Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!galen.crd.ge.com
From: leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: System 7.0: Interesting Times
Keywords: 7.0, Suitcase
Message-ID: <19650@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 17 May 91 14:14:03 GMT
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Organization: General Electric Research & Development
Lines: 124

I've now owned System 7.0 for about 24 hours, and my experiences so
far have been fairly interesting, so I thought I'd share some of them.
This will be sort of a "bad news, good news" report.  I'll put the
bad new first, but don't mistake this for a flame against Apple:  I just
think there are things that people should know.

First, an important WARNING!!  If you are using Suitcase II, make
ABSOLUTELY SURE that it is disabled before you drag fonts in or out
of any suitcase file or the System!!!  If you forget, you WILL get a
bomb (Bus Error), and if you had been moving stuff in the System, you
may end up with a corrupted System and have to reinstall, or worse.  This
is the voice of sadder (but wiser) experience talking, so listen up.  The
saftest way to disable Suitcase (and other INIT's) is to restart the system
with the Shift key held down.  The "Welcome to Macintosh" message will
say "No Extensions" if you have done it right.  Please don't repeat my
experience -- I had to clean up the disk structure with First Aid and
completely reinstall the system to recover from one of the bombs.  Note:
this problem is NOT related to incompatibilities -- I am using Suitcase 1.29,
which is listed as "Compatible".  The problem is also not related to
whether the Suitcase file you are opening is in use by Suitcase or not.

With regard to upgrades and application compatibility problems:  several
of my applications were flagged as "Incompatible" by the Compatibility
checker Stack you run before installing 7.0.  The driver and application
for the Apple Scanner must be upgraded.  However, Apple has not yet
announced when this upgrade will be available.  Similarly, Microsoft
QuickBasic 1.0 is incompatible.  (You can run the interpreter, but
compiled applications have problems)  I talked to Microsoft Customer Service
and the QuickBasic Support people, but they are unable to say when an
upgrade will be available.  If you own Claris CAD, you should call Claris
and request 2.0v2  (assuming you own the 2.0v1 release).  There will 
evantually be a 2.0v3 release that will be fully 7.0-compatible, but 2.0v2
will run ok for the time being.

A few other things that I don't like so much:  I think most people will
want to lose the balloon help after about 0.02 nanoseconds.  It's pretty
obnoxious.  Fortunately, you can turn it off easily.  Unfortunately, the
balloon control continues to take up room in your menu bar.  I hope 
someone writes an INIT or patch that gets rid of it.  The system is very
big.  I can see that a 5 mbyte IIcx isn' going to hack it very much longer --
I'm going to have to upgrade to 8 mbytes soon.  There is a noticable
slowdown, at least for certain applications.  (Is 7.0 a secret conspiracy
to sell memory and CPU upgrades? :-)  Well, Apple has reduced the IIcx-to-ci
upgrade price to the point where it's merely unaffordable, rather than
cosmic, so maybe there's hope.

A minor mystery:  does anyone know what the "Startup" folder in the
System Folder is for?  The few INIT's that I decided to keep all went into
the "Extensions" folder -- my Startup folder is empty.  I had thought that
since INIT's were called "Startup Documents" in the System 6.x view by
name listings, they would go into the Startup folder, but NOOOO.  I'd
really like to know that kind of files are supposed to go there.

Some INIT's, specificaly ATM, don't understand the new folder heirarchy in
the System Folder.  For ATM, you can put the ATM INIT into the Extensions
Folder, but the "ATM68020" file has to be at the top level of the System
Folder.  This is too bad, since it conspires against Apple's admirable
efforts to help you keep your system folder uncluttered.  I am probably
going to buy FontMonger to convert my PS fonts to TT, so I can eventually
get rid of ATM.  I've also noticed that some applications can't find their
"preferences" files if you put them into the Preferences folder -- they
want the files at the top level of the System Folder.

Another minor hassle is with fonts.  I wish the 7.0 installer scripts 
allowed you some choice over what fonts get installed.  Both the TrueType
and bitmap fonts are installed for Times, New York, Helvetica, Geneva,
Symbol, and Courier.  For Chicago, only the TT font is installed.  Also,
a few Palatino bitmap sizes are installed (for Hypercard, I think), but
no TT fonts.  I suspect that the bitmap fonts (9 to 24 points) are installed
on behalf of slower machines so that their screen drawing is faster.  I
removed all the bitmap sizes except for 10 and 12 points, thus saving a
bit of disk space, but it would be nice to avoid installing them in the
first place.  Another thing I think could be better arranged is the
location of fonts in the System Folder.  The 7.0 Installer puts PostScript
Type 1 fonts into the extensions folder, and TT and bitmap fonts into the
System.  It would sure be nice to have a "Fonts" folder for the PS fonts
to keep clutter down in the Extensions folder.  It would also be nice
to allow a heirarchy of folders inside the System, since the number of
fonts gets large very quickly.

Now for some good news:

Aliases work very well.  I put all of my major applications folders inside
an "Applications" folder, and made aliases for the actual application file
that reside at the top of the directory tree.  This means I can always see
the applications without having to see all the supplementary files that
go along with them.  Also, the "drag and drop" technique works fine with
aliases.  And yes, you really can drag a MacWrite file into MS Word and
have it opened. Yay!  This works for MacPaint files with SuperPaint.  You
can also use TeachTool to open PICT files and MacWrite files.

It's very easy to colorize icons using ResEdit.  For instance, I colorized
the MS Word icon in a few steps:  first, I opened MS Word's ICON with
Resedit and copied its bitmap to the Clipboard.  Next, I created a new
dummy file with Resedit and created a new CICN.  Then I pasted the bitmap
from the MS Word icon into the CICN editor.  I then colorized it using
the CICN editor, and copied the result to the clipboard.  After exiting
ResEdit, I opened up the Get Info dialog box for Word, selected the icon
at the top, and pasted the color icon image from the clipboard.  Voila!
(If you have an existing alias, it doesn't automatically get its icon
colorized if you change the file that it points to -- you have to delete and
re-create the alias.)  This icon business opens up a major can of worms
for system managers.  I can just see some prankster changing every icon
on a disk to MS Word!  Fortunately, a changed icon doesn't clobber the
underlying ICON resource.  To revert, just open the Get Info dialog, select
the icon, and pick "Cut" from the Edit Menu.

The System 7 Campatibility Checker Stack included with the user upgrade kit
is quite nice.  It prints a compatilibity report which includes the
name and version of all your applications which aren't compatible, 
including the Customer Service phone number for the vendor.  Of course,
ShareWare and PD applications aren't on the list.

All in all, I'm impressed with System 7.0.  Stay tuned.

-Bill Leue
leue@crd.ge.com