Watch out for products from Traveling Software (LapLinkMac). It’s an MS-DOS company with little knowledge of the Mac interface. They charged 92% of the LapLink price for an upgrade.
I partitioned my hard drive and then discovered that the System partition was too small. Rather than reinitialize (groan!) I unloaded a larger partition which contained applications, copied the System Folder over, then deleted it from its previous partition. Now I reloaded the applications in the smaller partition. Finally, I renamed the partitions, so the Mac would not be confused about what the startup partition was.
Now I had my larger System partition without reinitializing. The reason I would have had to reinitialize is that I set my maximum partition size and the actual partition size the same. This stupid move made it impossible for me to juggle partition sizes.
Read and learn! Be sure you make your maximum partition size larger than the actual, or you can’t make it larger!
Fast disk erasing: Hold down the Option/ Command./Tab keys while inserting the floppy. Much faster. Or, use Fast Formatter, select no verification and cut the time in half. Of course there is some risk in not verifying, but using only Sony disks, the risk is small.
The Mac IIfx will not work with many copy protected programs including a lot of games, and programs with European copy protection schemes.
System 6.05, which comes with the IIfx, will be useable by “all current Macs” according to MacWeek. Many bug fixes in 6.05, so it might bear watching. It also has some valuable add-ons, a lá System 7.0.
I personally doubt it will work below a MacPlus.
LaserWriters and LaserWriter Plusses can print at 1000 dpi. How do you do that? Buy a LaserMAX 1000 controller.
The catch? $7995. That’s eight grand, folks.
Double postcards, with a message on one part and a return address part, can be done easily in PageMaker, RSG, MacDraw, and other programs. Use a fingernail file to score the fold line.
If you use Style Sheets in Word, consider coding them a, b, c, d, etc. to reflect their precedence in the working environment. (Thanks, Bill Brown, Mouse Tales, Mid Michigan MUG.)
Important telephone number repeated: To find a MUG in your area, call 1-800-538-9696, ext. 500.
That’s at Apple.
Apple File Exchange will convert Apple Works files to MS Works simply and easily, without the use of Works to Works Translator as an “In between.”
After Dark’s 1.1 upgrade reduces INIT conflicts and has some great new modules, including Puzzle, which makes your screen a mess of moving tiles.
Bernoulli hard drives, which ride on a cushion of air, were bragged up in the March Resources from San Diego MUG. The Bernoulli is sturdy, and reliable as can be. The review blasts Syquest removables as “toaster ovens” for your cartridges.
Others warn never use a removeable as your main hard disk. OK, I’m impressed.
If you have sounds on an Apple IIGS, use Apple File Exchange to take them to the Mac. Now change type and creator (using DiskTop or the DA Info…) to FSSD and SFX!. If need be, you can change type and creator to other sets of characters to make them compatible with specific programs. Soundmaster uses FSD and SFX!, among other codes.
If you have QuarkXpress 2.12 and bemoan the fact that it only has 350 kerning pairs, call (303) 934-0784 and get your free fix.
To save paper when tiling in PageMaker or Quark, try fitting vertical tabloid-size pages on 3 sheets of landscape oriented legal paper.
Cheaper than Apple Care? Yes, State Auto Mutual Insurance Co., 518 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio 43216, has an Inland Marine policy at $10 per $1000 of coverage. Fire, theft, lightning are fully covered. Internal problems are subject to a $250 deductible. Wanna gamble? (Thanks, Washington Apple Pi.)
As I predicted, RAM has bottomed out in the low $60’s and is now headed upward. Expect the price to go as high as the $90’s per megabyte—but it will probably stay under $100.
Unless, of course, you buy your memory from Apple, and pay through the nose.
Another way to initialize disks fast is to use Fast Formatter and uncheck verification in the options menu. Of course that means what it says. The initialization is not verified. If you are using Sony disks, there isn’t too much risk. It takes 35 seconds instead of 1 minute 5 seconds.
If you are a serious Word user, subscribe to Inside Word from The Cobb Group, 9470 Bunsen Pkway, Suite 300, Louisville, KY 40220. It is loaded with meaty, practical Word tips and tutorials.
Here is a tip from an issue of Inside Word: To open every document with a ruler showing, go to Commands… and scroll to Open Document With Ruler. Click Do. That’s it. Neat, huh?
Here’s a hint from the always-valuable Weigand Report. To quickly determine which fonts were used in a PageMaker document, if you are using Suitcase, unload all its fonts. Now open the document and check the font menu. Those names appearing, including the grayed out ones, are the only fonts used in that document. (Thanks, Chuck Weigand.)
Here are a few presentation hints from Jean Mickelson of MadMacNews, from the Madison WI MUG.
• Keep the color scheme consistent throughout
• Put the good news high in the copy
• Don’t use red for bad news
• Display the competition in black, yours in color
• To “build an idea” through several slides, start with cool color and progress to hot
• Minimize the number of type styles; keep headings in one style, text in another
• Boxes are passé. Use rules above and below
• 3D charts may confuse. Use with great care
For slick ImageWriter platens, which cause problems, carefully remove platen, saturate a paper towel with Sanford TypeWriter Cleaner, wipe the platen thoroughly twice (use fresh cleaner for the second pass) and reinstall the platen. Remember to rub well. While you are at it, vacuum out the printer and lubricate the carriage rails with alight oil which is designed for phosphor-bronze bushings.
This is an elusive PageMaker hint. You already know that Command/Option/click toggles between Fit on Page and Actual Size. But did you know that Command/Option/Shift/click toggles from Actual Size to 200% and back? Add the Shift key to a 200% selection from the menu (not from a keystroke) gives you 400%.
PageMaker files get smaller when you Save As… But did you know that in some cases the files get even smaller if you Save As… two or three times? Try this when you really need a little more space on a disk.
Your last move in any PageMaker document should be a Save As… under the same name. Save space!
When you totally screw up the style of a paragraph in PageMaker, place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph and click again on the desired style. It will revert to that style.
I guess this one needs repeating. There is a way to group objects in PageMaker. One more time:
Select all items to be grouped (Shift/click them). Copy. Open Scrapbook. Paste. Close Scrapbook. Use the Place command (Command/D). Place the Scrapbook. Since the first page is your group, after placing it, unload the Scrapbook icon by clicking on any tool in the Toolbox.
Your set of items is now grouped with a single set of handles.
So there!
The addition of “ghost dragging” in Design Studio reminds me to tell you what ghost dragging is. Here is how it works. Grab an object and immediately start dragging and a bounding box appears, allowing you to position the item accurately. However, if, after clicking on the item, you pause with the mouse still held down, then drag, a “ghost image” of the object appears. This is handy for accuracy in certain kinds of placement, especially graphic elements.
Again, welcome LetraSet, to some more of PageMaker’s well-tilled soil.
Holy Smokes! Just found another Design Studio feature long present in PageMaker. Yes, you can now put locked guides on the master page. ‘Bout time.
Here’s another. Design Studio finally gives you template documents, just like PageMaker.
If, however, you think I do not lust for some of Design Studio’s features, you’re crazy. I’d love to have nudge, unlimited text rotation, flipping and automatic true fractions.
If you are into opening your Mac and don’t have a case-popper, substitute either a #4 letter clip or a one-inch spring clamp. They work.
Examine Word 4.0’s Commands… menu item. It is loaded with hundreds of goodies which can be executed from the keyboard if you like. Example: to add all available fonts to the Font menu, select List All Fonts from the Commands… menu and click Do.
Now look at all the other options under Commands…
What to do when a file refuses to copy? Try doing it with Disktop. That often works.
If you are a registered owner of an Ashton-Tate product (FullWrite Pro, FullImpact, FullPaint, etc.) be sure you are getting Update, a periodic newsletter full of hints and special offers. The current Update gives you Tycho Table Maker for only $12.00.
If you hear bitching, or plaudits, about various keyboards, take it with a grain of salt. Keyboard preference is very subjective, and what one typist likes, another one hates. Try one out, preferably for several hours. Or get a money back, like at Mac Connection.
Good mouse advice: use the one that came with your Mac until it breaks, then go buy a non-Apple substitute of your choice.
The Big Three Bomb Throwers: 1) more than one System on a hard disk, 2) INIT/cdev conflicts and 3) running MultiFinder in a 1 megabyte environment.
Viruses are probably reason #4.
I like Ehman. I recommend their drives on price, warranty and Ehman’s willingness to “make things right.”
By the way, Ehman isn’t to blame for this, but MacUser sent a letter to User Groups touting Ehman drives and monitors.
How come? I don’t like to see editorial and advertising in bed with each other.
Do you know what that little PMUSER.TXT file is in PageMaker? It’s the hyphenation exception list. Do you care? If you want to avoid hyphenating your company name, or some other word, open this file in a word processor and type in the word without hyphenation. Save. The updated PMUSER.TXT file will handle your new exception.
If most of the text you type into PageMaker is 10 point, why leave the automatic kerning at 12 points and above. Command/M takes you to where you can change it to “above 9 points.”
Never use script or highly ornate fonts in all caps. Makes them a bitch to read.
PageMaker automatically corrects for “typists’ syndrome.” That’s when you leave two spaces after each end of sentence, use inch and foot marks for quote marks, and use two hyphens for a dash.
Let’s say your tab leaders in PageMaker come out bold, and you wanted plain. That happens because the last character before the tab was bold. To correct this, type an Option/Space in plan immediately after the last bold character. Now tab. The leader will be plain, like you wanted.
Personal Publishing suggests you might like to do a custom “period space” leader for a nicer looking dotted leader.
Remember, you can use any character or set of characters as a leader. Does Zapf Dingbats ring a bell?
What is a thin space in PageMaker? Command/ Shift/T. Try it.
Command/Tab moves you to the next page in PageMaker. Add the shift key to back up instead.
Imagine taking a whole PageMaker page into Illustrator and working on it there. Save the page. Select Print. Ask for a single copy of that one page. Hold down Option and click Print. In the new dialog box, check “Print PostScript to Disk.” Also select the EPS option at the right side of the box.
Now Set File Name with a new name. Select Print again, exit to Finder, go to Illustrator and open up your document.
No, no, no! Copying text to the Scrapbook and back out again in PageMaker does not make the text a graphic. Only if you copy using the pointer, not the text, tool. Now if you Place the Scrapbook, the text is a graphic, but not unless.
You can “cram” one or two more characters on a line in most word processors by selecting the space between words and specifying a smaller font size for these spaces. It takes a lot of work, since you do it one space at a time.
Trying to tighten or space out a line using the Spacing menu item in PageMaker treats the entire paragraph, not just one line, so you may want to try the above hint in PageMaker too, when a single line needs a little adjustment.
Command/Option/Z in Word 4.0 returns the cursor to its last location, like after making a correction two pages back. You can trace the last three cursor positions by repeating this keystroke.
An easier solution exists on extended keyboards. You can use the 0 key on the numeric keypad to chase the cursor around the screen.
One more time: the Command symbol is Control/Q, and R, S and T give you the checkmark, diamond and Apple logo. Of course you don’t get those symbols until you change the font to Chicago.
If you use a service bureau for high output (non-Apple) laser printing, remember that the Apple logo is a registered trademark, and therefore, the Apple logo does not print out on non-Apple printers.
I found out the hard way, of course.
A free CMUG disk of the month to the first person sending in the page number in a Macintosh software manual of any kind telling you how to type ligatures. Be sure to include the manual name and the page number.
Command/click in a sentence in Word selects the entire sentence. But slide the cursor leftward until it turns into a Northeast facing arrow, then click, to select the entire document. If you slide too far left, the cursor is a Northwest facing arrow. That ain’t it.
Fastest disk eraser in the West: Put an initialized blank in the other drive and copy it over to the disk to be erased. Some say you save a minute this way. The best I can get is a 30 second savings. Why do you save time? Because no verifying is done using this method.
Do you hate the shade of gray in your scroll bars? Open ResEdit. Open System. Open PAT. Open the light gray pattern. If it is Pattern ID=17, go ahead and edit it, just like Fatbits. If it is not 17, don’t try it.
Copying graphics to the Scrapbook returns them to their original shape, so if you screw a graphic up, Copy, Paste to Scrapbook, Copy and Paste back into your document.
To make a Bezier curve in Canvas, use the polygon tool with the Option key held down. Click three points, then type Command/E and the curve appears.
You know that raised printing seen on a lot of business cards? Simulated engraving? To get it on LaserWriter printout, spray 5-10 coats of clear lacquer on the output. It puffs up the toner and looks like raised printing. Experiment and see.
The more I read about fonts, the more I can tell you are not paying attention. There is a simple way to get rid of the clutter of fonts and font driver icons in your System Folder.
Get the DA SetPaths. Put your font driver icons in a special folder anywhere you wish. Now use SetPaths and let it “Build A Path” to that folder. Presto, your Mac can find them there without any problems.
Quick rules for your hard disk: No more than 17 files per folder. Frequently used files near the top of the folder hierarchy, and don’t nest folders more than three deep.
