I am using a SANE INIT on a Mac ][ with 2 megs and an external 60 meg CMS hard disk. I have heard that the SANE INIT speeds things up. Although I have not run any real tests, I am sensing a perceptible increase in speed.
Any wisdom out there?
If your ImageWriter LQ has trouble printing at the top of bottom of pages, or is excessively noisy, check with your Apple dealer to see if you are eligible for an upgraded replacement at no charge. Be sure you have your serial number available before you call. The free upgrade is for printers bought between 8/11/87 and 3/7/89.
Thanks, Apple. Way to go!
If Comment 2.0 gives you problems, look for an updated AutoLoader v. 2.01, but only with a creation date of Jan 12, 1989. Earlier version dates do not correct a bug in it.
Deneba furnishes the latest AutoLoader if you send in your master disk labelled “To Customer Support/Comment Update.”
Other owners complain it takes a long time to get upgrade disks back from Deneba. Are you listening, Deneba? (Thanks, Mouse Times, Santa Barbara, CA MUG.)
For all those times when you want to move a graphic or a text block just a wee bit, with great accuracy, try Easy Access. Easy Access lets you move selected object one pixel at a time in any direction. Command/Shift/Enter puts you into Easy Access mode. Now use the keypad to nudge the object one pixel at a time.
The 2 and 8 move up and down, 4 & 6 are right and left, and 1,3,7&9 move on the diagonals.
The 5 key presses the mouse and the 0 key locks the button down. The decimal point releases the mouse. A tap on the key nudges the object one pixel. Hold down the key and it speeds across the screen.
Lasson an object, then use Easy Access to adjust the position. You might even think about a QuicKey macro to use this feature.
Why limit yourself to ten screen dumps (Screen 0 through Screen 9)? Use DiskTop to rename your dumps as you create them. Makes it easier to find the one you want, too.
If you can’t access Compact Stack in the File menu of HyperCard, it is because you are at the Browse or Typing level. Hold down the Shift key and pull down the File menu and Compact Stack will again be available to you.
Didja ever wish for a Group command in PageMaker? Here’s a partial solution example. Import a logo without any text. Add the text in PageMaker. Select the logo and the text (hold the Shift key down while making your selections). Copy or Cut the group to the Clipboard and Paste it into the Scrapbook. Return to PageMaker and use the Place command to import the Scrapbook. It will be grouped.
Since the Place command gets the entire Scrapbook, you will have to toss away the unneeded pages.
But the Place command is the secret. Copy and Paste will not do a thing for the grouping process.
Would you like another 1.45 megabytes on your SE with an internal 20 meg hard disk? Easy. If you are never going to use A/UX (Apple’s UNIX OS).
Use Apple’s HD Setup 2.0. Back up all your hard disk files. Select the hard disk and click Remove. Now click and drag the resulting gray area until the entire white/gray area is gray. Stop when the number says 20,454kb. Select Macintosh Volume and click OK. Your Mac will now mount the disk. When it is through, click Done and Quit. Copy your files back onto your larger hard disk. (Thanks, Steve Black and MacGuide, April 1989.)
OK, no more hints! The ultimate hint just appeared in April MacUser. What was it? If you like to Mac away with your keyboard in your lap, put Velcro on the bottom of the keyboard and on your clothes. Or, if you are wearing old clothes, put beeswax on the bottom of the keyboard.
All right, already. Now, I have heard it all!
For closer spacing of “By Name” items, open LAYO 128 in Finder with ResEdit. Change Line Spacing (right below the Window Rect item) from 16 to 10, 11 or 12. Save the changes as you exit ResEdit.
Do you know what a “pull quote” is? It’s a phrase from an article which is enlarged and displayed in the middle of a column or a page as a graphic element to heighten interest in the story.
For easy pull quotes in PageMaker, select and Copy the desired phrase or quote. Paste it in the pasteboard white area outside the page. Change type size, style and font as desired. Cut the quote. Paste it into the Scrapbook. Now, using the Place command (not Paste) position the quote. Since it is now a graphic, you can wrap text around it, resize it, or distort it. (Thanks, CompUShare, Bothell, WA.)
When converting MS Works 1.0 docs to 2.0, BE SURE you use a copy of the 1.0 document. Works 2.0 has a reputation for trashing or locking up 1.0 files during conversion. By this time, a fixed 2.0 may be available. Check and see. Works 2.0 also very much likes to run in a 6.0.2 environment, although it should work with 5.0 and later System versions.
Did you put a page number in MS Word where you now wish you had not? Go to Page Preview. Select the margins icon. Drag the page number off the page. It’s gone. (Thanks, Penn Printout, U of PA MUG.)
YAWTLD (Yet Another Way To Label Disks). DuraLabel from Suite 8244, 30100 Town Center Drive, San Diego, CA. It’s erasable plastic with special marking pens and erasers. $12.95 for 50 labels, a pen and an eraser.
You can’t remember where the heart symbol is in Zapf Dingbats? Of course you could use KeyCaps or BigCaps. You could also use the keyboard chart for Zapf Dingbats Mouse Droppings published months ago.
Here’s an even better idea! Make a chart containing all four keyboards (unshifted, shifted, option and option shifted) no larger than one MacPaint screenful, so it will fit in your Mac’s window. Carefully place all the Dingbats in their proper keyboard boxes. Now Copy this graphic to the Clipboard.
Now open the application DA Maker (from Dreams of the Phoenix) and it will let you make a DA out of the chart you just made. Install the DA, and when you need to know where a character is, pull down the DA and take a peek.
Dreams of the Phoenix may be out of business now, so getting DA Maker might be a problem. Any information out there?
Locked disks do not get viruses. Hint, hint hint!!!
Don’t believe everything you read! Many Mac magazine columnists complain about the large size of PageMaker files. That’s because they don’t know how to slim them down.
I do.
To learn why PageMaker files get big, pull down the File menu to the sixth item down—Revert. This feature lets you “revert” to the last Save you executed.
Now, if you are sure that you no longer need to revert to a previously saved version, you can reclaim all the space PageMaker takes up with the files necessary to reproduce the reverted version.
To reclaim the space, “Save As…” the document to the SAME disk with the SAME name as the original document. This replaces the document with the revert file with a new version with no revert file information. Your document will be smaller—in some cases dramatically so. But you won’t be able to revert to a previous Save any longer.
Fair enough? Quit bitching. There is a good reason for the large documents PageMaker creates and an easy fix, too.
If you have one of the new 1.44 meg SuperDrives, do NOT use those yellow plastic inserts to protect the drive in transit. The SuperDrive has built-in safeguards, and the yellow inserts can actually damage the drive.
If you are into genealogy, Personal Ancestor File is getting good reviews. It is very Mac-like and can be learned with only minimal manual reading. (Must be a Macintosh program.) $35 on your credit card by calling 1-800-247-3892.
It has been reported that MS Word 4.0 prompts users with a warning that too many fonts are being used, even when only 1 or 2 fonts are used in a document.
No one has “proved” that Word is the culprit, but it looks like it.
Is this the “first” Word 4.0 bug? Or will Microsoft be able to point the finger elsewhere?
Bill Gates says there will be no bugs. Sure, and the Pope is getting married next week!
Here is a quick guide to graphic objects and patterns in HyperCard:
• Card buttons and fields hide, or are on top of, card graphics
• Background buttons and fields are hidden by card graphics
• Card graphics cover background objects
• Background graphics cover nothing, since they are the bottommost layer
• To show objects, you must work around them when using graphics on the card layer.
(Thanks, Hands On Macintosh.)
What happens when you Paste a button, field, card or background into the Scrapbook? Lucky you! The Scrapbook retains all the properties, including scripts, icons, graphics. You won’t “see” the icons on the Scrapbook page, but they are there.
What LaserWriter driver are you using? The current standard is 5.2, but 6.0 is now available for those who 1) use a lot of fonts or 2) want to output halftones on a PostScript printer, or 3) want to print text only documents a bit faster.
The 6.0 driver is on the Apple Color Disk, along with some other new System files. Apple says use 6.0.3, not 6.0.2, with the contents of the Color Disk.
The disk is available at Apple dealers, and through MUG of Corvallis (when it arrives—at press time it had not).
To be sure you don’t lose library objects in MacDraw or ClarisCAD, make your library documents into stationery documents. Then, to use them, open them as Libraries.
If you don’t do it this way, any object you delete in a document will be removed from your Library as well.
For the uninitiated, libraries are a way to store elements (chairs, tables, couches, mirrors, sinks, cabinets) for repeated use in drawings.
SuperPaint 2.0 has an 8-pixel square eraser. To access it, hold down the Option key while you erase.
Holding down the Command key while lassooing in SuperPaint 2.0 selects no white space, even if that space is totally enclosed by pixels.
There is a very complete article on font ID conflicts in the May issue of Personal Publishing.
If you are shopping hard drives, don’t forget access time. You’ll see figures like 40, 28, 20 and 16, stated in milliseconds. The lower the number, the better. Try for something under 20 ms if you want fast. In the 20’s is medium, and 40 and up is S-L-O-W.
They’re all faster than floppies, however.
Your first speed-up investment should not be an accelerator board. The best way to work faster on a Mac is to know your application and your computer perfectly. That is a better way to work faster than any accelerator board ever devised.
Here’s another way to get eps images into page layout programs. Create or locate an eps graphic saved as EPSF. Open your page layout program. Now open Art Browser DA, found on most bulletin boards. Open the EPSF file. Copy, close and Paste into your page layout program. This method retains the 300 dpi nature of the graphic.
Word 4.0 lets you open SuperPaint and MacPaint documents from within Word. You can also convert a text selection—a table, for instance—into a graphic, which you can then run text around.
Imagine working on a text document, opening a MacPaint document, copying the image and pasting it directly into Word 4.0.
Whit Patrick of MUGPort, Newport, OR, says yes, you can constrain movement in ReadySetGo 4.5, even if the Shift key doesn’t do it. Turn on guides in the Special menu. Now, under Preferences, set snap strength to the number of pixels of your choice. The default is 5, which is probably good enough. Now pull a guide over or down to the edge of what you want lined up. Let your object(s) snap to this line.
Now you can also slide objects left and right or up and down along the snap line or guide. If your work is very critical, RSG can specify location down to 1/10,000th of an inch.
