Mousehole Report

By Rusty Hodge Mousehole BBS

LaserPrep revisited...

From: Richard Clark

In a post here a few months ago, I mentioned how typing <Command-K> while printing to the LaserWriter gives you a text copy of the LaserPrep file. (Just like <Command-F> gives you the PostScript commands for the document you otherwise would be printing.) Unfortunately, just downloading the Prep file + the PS file doesn’t work right -- everything comes out in Courier. Well, I just found out what’s happening:

The LaserWriter needs to have its internal “font list” initialized first. Try the following (after LaserPrep and before the PS file):

% The query
md begin 
%?fontList
lsf
%?end
end

Or, you can initialize just the fonts you need:

% make this “semi-permanent”, i.e. until the power goes off
% (otherwise, it only applies for this job)
serverdict begin 0 exitserver
md begin
% The format is...
%/<Coordinated-name> /<Previous-name> <Use-built-in-encoding?> rf
/|____Times-Roman /Times-Roman T rf
% Use the built-in encoding vector for the above.
% Most of the fonts are of the above form (i.e. Times-Bold,
% Times-Oblique, etc.)  but there are 2 exceptions:
/|____Symbol /Symbol F rf
% Use the LaserWriter’s encoding vector for Symbol (?)
% Zapf dingbats is a special case -- we’ll have to define some
% encodings ourselves
/|____ZapfDingbats /ZapfDingbats du fe
% redefine the encoding vector...
% format is: <encoding-position> <name> <operand>
128 /a89 ce
129 /a90 ce
130 /a93 ce
131 /a94 ce
132 /a91 ce
133 /a92 ce
134 /a205 ce
135 /a85 ce
136 /a206 ce
137 /a86 ce
138 /a87 ce
139 /a88 ce
140 /a95 ce
141 /a96 ce
nf

AppleLink users can get the whole story by searching the “Service” library for “LaserWriter” and then looking at “Working with LaserPrep and PostScript files”.

Animation on new machines?

From: Roy Hashimoto

Do the new machines (particularly the II) support multiple selectable video pages? I realize that in the II, the display memory is on the video card (at least that’s what I think), but if you are working in 1- or 2-bit mode, is the additional memory available to your process, and can it be displayed as a second page?

Furthermore, is there a non-kludgey way to do animation on the II? It would seem that it’s going to be VERY hardware dependent.

From: The Atom #397

Yes, the Mac II video card allows multiple screens, up to 8 can be page flipped via software control, if you are in 1 bit plane mode..(less if you are using more bit planes).

It should give some really nice animation, and since most of the page flipping support is independent of the video card( other than using its ram), it shouldn’t be as hardware dependant as you might think.

Some people at Apple had one of the escher pics loaded into a Mac II with 8 different variations, when they ran the page flipping, it gave a really smooth animation of water flowing over waterfalls and canals, etc.

Word 3.0... icch!

From: Max

Enough of the glowing remarks about Word 3.0! The release version is buggy (yeah, I bought it!), and shouldn’t be out on the market.

Word 3.0 will spontaneously decide to inject triple-spaced paragraphs within a document. Word 3.0 also has a habit of inserting its own page breaks for no good reason (the only fix is to convert the file to MacWrite, and then to open it again with Word 3.0. Page breaks gone. No explanation.).

Word 3.0 doesn’t work 100% with the Macintosh SE. Just try the command-shift-4 to select the next word. Nothing happens. Try it again, and the program crashes? Microsoft’s reply? “At this time, the keyboard commands you are using on the Macintosh SE don’t work, and there is no alternative.”

Is this representative of a $395 word processor? I hope not. And this doesn’t even address the glaring omissions, like word count, automatic repagination, etc.

Word 3.0 is a bad joke. Anyone who makes their living writing on a Macintosh has already figured this out. Does Microsoft care? We’ll see!

From: Gary Voth

To all who have posted on the subject of Word 3.0, I think it is time to interject some balance into this discussion.

First, most of you who are new to this board will not know me, but I have been a Mousehole regular since the dim days of 1984 (early Cretaceous period...). Presently, in addition to being an IBM PC and Macintosh programmer, I have overall responsibility for all technical, training, and product marketing literature produced by my company, a leading software development and consulting firm specializing in UNISYS Series 1100 mainframe systems.

In the course of my work, I routinely write, edit, and design 200+ page technical product manuals. My view of word processing software is biased by the fact that I depend on it for a living. I care about “insanely great” features only if they help me get my job done easier, faster, or better. I have personally used most of the top notch programs available, including WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, MultiMate Advantage Professional, and WordStar 2000 (haven’t tried Manuscript yet).

Microsoft Word 3.0 for the Macintosh is a word processor that satisfies both the “power typist” and the LaserWriter junkie: get-down-to-business data entry and unsurpassed control over the printed document. Unfortunately, many of the things about Word that appeal to professional writers like myself have confused some Macintosh users who’ve grown up with MacWrite. (Unfortunately, The MacWrite Way will haunt every text editing program ever produced for the Macintosh.)

Fact is, Microsoft Word works differently. Always has, always will.

Most of the “problems” reported by casual Word users are simply things they don’t understand about the program. Outlining, for example, is not designed to be some nebulous “idea processing” feature. Instead, Word’s outlining is a means of applying an underlying hierarchical organization to a document. Word can number section headings and generate table of contents and lists directly from the outline. You can “promote” and “demote” whole sections, and Words reflects this the next time you renumber or regenerate your tables. (The misunderstood “mark-text” option is provided only if you choose not to use the outline mode.)

Similarly, the Plain Text attribute is designed to work in conjunction with Word’s style sheets. Plain Text is not “normal,” but whatever is defined as the character attribute of the current paragraph style. Choosing Plain Text from the menu (or pressing Command-Shift-Spacebar) will override any manual text attributes you have used and resets the selection to the underlying style. This is very handy if you use style sheets (and almost any serious Word user will). Ordinary attributes are easily “de-selected” by toggling them. For example, it you select some bold text you will see that the Bold option in the Format menu is checked--choose it again to uncheck it and set the text to normal.

Word even makes the inadequate Macintosh keyboard useful, valiantly providing a keyboard shortcut for almost every possible command in the program. Borrowing from its own Windows interface, Microsoft even lets you select items from the menu and tab between dialog box options using the keyboard. (Tip of the week: select some text, press Command-Shift-E, and type “helv.”)

Word updates the screen in an incredibly complex fashion. It constantly draws off-screen bitmaps of adjacent screen pages in memory. 90% of the time, this results in very quick scrolling and screen updating, especially for embedded object-oriented graphics (they are drawn once, then displayed as a bitmap). Once in a while you can get ahead of Word and cause it to hesitate while scrolling, or perhaps it won’t completely update a section of the screen during some particularly complex event-handling sequence--for my money, this tradeoff is minimal. Word is the first word processor on a graphics-based system that can scroll a page of text as fast as its counterparts on character-based systems.

Of course, we could all go back to using LisaWrite...

From: Jim Reekes #583

Well, I understand how to use it. I beta tested it for MS and have the complete set of docs that I’ve read.

The bug that always gets me pissed is the bizarre paragraph spacing that suddenly gets magically inserted all by itself.

For example, Print the document. Everything is cool and WYSIWYG. Save. Open the next day and print. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT!!?? In between paragraphs are BIG blank lines. Select the paragraphs and check the format. It still says ‘AUTO’. Looks fine on the screen, but will continue to print with extra spacing between paragraphs.

The only way I’ve found to fix it up is to select the preceding, the in between, and the post paragraph and click on the [X] on the ruler to make them normal again. Then reformat them back to what you really wanted. Definite bug, fur sure. [Sounds like the Save command is dropping some information Word needs to re-construct the document. Whatever happened to simplicity in design yields dependability in practice? -Ed]

With all respect to Gary Voth (who is correct) there are some problems with Word 3.0 that are not just user misunderstandings. The other day, I found one involving repagination. Try inserting a hard page break (shift-enter) immediately followed (no visible or invisible characters) by a hard section break (command-enter). Then repaginate. The repagination algorithm loops endlessly, counting up dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of pages. Press command(-.) to break the cycle. I sent a letter to Microsoft telling them about this and just got a reply: “We are aware of the problem and are working on a solution.....” The whole world waits for Word 3.05!

Dr. Dog (registered 3.00 user)

From: David Valentine

An infinite loop is a pain, but you don’t lose data. Try a soft carriage return (shift return) with a box around it, with tabs for cols. it is ok when you enter the paragraph, but try and edit it. Sometimes works, others times its a real hassle. I haven’t had time to go back and take a good look at what caused it, but it lost a couple pages of tables I was working on. My favorite is that the speller doesn’t recognize the (option-n) n (n with atilde) as a character. I guess they don’t use any foreign characters up in Washington.

From: Tim Celeski

Microsoft has been listening, it appears. Among other changes, they will be rushing out a new version in June. Free to registered owners. Bug fixes, and maybe a few new things. It will appear in the trades next week. [Microsoft says the Word 1.05 update orders pending (some 2 or 3 thousand) are on hold pending the bug fix release. I called to find out about mine, and they said it takes four weeks just to get to your letter and open it, much less enter the order in the computer. -Ed]

NEC Multisync

From: Frank Henriquez

I just hooked up an NEC Multisync monitor to a spare 512 Mac motherboard, and it worked! The image filled the screen on the NEC, and it didn’t lock to the vertical frequency right away, but a week of the vertical hold button produced a nice, steady image of the insert disk icon and the cursor(in light pink and white...). I also read a letter in InfoWorld from one of the Nec folks who said that the Nec Multisync could easily scan up to 75 hz...so this monitor **may** work with the Mac II.

Disk Express/First Aid

From: Power Hopeful

I would be grateful for any help or suggestions for my following problem:

I attempted to Disk Express my 40XP on a Mac SE. After twice receiving the message that Disk Express could not communicate with the hard disk, I decided to try it on a Mac plus, and it ran with no apparent problems. BUT later when I attempted to boot the SE with the hard disk, I began having many problems. I tried First Aid, which told me that the XP was not an HFS disk. I’ve tried many things, including re-installing the 2.2 driver (from Mac +) and replacing the system folder. At first on the SE it will seem to be functioning correctly, but after the Welcome to Mac msg, it reboots and won’t recognize the hard disk. However, it is working just fine on the Mac Plus. Also, on the SE I am frequently told that the XP is damaged and needs to be initialized (oh no!!).

Can anyone help? How can I make the SE recognize the hard disk as an HFS volume? Or what else can I possibly try??

From: Jim Reekes

Well Power, you’ve described many different problems. First one is running a DataFrame XP on the Mac SE. Supposedly SuperMac fixed this with init2.2. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t use DataFrames. Secondly, after running DiskExpress you’ll not be able to use Disk First Aid. Because you’ve wiped out a vol-info block used by DFA. The Finder maintains two copies of this block, the second block from the beginning and the second block from the end. DFA uses the second from the end. You need to use FEdit to read block#2, then write it as the 2nd from the end. Then try Disk First Aid again.

Now, I’ve never had DFA do anything for me. So good luck. I would perform a complete backup (on the Mac+) and then format the drive. If you re-format the drive and it still gives you troubles, call SuperMac.

From: The Anarchist

Supermac Drivers before v2.51 were not completely compatible with ANYTHING except a Mac Plus or a 512e with a Supermac Dataport SCSI upgrade. Supermac has released INIT 2.51, which is supposedly compatible with everything, including the Mac SE and Mac II. I know for a fact that the SE works fine with this version.

From: Sam

In response to what Jim Reekes said several posts ago about not being able to use Disk First Aid after having Disk Expressed a volume is only true for versions of Disk Express earlier than 1.5 . The secondary VIB is correctly updated in 1.5 and up.

_SystemTask

From: Bill Evans

We are advised by the Documentor In The Sky that it’s a very good idea to call _SystemTask at least every 60th of a second. What are the consequences if we miss a beat quite often? Let me re-phrase that: If I ran an application for 24 hours which consistently called _SystemTask only every 30th of a second, what would be the side effects, other than lack of hair-trigger response to keyboard events, etc.?

From: Chief Wizard

SystemTask allows things like drivers to get control when they need it. Any driver that has the NeedsTime bit set in its header is checked during SystemTask. If the amount of time it specified has expired, the driver control routine is called. SystemTask is also used to blink the text edit insertion cursor.

SystemTask does not affect things like the low memory tick count registers, or the movement of the mouse, or the posting of keyboard and mouse events. TickCount and mouse movement are handled during vertical retrace interrupts, and key presses cause their own interrupts (I think).

So the net effect of not calling SystemTask often enough is pretty minute. DAs like the Alarm Clock may not update themselves so rapidly, but if you’re running a 24 hr. task, you’re not likely to have desk accessories in use.

PostEvent

From: The Atom #397

Is there any easy way to set up the Event.where location of an event that I post with PostEvent? I’d like to process certain keydown events to act as if the mouse was actually pressed in a control button.

From: Lsr

On 128K ROMs you can use PPostEvent, which returns you a pointer to the event queue entry. Then you can modify the queue entry. For all machines, you can create an event queue entry and call the _Enqueue function to put it on the event queue. Look at the OS Event Manager & OS Utilities chapters of Inside Mac.

Trap patching

From: Don

I’ve been working on a patch for GetResource and I’ve been running into some problems. First, a little background ... My patch is an ‘epilog’ type, that is, it must be called after GetResource has done its thing. Even though GetResource is already patched at system startup with an intercept that nastily looks at return addresses, my patch still works as an epilog. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with these terms for our problems, consult Scott Knaster’s ‘How to Write Macintosh Software’ appendix B. Anyway, everthing’s hunky dory except when I run ResEdit or Font/DAMover. ResEdit is particularly nasty -- because the Mac resets when you try to open a resource, I think the darn thing is generating a bus error. Other times it just begins writing wildly to video and sound memory. Font/DA Mover does the same thing. What’s the problem? I know what you’re thinking. They’re patching GetResource too! Wrong. To the best of my abilities to check this, neither program re-patches GetResource. So I’m stuck. If you have any ideas, any wild speculations, anything ... leave me some mail here.

MacMemory TurboMax upgrade

From: Max

Well... the results are in. I have just completed my review of the MacMemory TurboMax upgrade for the Macintosh (in fact, the Official Review will appear as an article in the June issue of MicroTimes - a freebie, available at enlightened computer dealers throughout California)

It’s fast. It’s fun. It is compatible with ALL Macintosh business software, and also compatible with all the DA’s I could throw at it, as well as most games (surprise!). Speed? Throwing a TurboMax into your Mac will cut 20% to 40% off the processing (“wristwatch”) time for most applications. I tested one with the optional 68881 co-processor. I’m sure that helped when it came to absolute number-crunching speed.

Value? That’s a gray area. The TurboMax is based on the 68000 CPU, rather than the 68020 of Levco’s Prodigy 4, or the (soon-to-be-released Mac II). For performance, the Prodigy ABSOLUTELY KILLED the TurboMax. At the same time, the Prodigy isn’t quite compatible with all existing software: some bizarre programs like Pro3D won’t run on the 68020.

In the final analysis, if you’re stuck on Macintosh software that’s available RIGHT NOW, the TurboMax is the cost-effective hot-rod upgrade for the Macintosh. If you’re concerned about future compatibility with applications written for the Mac II, the TurboMax is a stop-gap measure: one which exploits the existing technology, and will probably be obsolete by the end of this year.

68020

From: Power Hopeful

As you may know, I was at one time using a 68020 in my Mac Plus. I had SO many problems (mainly address errors) that I removed it. In all my studying -- both casual and serious -- I never came across one item that referred to this problem, and I just assumed the problem was with the particular board I was using, not with the 68020 generally...Lo and behold that today I see a line in MacWorld flatly stating that a large percentage (was it 50% or more?) of current Mac software is incompatible with the 68020! I don’t think this is a generally known fact, and certainly the mouth watering ads and hype about the fabulousness of the ’20 neglect to mention it...But my mouth still waters... and inquiring into Levco’s Prodigy SE: it’s selectable, i.e., a keystroke(or two?) can switch you back to your 68000. This feature should be seen as absolutely necessary, as you have an almost useless -- and certainly unpredictable -- machine without it.

From: Cpettus

I’m not sure I credit the statement that 50% of the existing Mac programs will be 020 incompatible. If a 68020 equipped system is getting BusErrors, then the problem is DEFINITELY in hardware; Address Errors might be software, but the 020 is more permissive than the 68k on strange addressing (loading a long from a byte boundary, etc.).

In general, the things that make a program 020-incompatible are self-modifying code (running afoul of the 020’s cache) or playing games with the interrupt stack frames (which are different among almost all members of the 680xx family). I doubt that 50% of all Mac programs are THAT misbehaved, and reports from Prodigy 4 owners seem to bear this out.

On the other hand, I suspect that incompatibility with _existing_ (note the emphasis) applications will get worse, not better, as the Apple system software evolves. The Mac lets programs get away with a lot right now that will probably be forbidden in the not-to-distant future. For example, right now a program can write to the screen directly; this will probably be “unsupported.” [Or impossible, since the video is not part of the Mac II motherboard RAM; programmers must agree to use the standards Apple establishes if the hardware is to grow in power without restriction. That is the beauty of Quickdraw. It eliminates the confusion of the CGA, EGA, VGA nonsense. -Ed]

From: Power Hopeful

I always appreciate words from those who REALLY know about this stuff. I was interested in the fact that those with Levco boards seem to be having fewer problems than reported. Actually, one of the reasons that I wanted to mess with the 68020 was to try some status separated (supervisor v. user) ideas I was interested in. The ‘020 has a number of additional instructions along this line, as well as enhanced stack-saved information on errors. I tried for a long time to generate bus errors with little success. My point is that all my software problems were address errors, and speaking of such, I’m experiencing some on my SE, most notably (besides “restart”) with Nosy and with SuperMac’s print spooler. The latter breaks my heart, as I am chained to the noisy Imagewriter with no draft mode from MPW!

Our discussion of the 68020 and possible incompatibilities clarifies the question that I’ve had all along about the situation. I’ve read and heard that the 68020 is downward compatible with all members of its family, but obviously its different abilities must be reflected somewhere. Does the hardware involved cause the problems? I mean --if this is not an Apple secret -- are the data/address bus expectations of a 68020 living in a current Mac different from what is actually there? Maybe you can see that I have only a rough understanding of hardware, but I’m really interested!

From: Cpettus

In terms of its physical package (i.e., what all the little pins on the outside of the chip do), the 020 is completely different from the 68k; not even close. This isn’t a source of software incompatibility, per se; the program still “sees” the same kind of addressing space, only bigger, than it saw before.

The 020 is downwards compatible, TO AN EXTENT, with the other members of the family. There are, however, some differences, and those can be killers. The stack frame on an interrupt is one, the presence of a cache (which makes self-modifying code even less of a good idea than before, if such a thing is possible), and such are related.

Then, there is the issue of addressing space. On the 68k, one only had 24 bits of addressing. The address registers, thus, only could store 24 bits of data; try as you might, A0-A7 would always report back 0 in their most significant byte. Apple took advantage of this in several places in the MAC OS (the Resource Manager being the worst offender) to keep an extra byte of data around associated with each 24 bit address (ie handles).

Enter the Mac II, and thus enter more than 16 meg (possibly) of user RAM. Those bits that they were using for other things (such as the resource flags) are now needed if the user is to have more than 16 megs of memory managed by the Mac Memory Manager plugged into the system. This is, after a fashion, the Mac equivalent of the IBM PC 640k limit; fortunately, I think the Mac limit will be more easily lifted.

I think most programs written in high-level languages using reasonable development tools will be compatible. Some programs which take considerable liberties with the Mac system will fail. Apple’s Tech Note #117 is 28 pages of compatibility guidelines, and covers the subject pretty well.

MPW And Font Manager

From: Ram Warrior

Has anyone noticed a problem with MPW Pascal and the Font Manager?

When initing the Font Manager, several constants are defined for special characters i.e. checkmark, blank, etc... In the past I have used these constants for inserting and removing special characters next to menu items. I am now using MPW and for some reason they no longer seem to work. Everything compiles just fine, but no checkmarks or other special characters.

Any thoughts? ideas? suggestions?

I am now using CheckItem instead of SetItemMark and it works fine for checking an item, but I still have need to put other characters next to a menuitem.

Menu Icon Bug

From: Rick Boarman

My last conversation with Cupertino about that got nowhere. They said not only is it a bug but it has become a feature. They tried to code some routines to fix it but nothing worked! I can’t believe Apple’s programmers can’t figure out such a seemingly simple bug.

Window Question

From: Ram Warrior

In an application I’m writing in MPW Pascal, I use a window defined as follows:

resource ‘WIND’ (1000, “window”) {        
{44, 7, 335, 505},        
noGrowDocProc, visible, GoAway, 0x0, “window” 

To the best of my current understanding this should yield a window with only a go away box, and the title “Window”.

When the program starts, the window is fine, but when a menu item is selected, and something is put in the window, the bottom and right edges, appear to have the outlines of scroll bars controls, and the bottom right corner has a “size” box in it. Is this a problem with the window control list?

noGrowDocProc

From: Chief Wizard

When you specify a window definition procedure of noGrowDocProc, you’re telling the window manager which WDEF to use to handle the window. This WDEF is called upon to draw the window, calculate its regions, and to hit-test the mouse. That is, the WDEF determines what to return when you call FindWindow. By using the WDEF for these things, you can write a WDEF that creates an unusual custom window that may have things like the grow box and the go-away box in non-standard locations.

If you specify the noGrowDocProc WDEF in your Rez source file, the WDEF that gets used will NEVER return inGrow when you call FindWindow. After all, you specified no grow box.

HOWEVER, the WDEF is NOT what draws the grow icon (and the lines for the scroll bars). When you want the window updated, you must draw these items yourself in your update window routine. To do this, you call the routine DrawGrowIcon. If you don’t call this, no grow box will be drawn.

I suspect that what’s happening is that when you put something in your window you get an update event. Then your update routine mistakenly calls DrawGrowIcon. Simply remove this line. Did you, perhaps, take some of your code from an example or other program that does have a growable window?

Window Manager Port

From: The Cloud

What is the “official” status of the Window Manager Port? i.e. can I draw in it, or is this frowned on? I’d like to be able to implement a ZoomRect procedure to draw the zooming rectangles that one sees when double-clicking something to “open” it... Also, when I set the current port to that returned by the GetWMgrPort call, I find that nothing happens if I have previously made a window invisible (by calling HideWindow() ). If I simply CloseWindow, the drawing routines work fine, but then I have to get the window all over again. Any insights would be appreciated!

wMgrPort

From: Micro Ghoul

The official status of the wMgrPort... The application did not create it, so don’t play with it or the layer manager will eventually wake-up and byte your nose.

Transfer using _Launch w/Lightspeed C

From: Mark Chally

I’m writing in Lightspeed C 2.01 and know *NOTHING* about assembly. How would I go about writing a Transfer routine (that does a SFGetFile, of course) using inline assembly? I imagine it would look something like:

Transfer()

SFReply  reply;

SFGetFile(getPlace, NIL, NIL, 1, “APPL”, NIL, &reply);  
 if (!reply.good)          
return(FALSE);       
 SetCursor(&waitCursor);        
asm {          
move.l   reply.fName, (A0)          
move.l   0L, 4(A0)          
_Launch        }

but I’m sure the assembly stuff is way off. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

From: Larry Nedry

Why do it in assembly ?

Transfer()    
{    
Point       dlgOrigin;    
SFReply     theReply;    
OSErr       Error;
    
SetPt(&dlgOrigin,82,71);    
SFGetFile(dlgOrigin, 0L, 0L, 1, “APPL”, 0L, &theReply);   
if(theReply.good)        
 {        
 Error = SetVol(0L,theReply.vRefNum);        
 Launch(0,&theReply.fName);       
 }    
}

This routine will return if cancel is selected. Larry

Files and ram cache

From: The Corsair

Ok, for my file save routine, I call Create(), FSOpen(), FSWrite(), and FSClose(). If I have the control panel RAM cache on when I do a save, it doesn’t even turn on the disk and I am assuming doesn’t update the disk until I do a quit. (this can be a real bummer) Is there some extra call that I need to do to override this?

From: Rick Boarman

Yes, FlushVol will flush out the cache buffers and the file manager buffers. I call it after I do any serious file IO (like a save).

Benchmarks

Isoemac

Does anyone know where I can get the code for the following popular benchmarks: Whetstone, Drystone, Orbit, Sieve, and FPBenchmark?

From: Jim Reekes

I called Motorola and asked for a copy of MC68020 vs. 80386. Besides being a real cool thing to have by allowing you to argue with IBM heads, it also lists the popular benchmark source code in standard format. (not like the version that was run by Intel when reporting result on the ‘386) The listing are in Fortran, Algo, and C.

Motorola: 1 800 521-6274. Ask for a copy of the Apples-to-Apples comparisons.

From: Frank Henriquez #141

Motorola is **TOO** conservative on their benchmarks; in their 68000 vs. 80286 comparison, they were pretty lenient with the 80286, and it still came out looking like doggy poo when compared to the 68000. In the 68000 vs. 80286 manual, they also provided source code - including a great little assembly language Quicksort routine that I adapted for other uses with only minor mods.

From: Cpettus #484

Actually, Motorola has always played very straight with their benchmarks, a refreshing change in an industry where benchmarks are about as reliable as ramp-up dates on production. It was nice to see M finally go after Intel’s completely bogus benchmarking suite: the 020 is, in many circumstances and MHz for MHz, a better processor than the 386; in a cost limited environment (i.e., you can’t buy fancy external caches for the 386), there IS no comparison...

TML, MDS, & MacApp

From: Worker

Well, shortly after my last message on this subject (3 days), I hit a wall that I didn’t feel like climbing. TML’s lack of PROCEDURE and FUNCTION parameters makes it next to impossible to convert MacApp to compile using the 2.0 compiler. So, I gave up and went back to Smalltalk-80. Right now, I can get more real work done with it, and it’s undoubtedly the best introduction to object-oriented programming that money can buy. Daryl Lovato at TML said they will begin working on MacApp support once they finish the Pascal compiler for the IIGS Workshop. Late summer, at least, I’d guess...

EPSF FilesFrom:

Rob Humble

Does anyone have any experience with EPSF (Encapsulated PostScript File) type files? I downloaded ArtBrowser form MHDL and like using it with the demo files provided, but what other use is it? I have generated EPSF files with Cricket Draw, but ArtBrowser won’t recognize them. And PageMaker 1.2 won’t recognize any of them, demos or C Draw made. What’s the deal with EPSF files anyway???

ArtBrowser

Dave Kosiur

I took another look at ArtBrowser since I originally got it. It’s not ArtBrowser’s fault that it doesn’t recognize Cricket Draw EPSF files - it’s the fault of Draw! I saved a simple Draw file as spheres.epsf after clicking on Draw’s EPSF option in the Save As... box. After exiting CDraw, I found 2 files called spheres.epsf! One was in the proper folder, the other was one level higher. The one in the right location had no resource fork, therefore it had no PICT resource for ArtBrowser to display. The other file had A resource fork, but something else was missing - ArtBrowser didn’t recognize it (come to think of it, I think it was a text file). Using ResEdit, I pasted the PICT resource from file B into file A and, lo and behold, ArtBrowser recognized it and displayed it properly.

It looks like Cricket Draw has a programming bug when it comes to creating EPSF files. I’m planning on phoning them tomorrow to let them know.

More on EPSFFrom

Dave Kosiur

I called Cricket Software today - they were aware of the problem with the encapsulated files created by Cricket Draw (internally, that is - I was the first user to bring it their attention). Someone in Tech Support said that they are currently testing a new alpha-release and the EPSF file bug is one item that’s addressed in the new version. Just thought you’d like to know.

APDA Response

Dave Cochran

I'm concerned with the reports in MacTutor on APDA's customer response. In the last two months, APDA has been filling orders quickly and responsively. If you have any doubts about ordering from APDA, feel free to call them about it.