Bill! We needed that!
And if you like to get into FatBits a lot, here’s a helpful script:
on mouseUp
wait until the mouse is down
choose pencil tool
click at the clickLoc with¬ CommandKey
end mouseUp
Here’s how to use two styles or sizes of type in the same HyperCard field. Let’s say you want a bold word in the middle of a field of plain text. Make a new field. Specify the bold type style. Adjust the size of the new field and carefully position it smack on top of the plain text field, using the dotted lines to help you get it just right. Now adjust the type in the plain text field so that the overlying new field places the bold word in the exact right spot.
Do you have a whole lot of icons stored in your Home stack? It can take awhile for the icon selection box to show up. One solution is to go to the icon selection box, scroll until you see the first screenful of icons and take a screen dump of it. (CopyScreen or Screen-To-Clip FKEY is great for this.) Scroll down to the next screenful and repeat until you have dumps of all icons. Now go back to the icon selection box with your print out beside you. Click each icon in turn and note its ID number on your printout. Now, armed with this “directory” you can use the message box to assign the desired icon(s) without going anywhere near the icon selection box. Here is an example of a message box command to do this:
set the icon of card button¬
ID 2 to 257
-- in which 257 is the ID of the desired icon
One way to put a table of contents at the beginning of a HyperCard stack is to paste miniature pictures of cards on a Table of Contents Card. Now cover each mini-page with a transparent button and script the button to go to that “real” card. To get a mini-card picture to Paste, copy the card normally, then Paste while holding down Command/Shift/V. Voilá! A tiny card picture.
Here are HyperCard’s theoretical limitations, as listed by Apple Link:
• Number of stacks — limited only by disk space
• Maximum stack size — 4096 megabytes
• Number of cards in a stack — 16 million
• Card size — 512x342 pixels
• Graphics — black and white with opaque or transparent areas
• Text fields per card — unlimited
• Maximum text per field — 32,767 characters
• Buttons and links per card — unlimited
• Maximum script length — 30,000 characters
If you use the expression “put the target” in HyperCard, you get the description of the container. For example, such a script might return “card field ID 4” instead of the actual contents of card field ID 4. The right script to get the contents instead of a location description would be:
put value of the target
You can store information in the variable “it” in HyperCard. But always remember that the variable “it” is like a HyperCard clipboard. The next time HyperCard uses “get,” “answer,” “Ask,” or “Convert,” the contents of “it” get replaced. Name your own variables if you aren’t sure if “it” will be safe to use.
HyperCard 1.2.2 fixes some bugs, helps sound, helps the ImageWriter LQ, solves some memory problems and enhances international versions, among other things. However, Icon Review reports that this version may not work on a 1 meg Mac unless you cut down on the number of INITs and cdevs in the System Folder. Finally, 1.2.2 allows you to Cut/Copy and Paste fields including their text. The secret? Hold down the Shift key when it is time to Paste.
And Still More Hints
If the tour disk for your 1 meg Mac II won’t work. Set your monitor to black and white, 2 shades of gray, and turn off the RAM cache in the Control Panel. The tour needs every k of that 1 meg to work.
If your Mac Plus will not recognize a hard disk, you probably have one of the earliest of three ROM versions for the Plus. The fix is about $140 worth of chips. (Thanks, Washington Apple Pi.)
OK, so you have a Mac II with a color screen. And you have it on all the time to impress everyone. Wrong! To run applications which do not NEED color, switch back to black and white, 2 shades. It’s faster that way. To help make this a simple chore, get the FKEY Switch-a-Roo. It lets you toggle from black and white to color from the keyboard.
To make sure you install a clean copy of CE Software’s Vaccine INIT, select it first from the desktop and GetInfo... If it is a clean copy, it should say 11,875 bytes and have a creation date of March 19, 1988, 11:49 pm. (Sounds like my computing hours!) Any other size or date is suspect.
Graphics Gig
To get your “bug correction” version 1.0v4 of MacDraw II, you have to ask, so it must correct fairly exotic bugs. Also from Claris, MacWrite 5.0.1 for 512kE owners who have problems. Plus, SE or II owners don’t need it. It helps MacWrite’s spell checker work better with the 512kE’s. (Mouse Times, Santa Barbara, CA MUG.)
Illustrator artwork can be pasted as PICT. Press the Option key while copying the art. The resulting image is just like MacDraw PICT in its behavior. If you rotated text, or used some other exotic special effect, these features will not print correctly, however.
Click the mouse outside of a NuPaint dialog box several times in succession and the program “gives you the finger.” In other words, don‘t do that.
Desktop Publishing Made Easy
If you run into problems in your favorite desktop publishing program, don’t forget that it is possible to use an Exacto knife and rubber cement, just like you used to. Sometimes low-tech beats the crap out of high-tech solutions. Smart Maccers know when to use low-tech.
Typography experts tell us that 11 point type is far more readable than 10 point. Think about it. Yet, since none of the PostScript fonts come in 11 point, you have to either look at crappy output on the screen, or type in 12 or 10 and change to 11 at the last moment. Help, Adobe?
If your 300 dpi LaserWriter master is photographed at 50%, you get a 600 dpi master. This means that the 300 dpi master you use must be 200% of the desired final size. Try other percentages for even finer resolution.
Remember the trick I told you about for maximizing the quality of bitmap clip art used in PageMaker 3.0X? If you use the Place command, you can hold down the Command key while resizing the graphic and it jumps to graphic arts sizes at 96%, 72%, 48% and 24%. It only works with a Place command, so what do you do when the graphic is on the Clipboard or in the Scrapbook? Copy and Paste the image into DeskPaint DA or Canvas DA. Either one will let you save the image as a MacPaint document. Do so. Now you can return to PageMaker and use the Place command to pick up the image. Now the little Command key trick will work for you.
QuicKeys Tricks
When you build a sequence macro in QuicKeys, you “use up” a lot of keystrokes which you will probably never use once the sequence has its own macro key. So when building a macro, use really obscure keystrokes to define them — things like Command/Option/Shift/Control/q. Save the nice easy keystrokes for actions which will be used frequently, not for the parts and pieces of a sequence macro you are constructing.
Here’s another QuicKeys trick. Let’s say you are typing a table with 8-10 tabs, and some of the columns are times (8:17, 10:42, etc.) Also let’s say that you have to alter the table, making certain non-contiguous entries boldface. Here’s where QuicKeys comes to the rescue.
To boldface certain entries, you would normally mouse to the entry and highlight it. Now you need to use something like Command/Shift/B to get bold. That means you are alternating between the mouse and the keyboard in an awkward fashion. So set up a QuicKey Alias for Command/Shift/B. Assign it to the ` (tilde) key. Now you mouse to the entry, highlight, and with your hand still on the mouse, click the tilde key with the left hand (hope you’re right handed — if not, innovate).
For straight typing of the times of day, you can avoid the shift key by temporarily assigning the Shift/; keystroke for the colon (:) to a simple semicolon keystroke. Remember to delete this key when you finish the task at hand.
Of course boldfacing discontinuous entries and typing times may not be your problem, but this hint should open your mind to some possibilities.
Word Processing Corner
What is a soft return? When you want two words to stay together on the same line, hold down the Option key while typing the space between them. That’s a soft return. It will keep the two words together.
There are easier ways to get Super- or SubScript in Word 3.0X than going to the menus. Command/Shift/+ makes the next character you type (or the character you have highlighted) Super-Script. Command/ Shift/- (hey, you’re way ahead of me) makes it Sub-Script. To get back to normal, use Command/Shift/Spacebar. (Thanks, Mac Valley Voice, Burbank MUG.)
For a hurry-up count of the number of words in a document, figure about 170 words per kilobyte of memory used. Try this on a sample of your writing and then adjust the 170 to match your writing style.
To use your favorite Spellswell dictionary with Works 2.0, rename a copy of the dictionary MSWorksDict. Spacing is probably important.
A third party book about Works 2.0 is almost guaranteed. Why? The Lessons Guide that comes with Works 2.0 sucks. So there! For example, the new draw layer is not even mentioned.
