Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU!Info-Mac-Request From: Info-Mac-Request@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (The Moderators) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.digest Subject: Info-Mac Digest V7 #42 Message-ID: <8902280057.AA06831@sumex-aim.stanford.edu> Date: 28 Feb 89 00:56:55 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Info-Mac@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Organization: The Internet Lines: 485 Approved: info-mac@sumex-aim.stanford.edu Info-Mac Digest Mon, 27 Feb 89 Volume 7 : Issue 42 Today's Topics: All the rumors that fit we print Archive access Character Map DA Addendum GIF file format MACII and the HP Laser Jet Non-proportional font Problems in a Novell 2.15 network Sharing modem ports on a Mac II TARGA->PICT2 on PC or VMS? Your Info-Mac Moderators are Lance Nakata, Jon Pugh, and Bill Lipa. The Info-Mac archives are available (by using FTP, account anonymous, any password) in the info-mac directory on sumex-aim.stanford.edu [36.44.0.6]. Please send articles and binaries to info-mac@sumex-aim.stanford.edu. Send administrative mail to info-mac-request@sumex-aim.stanford.edu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 26 Feb 89 22:40:26 EST From: Murph Sewall Subject: All the rumors that fit we print VAPORWARE Murphy Sewall From the March 1989 APPLE PULP H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter $15/year P.O. Box 18027 East Hartford, CT 06118 Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739 Permission granted to copy with the above citation All in One LAN. NetFrame Systems of Sunnyvale, California plans to deliver by year's end a multiprocessor 80386-based network server to seamlessly link Novell Netware, OS/2 LAN Manager, and UNIX networks. The NetFrame Server will initially be offered in two sizes, one designed for between two and five processors and another for between three and 17. NetFrame's future plans call for integration with networks based on Motorola 68030 and 88000 CPU's, Sun's SPARC processors, and the Intel 80486. - PC Week 13 February Major OS/2 Upgrades. Microsoft plans a new release of OS/2 this fall that will permit the operating system to access non-OS/2 storage devices. Hardware vendors will be able to create OS/2 Installable Files Systems (IFSs) for their products, and OS/2 users with corresponding file systems will then be able to access DEC VAX, CD ROM, Macintosh, or UNIX-based devices. Two further versions of OS/2 are planned for 1990. One will be a multiprocessor release that will allow users of MCA and EISA architectures to take full advantage of their multi-channel capabilities, and the other will be specifically written for 80386 computers. - PC Week 30 January and InfoWorld 6 February Porting Macware to PM. Developers and industry observers say a substantial number of Macintosh applications should start appearing in releases for IBM's Presentation Manager (PM) later this year. The rivalry between the Macintosh and PM interfaces may lead to more buyouts of smaller software firms. Porting the programs is far from trivial, and small developers probably won't have the resources to sustain the effort. While Apple's lawsuit against Microsoft appears to be having little effect, a major drawback is that most Macintosh applications are written in Pascal while PM development generally is done in C. - InfoWorld 30 January The "Year of the CPU" Continues. The 16 MHz 3-slot Mac should make its expected debut March 8 at the Hannover (West Germany) Computer Fair (see last month's column). The more powerful 25 and 33 MHz Mac II descendants which also will have a 20 MHz version of the NuBus (twice as fast as the 10 MHz bus in the Mac II, IIx, and 3-slot) will appear in August (with a hefty price tag ranging from $10,000 to $15,000). Apple will be releasing a new generation of Laser printers using the new Canon 400 dpi engine in August as well. - InfoWorld 30 January WalkMac/030. You may actually see a LapMac from Apple later this year (have you heard that before?), but by that time, Colby Systems will already have shipped a 12-pound laptop based on the new SE-030. Under an arrangement with Apple and dealers, Colby provides unfinished portable units to dealers who complete the systems by adding Mac motherboards. The WalkMac/030 will include the 1.4 Mbyte Superdrive, a 40 Mbyte hard disk, and a 2400 baud modem. The portable measures 12 by 15 by 3.5 inches, has a double supertwist blue backlit LCD, a built in keyboard, and internal batteries which can last up to four hours. Sufficient motherboards to make the WalkMac/030 available are not expected for at least two months. Colby expects to be able to offer the machine for $6,500. - InfoWorld 6 February No Low-Cost Mac (from Apple). Apple CEO John Sculley told stockholders last month that the firm has opened a second design center to focus on designing machines for the low end of the market, however a Mac with a price tag below $1,000 will not be offered this year. Products Division president Jean-Louis Gassee also is quoted as saying the company doesn't plan to offer a low-cost Mac configuration anytime in the next two or three years. - InfoWorld 30 January and PC Week 6 February An SE-30 Clone (Sort of) Already? At least some of Atari's new $2,000 68030 computers are expected to ship this Spring with genuine Macintosh ROMs legally obtained from a third-party. - InfoWorld 6 February Bus Transfer. Although the 030 Direct Slot in the new Mac SE-030 isn't compatible with NuBus cards used in the Mac II or cards for the original Mac SE, Second Wave, Inc. of Austin, Texas says that in April it will begin shipping the Expanse II/SE-30 which will expand the SE-030's single Direct Slot into eight (8) NuBus slots as well as adding a 130 watt power supply, a cooling fan, and support for three SCSI devices. The company already is shipping an eight slot expander (the Expanse II) for the Mac II and IIx (providing a total of 12 slots). Both Expanse products are priced at $2,295. - InfoWorld 30 January Virtual Memory for the Mac II. Little known start-up, Connectix, demonstrated a $295 program at last January's Macworld Expo which enables Mac II's equipped with 1 Mbyte of RAM (and sufficient hard disk space) to run applications accessing up to 8 Mbytes of memory (the maximum allowed by the current operating system). The program, called Virtual, requires a 68030 or the 68551 Page Memory Management Unit (PMMU) in a Mac II with a 68020. - InfoWorld 30 January Desktop Unpublishing. Xerox plans to ship its $995 Datacopy Accutext software for the Macintosh during the second quarter. Accutext uses artificial intelligence to increase scanning accuracy and can recognize a wide variety of fonts and character sizes >From 6 to 24 points. It not only translates scanned documents into text, it can create word processing files (Mac Write, Word) which include information for column margins, paragraph indentation, indented blocks, and tabs. The program also processes graphics into TIFF, PICT, or Mac Paint files in resolutions from 75 to 400 dots per inch. - InfoWorld 23 January MCA/1+? In response to widespread rumors, IBM Senior Engineer Chet Heath denied the existence of an enhanced MCA architecture (MCA/2 see January's column) that would be incompatible with current PS/2 computers. However, Heath also is said to have confirmed that some enhancements, presumably using undefined "reserved lines" in the original MCA specification will be introduced in the 33 MHz Model 70 in August (see last month's column). - PC Week 6 February and InfoWorld 13 February RISC-based Graphics. Hardly had Compaq and TI teamed up to produce a graphics board to outperform IBM's 8514/A adapter (see last month's column), than word arrives that Big Blue will announce a board with 1,280 by 1,024 pixels by 256 colors or 1,600 by 1,200 pixel monochrome resolution (the 8514/A provides up to 1,024 by 768 pixels). The new RISC graphics processor and a daughter board that will dramatically speed printing of complex graphics will be introduced later this year. The boards will support Interleaf publisher, but it is not clear whether they will support any other software at the time of their release - PC Week 13 February Color Clamshell? Later this Spring, IBM will unveil a color LCD display said to offer the brilliance, resolution, and readability of standard CRT's. Look for the display in a laptop this summer. - PC Week 23 January Excel 2.2. Microsoft plans an April release for the latest upgrade of its popular Macintosh spreadsheet program. Version 2.2 will require a minimum of 1 Mbyte of RAM and will support spreadsheets as large as 5 Mbytes. The new Excel will be able to import and export in industry standard (MS-DOS) database formats (Ashton-Tate's dBase and others) as well as Lotus 1-2-3 "WRK" format. Other features include using as many as six styles of type and an unlimited number of fonts, annotation of cells with visible or hidden text, and support for color on the Macintosh II and IIx. - PC Week 23 January OS/2 Applications. Word Perfect's OS/2 version, a straight port of MS-DOS version 5.0, is expected by the end of March. OS/2 will permit background printing and lifting of memory constraints. A Presentation Manager version is planned for release by the end of the year. Microsoft's Word, originally scheduled for December, also is expected by the end of the month. Word 5.0 will be a single program that can be configured to run under either MS-DOS or OS/2. Ashton-Tate plans to release dBase IV version 1.1 for both DOS and OS/2 sometime this Spring. - PC Week 30 January and InfoWorld 13 February Windows Applications. Microsoft has been demonstrating several, as yet unannounced, Windows programs to selected corporate accounts. Windows versions of Microsoft Word (October), Power Point (third quarter), Project Manager (third quarter), and a new Systems Application Architecture (SAA) database (October) are scheduled for release later this year. - InfoWorld 13 February Forever Vaporware. Tektronix has canceled its previously announced Postscript compatible printer, the Phaser LP. Problems with the printing engine's print quality were given as the reason for the demise of the printer which was announced last November and scheduled to ship by the end of March. - InfoWorld 30 January Speculating on Vaporware. Software publisher Claris has struggled financially since Apple spun it off two years ago. However, Claris has shown some signs recently of challenging Microsoft for leadership in Macintosh software sales, and talks with investment bankers about a stock offering have been resumed. A likely date for the debut of publicly traded Claris stock would be this summer, but stock market conditions will be the decisive factor determining whether the company moves ahead with an offering. Apple continues to control 82% of Claris stock; so Apple board members will make the final decision. Meanwhile, Wall Street rumors have Ashton-Tate (selling for $23 a share in early February) as potentially "in play" (a takeover target) at a price that may reach as high as $42. - PC Week 23 January and 13 February ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 10:07:08 EST From: paisley@mte.ncsu.edu (Mike) Subject: Archive access To VMS netters: I have a new problem with the change in format of the Info-Mac archives. I'm accesssing the system from a VAX-750 running VMS and using CMU's TCP/IP package. I'm finding it difficult to find the files I'm looking for in the archives because I can't use the Unix 'ls' command. I've tried most all combinations of the QUOTE command which is supposed to allow you to send any command line to the remote host, but the local machine keeps trying to interpret it (I think). If I use the normal 'DIR' command, it complains about invalid file identifier. If I use 'DIR *' then it works ok, except it shows me all of the contents of the current directory AND the contents of all of the subdirectories. This can be disconcerting when you're at the top level of Info-Mac. Any other VMS'ers out there running CMU that have figured a way around this? Thanks. Michael J. Paisley PAISLEY@NCSUMTE.BITNET Materials Science & Engineering PAISLEY@MTE.NCSU.EDU 229 Riddick Laboratories PAISLEY%MTE@NCSUVX.NCSU.EDU Campus Box 7907 Office: (919) 737-7083 North Carolina State University Messages: (919) 737-2377 Raleigh, NC 27695-7907 FAX: (919) 737-3419 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 13:47:30 EDT From: Guenther Blaschek Subject: Character Map DA Addendum When I posted my Character Map DA a couple of days ago, I forgot to include a hint for MultiFinder users. I'm just a poor Mac+ user with not more than 1 MB RAM, so MultiFinder isn't relevant for me... When you pick a character in Character Map DA, it simply posts a keyboard event that is subsequently processed by the application. When you run under MultiFinder, the current application is the DA Handler that doesn't know what to do with keyboard events. Thus, when runnung under MultiFinder, you should press the option key when invoking Character Map in order to get it loaded in the application heap and not under control of the DA Handler. As a further inconvenience, Character Map cannot communicate with other DAs. I'm too busy in the moment to produce a new version of Character Map now, but I promise to come out with one in the near future. It will then support the Clipboard just like Key Caps does. I've you have further suggestions/complaints, just contact me under the eMail address listed below. e Guenther Blaschek gu EMail: SNail: University of Linz / Austria Institute of Computer Science / Software Altenbergerstr. 69 A-4040 Linz Tel.: +43 (732) 2468 / 447 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Feb 89 12:56:35 -0900 From: Reed Rector Subject: GIF file format The De-facto standard for transfering color images seems to be the GIF format. I have a couple of programs for the Mac that display GIF format pictures and there seems to be numerous images out there in this format. I am taking a computer graphics class this semester using Masscomp computers and I would like to wirte a program that will allow GIF pictures to be displayed on our masscomps. Unfortunatly I don't know where to find the specs for the GIF format. If anyone out there knows where I could get some documentation for GIF files, please e-mail me a message. If I can get a program running it would allow us to distribute some of the images that we generate (including Ray-Traced and other rendered pictures) to this list. Thanks in advance, Reed Rector SXWRR@ALASKA (Bitnet) SXWRR@acad3.fai.alaska.edu (Internet) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 09:53:53 CST From: "Elias Saab" Subject: MACII and the HP Laser Jet Isn somebody using GRAPPLER from ORANGE MICRO as a driver for the HP Laser Jet on a MAC II? I would like to know if one can use it with Texture or with say super paint, WritenNow. I would appreciate a response. Thanks MATHES@UMCVMB.BITNET Elias Saab ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 09:35 EDT From: HENRY YEE Subject: Non-proportional font Have you tried Monaco? I think that's supposed to be non-proportional. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 02:30 CST From: "Kevin W. Mullet, UNT Academic Computing Services" Subject: Problems in a Novell 2.15 network We've recently set up a Mac/IBM computer lab for the students here at the University of North Texas using Novell's Netware 2.15. There's a few things I need to know in order to get everything ship-shape here. HOME STACKS What is it that makes a home stack a "home stack"? Is it simply the name, or is there a resource I can copy with ResEdit from the original homestack? I've read elsewhere in this digest that it's the homestack's requirement for read-writeability that precludes it from being mulit-launchable (huh?) on a network. If this is true, I'd like to simply give each of our station accounts a seperate home stack as a menu-interface to the network. MULTI-LAUNCHING Elsewhere in the digest, I've read that certain applications can be made switch-launchable by changing the cache bit through ResEdit. Could I have a bit (pun intended) more info on this? I'd appreciate having enough rope to hang myself. SWITCH-LAUNCHING Big problem on our network. We've got access to LOTS of fonts and DAs that we'd like to let our student users use. The problem is caused by the fact that our students use the network from a lab full of 2-floppy SEs with no hard drive. Minimal room on the startup disk for all the fonts and DAs we'd like to provide. I've tried switch-launching to system resources on the network, but it doesn't work. I've tried using INSTALL to install a network volume as a startup disk. nada. I desperately need information on how I can put our fonts and DAs out on the network and have them be used by our 2-floppy machine users. Preferably, I'd like to do so transparently. Tall order? Thanks to all who reply, Kevin Mullet Microcomputer Support University of North Texas Academic Computing Services Denton, Texas... "home of happiness". ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 19:14 EST From: Karen Strauss Subject: Sharing modem ports on a Mac II A colleague of mine asked me to pass this question along. We have a Mac II hooked up to a scanner and we also want to hook it up to a modem. Is there any way to let these two devices share the same port. The scanner and the modem are not used at the same time, but we want to avoid the problem of changing cables every time we want to use the other device. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also -- several weeks ago there was a request for information about scanners and OCR. I didn't see any reply. I would like the same information (or summary of one is available). Thanks in advance. Karen Strauss STRAUSSR@NYUACF CompuServe 71571,3226 GEnie K.Strauss ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 89 15:53:35 EST From: Dick Dramstad Subject: TARGA->PICT2 on PC or VMS? We've got several thousand images (badge photos, actually) that were captured using an IBM PC-based TARGA-16 image capture system. We need to convert all of these images to Macintosh PICT2 (color) format and place them on a VMS VAX running AlisaShare. Right now, we are using DECnet-DOS to get the PC images to the VAX, and then using AlisaShare and a Mac-based photo retouching package from Avalon called PhotoMac to convert the images from TARGA to PICT2 format. We're also converting the TARGA files to Encapsulated PostScript for storage on the VAX. The process is slow and tedious, because the Macintosh doesn't support a powerful enough Macro facility or, especially, a command language to batch up the conversions. So far, we've struck out trying to find companies that have what we need (precise requirements below), and so are turning to the net for help. Free/public domain software is, of course, welcome, but we're willing to pay for the software, which would: - convert TARGA to PICT2 format - run on an IBM PC or on VMS (or both) (Note: high-level language source code is highly desirable) - run from a command line with all options specified and amenable to batch processing; including specification of input and output file names - allow for TARGA image cropping before conversion - support option of adjusting aspect ratio by 6% to account for non-square TARGA pixels - support image scaling If anyone knows of any package that would meet some or all of our requirements, or if you're experienced enough with all the relevant pieces to propose a reasonable development effort, please contact Norm Sutherland at the following addresses (please respond directly; we don't always follow both of these newsgroups): nbs@mbunix.mitre.org (E-mail) (617) 271-3073 (Voice) Norm Sutherland The MITRE Corporation M/S B010 Burlington Road Bedford, MA 01730 Thanks, Dick Dramstad (rad@mbunix.mitre.org) ------------------------------ End of Info-Mac Digest ******************************