Newsbits

By Scott T Boyd, Editor

Making More $$$

The Percentage Plus Group has just extensively revised Making More Money On Your Invention or Product. This information-packed guidebook is for anyone who markets products. It retails for $19.95. 220 pages, revision 7.

For more info, contact The Percentage Plus Group, 3415 Greystone, Suite 300, Austin, Texas 78731-2365. Call (800) 856-6639 or e-mail fred.brown@tpoint.com.

Tools Plus 2.5.1

Tools Plus 2.5.1 expands the capabilities of its GUI Building and Event Management libraries to enhance standard user interface elements and to add new ones.

Tools Plus 2.5.1 features extended functionality, automation, and full integration of: windows, tool bar, floating palettes, cursors, buttons (all kinds), picture buttons, scroll bars, editing fields, list boxes, pull-down and hierarchical menus, pop-up menus, the Edit menu, clipboard, dynamic alerts, event handling, and more. After creating the user interface with Tools Plus routines, Tools Plus makes it work.

Event management is simplified to a level of handling “requests.” Tools Plus applies system-level events to the appropriate user interface elements. Low-level events that must be handled by the programmer’s application are translated into Tools Plus Events, which require no decoding and are immediately usable. Instead of getting a low level “mouse down” event, the application receives a highly informative Tools Plus Event such as: the “Save” button was selected in the “Add Customer” window (or Button 7 was selected in Window 15).

Virtually all Tools Plus routines (each one being a reusable, self-contained, and self-maintaining component) can be executed with a single line of code.

Novice programmers and seasoned developers alike can use Tools Plus, whether their code is procedural or objected-oriented. Programs written with Tools Plus execute as quickly as procedural C applications, while having a modest impact on memory and disk space.

Tools Plus is not based on custom resources or other productivity tools (it does not require the THINK Class Library or AppMaker).

Tools Plus 2.5.1 is available for Symantec THINK C/C++ or THINK Pascal for $149 each, or $199 for both. An on-line evaluation version is available on CompuServe and AppleLink.

For more info, contact Water’s Edge Software at 2241 Lakeshore Road West, PO Box 70022, Oakville, Ontario, Canada, L6L 6M9. (416) 219-5628.

CD-ROM Of Code For $35

Celestin Company released Apprentice, a compilation of Mac source code and utilities. Apprentice contains over 450 megabytes of up-to-date source code, as well as programming utilities to assist novice as well as experienced developers.

Users will find complete working examples of applications, games, control panels, extensions, utilities, and more. Most of the source code is in C, C++, and Pascal.

Included are several “shell” programs, complete application frameworks that take care of many of the tedious tasks associated with Mac programming, including menus, standard dialogs, file handling, and the like. A complete Mac application can be built in no time by simply writing code to perform specific activities. All other aspects of the Mac environment are handled by the shell utilities.

Apprentice contains dozens of libraries, routines designed around a specific task, from graphics and sounds to menu management and serial communications. Many of these libraries include complete source code. Also included are hundreds of code “snippets”, small routines that perform specific programming tasks. From displaying a color icon or resolving a file name alias, developers will find what they are looking for in this definitive collection.

MPW users will find dozens of new and interesting tools, languages, and utilities, many with complete source code. And developers looking to learn a new language, or just dabble, will find more than 20 complete standalone programming environments. Ada, C, Forth, Lisp, Modula-2, Oberon, and Prolog are only a few of the languages included. Most come with complete documentation and programming examples, and some include complete source code to the language itself.

The information hungry will find technical specifications, language guidelines, programming hints, as well as a complete collection of the comp.sys.mac.programmer digest, a compendium of information from one of the best Mac programmer discussion groups on the electronic networks. Also included are demonstration versions of commercial programmer utilities, including installers, code and resource editors, database libraries, and much more.

Everything on the disc is indexed using several different utilities, so users will find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

Apprentice is $35, which includes standard shipping within the United States and Canada. It comes with an unconditional 30-day money-back guarantee. Customers who for any reason are dissatisfied, are entitled to an immediate refund.

For more info, contact Celestin at (206) 385-3767 voice, (206) 385-3586 fax, or email celestin@pt.olympus.net.

Want To Get Listed?

Warthman Associates is publishing the third edition of the PowerPC Tools Catalog for IBM and Motorola. Entries in the catalog are free and include both hardware/software development tools as well as support services and publications.

You can get a free copy of the current edition of the PowerPC Tools Catalog by calling (800) 426-6477. The document number is 52G7483.

If you want your PowerPC tool to be listed in the catalog, contact Forrest Warthman at Warthman Associates 240 Hamilton Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94301 (415) 322-4555 voice, (415) 322-4559 fax, or warthman@garnet.berkeley.edu

Infomac CD $49.95

Pacific HiTech, Inc. announced the release of the Info-Mac Four CD-ROM, the CD’s fourth edition. It features an easy-to-use interface and contains 600MB of all-new content, and is indexed for instant access. Brief descriptions of each program on the disc allow users to survey the considerable volume of information quickly and efficiently.

The Info-Mac Four CD-ROM is a package of files downloaded in June 1994 from the Stanford University Info-Mac archive on the Internet. They have all been uncompressed. Price is $49.95, with upgrades for registered users priced at $29.95.

For more info, call (800) 765-8369, (801) 278-2042, or e-mail info@pht.com or orders@pht.com.

BBEdit 3.0:
High Performance Text Editor For Power Macs®

BBEdit 3.0 takes advantage of native PowerPC code to greatly enhance the speed of common operations, such as loading and saving files, and text editing, searching and transformation.

In addition to support for the newest Macintosh line, BBEdit 3.0 features a unique multi-file Compare facility, which can compare individual files, folders, or project documents for differences. When comparing folders or projects, BBEdit will display files which are common to both folders or projects, as well as files unique to each folder or project. Common files can be directly compared for differences. As the result of an alliance with SciComp Software, BBEdit 3.0 also features integrated PopupFuncs technology, which allows quick access to C, C++, Pascal, Rez and 68K assember constructs defined in a source file via a popup menu in that file’s window.

Other significant enhancements include support for user scripting via AppleScript, Frontier, or any other OSA-compliant scripting system, use of Macintosh Drag and Drop in the user interface and for text editing, and support for the AOCE “Standard Mail Package”, so that users can compose, send, and read PowerTalk mail messages from within BBEdit.

BBEdit 3.0 also features a number of user-interface enhancements, included in direct response to user comments and suggestions. In order to smooth the transition from other text-editing products to BBEdit, Bare Bones Software has included a number of new text transformations, including line sorting, generation of C function prototypes, line numbering, and organization of delimited words into rows and columns.

Suggested retail price of BBEdit 3.0 is $99.00. Current BBEdit 2.5 owners can upgrade for $39.00 (US shipping & handling included). Customers who are currently using a freeware version of BBEdit, or a competing or complementary product, can upgrade for $69.00 plus S&H. (Contact Bare Bones Software for cross-upgrade information.) Students can purchase BBEdit 3.0 for $39.00.

For more info, contact Bare Bones Software at 1 Larkspur Way #4, Natick, MA 01760. (508) 651-3561 voice, (508) 651-7584 fax. E-mail CIS 73051,3255, bbedit@world.std.com, or Alink BARE.BONES.

Correction

We incorrectly reported in May that StuffIt InstallerMaker required ResEdit for custom splash screens - creating an Installer Splash screen is a simple Copy/Paste, as is adding read-me text. Since May, Aladdin has shipped version 2.0, with a plethora of new features. In fact, the entire field has changed, and several vendors have shipped all-new versions.