PD ROM 1/PD ROM Volume I - Macintosh Software from BMUG (1988).iso/Electronic Messages/USEnet Digests/USEnet Vol. 4/USEnet 4.62

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List (Unformatted): USENET MAC DIGEST V4 #62


Usenet Mac Digest     Thursday, May 12, 1988         Volume 4 : Issue 62

Today's Topics:
     Apple sample SCSI disk driver
     The Last Screensaver (2 messages)
     Electronic design on MacII
     Need a MS Word Patch
     Re: Goin' Crazy on a Mac, or, How I Love MPW "GlobalData"
     Mac II document icon colors
     keeping multiple machine environments in synch (3 messages)
     Why I couldn't choose Imagewriter
     What are good security (tie-down) devices for Mac II's?
     wireless mice?
     SoftPC
     Fax for the Mac
     Re: Seeking extended keyboard for MacPlus
     Bibliography databases?
     TeXtures 1.01 info
     LaserWriter SC driver 1.0
     Re: Dual Video Card Problem
     Re: LSC Printer Driver Info
     Re: Goin' Crazy on a Mac, or, How I Love MPW "GlobalData" (3 messages)
     Spooling a PICT2 (2 messages)
     Quickdraw speed (2 messages)
     Re: Questions about Macsbug
     Re: TESetStyle bug
     Re: Full path name of a file

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (T.W."Tim" Smith, Knowledgian)
Subject: Apple sample SCSI disk driver
Date: 6 May 88 21:29:09 GMT
Organization: Suction and Pressure Lab, California Institute of Lawsonomy

I was looking at the non-functioal sample SCSI disk driver from Apple.
Why is it non-functional?  A friend and I implemented a driver of our
own, refering to the Apple one when we needed help, and our driver seems
to work quite well.
--
Tim Smith                               [e-mail]
"I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the
                       kind of person I'm preaching to" -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs


------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: The Last Screensaver
Date: 5 May 88 17:19:00 GMT


With all these screensavers in the works and coming out, I would like to
see the screensaver to end all screensavers, at least under multifinder.


- One screensaver could be customizable to launch a designated
  application which would do the fancy graphics.   - The screensaver
could have an optional fade-to-black or let the application
  do its own blackout.   - The signal to quit the screensaver might be
specified as
  mouse-motion, mouse-button, any key, some particular key, etc.   - If
possible, the designated application could be preloaded at startup.

Since all the details of how to make the screensaver work with multiple
screens, background processes, etc, are difficult to get right and since
everyone wants their own fancy graphics display while saving the screen
and since it is difficult to write much in an init anyway, someone
should do the init part right and let the rest of us do the graphics.
Is this a reasonable possibility?  Is there a way to make this work with
other finders and substitutes?
--
Dan LaLiberte
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
[e-mail]


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Oliver Steele)
Subject: Re: The Last Screensaver
Date: 7 May 88 14:36:08 GMT
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

I was just thinking about this when your posting came, and what I'd
thought most useful would be a CDEV that presents, in a Sound CDEV style
list, all the named SCSV resources in itself or the System file (the
latter so that Suitcase can be used to specify additional files).  Each
SCSV could contain a procedure
        enum {SCSVCheck, SCSVInit, SCSVDispose, SCSVUpdate};
        pascal long SCSV(int message, long ref, [C]GrafPtr port, Rect *bounds);
which, on a Check command, returned true if it could run on the selected
machine (so that color drawing programs could turn themselves off on
monochrome macs and IIs in 1-bit mode), and on an Update command, redrew
the specified rectangle.  Init, Dispose, the ref parameter, and the
return value could be used for storage, the same as a CDEV has (see
IM5).

I might write this someday if nobody else does, so tell me if you're
doing it instead.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Oliver Steele                                    ...!decnet!mcnc!unc!steele
 UNC-CH                                                    [e-mail]

 "We made it structured, and now it doesn't work." -- Brice Tebbs


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mikael Eriksson)
Subject: Electronic design on MacII
Date: 5 May 88 08:15:26 GMT
Organization: University of Lulea, Sweden


 A while ago I asked for information on electronic design and simulation
programs that works on the MacII. I promised a summary so here it is. (A
little late unfortunatly.)
--
>From @enea.se:[e-mail] Sat Mar 26 17:16:12 1988

At UCI, there are some undergraduates that just completed version 1.0 of a
program called Digital Magic.  It is a very good circuit simulator, but still
needs some improvements (like timing diagrams and saving subcircuits).
However, it does work on a Mac II and is very good in spite of the things
that are missing.  For more information, please contact one of the authors:

Sailesh Ranchod  [e-mail]

Hope this helps!

Mark Nagel      [e-mail]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ Digital Magic was also mentioned by [e-mail] who gave
two other addresses to reach the authors on: [e-mail],
[e-mail]
I hawe written and asked about Digital Magic but I have not gotten
  any answers.]

>From: Ray Curry <[e-mail]>

I have used Logic Works and Design Works (a newer and more advanced version
from Capilano (Canada) on a Plus and just recently on a Mac II.  I find it
satisfactory and it allows subcircuits.  Subcircuits are how complex devices
are added to the library.  Recently they associated themselves with Douglas
Engineering in the LA area.  Douglas has a board layout program that now
takes the outputs from Logic Works or Design Works and produces artwork.
Douglas will take a floppy and two weeks later send you a board.  Both
Douglas and Capilano are selling complete packages.  I haven't used the
board layout package yet since its pretty expensive.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mikael,
      This may not be of much help, but there is a company called
Bishop Graphics (location in Canoga Park)
that put out a program called Quick Circuit.  I have a demo disk
here, but I think it is an unathorized copy, its not mine.
It won't let me do much but it will do PCBoard layout design.
I know they have other material published, so you may want to
look into it.  The phone number is 1-800-222-5808 (Canoga Park)
They do send out catalogs.  I should have one in hand this week.

Steve Gerber  Purdue Univ. Computing Center - Micro Repair 317/494-1787 ext 242
   ARPA:    [e-mail]
   UUCP:    j.cc.purdue.edu!ae3
FidoNet:    Opus 201/1          COMPUSERVE: 72467,3145
---------------------------------------------------------------
>From: Ken Hillen <[e-mail]>
I use   DesignWorks
by:     Capilano Computing,
        501 - 1168 Hamilton St.,
        Vancouver, B.C.,
        Canada, V6B 2S2
        [phone]

This package does full schematic capture as well as simulation.
It has a device librarian which allows you to put a circuit into a reusable
component.  They also make a PAL compiler which produces JED files (for
programming devices) as well as an input file to DesignWorks.  DesignWorks
creates a netlist which is directly compatable with Douglas Electronic's
circuit board design tools.  It will also generate a parts list.  They also
have available large libraries of 'off the shelf' components.  DesignWorks
runs on the Mac II, runs under multifinder (simulates in the background)
and supports color.  I have been very satisfied with their products and service.

Ken Hillen

-------------------------------------------------------------
--
Mikael Eriksson  ([e-mail])  or  ...enea!sm.luth.se!mikael
.........       From the US         ..!uunet!enea!sm.luth.se!mikael
Give me source or give me death...


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Peter Steele)
Subject: Need a MS Word Patch
Date: 6 May 88 23:01:31 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Acadia Univ., Nova Scotia

This is really a followup to my posting regarding how to print a
LaserWriter compatible draft copy on the ImageWriter (i.e., one that
uses the same "aspect ratio" as the LaserWriter). Normally, lines are
"longer" when printing a document on the ImageWriter that was created
for printing on the LaserWriter, which can really mess up formatting,
especially when unsuspecting thesis students are concerned. Someone
pointed out that the ImageWriter's "Tall Adjusted" setting will scale an
imagewriter prinout to match the laserwriter's. I tried this and it does
seem to work. I had used this option before when I wanted my circles to
come out as circles when printing on the imagewriter. It never clicked
that this would alos work to solve the laserwriter compatibility
problem. I tried looking this option up in various manuals and none
describe this as being used for this purpose. The Mac user's manual
doesn't describe it at all, and the MS Word manual describes it only
briefly.

Now that I know what this is for, I want to set Word so that it is in
this mode by default. As it is now, the only way to turn this mode on is
to open a document, select Print, click on Tall Adjusted, click on OK to
start printing, and then click Cancel (unless you want to get a print
out at this point as well). Back in Word, the paragraphs automatically
adjust to reflect this "Tall Adjusted" setting. However, the ruler does
not--you have to hide the ruler and turn it back on before the scaling
takes affect. In my investigations with ResEdit, it does not appear that
Word keeps a print dialog as a resource, so I can't flag Tall Adjusted
that way. Its print dialog appears to be coded "in-line". It also
ignores the system's own Page Setup setting for Tall adjusted (as well
as the 50% reduction option). So even if I set the system's print setup
to be Tall Adjusted, when I run Word and check under Print, it says Tall
Adjusted is off (which is confirmed by printing).

So how can I make Word use Tall Adjusted by default? I don't relish
having to explain to users how to do it in the current setup. Its even
worse that they have to do it for every document, and their bound to
forget sometime and print out a mess on the laserwriter. Why would you
even want to use anything but Tall Adjusted anyway? Other than more
characters per line, I can see no reason not to use Tall Adjusted.

Any comments, advice, or whatever, on this subject would be appreciated.
--
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 [phone]x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia  Internet: [e-mail]


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (David Phillip Oster)
Subject: Re: Goin' Crazy on a Mac, or, How I Love MPW "GlobalData"
Date: 7 May 88 18:03:24 GMT
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Clive Steward)
writes:
>for this.  In particular, the very useful program generators yacc and
>lex generate data arrays, which are used for finite state machines.

So, write the data arrays to a resource using a tool. Then in your
actual program, just as you init your unitinitialized arrays with
NewPtr, you init your initialized arrays with:

   fooarray = (FooArrayType) * GetResource('GNRL', 128);

Simple, no? just make the resource purgable and locked, and this gives
you now problem.  Sure it is a pain that the compiler didn't do it for
you, but when the workaround takes one line, why bitch?
--
Copyright (c) 1988 by David Phillip Oster, All Rights Reserved
--- David Phillip Oster            --When you asked me to live in sin with you
Arpa: [e-mail] --I didn't know you meant sloth.
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Jan Harrington)
Subject: Mac II document icon colors
Date: 7 May 88 14:34:42 GMT
Organization: Scholastech, Inc., Waltham, Mass.

It's nice to be able to color code documents and their applications.
However, it's also a drag to have to use the Color menu every time a
create, for  example, a new MacDraw document. Is there a utility out
there that will tell the Mac II to automatically color icons of a given
file and/or creator type?
--
Jan Harrington, sysop
Scholastech Telecommunications
UUCP: ihnp4!husc6!amcad!stech!sysop or allegra!stech!sysop
BITNET: JHARRY@BENTLEY

********************************************************************************

        Miscellaneous profundity:

                "No matter where you go, there you are."
                                Buckaroo Banzai
********************************************************************************



------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: keeping multiple machine environments in synch
Date: 8 May 88 02:12:50 GMT
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department

It is getting really difficult trying to keep a few different machines
in synch in terms of each having the same installed software and copies
of the same working documents (home & office machines).  Does anyone
have any good suggestions or know of a program that will help with this?
 There are a few things that make this non-trivial:

- Find Since ... (e.g. with DiskTop) doesn't work, since newly copied
files keep their original write dates (which could be quite a ways into
the past).  So you have to keep a directory snapshot in some manner to
be able to detect what has changed.

- I thought incremental backups would be a way to do this, but with
DiskFit at least I can't make it restore a save set without first
deleting and reinitializing the target disk.  Also, you want to
incrementally grab every change that was made, not since the last
backup, but since the last time you propogated changes to other
machines, so you need to be able to specify this.

- Also, with different machines, some individualization is necessary.
For example, choosen printers are different, baud rates differ, folders
differ.  In the future other differences may be based on different
amounts of core memory, disk space, appletalk connections, activities
done only at one place and not the other.  Thus, some way is needed of
making individual changes and NOT having those propogate to other
machines as they are updated.

Does anyone have any suggestions for technique or sofware packages to
aid with this?  Right now I just try to be careful and systematic, but
that fails at times.
--
thanks,
Margot Flowers   [e-mail]   ...!{ucbvax|ihnp4}!ucla-cs!flowers


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Walter Ray Smith)
Subject: Re: keeping multiple machine environments in synch
Date: 8 May 88 07:44:08 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon

The CMU Computer Science Dept. has had hundreds of networked Unix
workstations for several years now, and we have exactly the same
problem.  Different machines need different configurations.  Some things
are centrally controlled, while others are dictated by individual
preference.  Packages are constantly being updated, especially those
created locally.  The machines are no longer in a single room staffed by
operators, but distributed around the campus in locked offices.

This situation became enough of a nightmare to generate at least one
Ph.D. thesis and a complex system called SUP (Software Update Package?).
 SUP is a daemon process that visits each machine daily in the wee hours
of the morning and makes it conform to the appropriate configuration
standard.  It takes the place of the operator of times past who would
fix each machine individually when a package was updated.

Now that Macs are being networked together in vast numbers, it seems
that a SUP-like program for the Mac might have a market opportunity.  It
would take a lot of effort to make it comprehensible to the average
part-time "LAN manager", but could save a lot of time for users.
Imagine, when a new LaserWriter driver comes out, installing it on a
single Mac, pressing a button, and distributing it to every appropriate
Mac in the building, all at once.

- Walt


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Duane Williams)
Subject: Re: keeping multiple machine environments in synch
Date: 10 May 88 03:47:33 GMT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI

No, Walt, SUP makes the machines conform to the latest installed
configuration, whether or not that is an appropriate configuration.  SUP
will install buggy or broken software as readily as improved software,
and has done so on a number of occasions.  People have prepared demos
the night before the event and come in the next morning to discover that
incompatible system software has been automatically installed on their
machines by SUP. I would not be so enthusiastic as you are about
recommending such a system for networked Macs.

Duane Williams
--
uucp: ...!seismo!cmucspt!me.ri.cmu.edu!dtw
arpa: [e-mail]


------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Why I couldn't choose Imagewriter
Date: 8 May 88 02:22:32 GMT
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department

People may recall my postings asking for help on why my machine wouldn't
let me choose imagewriter, which I wanted since I had just gotten a
Grappler.  I got a few good suggestions.  The answer turned out to be
pretty simple, and I thought people would be interested.

The grappler was not involved.  Some time earlier I had locked my system
file in a fit of virus-paranoia during software testing, before vaccine
was out.  Unfortunately, I was accustomed to systems which warned you if
you tried to write a file which was write-protected, and assumed the Mac
would be the same.  It was not.  Chooser would blithly let me choose
what I wanted, but fail to warn me when the change was not recorded.
Thus, symptoms that there was a problem (problems finding the printer
driver file) were separated from their cause.

I'm posting this so that others are alerted to the lack of warning
message in this type of situation.

Margot Flowers   [e-mail]
...!{ucbvax|ihnp4}!ucla-cs!flowers


------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: What are good security (tie-down) devices for Mac II's?
Date: 8 May 88 05:22:43 GMT
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department


   Has anyone heard of a good way to secure a Mac II and its monitor so
it won't be stolen? I already know about cables, but these don't solve
the problem of someone poping up the Mac II's easy-open top and making
off with some hardware inside the machine.

   Willard Korfhage

   ARPA : [e-mail]
   UUCP : {ucbvax,ihnp4,randvax,trwrb!trwspp,ism780}!ucla-cs!korfhage


------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: wireless mice?
Date: 8 May 88 07:27:27 GMT
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department

Are there any wireless mice which will work with the Mac?
--
thanks,
Margot Flowers   [e-mail]   ...!{ucbvax|ihnp4}!ucla-cs!flowers


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Rob Beckham)
Subject: SoftPC
Date: 9 May 88 05:19:33 GMT
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas

I had a chance to see SoftPC run on a MacII.  This SOFTWARE (no card)
emulates an IBM PC-XT.  This is a wonderful piece of software.  The
program even makes the sounds of a PC starting up.  We ran a variety of
software.  From color games to PC comm programs.  It runs DOS 3.3. The
Mac II runs it with full color.  At one point we had a Mac II acting
like a PC, running the program readmac.com reading Macpaint files.  This
thing is supposed to be able to run Flight Sim.  I think it is sharp
that the Mac can now run IBM software, while running Mac software!


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Tomas Prybil)
Subject: Fax for the Mac
Date: 8 May 88 11:28:59 GMT
Organization: The Royal Inst. of Techn., Stockholm

Hi!

Im looking for  a fax for the Macintosh. They havent reached the swedish
market yet, so im asking anyone out there to send me some places where i
can get some information about it.

Tomas Prybil


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Herb Poppe)
Subject: Re: Seeking extended keyboard for MacPlus
Date: 9 May 88 14:40:53 GMT
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder, CO

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Ken Mitchum) writes:
>Shifting keyboards between the Mac II and SE at work and Mac Plus at home
>is about to drive me bonkers. Does anyone know of a keyboard for the Mac Plus
>that has real control and escape keys?

"Olduvai Corp. makes the ADBridge. It is a hardware interface that lets
users connect older devices (such as trackballs, tablets, joysticks,
etc.) to a Macintosh SE and II and allows 512KE and Mac Plus users to
use the "new" ADB mice and keyboards (including the Apple Extended
Keyboard)."

"An accompanying software utility provides automatic configuration and
allows for users of older machines to address the function keys
available on many Apple Desktop Bus keyboards."

        $129 retail
        Olduvai Corp.
        7520 Red Rd.
        Ste. A
        South Miami, FL 33143
        [phone]

"DataDesk International makes the Mac-101 Enhanced Keyboard; a
full-function keyboard for all Macintoshes."

        DataDesk International
        7651 Haskell Ave.
        Van Nuys, CA 91406
        [phone]
        [phone]

So says "The Macintosh Buyers Guide". I don't know anything else about
these products. Standard disclaimers apply.
--
Herb Poppe      NCAR                         INTERNET: [e-mail]
[phone]  P.O. Box 3000                   CSNET: [e-mail]
                Boulder, CO  80307               UUCP: [e-mail]


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mark Interrante)
Subject: Bibliography databases?
Date: 9 May 88 14:36:58 GMT
Organization: UF CIS Department

I am looking for a database which is adept at handling bibliographys and
notes on the accompanying papers.  It should have the ability to export
the results to macwrite/MCWORD.  I have seen a product called
"Professional Bibloigraphic System" and I head that it had recently been
renamed "Prolite" Does anyone have expereinces with this product?
Thanks.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| That government is best which governs least, because its people            |
| discipline themselves. |                              - Thomas Jefferson   |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Mark Interrante                                            CIS Department  |
| [phone]                                      University of Florida  |
| Internet:  [e-mail]                   Gainesville, FL  32611  |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Irvin Lustig)
Subject: TeXtures 1.01 info
Date: 9 May 88 15:41:00 GMT
Organization: Princeton University, NJ

Addison-Wesley has transferred the rights to Kellerman and Smith the
authors of TeXtures.  Their address is:
        Kellerman and Smith
        534 SW Third Avenue
        Portland, Oregon  97204
        USA
        503/222-4234
        Telex 9102404397 Keller Smith
        Toll free (USA) 1-800-622-8398

1) Version 1.01 works with LW 5.0 and supports typesetting in backround.
2) They sell LaTeX now (I don't have it)

        -Irv Lustig
        Assistant Professor
        Dept. of Civil Engineering and Operations Research
        Princeton University
        [e-mail]





------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (William Lipa)
Subject: LaserWriter SC driver 1.0
Date: 10 May 88 00:32:11 GMT

Does anyone know why the 25% reduction option is not offered with the
driver for the LaserWriter SC? I used this option all the time with
old-style LaserWriters. For example, this is the only way I know of to
print a document from MacDraw at 300dpi. (You do this by drawing
everything 4 times as large and then reducing it 25%).

Bill Lipa [e-mail]


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Ed Tecot)
Subject: Re: Dual Video Card Problem
Date: 9 May 88 22:48:13 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA

[ The following is from Art Cabral, who wrote the Palette Manager. ]

Here are some thoughts in response to Eric Olson's comments on
explicitly ordered indexes, the Palette Manager, and the Color Manager.
(Nice explanation, Eric; your analysis was very good.) Here are a couple
of tricks Eric didn't mention that are not well tested but which should
work.

First, it is possible (although clumsy) to arrange for explicit indexes
on each device and still use the Palette Manager model.  To start with,
when your application becomes active (under MultiFinder or SingleFinder)
call the Color Manager routine SetEntries to set an explicit color
environment on each device where your window(s) are drawn.  You'll have
to do some work to figure this out, namely by intersecting the device
rects with your window's global portRect.  We consider it discourteous
to simply change all device's color tables whether your window uses them
or not.  Then, make sure the palette in your window exactly matches the
ordering of the 'clut' you used in the SetEntries calls.  Then force an
ActivatePalette on your window. The Palette Manager will examine each of
the devices and discover that the environment is sufficient and not
cause any changes, so your indexes end up in the right order and
everyone is happy, right?

Almost.  You've lost updates in the background.  This is a problem when
you are running under MultiFinder.  The trick is to get the Palette
Manager to generate the updates for you.  So, during the SetEntries
call, use a 'clut' that is almost correct, say one color (not black or
white) is just a few insignificant bits away from what you need, and let
the Palette Manager correct that for you, causing updates for everyone
else on that device that needs them.  This requires using a palette that
has all entries pmTolerant with tolerance of 0.  Make sure your 'clut'
keeps white at entry 0 and black as the last entry or Color QuickDraw
will exhibit some strange behavior.  Also, try to avoid using two colors
which match exactly, especially white or black.

We hope to provide an alternate, more straightforward method for
generating this sort of behavior, but it requires some changes in the
Window Manager so you won't see it in the immediate future.  At the same
time we hope to provide a better method of palette prioritization so the
same scheme will work when devices of different depths are encountered.
Stay tuned to a system disk near you.  In addition, stay on the lookout
for a TechNote from MacDTS which describes many interesting changes and
additions to the Palette Manager (such as the Application Palette and
the routine CopyPalette).

[ End of Art's comments ]

>There are other problems with multiple screens:  the most annoying is that
>Pop-Up menus ALWAYS appear on the screen with the MenuBar.  Apparently the
>Menu Manager doesn't know how to deal with multiple screens.

It does now.  This has been fixed for System 6.0.

                                                _emt


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Frederick Wamsley)
Subject: Re: LSC Printer Driver Info
Date: 7 May 88 20:33:04 GMT
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA

See Earle Horton's article in the November '87 MacTutor.

The session on printing at the Developer's Conference  brought up some
interesting information about writing printer drivers.  The  Apple folks
said that Mr. Horton's article was correct for now but things may change
in the near future.  The innards of Apple's printing interface haven't
been well documented, because they keep changing.
--
Fred Wamsley  {dual,hplabs}!well!alcmist;well![e-mail];
CIS 72247,3130; GEnie FKWAMSLEY;ATT Mail fwamsley; USPS - why bother?
"Last year they got food poisoning.  This year they got Bill Gates."


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (David Phillip Oster)
Subject: Re: Goin' Crazy on a Mac, or, How I Love MPW "GlobalData"
Date: 8 May 88 16:14:53 GMT
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Guido van Rossum) writes:
>The generators mentioned
>produce their output as C code (mostly data initializations), so how do
>you suggest we create the resource in the first place?  It has to be run
>through a compiler at some point...

My apologies, you are right. I was confused because I've used this
technique on a grammar for C and although _all_ the initialized
structures were over 32k, no _single_ structure was anywhere close.  If
you really do have single structures over 32k, of course you can break
them into smaller pieces and concatenate them in the tiny one-shot C
programs that write their single large piece of initialized data into a
resource fork (I usually just have them write to themselves, which is
already open, and the default destination of AddResource anyway. Then I
manually copy the resource to its final destination using ResEdit.) If
the yacc grammar is changing, then I write a small tool to do the
resource moving. More commonly, you are porting a working program from
some other machine, so this job only needs to be done once. (Why, you
could write a one-shot on that other machine that writes the data out as
a binary file, port the binary file to the mac, and just copy it into a
resource in a tiny program. (Beware of intel et al byte swapping if that
other machine isn't a Vax or a 68000.))

It is a pain. The workaround is still simple and short.


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Dan Allen)
Subject: Re: Goin' Crazy on a Mac, or, How I Love MPW "GlobalData"
Date: 8 May 88 23:17:31 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA

David Oster's advice is sound and in fact is what Apple has done for
versions of Yacc and Lex that are used internally.  They are built with
the standard MPW C 2.0 and seem to work fine in building things like the
CFront C++ preprocessor.

DISCLIAMER:  NO, these Apple internal versions of Lex and Yacc are NOT
available for the public.  YES, I wish they were.  Lean on your favorite
product marketing people and tell them you'd like to be able to buy Lex
and Yacc and Awk for MPW and maybe they'd figure out a way to sell it.
The reason that they are not available is simple: it is a legal issue.
The lawyers are going to ruin this industry, I'll tell you, and here
again we see a licensing problem rather than an engineering problem.
Something to do with Unix and AT&T, if I recall right.

GOOD NEWS:  There is another way around global data problems with big
arrays other than saving the arrays as locked resources.  (By the way,
you can create those arrays with Rez code that is almost identical to
the C code you would have written anyway, and it works very nicely.) If
you are running into lots of large arrays because you are doing
numerical analysis stuff (finite element analysis, Runge-Kutta
integration of sets of PDQs, etc.), then the latest version of
"Numerical Recipes in C: The Art of Scientific Computing" by Press,
Flannery, Teukolsky, and Vetterling (Cambridge Press) has a great
solution to the conformant array problem which ends up putting all
arrays on the heap using malloc.  Not only does the solution fix the
global data problem, but it also fixes the conformant array problem, all
in about two lines of code.  The crux of the solution is:

        double **array;

        array = SpecialRoutine(10,10);

Where the SpecialRoutine allocates pointers to each row of the array. It
takes up a little extra overhead in terms of memory (4 bytes per row of
the matrix), but speeds up array indexing as well as solves the
conformant array problem.

Great stuff!!!
--
Dan Allen
Software Explorer
Apple Computer
#include <stddisclaimer.h>


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Pierce T. Wetter)
Subject: Re: Goin' Crazy on a Mac, or, How I Love MPW "GlobalData"
Date: 10 May 88 01:03:53 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology

   Bison which is Gnu's version of Yacc has been ported to MPW (by me)
and will me posted to the net soon. As for lex, feel free to port flex,
which was just posted to net.sources.unix.
 Pierce Wetter
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail]     Race For Space Grand Prize Winner.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
   Useless Advice #986: Never sit on a Tack.


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Oliver Steele)
Subject: Spooling a PICT2
Date: 9 May 88 04:15:45 GMT
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

I need to save a color bitmap as a PICT file.  Here's what I've tried:

1) Opening a CGrafPort and a picture, doing a CopyBits from the port to
itself, closing the picture, and saving it to disk.  For a 640x480
picture, this bombs during the CopyBits, even with 5M of memory, whether
I've called MaxApplZone or not.  QuickerGraf is enabled, for what that's
worth.

2) Same as (1), but CopyBitsing in bands.  This works perfectly, even
when all the CopyBits are wrapped in a single picture, but it doubtless
makes a larger PICT file than necessary, and it definitely takes longer
to draw than...

3) Same as (1), only change the port's grafProcs to one that's been
initialized with SetStdCProcs, and change the grafProcs' putPicProc as
per IM5.  (LSC bug:  a CGrafPort's grafProcs is defined as a QDProcsPtr
instead of a CQDProcsPtr.) This is pretty much straight from IM5, so I
doubt I've messed this up.  This also works perfectly, and gets me a
much smaller PICT file than (2), but the color table is all wrong.  This
is true even if I use an OpenCPort to open both the port I'm copying
from when I make the file and the one I'm copying to when I display it,
or if I use another program to display the PICT file.  Also, for fairly
small rectangles (say 10x10), an application that tries to display the
PICT file locks, but I suspect this is an independent bug.

Although I'd like to know why (1) bombs and (2) doesn't, I'd really like
to spool the pictures instead of doing (1) or (2) since I want them on
disk anyway and I don't want to need a half meg MF partition.  Has
anybody done (3) successfully, for color pictures?

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Oliver Steele                                    ...!decnet!mcnc!unc!steele
 UNC-CH                                                    [e-mail]

 "We made it structured, and now it doesn't work." -- Brice Tebbs


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Marc T. Kaufman)
Subject: Re: Spooling a PICT2
Date: 9 May 88 15:36:38 GMT
Organization: Stanford University

>      (LSC bug:  a CGrafPort's grafProcs is defined as a QDProcsPtr
>instead of a CQDProcsPtr.)

This is because the first routines in a CQDProcs list are identical to
the routines in a QDProcs list, and if you are only going to change,
e.g.  TextProc, you don't have to check the Graf type or Ptr type (Apple
seems to do this lots of places, not just here).

To get back to the original problem:  Why not open a NEW CGrafPort, with
NO storage for the PixMap (portRect = (0,0,0,0)), and spool to that.  It
works, and gains back the space you had allocated to the PixMap.  I
think that if this is an Offscreen GrafPort, the color table will be
saved to the spool file, since it is not the same as the source color
table (you may have to twiddle the CLUT ctSeed in the Offscreen port to
convince QuickDraw this is the case).

Marc Kaufman ([e-mail])


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Kevin Whitley)
Subject: Quickdraw speed
Date: 9 May 88 14:32:10 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon

I've been working on a program that draws a lot of lines to the screen
(using LineTo & friends) and now I'm trying to speed it up.  I wrote a
little test program in Lightspeed C whose relevant part is:

        ii = 10000;
        timer = TickCount();
        while (--ii >= 0)
                {
                MoveTo(0,0);
                LineTo(1,0);
                LineTo(2,0);
                }
        timer = TickCount() - timer;

When I execute this fragment with varying numbers of LineTo calls I get
the result that a call to LineTo which draws 1 pixel on a horizontal
line costs around 0.4 milliseconds on a Mac II, about twice that much on
an SE.  Am I doing something wrong?  This seems MUCH too slow.  My
non-Mac colleagues have been derisive about this speed.  What can I do
to speed it up?

Thanks,
--
Kevin Whitley
Carnegie-Mellon University
[e-mail]


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Oliver Steele)
Subject: Re: Quickdraw speed
Date: 9 May 88 18:35:11 GMT
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

First of all, the fact that the line is only 1 pixel long doesn't make
your test go much faster than if the pixel were 10 or 100 pixels long,
since you're also measuring the overhead of the trap dispatcher and the
overhead to check for clipping, depth of bitmap, penpat, etc.

I get, for horizontal lines, that each MoveTo/LineTo pair takes
        length          milliseconds
          1             .52
         10             .52
        100             .53
        500             .54 which begins to look respectable; it isn't as if the
 Mac
spends half a millisecond on each pixel of a line.  Quickdraw is
optimized for horizontal lines, though; for vertical:
         10             .83
        100             .75 and diagonal (length in x or y delta):
         10             .83
        100            2.84 ! .

>My non-Mac colleagues have been derisive about this speed.
I think it's pretty good, when you consider that this includes clipping
time and a check for arbitrary patterns, colors, and sizes.  If your
non- Mac colleagues work at Pixar or E&S, though, they probably have a
right to be derisive.  (Sorry; my Mac bigotry is showing.)

>What can I do to speed it up?
1) Keep in mind that the trap dispatcher on a II takes about .05
   milliseconds per call, and that each MoveTo takes that .05
   milliseconds plus another .01 to do its stuff.  If your lines have
   adjacent end points and you can draw them in that order, you'll save
   .06 milliseconds per line.

2) Forgo the trap dispatcher all together, by getting the address of
   MoveTo and LineTo OUTSIDE of the loop and calling these addresses
   inside the loop.  This saves you .1 millisecond for each line, if
   you need to MoveTo each beginning.  Here's how to do this in LSC:

        #include <OSUtil.h>

        #define MoveToTrapNum   0x93
        #define LineToTrapNum   0x91
        ...
                long    MoveToAddr, LineToAddr;

                MoveToAddr = NGetTrapAddress(MoveToTrapNum,ToolTrap);
                LineToAddr = NGetTrapAddress(lineX,ToolTrap);
        ...
                while (--i >= 0) asm {
                        move.w  #0,-(a7)
                        move.w  #0,-(a7)
                        move.l  MoveToAddr,a0
                        jsr     (a0)
                        move.w  #0,-(a7)
                        move.w  #100,-(a7)
                        move.l  LineToAddr,a0
                        jsr     (a0)
                        }

Don't use CallPascal(0,0,MoveToAddr):  CallPascal takes longer than the
trap dispatcher does.

It's probably not worth going to too much effort to optimize this any
more, or to try getting around QuickDraw unless you're writing an arcade
game and are really sure what you're doing.  You'll usually find that
it's your generation or transformation of the lines, and not their
actual rendering, that is slowing you down.  (Speaking from my own
experience, not an indictment of your skills.)

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Oliver Steele                                    ...!decnet!mcnc!unc!steele
 UNC-CH                                                    [e-mail]

 "We made it structured, and now it doesn't work." -- Brice Tebbs


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Dan Allen)
Subject: Re: Questions about Macsbug
Date: 8 May 88 22:54:14 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA

MacsBug 6.0 B1 is available from A.P.D.A, the same place MPW is
available from.  It was sent there very recently, so I am not sure when
they will be shipping it.  Call APDA.

MacsBug 6.0 B1 is about three times the size of MacsBug 5.5.  It has
many great new features, includes user definable macros and templates.

I wrote all of the 5 series MacsBugs (5.1, 5.2, ... 5.5), but a new guy
has written 6.0, almost from scratch.  It is somewhat compatible, but is
definitely a different animal.

EITHER MacsBug 5.5 or MacsBug 6.0 B1 will automatically affix itself to
the startup screen of a multiple screen Mac II setup.  To change which
monitor is the startup monitor, hold the option key down before clicking
on the Monitors cdev in the Control Panel.  You will then see a little
face.  Dragging that face to a monitor makes it the startup monitor,
which means that the Startup Screen (or Welcome to Macintosh) will be
displayed on that monitor.  It also means that that is the MacsBug
monitor.

I was not able to get MacsBug 5.5 to work with lots of 3rd party
displays because I did not have any access to any 3rd party displays.  I
asked my manager to get me a Radius FPD or a SuperMac but he would not
buy it for me, so I could not get it to work.  Simple, sad, but true.

I still like my version of MacsBug, which is post 5.5.  Maybe I can get
permission to post it.... Don't hold your breath, however.

The Apple Legal wheels grind slowly.
--
Dan Allen
Software Explorer
Apple Computer


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Ed Tecot)
Subject: Re: TESetStyle bug
Date: 9 May 88 23:01:21 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA


TESetStyle was ambiguous.  Especially if the selection ran over multiple
styles.  In particular, does the client want to toggle the particular
style, or is this a replacement.  In other words, does [bold] mean "add
the bold attribute to this text" or "make this text just bold"?

TESetStyle in System 6.0 has a new mode selector, doToggle which
addresses these issues.  Stay tuned for a technote near you.

                                                _emt


------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Darin Adler)
Subject: Re: Full path name of a file
Date: 10 May 88 02:16:53 GMT
Organization: Apple

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Pierce T. Wetter) writes:
>   I'm assuming you have some special file your application needs to look at
> which for some reason you don't want to save with your application in the
> data fork. You want this file to be located somewhere other then the same
> folder as the application or the system folder.
>
>    Two ways to do this: If you can't find the file put up an sfgetfile box
> and ask the user where it is. Then save the pathname in a str resource. If its

> longer then 255 bytes, your application will just keep making the user find
> it each time.
>
>   Or, if the pathname is longer then 255 bytes, save it in pieces and wander
> down the heiarchy each time you need to find the file.

Developer Technical Support recommends this solution:

        Save the volume name, dirID of the directory containing the
        file, and file name. If the file is not where you expect it,
        use SFGetFile to have the user find it.

This has a number of advantages. First of all, dirIDs are guaranteed to
be unique for a volume. No dirID is ever reused. DirIDs also remain the
same, even if one of the directories in the path down to the file is
renamed.

I can't really think of ANY good reason to calculate the full path name,
except perhaps to display on the screen for some advanced users.
--
Darin Adler                                             AppleLink:Adler4
UUCP: {sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual}!apple!darin     CSNET: [e-mail]

------------------------------

End of Usenet Mac Digest
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List (Unformatted): USENET MAC DIGEST V4 #63


Usenet Mac Digest     Friday, May 20, 1988           Volume 4 : Issue 63

Today's Topics:
     Re: Info on EMAC hard drives