TidBITS#200/01-Nov-93

=====================

Welcome to our two hundredth issue! News this week includes a POP

mail client for the Newton, the release of Aladdin's SITcomm

communications program, a better PageMaker tip, and details on

the new SuperDrive. We also have a report on the Seybold

publishing conference in San Francisco, reader comments on the

Handeze gloves (including non-800 numbers for overseas readers),

and news of a chilling legal decision for RSI sufferers in

Britain.

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:

* APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- 71520.72@compuserve.com

New Seagate hard drives, new 10 GB HyperDAT, and new cases!

For APS price lists, email: aps-prices@tidbits.com <----- New!

Automated info: <info@tidbits.com> Comments: <ace@tidbits.com>

--------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:

MailBITS/01-Nov-93

New SuperDrive

Two Hundred Issues?

RSI & Handeze Gloves

Seybold SF Pushes Publishing Even Farther

Reviews/01-Nov-93

[Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-200.etx; 28K]

MailBITS/01-Nov-93

------------------

**Knoware**, a Macintosh Internet provider in the Netherlands, has

created a prototype of a simple POP (Post Office Protocol) client

for the Newton, according to Merik Voswinkel of Knoware. Although

Apple's NewtonMail has access to the Internet, many Newton users

want direct access to their Internet email, which is often

accessible via a POP server running on a Unix host. Although

Knoware isn't yet sure if they will complete their Newton POP

client, they stated that if not, they would release it to the net

for someone else to finish. Steve Dorner has said that he isn't

working on a Newton version of the popular Eudora, a POP and SMTP

(Simple Mail Transport Protocol - for sending email) client for

the Mac. Knoware -- knoware@indy.knoware.nl

**SITcomm shipped** last week, marking Aladdin Systems' first

foray into the communications market after years of concentrating

on utility programs. SITcomm's claims to fame are ease of use,

automatic handling of logins to many different types of systems,

automatic expansion and compression of files using StuffIt

technology, and translation of files from non-Macintosh formats

using StuffIt translators. Even better, SITcomm is scriptable and

recordable with AppleScript or Frontier. Elegance abounds, from a

battery-saving design for PowerBook users to one of the first

available ZMODEM tools for Apple's Communications Toolbox. SITcomm

requires System 7 and 2 MB of RAM and lists for $120, although you

can buy it for $39 if you own another Aladdin product or for $49

if you own a competing communications program. Aladdin -- 408/761-

6200 -- aladdin@well.sf.ca.us

**Alan Stearns** <alan.stearns@aldus.com> writes:

Thanks for the write-up of the tracking changes in PageMaker 5.0.

We did receive some feedback that tracking was too tight in

earlier versions, so now all five tracks are slightly looser than

they used to be - not just Normal and Very tight.

Your workaround of adding manual range kerning may work in some

cases, but it doesn't take you back to the original letter spacing

of a 4.0 or 4.2 document. And, if your file has many different

stories with the old tracking applied, it can become time

consuming. (Also, there is no way to do a "half-tap." You can only

kern in increments of .01 em).

My own workaround is less drastic than the one you see in the

Getting Started manual. I assume you'd want to use the new

tracking values in your new work, and merely want to keep your old

documents from changing when you convert them. This workaround

makes use of the fact that PageMaker looks for the tracking values

file in the document's folder first, and then looks in the Aldus

folder if it can't find a local file. (This is why when you choose

to save with "All files for remote printing," PageMaker makes a

copy of the tracking values file in the document folder.)

Make a "Convert" folder somewhere where you keep your old

documents. Then make a copy of the old Kern Tracks file and put it

in the Convert folder, renaming it to "Tracking Values." Now,

whenever you want to convert an old document to 5.0, move it to

the Convert folder and open it from there. All documents residing

in the Convert folder will use the old tracking values, and

everything else will use the new tracking values that reside in

the Aldus folder.

New SuperDrive

--------------

I briefly mentioned that my new Centris 660AV came with the new

SuperDrive that doesn't do automatic inject, as the older

SuperDrives did. In that respect the drive is more like the floppy

drives on the PowerBooks. However, I find the ergonomics of the

PowerBook drives better because the PowerBook drives are located

on the side, making for an easier motion than pushing a disk in

from the front.

Either way, it's not a big deal, and the new floppy drives do have

one nice feature not shared by the older floppies. A major problem

experienced by older Macs is that the floppy drive slot is used

for ventilation, and the airflow through the drive slot resulted

in dirty drives. The new SuperDrives sport a protective dust cover

that should reduce the amount of garbage inside the floppy drive.

The new drive is slightly larger than the old ones, so Macs

require new front panels to accommodate the new drive. These

panels resemble nothing so much as a pair of puckered lips, but

the important fact is that you can't mix and match the old and new

SuperDrives.

Apple claims that the new SuperDrives are functionally and

electrically the same as the old ones (other than the manual

inject and the dust cover), but Apple's rationale for switching is

that Apple can more easily source the new drives, which means that

the company can go to different suppliers to buy them, thus

reducing the price and ensuring a constant supply. In theory this

means Macs will cost less, but in fact it's more likely that Apple

or the channel will absorb the difference in the ever-shrinking

margins. Current model Macs made as of September, and all new

Macs, will incorporate the new floppy drive.

Information from:

Apple propaganda

Two Hundred Issues?

-------------------

I'm astonished. Two hundred issues is a lot, and I had no idea we

would reach this mark, not because I ever planned to stop

publishing TidBITS, but because I seldom think about the future in

that respect. The anniversary prompted me instead to think about

the past, and had I been able to scrape up the time, I would have

written an abbreviated history of TidBITS for those of you who

haven't been reading since April of 1990. Time is in ever-

dwindling supply, it so often seems, and instead of poring over

back issues to pull out our most successful stories and the most

embarrassing mistakes, I've decided to publicly thank some of the

people who have made publishing an issue of TidBITS almost every

week for over three years a true pleasure. In the process, I'll

tell you a bit about each person so you know more about the people

whose text you frequently see.

**Tonya Engst** deserves the most credit, of course, because even

though she only writes articles on occasion, she reads and edits

every issue of TidBITS, tightening my prose and often catching the

stupidities and infelicities that creep into anything that must

perforce be written quickly. Tonya has a degree from Cornell

University in Communication, with a minor in the History and

Philosophy of Science and Technology.

**Mark H. Anbinder**, our ever-vigilant News Editor, has devoted

an incredible amount of time to TidBITS over the last three years

as well. Although Mark graduated from Cornell (with a degree in

Linguistics, I believe) the same year Tonya and I did, we became

friends afterwards, when he was doing technical support for BAKA

Computers, the main Apple dealer in Ithaca, a medium-sized town in

New York State, and home of Cornell University. Mark has been the

president of MUGWUMP, the Macintosh Users Group in Ithaca, for

several years now, and also runs a FirstClass BBS called Memory

Alpha.

**Matt Neuburg** has graced our screens over the past few years

with long and insightful reviews of word processors, outliners,

and hypertext editors. Matt is currently a professor of Classics

at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, but we met when he

taught Greek Composition at Cornell, the class that I rank above

any other in terms of helping me as a writer. (Greek is a verb-

based language, whereas English is a noun-based language, so to

translate from English into Greek, you have to determine the

_meaning_ of the sentence to express the concepts in Greek.) As

I'm sure you've noticed from his reviews, Matt is an excellent

teacher and writer, and I owe him thanks for help with TidBITS and

during my years at Cornell.

**Ian Feldman** created the setext format that we introduced to

the world in TidBITS #100_, and he has provided megabytes of

comments and discussion on TidBITS, electronic publishing, and the

nets in general. Ian is a master of ASCII formatting, and that

skill shows through in some of the articles he's written or

formatted for us. Frankly, it's a unclear what Ian does, although

he's continually bombing off on long bike trips in Northern

Europe.

**Akif Eyler** of Bilkent University in Turkey wrote Easy View,

the excellent text browser that enables readers to easily skim

through issues of TidBITS and other structured text files. Without

Easy View, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to refer to

past issues of TidBITS stored on your Mac.

**Mark Williamson** of Rice University set up and has maintained

the TidBITS mailing list on Rice's LISTSERV for about a year and a

half now. His efforts have made TidBITS available to many people

who could not otherwise retrieve issues each week. Mark also

maintains the Info-Mac list at the same site, and his dedication

behind the scenes deserves recognition. Thanks are also due to the

kind folks at Rice who allow their machines and networks to be

used for the good of the Macintosh net community.

**Ephraim Vishniac** of Thinking Machines created a WAIS source

for TidBITS that makes it easy for Internet users around the world

to use the power of WAIS to search all of our back issues. Within

weeks of creating the macintosh-tidbits.src, it was being searched

over 300 times a day. I wonder what it's up to now.

**Pythaeus**, our own voice of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, has

continuously gone above and beyond the call of duty to provide

hitherto unknown information about every topic under the Macintosh

sun. You know who you are.

Scores of others have helped along the way as well, and the number

of people and the ways in which they have helped are too numerous

to mention here (or I'll have written that history after all).

Nevertheless, you too know who you are, and please consider this a

personal thank you to each and every one of you. I never intended

to monopolize TidBITS each week, since I don't pretend to be an

expert on everything, and the addition of expert voices from

around the net and around the world vastly improves our content.

RSI & Handeze Gloves

--------------------

My article on the Handeze gloves in TidBITS #199_ provoked a

number of comments and questions, the most common of which was a

request for a non-800 number for Dome Publishing. Sorry about

that - I realized I didn't have the non-800 number too late in

the day. The numbers are:

Dome -- 800/432-4352 -- 401/738-7900 -- 401/732-5377 (fax)

I received some comments from a doctor concerning the use of

heat and cold in healing. The general guidelines seem to be that

cold is useful in the first 48 hours after an acute injury, since

it decreases the amount of bleeding into the injured area. Heat,

in contrast, increases circulation, which aids healing by

providing the white blood cells needed to clean up the cellular

debris and by providing the nutrients, oxygen, and raw materials

needed to repair the damage.

Several people noted in reference to the strange four-hole

design of the gloves that in playing certain instruments like

piano and guitar, beginners are encouraged to increase the

strength and independence of the third and fourth fingers (middle

and ring fingers) which perhaps indicates that the design was

created to provide extra support for a vulnerable tendon in that

area.

**Rick Holzgrafe** <rmh@taligent.com> commented that you might be

able to find the gloves more cheaply at crafts stores that

specialize in hobbies like knitting, sewing and needlepoint, since

people who participate in such tasks often suffer from RSI as

well.

**Angus McIntyre** <angus@aegypt.demon.co.uk> and

**Fearghas McKay** <fearghas@challis.demon.co.uk> wrote to say

that the British legal establishment, in the person of Judge

John Prosser, has ruled that RSI is "meaningless" and has "no

place in the medical books." The ruling came down in a case

involving a Reuters desk editor suffering from "upper limb

disorder." It appears that the editor's doctor wasn't a

particularly confident or sure witness, in contrast with two

experts called by Reuters who claimed that RSI has "no medically

recognised symptoms which could be put down to a physical

condition."

Excuse me? Just because medical science doesn't fully understand

why millions of people around the world are suffering tremendous

pain from repetitive motions doesn't mean that they're all

hallucinating, or as in the case of the desk editor (according to

Judge Prosser), suffering from a "lack of confidence in his

ability and feelings of being watched and even victimised by his

colleagues at work." I agree that medical science doesn't

understand RSI completely, based on my research into the subject

last winter, but the pain is all too real. I doubt a doctor could

discover a pathology for blind justice either. Medical science

also doesn't know entirely how aspirin works, but you may have

trouble finding a doctor who won't prescribe it because of that

minor failing. If problems that have no medically recognized

symptoms have no place in the medical books then everyone

suffering from psychological problems should just stop whining and

get on with their lives. That's sarcasm, for anyone reading too

quickly to notice.

Rumor has it that the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is

considering an appeal of the case, and the NUJ has some seventy

similar cases pending that could be in jeopardy if this ruling

stands. Other groups, including professors, physicians,

physiotherapists, and the British Chiropractors Association, have

come out against the ruling, which, incidentally, applies only to

England and Wales, not to Scotland (and presumably Ireland), since

Scotland has its own legal system.

From various reports, Judge Prosser has something of a reputation

for having his decisions overturned. According to an article in

the Independent, in February he freed a 15-year old accused rapist

and ordered him to pay 500 pounds to the victim so she could have

"a good holiday." The successful appeal replaced the fine with a

sentence of two years detention. Perhaps the good judge will start

suffering from a little gavel elbow as his courtroom becomes

increasingly full of angry RSI-sufferers.

If the consequences of the ruling weren't so tragic, the whole

thing would be funny in a sick way. Some rulings have been more

successful, with several recent cases involving an electronics

worker and workers in a turkey factory (assembling turkeys is very

repetitive, I guess). The Trade Union Congress estimates that

100,000 people in the U.K. suffer from RSI, and we can only hope

that some of the RSI cases still to come before the courts will be

favorably received.

Seybold SF Pushes Publishing Even Farther

-----------------------------------------

by Jeffrey Veen, News Editor, South Coast Community Newspapers

6500lvee@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu

Conferences have a way of splitting their attendees into two

groups, and the Seybold San Francisco Expo was no exception. In

the conference rooms, executives and managers hypothesized on the

future of publishing, debating standards for electronic document

distribution and high-fidelity color halftone screens. But on the

floor, dashing from display to display, were the users. The users

work in the trenches, pushing the machines and software everyday -

for hours and hours - and they wanted a peek at their future. They

wanted to see the products that could make their work easier, more

productive, and more creative.

A number of vendors offered faster imagesetters with an increasing

number of features. Others lauded direct-to-plate printing from

the desktop for short-run color printing jobs. But the most

excitement focused on none other than the Macintosh and related

products. It's refreshing to see that our beloved machine still

has a stronghold in the publishing industry.

Of interest mainly to publishers were a number of companies

offering high-end solutions to age-old printing problems. It

seemed that at almost every second booth, another software firm

offered WYSIWYG trapping applications (programs that deal with the

interface between colors on a printed page). On-screen imposition

programs were quite popular as well. [Imposition programs print

multiple pages of a publication on a single piece of film in the

proper sequence and orientation for going directly to the press to

facilitate final folding and bindery, bypassing the film stripping

process, which involves pasting individual pieces of film onto

another piece of paper. -Adam] But all eyes continuously turned to

graphics and design applications.

Instant Images

The obligatory new product buzz was alive and well at Seybold. The

honor fell this time on HSC Software with their announcement of

Live Picture, a product that promises to change the way we edit

images. The $3,495 software package is similar in concept to Adobe

Photoshop but with a marked difference: you don't touch the image.

When you open an image in Live Picture, the program creates a

mathematical representation of the data. This process, known as

FITS Technology (Functional Interpolating Transformation System),

allows real-time editing and correction of any size image. HSC

Chairman and CEO John Wilczak proved the power of the software

during live demonstrations throughout the conference. Using a

stock Quadra 840AV, Wilczak opened a 150 MB file, resized it three

times, rotated it twice, and adjusted the contrast - all in less

than 15 seconds. He then zoomed into the image more than a dozen

times (instantly) and edited the shape of individual pixels to

prove his point: there is no data here.

Once you manipulate the image into a finished product, the real

work begins. Since the changes have been made only virtually,

saving your work can take some serious time - from a couple of

minutes to a few hours, depending on how drastically you altered

the image - since Live Picture must now update the data file. Once

it completes the calculations; however, you have a finished

product and something called a FITS file. This file, containing

only the changes you made to the mathematical model, can then be

compressed and sent to a client, who can apply it to her copy of

the original image. This means that instead of sending a SyQuest

cartridge overnight, you send the changes via modem in ten

minutes.

The importance of Live Picture was immediately obvious. Now, when

editing high-resolution images on the Mac, the focus can be placed

entirely on the creative process. No more waiting for screen

redraws and filters to calculate. A designer can experiment with

many different choices and still meet his deadline.

Of course, this means little to the majority of Mac users who

can't shell out over three grand for an application, not to

mention that the program needs a Quadra with 32 MB of RAM. But it

is the first step in a new direction and competitors will most

likely follow suit with similar technologies.

The technology for Live Picture was developed by Paris-based FITS

Imaging and is being ported to the Mac by HSC, who hope to have

the product shipping early next year. The company offered an early

adoption program, where professional users could help beta test

the program. As awed audience members lined up after the demo,

Wilczak said he had sold nearly $100,000 worth of Live Image by

the third day of the conference [which is actually only about 30

copies... -Tonya].

Freedom for FreeHand

Aldus pushed the illustration software envelope a bit further by

announcing FreeHand 4.0. The program boasts a completely

overhauled interface including an "Inspector palette." This new

feature will come as a blessing to those previously frustrated

with the way the program buried many of its most powerful commands

under layers of dialog boxes. Now, you can access everything from

page size to text formatting to measurements from one central

location.

The new version offers drag & drop transfer of colors and

gradients between palettes and objects as well as between

different palettes themselves. The text handling features of the

program have been greatly improved as well, including - finally -

the ability to enter text directly on the screen. New kerning

controls, column features, and text wrap options have been added

to make you wonder why you even need PageMaker.

The upgrade will be available by Christmas and will cost $150 no

matter what version of FreeHand you currently use.

XPressing Apologies

Quark busily hyped XPress for Windows during the conference but

had little to say about version 3.3 for the Macintosh. Expected to

ship soon, the new version comes only weeks after XPress 3.2 hit

the shelves. Quark explained that they rushed version 3.2 so it

would coincide with the release of the Windows version, ensuring

immediate cross-platform compatibility. The update to 3.3 will

include additional features planned for 3.2 but not included when

it shipped. Quark will concurrently release both the Macintosh and

Windows upgrades of the program.

In the continuing melee between XPress and PageMaker, Quark

continues to both push ahead and catch up, offering a number of

new features to the package. Mimicking a new addition to

PageMaker, XPress will now recognize colors in an imported EPS

image. Text boxes will act like picture boxes, offering any number

of variable shapes. The document layout palette, which Quark

modified in version 3.2 to the horror of many users, has been

"enhanced," meaning that it will most likely look more like it

used to.

The upgrade will be free to 3.2 users; $195 for everyone else.

News from the Top

Apple's display hummed with talk of the Power PC. The new machines

were there, too, but you couldn't see them. A number of demos were

running, but each consisted of a monitor and a mouse with cables

running behind the scenes. One showed a 486 based PC displaying a

fractal-rendering program. Next to it was a Power PC-based machine

drawing 20 to 30 of the same fractal in the same time. [Hmm,

that's the same demo Apple showed at Macworld Boston. -Adam]

Apple showed off its new QuickDraw GX, which features desktop

printer icons for drag & drop printing and queue viewing. A new

print dialog box offers different page sizes for different pages

in a document as well as printer selection without going to the

Chooser. Text attributes have been revamped from the old

bold/italic/shadow/outline days to include a slider for tracking,

a pop-up menu for special characters like swash caps, and Multiple

Master-like scaling of width and weight. QuickDraw GX will also

ship with "smart fonts" that automatically space and weight

individual characters based on their size and placement in a

particular word.

Apple's two recently-released LaserWriters gathered a lot of

attention, in great part due to their Postscript fax options.

Apple will offer an internal modem for both the LaserWriter Pro

810 and Select 360 that will enable anyone on a network to send a

high-quality fax as simply as printing the document. The 810

stands as a monolith to printers with three paper trays, 800 dpi,

and a 20 page-per-minute print speed. The 360 offers two paper

trays, 600 dpi , and 10 pages per minute. Both printers are based

on a RISC processor and run Postscript Level 2.

After the Storm

If a trend were to be found at Seybold San Francisco, it was the

shift in power from hardware to software. It was obvious that

programs will soon offer new techniques that leave processing for

later and put creativity first. With virtual editing just around

the corner and scripting of repetitive tasks already in place, we

may soon find that we no longer wait for our machines to catch up

to what we see in our minds. Look for a wide application of these

concepts, and start looking for them soon.

HSC Software -- 310/392-8441 -- 310/392-6015 (fax)

kptsupport@aol.com -- 75300.2707@compuserve.com

Aldus Corp. -- 206/628-2320

Quark Inc. -- 800/788-7835

Apple Computer -- 408/966-1010

Reviews/01-Nov-93

-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 25-Oct-93, Vol. 7, #42

eDisk 1.2 -- pg. 39

Stacker for Macintosh 1.0.1 -- pg. 39

Passport Producer Pro 1.0 -- pg. 40

VersaTerm 5.0 -- pg. 42

* InfoWorld -- 25-Oct-93, Vol. 15, #43

Desktop Publishing Programs -- pg. 69

QuarkXPress 3.2

Aldus PageMaker 5.0

FileMaker Pro 2.1 -- pg. 108

PortShare Pro, PortShare Lite -- pg. 109

* Macworld -- Dec-93

Quadra 840AV; AudioVision 14" Display -- pg. 50

Apple Newton MessagePad -- pg. 52

Finale 3.0.1 -- pg. 55

Turbo 040 -- pg. 57

Coolscan LS-10e; ScanMaker 35t -- pg. 59

Now Compress 1.0 -- pg. 59

Icon-It Pro 3.0.6 -- pg. 60

MovieMovie -- pg. 61

Useful Voice Processor for Mac 1.1v7 -- pg. 63

Power To Go 2.0 -- pg. 63

On The Road 1.1 -- pg. 65

PowerBook 140 F/25 Upgrade -- pg. 67

AsanteHub 1012 -- pg. 67

AppleDesign Powered Speakers; ACS100; ACS150 -- pg. 75

Now Fun -- pg. 77

Spectre Supreme -- pg. 77

Mr. File 2.0 -- pg. 79

Toner Tuner 1.0.3 -- pg. 79

HyperStudio 1.0 -- pg. 81

MobileWriterPS -- pg. 81

Office Tracker 1.1 -- pg. 82

Hello Music -- pg. 82

ultraShield 1.252 -- pg. 84

LightningScan Portable -- pg. 84

Falcon MC 1.0 -- pg. 88

New 040 Macs -- pg. 92

(too many to list)

PowerBook Duo 250 and 270c -- pg. 102

Optical Drives -- pg. 120

(too many to list)

Non-profit, non-commercial publications may reprint articles if

full credit is given. Others please contact us. We don't guarantee

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