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Newsbits

By Neil Ticktin, Editor

New Developer Support Center

The Apple® Developer Group has created a single gateway for support services for commercial software and hardware developers in the U.S. and Canada, called the Developer Support Center (DSC). The DSC is designed to make it easier for third-party developers to access a wide variety of technical and business resources to help meet their development needs. For more information, call Apple Computer, Inc., 408/996-1010.

SoftPolish - Putting the Shine on Your Application

Language Systems Corporation has announced SoftPolish™ which enables developers to find embarrassing errors before their application ships. Errors such as incorrect capitalization in menus, incomplete icon families, and misspelled words in dialogs are now a thing of the past.

The tool looks for conflicts with Apple’s user interface guidelines, detects missing resources, and discovers potentially embarrassing mistakes. Over 50 different tests are made on resources that contain visible elements of the Macintosh user interface. SoftPolish retails for $295. For more information, contact Language Systems Corp., 441 Carlisle Drive, Hendon, VA 22070, 800/252-6479, 703/478-0181, Fax: 703/689-9593.

Marksman Version 1.1

IT Makers is now shipping Marksman 1.1. New features include floating palettes, an AppleEvent editor, more code generators, movable modal dialogs, preference file support, saving window positions, a select volume dialog, gauges in dialogs, and custom sliders.

For more information, contact IT Makers, P.O. Box 730152, San Jose, CA 95173.

MacHack ‘92

Cutting edge developments for the Macintosh will bring hundreds of the industry’s best to MacHack ‘92, the 7th Annual Macintosh Technical Confer-ence, to be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on June 17-19, 1992 at the Holiday Inn West.

MacHack will focus on RISC, and the collaboration between Apple and IBM to develop a joint operating system. Steve Weyl, Apple’s Senior Engineering Manager for Developer Tools Engineering will deliver the keynote remarks. For further information, contact Expotech, Inc., 313/882-1824 or by AppleLink: EXPOTECH or Internet: Expotech@applelink.apple.com.

MacWireframe 3.0

Amplified Intelligence has released MacWireFrame Version 3.0. The most exciting new feature is the Walk Around Dialog which allows users to explore Virtual Reality. A wire frame house can be created and the user can move through the house, going inside the wire frame; moving forwards, up, down, right, left; rotating camera viewing angles as well as direction of travel.

The program is structured around the concept of Event Objects. Transla-tion, Rotation, Scaling, Viewing Angle Rotation and the mapping of 3D objects into 2D is accomplished by a collection of matrix objects.

For more information, contact Amplified Intelligence, P.O. Box 189279, Sacramento, CA 95818, 916/737-1550.

Resorcerer Update

Mathemæsthetics has announced Resorcerer® 1.1. The new version adds support for System 7 specific resources including Balloon Help™ and Apple events. Major enhancements include a simple C/Rez-like script interpreter with a symbolic preprocessor, a compiled code editor with patch support, and the ability to edit the data fork of a file.

Resorcerer 1.1 retails for $256. The price includes a 400-page manual as well as one free upgrade and free telephone support. For more information, contact Mathemæsthetics, Inc., P.O. Box 67-156, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167, 617/738-8803, Fax: 617/738-0164.

NuBus Serial Boards

Creative Solutions, Inc. is shipping a newer, faster version of their Macintosh II NuBus Serial boards. CSI’s Hurdler line of boards have been on the market since 1987. The new version 4.4 features: sustained baud rates of 57,600 baud per channel, on-board 68008 micro with 32K bytes on-board buffering, Comm Toolbox and System 7 compatibility, 8 pin mini-DIN connectors, and software utilities.

Dual Serial version: $299. Quad Serial version: $379. For more informa-tion, contact Creative Solutions, Inc., 4701 Randolph Road, Suite 12, Rockville, MD 20852, 800/367-8465, 301/984-0262.

List Manager Replacement

DataPak Software has announced Matrix Engine to help developers display information in spreadsheet and database formats for reports and further manipulation. The Matrix Engine can create, edit, maintain and save lists or “ledgers” with an application-defined number of columns and a virtually infinite number of rows.

Matrix Engine (ME) can be used as a replacment for the Macintosh List Manager as well as an excellent building-block for “flat” database applications. ME has no 32K limit and has built-in Virtual Memory, and built-in arithmetic.

Retail price: $395. For more information, contact DataPak Software, Inc., 9317 N.E. Hwy 99, Suite G, Vancouver, WA 98665-8900, 206/573-9155, Fax: 206/573-9269.

Keyserver 3.0

Sassafras Software, Inc. has announced a major upgrade to KeyServer, its license management package. The new KeyServer 3.0 includes name & password authentication and Remote Access support. Version 3.0 will be shipped in Spring, 1992. The upgrade will be free to registered users of the KeyServer Package.

KeyServer enforces concurrent usage limits for Macintosh personal computer applications without introduc-ing new obstacles to users or software vendors. KeyServer works much like a library. To run an application, a user checks out a key from a central KeyServer. The server maintains a usage count, and will not grant a key if the count would exceed the maximum number of keys allowed.

A 10 client KeyServer costs $680, with an incremental cost of $47 per additional user. KeyServer Light for 32 users will continue to ship at the 2.3 version level for $695. Discounts are available for large purchases and educational sites.

For more information, contact Sassafras Software, P.O. Box 150, Hanover, NH 03755, 603/643-3351.

FaceWare’s ViewIt

ViewIt is a new module from FaceWare that can be used to design and manage sophisticated dialogs and windows. Its major features include (1) support for editing modal and modeless windows from within running programs, (2) multiple fonts, styles, colors, (3) the expected custom controls (lists, menus, ICON/PICT buttons, etc.), (4) extended controls as powerful as complete text editors, (5) view hierarchy that supports scrolling and paging of groups of controls, (6) direct links between variables and control values, (7) ability to override all control behavior, (8) compatibility with existing CDEFs, (9) works with all major languages/ compilers, (10) is less expensive than competing tools that do less.

For more information, contact FaceWare, 1310 N. Broadway, Urbana, IL 61801, 217/328-5842, AppleLink: D1323.

CE Updates QuickMail to 2.5.1

All registered QuickMail 2.5 customers in North America will automatically receive an update from 2.5 to 2.5.1 at no charge. Administrator improvements include: numerous minor fixes to the Administrator program, the handling of file based MailCenters has been optimized, Pathworks file servers for file based MailCenters has been improved, a more reliable Apple modem tool from Apple Computer, and address searching is more robust.

QM-Direct Bridge has various improvements to its communications options and more reliability in connecting and staying connected.

The QM-QM Bridge provides improved inter-office dialing capability for phone numbers of less than 7 digits.

QM Remote has a more robust and reliable Apple modem tool from

Apple Computer.

NameServer's long zone list handling now provides quicker access to many zones, does faster database searches, long address handling has been improved, and it now allows up to 500 MailCenters per zone.

QuickMail for DOS provides increased performance in several areas. For more information, contact CE Software, Inc., PO Box 65580, W. Des Moines, IA 50265, 515/224-1995, Fax: 515/224-4534, Orders: 800/523-7638.

Universal Component System

Software Transformation, Inc. (STI) has announced the availability of its Universal Component System™ (UCS), a software development system that enables software vendors to develop applications on a single master source code base that can be recompiled to run on multiple platforms. UCS is comprised of 25 software component families, reusable software modules that are both scalable and extensible. UCS permits developers to optimize applications by selecting the appropriate software component families then configuring each component for just the features needed for the target application - a unique technology STI calls application driven scalability. UCS is shipping now on both Windows and Macintosh with UNIX versions scheduled for later this year. For more information, contact Software Transformation, Inc., 408/973-8081.