Jaques Law Bits 9609 (© Kevin Jaques 1996) ©(c)1996 Kevin Jaques. All rights reserved excepting that this file may be copied for non-commercial purposes, unchanged. No warranties apply. I am just a user volunteering my observations and collecting those of others. €Note about this issue Sadly, it is more (MUCH!) than 32k. Consequently, it cannot be opened by SimpleText as an editable document. So I saved it as a read­only document. To copy stuff, you must change its file type to TTXT or some other text format which can be read by another text editor you may possess. BBEdit Lite is a good choice. Or, just open it with a more fancy word processor and the file type won't matter. ClarisWorks will suffice. €Way Cool - The Brain Mouse! New York --July 5, 1996 -- IBVA Technologies, Inc., maker of the Interactive Brainwave Visual Analyzer (IBVA) system, announced today a set of Expansion Paks for its innovative brainwave control system. The IBVA system is a Macintosh-based electroencephalograph (EEG) featuring a one- or two-channel headband, wireless transmitter, receiver and brainwave analysis software that provides a direct mind-to-computer link. The new Expansion Paks are add-on applications and hardware that will enable IBVA users to use their brainwaves to wirelessly control industry standard video games, virtual reality applications, and common household devices including CD players, VCRs, cable boxes, light switches, security systems, etc. The 1 channel IBVA retails for $1,295 and the 2 channel IBVA retails for $2,295. To kick off the announcement of the new Expansion Paks, the 1 channel IBVA is being offered to Evangelist members for $995 and the 2 channel for $1,995 through July 31, 1996. €Netscape v. Interslip Timer Nathan Williams reported that his longstanding problems with Netscape 2.02 were solved when he closed InterSlipTimer and connected with InterSLIP directly (same NN prefs file). €What can you trash from your system folder? See Dan Frakes' Power Mac Pruning Page at: He lists nearly everything that's in your system folder, what it does, and whether you need it. In general it's a bad idea to start throwing out Apple extensions without prior knowledge of what they are (I learned this from experience also). Another (sometimes) good source of info is Conflict Catcher. If you click in the left margin of the list view a box comes up with info about the extension or control panel of interest. Another good resource is "The System Zoo II" a Filemaker 2.1 database (very well done) of most known system stuff. €NetDoubler SAN JOSE, Calif., April 29, 1996 - Asante Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASNT), today released NetDoubler(tm), a new network acceleration software utility for Apple(r) Macintosh(r) power users that increases Mac-based Ethernet and Fast Ethernet performance up to nine times. Ideal for accelerating copies, opens, and saves of large files over the network, NetDoubler is compatible with any application running on a Macintosh system using Open Transport (OT). NetDoubler is available free with any Asante Fast 10/100 adapter card or for $99 list as a standalone package for use with other Fast Ethernet and Ethernet cards. NetDoubler speeds up network performance using Apple's Open Transport which enables Macintosh computers to connect to any popular network, regardless of protocol. This extends the protocols available to Mac clients beyond AppleTalk File Protocol (AFP) to include others, such as TCP/IP. NetDoubler leverages this protocol-independence of OT by allowing AppleShare(tm) servers and/or Macintosh clients running Personal File Sharing to use TCP/IP file transfer protocols. Client Macs typically communicate to the server via the AppleTalk(tm) Transaction Protocol (ATP), which is less efficient than TCP/IP. NetDoubler transparently uses TCP/IP to transfer files at much higher speeds, yet retains the normal Macintosh interface. The demo only runs one hour after each start up. For additional information, contact Asante Technologies at 800-662-9686 or browse the company's World Wide Web home page at http://www.asante.com. €Another Summary of Internet File Translation What is 'MacBinary'? Unlike files on other computer platforms which are data only, Macintosh files have a 'Resource fork' and a 'data fork'. If you take a Mac file and put it on a non-Mac such as a PC or a UNIX machine, the resource fork will be stripped off. In some situations, this is ok, but many Mac files will be rendered unusable if they lose their resource fork. To prevent this from happening, users can 'MacBinary encode' their files before posting to a non-Mac. MacBinary encoding takes the resource and data forks of a Mac file and attaches them together into a single data file. MacBinary encoded files often have '.bin' at the end of the file name. What is 'BinHex'? The internet is a network that was originally designed for sending text messages between computers. Text messages need only 7-bits of data, so many internet gateways are 7-bits wide by default. Most non-text files that we use are 8-bits wide. If 8-bit wide files are sent through the internet, they can lose 1/8th of their content and be rendered unusable. It's a bit like sending a big truck through a small tunnel. There are ways to perform a 'binary' transfer via the internet which forces the file to be sent through an 8-bit wide gateway (a bigger tunnel), but the most common way to get around this bit-width problem is to encode the 8-bit wide file into a 7-bit wide format (actually a text format). This process will actually make the file bigger in file-length. For Mac users, BinHex is the standard 7-bit encoded format because it preserves that Mac resource fork, as well as the data fork. BinHex files usually have a '.hqx' suffix. Note: UUencoding is another 7-bit encoding method, but it only encodes the data fork of a Mac file. UUencoding is common for files that are not platform-specific such as GIFs. UUencoded files usually have a '.uu' or '.uue' suffix. €FedEx admits software flawed, but Œtough¹ (Carey Tews) The current version of FedEx Ship for Mac, I believe it's 1.3, is available for download the . This software is not native on Power Macintosh, and there are definitely some problems with it, but many people have been able to make it work. It is nearly 2 mb! There is also a Mac program to track your packages at the same address. €What is Cyberdog anyway From: "William Barthelmy" First of all, Cyberdog is an integrated suite of OpenDoc parts (or applications) designed to make life on the internet, well... , more like working on a Mac, and depite the slowness of some of those parts (notably, the webbrowser) have greatly simplified parts of my life. I manage a number of websites and the ability to drag-and-drop ftp and remotely rearrange things on various servers (almost) as if they were on my hard drive in folders is incredible! As a few people have already pointed out, the major innovation here is as much (if not more) OpenDoc as Cyberdog. OpenDoc is a way of thinking about computing which is _document_ centered and not application centered like most computing is today. That is, the OpenDoc decides what applications (or parts) are needed to run whatever it is that you are doing and turns everything else off. For example, if I were designing a document that was nothing but text, only the text editor would be active. If I later decided to drag-and-drop some graphic files in my text, OpenDoc checks the format and decides what part is necessary to display this type of graphic file. As for the general problem with Cyberdog messages, it's because Cyberdog is MIME 1.0 compatible. This means that Cyberdog users can send messages using different fonts, font sizes, colors and graphics. The down side is that very few of the rest of the internet community have email software which is equally advanced. (This is quickly changing) So, those Cyberdog users who aren't used to what is and is not displayable by most email software end up sending what looks like cyperpoop. From: chuqui@plaidworks.com (Chuq Von Rospach) It's an environment. Not a browser. There's a SIMPLE browser in there, but the cyberdog browser is not cyberdog. It's a part of cyberdog -- and like opendoc parts, it can and will be replaced by other parts. And since Netscape's committed to an opendoc.... well, you get the idea. From: "David McCusker" [re it being so slow] A lot of the OpenDoc work now being done is related directly or indirectly to performance or memory footprint optimizations. Of course, we are also still fixing bugs with high enough priority and also tuning human interface details. The optimizations will trickle into releases over time, as opposed to occuring in a big bang. The easier ones go in right away and the harder ones will take a little longer. I'm not allowed to predict when most optimizations might be done; however, it's going to take more than one release. But each release you should see noticeable improvements in different areas. For example, we've already made good advances in launch times, and times will improve even more as we streamline the process of using all information necessary to bind parts. Expect speed optimizations to appear sooner than footprint optimizations. €Netscape tip From: asg1@liii.com (Adam S. Goldstein) To: Subscribers to For those of you who suffered with very slow pulldown menus and slow typing in Netscape 2.01 for the Mac, I finally found the solution. For some reason, if your bookmarks file is too big, it slows down the program. What I did was break up my bookmarks into groups and put them into folders. No more slow pulldown menus now. €Free PPP rumours Several users report hard drive corruption in association with FreePPP, probably taking place during the installation. €Ram Doubler 1.6.2 rumours Several users report conflicts with AppleScript applets and the script editor. Recompiling the scripts helped for some. €Applescript - Creating & Writing to a File Here's a simple script that creates a file and writes to it: set thefile to "Cool Mac:testfile" ---- Cool Mac is the name of my disk, testfile is the name of the file create file thefile set refnum to open file thefile write file refnum text "hello world" close file refnum Basically, you want to set 'theFile' variable to the Macintosh pathname to where you want your file to be. If you try to create a file and it doesn't work(probably because of faulty syntax), Applescript doesn't return an error. The error doesn't show up until you try to do something with this file that doesn't exist(File not found errors) €Font History In the late-80's, Microsoft and Apple were both worried that Adobe had a lock on typographical and page description technology with PostScript. In a collaborative agreement, Microsoft and Apple agreed to attack this by creating alternatives. Apple did the typographical part - TrueType. Microsoft was supposed to deliver the page description - TrueImage. A cross-licensing agreement was signed early on. As it happened, Apple delivered TrueType. By the time Microsoft was to come out with TrueImage, Adobe, Apple and Microsoft settled their differences and licensed the PostScript technology. (Adobe made the licensing agreements much less costly) TrueImage was no longer important, so Microsoft quietly dropped it. In a measure of true irony, Microsoft did deliver TrueType technology in Windows 3.0. Early Windows adopters were quite excited by this technology, which was really useful on the PC platform given the wide variety (and display pitch) of PC displays. (Mac displays of the time were nearly all roughly 72 dpi) The ironic part is that Windows adopters credited Microsoft with inventing TrueType technology. Bill Coleman, AA4LR, AA96LR Mail: aa4lr@radio.org €Color QuickCam Software Update Connectix has recently updated the Color QuickCam software to version 2.0.2 and the updater is available FREE online. See below for online locations. Connectix Technical Support www.connectix.com * AOL Keyword: Connectix * CompuServe: GO Connectix * email: support@connectix.com * Tel: (800) 950-5880 or (415) 571-5100 * Fax: (415) 571-5195 * For automatic update announcements: www.connectix.com/connect/mail.upda.html or send email to: majordomo@connectix.com with 'subscribe updater-list' in the message body. €MacUser Utility: Talking Mouse Veteran Mac users will remember the Talking Moose, an animated Bullwinkle clone that randomly provided sardonic commentary about what was on your Mac's mind. In this age of downsizing, we've revived the animated know-it-all -- not as a moose, but rather a mouse. MacUser's latest free utility is called Talking Mouse. You can edit Talking Mouse's phrases in any text editor -- it uses Speech Manager and MacinTalk (available in the System 7.5.3 update) to create speech out of phonemes. Talking Mouse is also AppleScript-ready, so you can write scripts that make the Mouse say anything you want. And Talking Mouse includes several different "faces" and collections of phrases to choose from, so you can choose the personality that best suits you. With any luck, there will be several new face and phrase files for Talking Mouse in the future! [Jaques - Moose had a tiny RAM and disk footprint and spoke clearly, using the antique MacInTalk. However eventually it developed conflicts and Apple built in the Speech Manager (several mbs!). Progress!] €Flash ROM update for Supra 28.8 modems released From: Todd Somers To: apple-internet-users@solutions.apple.com €Demo Java sites These three top-down sites probably cover 95% of the java resources available. Todd C. Somers, Ph.D. somers@gene.com and/or somers@best.com Note -From: maccafe@macatawa.org (Jarvis badgley) To: apple-internet-users@solutions.apple.com Netscape 2.02 doesn't support it, but 3.0 does [Jaques - the beta version, widely rumoured to be buggy] €Internet Efficiency Tip for the Unix Skilled [summary of several long postings] A busy site can be hard to get onto, and slow to transmit. Therefore, get your ISP to transfer it (over the faster speeds it enjoys) to your account on your ISP. Then download to your machine from there, without all the competition. However, to direct your ISP to do this, it probably must be UNIX and you probably must Telnet to it. I¹ve never tried either. However, here are some quotes: [re necessity of using ftp to get it to ISP] - [try] lynx for http downloads. Also, if your provider has perl installed (almost certainly true) and libwww-perl-5 (more unlikely), you can use the lwp-request perl script to download ftp, http, and gopher url's. (It's usually linked to GET, so you can just type GET url > file on the command line). A benefit of using Unix FTP programs in this fashion is } that most have "redial until connected" features, very useful when that new } Netscape beta has just come out and the site is bogged down by its max } number of users. ncftp also has a "restart where you left off" (get -C), so if your connection breaks in the middle of a gargantuan download, you can restart without having to download the whole file (not all ftp servers support the necessary ftp commands, though). €Official Apple Sources of System 7.5.3 Revision 2.0 System 7.5.3 Revision 2 U.S. version can be downloaded from the following Internet sites free of charge: ftp.info.apple.com ftp.support.apple.com http://www.info.apple.com http://www.support.info.com Customers in the United States may also order the update on two floppy disks for $13 by calling 800-293-6617, extension 1198. In Canada, customers may order the update on two floppy disks for $20 by calling 800-361-6075, extension 1198. €Official Apple Sources for Cyperdog and its code You can download free Cyberdog sample code from Apple's Cyberdog Developer web site, either as Metrowerks or Code Sampler projects. You'll also want to check out the site's list of third-party Cyberdog parts and containers, many of which can also be downloaded. For the Cyberdog Developers web site: http://cyberdog.apple.com/developer.html If you haven't yet started working with Cyberdog 1.0, you can download it from the Cyberdog web site: http://cyberdog.apple.com/ €National Geographic Magazine site (produced on Macs) €Open Transport Frustration Fixed by User When Open Transport 1.1 is installed, part of the installation replaces the MacTCP/IP control panel in the Control Panels folder. Further--at least on my PM 6100/66--the new installation RESETS any preference you may have in the "Configure" field for the MacTCP/IP control panel to "Using BootP Server" rather than "Using PPP Server." That allows the Mac to CONNECT to my ISP provider's server, but all apps fail when run. For instance, in Netstape 2.02 a "failure to open a network socket connection" occurs Similar failures occur with Eudora and other apps. Reset the MacTCP/IP control panel to "Using PPP Server" solved the problem and all apps work fine. €Thunder 7¹s replacement Thunder 7 was recently acquired by Casady & Greene (makers of Conflict Catcher) and C&G told me a month ago that their first release of the revised product (to be called Spell Catcher) would be out right about now. No announcement yet. http://205.179.133.2/C&G/Welcome.html €More on catching Quits with Applescript From: alldritt@wimsey.com (Mark Alldritt) To: Subscribers to Subject: Re: Stopping a script >I'm running a script in my home-grown script runner application using >OSALoadExecute. How can I catch Quit apple events in my script runner and >have them forwarded to either a quit handler in my script or a quit handler >in my app? You need to do two things: 1 - install an AppleEvent handler for the kAEQuitApplication event. In this event handler you use the OSADoEvent call to handle the event. If you get back errAEEventNotHandled, then there is no Quit handler in the script and you should process the quit event yourself. 2 - you need to use OSASetResumeDispatchProc to install a resume event handler. This handler is called if the script does something like the following: on Quit display dialog "Quitting" continue quit --> this is when your resume proc is called end You resume proc can then complete the quit processing. €OpenDoc Part Handlers Since OpenDoc uses different handlers for different parts of the same document, where do you get the handlers? [editor - this is the same as Part Bank] Also check out the Kantara/PartMerchant folder(s) on the DR5 CD that just arrived in the developer mailing. There is a shell plug-in called PMFinder which finds and retrieves missing parts over the Internet using The Part Merchant. It is a way cool, well-engineered and well-implemented solution. <"Brad Hutchings" brad@hutchings-software.com> €AppleScript Extensions Having scripts that you get from the 'net cause you problems could be related to not having the right scripting extensions installed. Many of the scripts you will find use things like Jon's Commands, Acme Widgets, or GTQ Scripting Library. All are available on the 'net, at places like InfoMac and the gaea archives on ScriptWeb From: Andy Bachorski - Apple Developer Tech Support €Mac Trading Post Special to Evangelist members. The Mac Trading Post is up and running! We would like to extend our introductory offer to all Evangelist Members for a FREE ad. The ad must be 80 characters in width and 8 lines or fewer in length. The ad can be for used Mac software or hardware that you wish to buy, sell, or trade. The regular price of an ad is US $5.00 and your ad remains until the item is sold, or traded. €Did you know? A little known "trick" of these [web] search engines is that, once you've crafted a particularly clever search, you can save the url just like any other bookmark. €FREE email/web based Mac programming course There you can find information on those behind the MOST effort - MOST stands for MacOS Students & Teachers - and how to join in. The current course, which is now into its third week and has over 160 enrolled, is based on K.J. Bricknell's "Macintosh C: A Hobbyist's Guide to Programming the Macintosh in C" (which is superb). The method of delivery is self-study, 2 weeks per chapter, with mailing lists provided for discussion of the current chapter. A number of experienced Mac programmers act as Mentors on the lists, answering queries raised by the class. Follow the instructions at the page above to enroll. Prerequisites are a knowledge of C (there are remedial materials available, but this course is not intended to teach you C), a development environment (demonstration programs are for Symantec's THINK C and CodeWarrior), and access to KJ's book. This can be found at in HTML, PDF and Word 5.1 formats for downloading or online browsing. €Danger! Danger, Will Scott! Copland does break all drivers. However, as noted in the white paper, if you design your driver to run according to the specifications published for PCI compability you 'll automatically be able to move to Copland w/o incident. Scott D. Sauer czar@fcs-net.com [Editor - Copland will come with a driver updater. But I am skeptical. I have never had any success using Apple¹s HD ToolKit to upgrade any non­apple drive, or even an apple drive on which a non­apple driver was installed.] No, that is not the case. I have run MacOS 8 off of an APS external drive formated with APS drivers. Mike Lockwood lockwood@metrowerks.com €Port Speed Tip Lawson English - english@primenet.com reported at some length that where he brought the port speed down from the maximum to 19,200 for his 14.4 modem, it substantially increased the speed with Cyberdog and Netscape and reduced crashes. €ICScriptor 1.0 is now available. ICScriptor is a collection of pieces which allow one to access the Internet Config preferences from an OSA compliant scripting language. If the previous sentence doesn't make any sense to you, then you do NOT need ICScriptor! Dan Crevier [editor - I couldn't find it anywhere, 960821.] €Supra working on problems with Flash ROM upgrade 33.6 So far it seems to be only a problem with certain specifics in the connection but we are working on a fix already. If you want to go back to an earlier release, we have 1.300-13 posted on our ftp site []. I also have found that limiting your modem connection speeds using the +MS command can help as a short term work around. Look on our Web page for the next release. I don't know when it will be posted, but it will be once we identify, fix and test the solution. Jim Hafner-Eaton jimhe@supra.com €Reminder of Hidden Feature on System Installs command shift K in the install dialogue window will create a brand new system folder. €Eudora 3 is final and available from This is the commercial version. v.1.5.4 of the Lite version is out too. http://www.software.net/prod.htm?SRKEY=eudora+pro+mac&FUZZY=N €Converting HTML tables BACK to tab tables or spreadsheets Formula One/Net by Visual Components found at http://www.visualcomp.com/f1net/download.htm. Its an internet spreadsheet program that may be of use to you (supports excel etc.) [editor - I went there, and it appeared to be Windows only.] €BBEdit upgrade out (Rich Siegel) Bare Bones Software is pleased to announce the release of BBEdit 4.0.1. This update to their popular and critically acclaimed text editor and HTML authoring tool adds new capabilities to BBEdit's strong feature set. Highlights of version the 4.0.1 update include: - multiple Undo -  direct editing of files from FTP servers (new "Open from FTP Server" and "Save to FTP Server" commands) - support for TeX (the typesetting language widely used in science and mathematics), in addition to syntax coloring and function navigation for C, C++, HTML, Java, Pascal, Fortran, Rez, ScriptX, GuideScript, assembly language, Perl, and Tcl. - version 2.1 of the BBEdit HTML tools; this new version of the tools fixes reported problems, and provides a variety of cosmetic and functional improvements. All licensed owners of BBEdit 4.0 may download this update free of charge from the Software Update page on Bare Bones Software's site. This page is located at . In addition, the update can be found on Bare Bones Software's public FTP site, located at . Bare Bones Software invites anyone who wishes to learn more about BBEdit to visit their Web site at , or to send mail to . €Intuit is sorry. Be a Beta­Tester for on­line payments (BETA) We wanted to provide you with an update regarding the recent message submitted to EvangeList Digest regarding online payment with Quicken for Macintosh. Although online payment is not currently available for Macintosh, we are excited to let you know that it will be included with the next version of Quicken for Macintosh. We are currently accepting applications for our Quicken for Macintosh online banking and online payment beta test. If you're interested in beta testing these services, please visit our web site at to submit an application and complete a testing agreement. If you would rather have these forms faxed to you, please send an email to with the subject "FAX FORMS" and we will quickly get them to you. Please include your name, phone number and fax number in the body of the email. €ForEver Mail Our company, Digital Footprints International, provides subscribers with a personalized, permanent e-mail address (your ForeverMail address) that forwards your e-mail to your current address, no matter how many times you change jobs or e-mail providers. All you have to do is notify the ForeverMail service whenever you change your e-mail address, and ForeverMail will make sure that your e-mail always finds you at your new location. We have set up the 'Mac.lover.org' domain name if you like. Our regular price is $18 for one year of ForeverMail. However, as a *special offer* to Evangelistas, we will extend the service to 18 months for the price of 12. Just put the word MACWAY in the "Referred by" box on the form. This special offer is good through July 15, 1996, and only for the Mac.lover.org domain name. Our website is at: Or you can go directly to the sign-up form which includes the Mac.lover.org domain: €Sorry, that¹s all the time I have. This Jaques Law Bits was delivered by: Kevin Jaques, B.A. LL.B. of the Jaques Law Office #101 - 2515 Victoria Avenue Fax: 525­4173 Regina, Saskatchewan Home: 586­2234 email: jaques.law@dlcwest.com Tel: 359­3041 visit our web page at http://www.dlcwest.com/~jaques.law/