AppleUserV7n9Sept1987

Us Database Publication " Vol. 7 No. 9 September 1987 £1.50 Mac music heads for the charts Tracking down errors in Prodos Reorganising the AppleWorks database More memory for the Ilgs Customising desktop icons REVIEWS e Sidekick e Print shop e Oisk hard disc e Notes ‘n’ Files + all the latest games for the Apple II and Mac " Upgrade your More than £700 worth of Mac Apple ll-latest software s to be won boards reviewed GS - the ONLY RAMcard you'll ever need! plusRAM-GS8 is the on/y RAMcard that lets you add up to E/GHT extra Megabytes of RAMAND half a Megabyte of ROM to your Apple IIGS the maximum memory possible on the IIGS! There are two plusRAM-GS cards designed to suit your specific memory needs: plusRAM-GS2, supplied with 256K and expandable to 2 Megabytes; and plusRAM-GS8, designed to get maximum performance and expandability from your IIGS, with ONE Megabyte and expandable right up to a huge EIGHT Megabytes! plusRAM-GS — GREAT PERFORMERS! Simply plug a plusRAM-GS card into the IGS memory expansion slot for up to 8 Megabytes of instantly recognised RAM, fully compatible with all IIGS software, like AppleWorks, as well as ProDOS, DOS3.3, CP/M and Pascal 1.3 programs. Use all or part of the plusRAM-GS memory as a RAMDisk to give old-favourite programs a new lease of life or use new programs, with advanced desktop displays, graphics and sound, which address the plusRAM-GS memory directly. Either way, you won't believe the extra power and speed! AppleWorks POWER Each plusRAM-GS comes complete with support software to enhance the performance of AppleWorks. As well as increasing desktop size, plusRAM-GS cards boost AppleWorks 2.0 beyond all limits: = Use the IIGS mouse to move oa A_ full function, memory- i the cursor around or to resident calculator pops up select menu items onto the screen the instant S you need it! Adds a massive 42K printer buffer which you can assign to any printer. This lets you carry on AppleWorking while < it handles the printing — no more waiting SS for a'slow printer to finish! Large desktop files are Date and time are displayed on automatically saved onto the AppleWorks screen at a// multiple disks. times 71/06/87 12-04 EASY EXPANSION Both plusRAM-GS cards are fully socketed for quick and easy expansion using readily available standard RAM chips. plusRAM-GS2 grows in 256K steps to 2 Megabytes, and plusRAM-GS8 in big 1 Megabyte stages to a massive 8 Megabytes. INSTANT PROGRAMS You can also expand your plusRAM-GS cards with a PROMDisk or ROMDisk Adaptor, giving up to 256K battery backed-up static RAM or 512K ROM... . just think, your favourite programs stored in the Adaptor, ready for use the instant you switch your GS on! GET THE RAMCARD OF THE FUTURE RIGHT NOW! plusRAM-GS2 — £99.00 plusRAM-GS8 — £249.00 GS2 256K Upgrade — £20.00 GS8 1 Meg Upgrade — £125.00 =. (Prices exchule VAT) N CIRTECH (UK) LIMITED, Currie Road Industrial Estate, Galashiels Selkirkshire, Scotland, TD1 2BP Telephone (0896) 57790 | Telex 265871 (Attn. 84:CPD001)-Telecom Gold Source Mailbox -AAH555 {(E\@2) =Contents Vol. 7 No.9 September 1987 Managing Editor Derek Meakin Technical Editors Max Parrott Cliff McKnight Production Editor Peter Glover Advertising Sales John Snowden Gail Blincow Art Editor Heather Sheldrick Reviews Editor Christopher Payne News Editor Mike Cowley Tel: 061-456 8383 (Editorial) 061-456 8500 (Advertising) 061-480 0171 (Subscriptions) Telex: 265871 MONREF G Quoting Ref. 72:MAG001 Telecom Gold: 72:MAGO0! Prestel Mailbox: 6 | 4568383 Published by: Subsenption rates for 12 issues, post free: E18 UK & Bre (string) £23 £38 Overseas (arma 11,780 January-June 1986 ISSN 0767-3114 Writing for Apple User: Articles and programs felating to the Apple are welcome. Articles should preferably be typed or computer- Printed, using double spacing. Unsolicited Manuscripts, discs etc, should be accom- panied by a self addressed stamped envelope, otherwise their retuin cannot be guaranteed. Unless agreed otherwise, Matenal is accepted on an all rights basis. © 1987 Database Publications Ltd. No material may be reproduced in whole o* in art without written permission. While every care is taken, the publishers cannot be held legally responsible for any errors in articles or listings. Apple and the Apple symbol are the reg- istered trade marks of Apple Computer Inc. Apple User is an independent publication and Apple Computer is not responsible for any of the articles in this magazine, nor for any Of the opinions expressed, News trade distribution: Europress Sales and Distribution Limited, Unit 1, Burgess Road, Ivyhouse Lane, Hastings, East Sussex TN35 4NR Tel: 0424 430422. Features 5 News All the latest news from the world of Apple computing. 8 Opening up the Mac Duncan Langtord modities the Mac's icons. 12 Battering ram Geoff Woods reviews four memory expansion cards for the Apple Il. 16 Adesktop the size of the Sahara Lew Norris discovers the potential of AppleWorks boosted by Z-Ram. 18 Icon designs The winning creations that won a reader a Macintosh Plus. 21 Problem Page Tony Hasemer answers queries on the LaserWriter. 29 True Faith in Mac lan Byfield samples New Order's Mac sound. 34 Shaping the skyline Kevin Roberts with an award-winning CAD concept. 38 Sending bits of information Kate McGill takes an introductory look at communications. 55 Competition Your chance to win more than £700 worth of software. 56 Fun and Games We look at Print Shop, Shard of Spring, Battle Cruiser, Warship, Airheart and Stationfall, 60 Desktop publis Ken McMahon and Bohdan Buciak on running a DTP bureau. 65 Overprotective? Cliff McKnight puts the case for unprotected software. 67 First-time users lan Byfield finds real people using Apples. 69 Feedback On file transfers, 80 column cards, Newsroom graphics, AppleWorks. Programming 31° CP/M: The Basic InpuyOutput System. 45 Prodos: Andrew Maskell cures two common bugs. 47 Pascal: Stuart Bell with the final part of the Apple User Control Unit. Utilities 41 Phillip Colledge creates. menu layouts with Pascal. 53 william Davis produces a customised shapes table. G3 Peter Hawks sorts out the AppleWorks database. Reviews 23 Notes ‘n’ Files: Max Parrot tries out a complement to GraphicWriter. 27 isc: Mark O'Donovan tests a hard drive for the Mac. 37 Mac assembly language: Paul Russell scans a new book. 50 Sidekick: Lech Dziewulski finds an ideal desktop companion. September 1987 APPLE USER 3 The old technology is dead. Join the revolution! The printing industry has been rocked to the core by an ever-growing series of developments in the exciting new field of Desktop Publishing. Traditional ways of producing the printed page have been revolutionised. Now anyone can use a home or office micro to design and typeset anything from books and newsletters to advertisements and company reports. With the latest methods it can all be done at a fraction of the conventional cost. And much quicker and easier than ever before. October 15, 16 & 17 Business Design Centre Islington, London N1 Organised by Database Exhibitions & Sponsored by Pira, the UK technolgy centre SWI for the printing and publishing industry Here’s a unique opportunity to find out more about this bustling new industry — the first Desktop Publishing Show. All the major companies will be demonstrating their latest products. And there will be seminars throughout each day to tell you exactly how you or your company can benefit most from the Desktop Publishing revolution. In addition, each visitor will receive a free copy of the Desktop Publishing Yearbook, worth £5 — packed with facts and figures on the most fascinating development in print technology since Caxton. No admission charge. Please complete this coupon for your tickets. Post to: Norah Hodgson, Database Exhibitions, Europa House, 68 Chester Road, Hazel Grove, Stockport SK7 5NY. Laser printer Prices lopped APPLE has cut the cost of its laser printers by £500 as part of its determi- nation to remain competitive in the fast- growing desktop pub- lishing marketplace. The Laserwriter, the launch of which in effect began the desktop pub- lishing revolution, now costs £4,495; the price of the Laserwriter Plus drops to £4,995. An Apple spokes- woman said the reduc- tion was made for a variety of reasons. “It is a reflection of falling production costs and, following on from that, economies of scale now that the DTP momentum has built up. “Also, of course, the field is constantly changing and it is impor- tant for us to be competitive”, she said. Pagemaker upgrade on its way SHIPMENT of the international English version of Pagemaker 2.0a desktop publishing software has been announced by the Aldus Corporation (01-831 2808). Pagemaker integrates text and graphics to allow the Macintosh to create high quality documents. The new version is a result of requests by customers for additional facilities. Among the most requested new features are automatic hyphenation and justification, kerning and the ability to work on longer documents. Pagemaker 2.0a will accept preformatted text files from a number of popular word process- ors including WordPerfect, WordStar 3.3 and XyWrite. It is also possible to reproduce high quality images from scanners that support the grey scale and tag image file formats (TIFF). Price £450. Apple is poised to invade China APPLE is poised to take over what is potentially the world's largest micro market — China — with its Macintosh family of computers. It has developed a Chinese operating system — the first of its type - and now experts are fore- casting that Apple may become the dominant force in a market of one billion people. A number of problems like the keyboard and operating system; as well as the fact that the Chinese alphabet has more than 14,000 characters, had to be overcome. Early attempts by the Chinese at putting all of the characters into a mechanical system resulted in a machine weighing hundreds of pounds and only capable of print speeds of six words a minute. The introduction of the new operating system, Zhongwen Talk, on the Macintosh opens up tremendous potential for applica- tions programs that will bring China firmly into the 20th Century. Another problem Apple had to tackle was the language. In China there are no less than six dialects with thousands of variations in each province, so designing an operating system and keyboard that can cope with those diffi- culties would seem an impossible task. Until now there were no effec- tive answers. To overcome the difficulties Apple developed the Zhongwen Talk operating system that allows programs to be written in Chinese. Input is by either a phonetic or special coding system. To make life easier for Chinese programmers it contains a built-in dictionary of over 6,700 characters and gives users the possibility of creating thousands more. Because of the current relax- ation of trade restrictions with Western countries and China’s push for modernisation, the time is right for Apple to infiltrate the vast market. “Computerisation is vital for China if it is to catch up tech- nologically with the West”, an Apple spokesman explained. Efforts to penetrate the market in the past from Western and Far Eastern companies have met with only limited success. BIG BATTLE BLUE APPLE in the States is digging in for what is likely to be a long and bitter battle with IBM. This follows the news that Big Blue has launched a new per- sonal computer aimed directly at Apple’s main US markets — educa- tion, the home and small business. Known as the IBM Model 25, it is priced at £859 for a complete system including monitor and disc drive — or a colour display version for £1,059. As such it becomes the com- pany'’s low end model in the recently launched Personal Systems/2 range. American analysts believe that it will take a long time — if ever — for IBM to make any real impres- sion on Apple’s traditional market strongholds. In particular, the company will face an uphill struggle in the lucrative US schools and colleges market — estimated to be worth £1 billion this year - and in which Apple currently claims a 65 per cent share. series. by a computer. unit alone. ACCORDING to reports from America, Apple is about to move into the plug-in fax unit market and is set to unveil a fax box for the Macintosh Fax units use 9600 baud modems, but apart from the modem and driving software, a good deal of the remaining circuitry can be emulated When the new unit arrives it is expected to retail for under £500, which is a good deal cheaper than the current £2,000 plus for a fax Plotter progress MACINTOSH owners who require high quality and colour output can now obtain an updated version of MacPlot from Microspot (0622 858753). Version 3.0 now works as a driver installed on the customer's application disc so that plotting can be performed directly without copying to the clipboard or having to create PICT files. Two versions of the program are available — the standard which covers paper sizes A3 and A4, and the professional which will cater for all sizes of paper. It allows you to create docu- ments and graphical charts on all normal and draughting paper sizes in full colour with greater resolution than is possible on a dot matrix printer. MacPlot 3.0 makes full use of Macintosh features such as pull- down menus and mouse. Price £129 for the standard and £249 for the professional version. September 1987 APPLE USER 5 Colour Modulator + sound for Ie £30 PAL for use with colour TV for II £A2 Apple 80 Column Text card £15 LUTION (80 col Ile) £15 RESOLUTION 64 (80 col + 64K RAM + DOS RAM disk) Ile £25 RESOLUTION 128 (80 col + 128K RAM + DOS RAM disk) Ie £35 MultiRam RGB 256K + AppleWorks expan. + DOS/ProDOS R. disk £129 | RamFactor 256K for II, Ile (runs AppleWorks on II) £219 RamWorks 256K for Ile (includes AppleWorks 2 expan) £185 Z-RAM 256K for IIc (includes AppleWorks 2 expan.) £249 GS-RAM GS for II (includes AppleWorks 2 expan.) £159 SCREEN 80 (80 col + softswitch) II 85 Digitek SCREENMASTER 80 (80 Col + softswitch) IT £A9 DMS C12 RGB for II or Ile £AS DMS C30 RGB for II or Ile £55 | PARA-GRAPH printer card + cable £30 Digitek PRINTMASTER III + cable £45 Grappler + compatible + cable £29 Orange Micro Grappler Bufferboard 16 - 64K £29 CACHECARD 16 with cable £50 CACHECARD 64 with cable £60 Serial/Communication £48 Serial Printer £24 TEEE-488 £79 Clock Card (battery back-up) £59 280 In-Circuit Emulator £199 6502 In-Circuit Emulator £149 V/O Card (Four 8 bit ports + 2 counter/timers) £59 IC Tester (Recognises & tests most 74 & 4000 series) £99 EPROM Writer upto 27256 (EPROM socket on card) £89 EPROM Writer upto 27256 Single gang (external pod) £139 EPROM Writer upto 27256 Four gang (external pod) £199 EPROM Writer upto 27256 Ten gang (external pod) £299 280 Card (II or Ie) £25 CP/M Plus for the Ie,c, or GS (board & software) £109 Disk Controller £25 16K RAM Card for IL £25 128K RAM Card for II £69 HANTAREX (Quality Italian monitors) 12" Hi-Res (green screen) £75 KAGA 12" Hi-Res (green screen) £109 Monitor Base (tilt & Twist) £12 ED 1 All prices shown exclude VAT & delivery and are correct at time of press DELIVERY: £3.00 + VAT - orders under £100 £5.00 + VAT — orders over £100 £10.00 + VAT — printers, ete. nS = 2 EPSON LX-800 FX 800 FX 1000 STAR NL 10 with parallel or Apple Ie interface NX 15 with parallel interface NL 10 Cut Sheet Feeder Apple Il compatible drive Apple lc compatible drive XEBEC Hard disks-Run DOS 3.3, ProDOS, CP/M and Pascal programs SIDER 2 (20 MB with controller) BSIDER (Tape Back-up) Numeric Keypad for He ‘AC Cooling Fan Hitek superfan for IL Metal cased two button joystick II or Ile ‘Two tone 5.25" disk box (20 disks) 5.25" Lockable storage box (100 disks) 3.5" Lockable storage box (40 disks) Diskettes D9DD Non-Branded (10) Format 80 Enhanced (DOS & ProDOS version) Il or Ie AppleWorks 2.0 ‘Wordprocessor/spreadsheet/database Pinpoint 2.0 (Appleworks expansion software) Multiscribe (Word processing with multiple fonts) Ile Font Paks for Multiscribe (5 types) Picture Manager for Multiscribe Dazzle Draw for He MultiRam CP/M RAM disk Visicalc Super Expander software Unimate (allows 3.5” drives to run DOS, CP/M etc.) PARALLEL and SERIAL ‘Two way communication 1to2 1to3 Cachebox 256K buffer (parallel or serial) 289 Birchfield Road, Birmingham B20 3DD Tel: (021) 356 7402 Telex: 334303 TXAGWMG £239 £339 £454 £239 £339 £55 _ £89 £99 £699 £599 Flights of fancy FOR people who like to fly their computers rather than work on them, a new application, Scenery Disc 11 has been released by SubLogic of Illinois (0101-800 637 4983). Used in conjunction with Microsoft's Flight Simulator on the Macintosh, the package allows the computer pilot to fly over a number of American cities. Scenery Disc 11 changes the pilot's flying environment with highly detailed views of Detroit, Pittsburgh and Niagara Falls. It also features a new default ground pattern that simulates fields and other areas of varying colour on the earth below. SubLogic says that with the Niagara Falls scene loaded the pilot can fly below the rim of the Niagara river canyon. Price $24.95 Touch of romance WOMEN with a sense of romance and a tender touch on the keyboard of an Apple II or Macintosh computer may welcome Plundered Hearts from Infocom (0101-671 492 6000). Set on board a sailing ship bound for the West Indies and faced with the amorous advances of a pirate captain, the heroine is trying to get to her ailing father on the island of St Sinistra. Plundered Hearts is an inter- active fiction game that features pirates, drunks, crocodiles and exotic locations. It is the first game from Infocom to be aimed specifi- cally at women. The main story for the game was written by Amy Briggs who read dozens of romance novels and researched 17th century ships and costumes to make the story line as realistic as possible. Price $39.95. AN agreement to develop an Ada compiler for Apple's Macintosh Il has been reached between Apple with real-time process- ing which allows true multi-tasking. It was originally devel- and Alsys. Ada is a powerful pro- gramming language . oped for the US Defence Department and has since been taken up by a number of large com- panies including ICI, British Telecom, Boeing, Nippon Electric and NASA. The language has recently been accepted by the Ministry of Defence as the prefered language for defence APPLE-ALSYS DEAL contracts. Alsys hopes that this will create a number of opportunities for companies with vali- dated Ada products. Martyn Jordan, mar- keting manager of Alsys, said: “We see the agree- ment with Apple as being hopefully the first of several such collabor- ations”. Search is on for second generation software SECOND generation software — whole new ways of preparing and running programs on Apple’s machines — is being investigated in a major technological explor- ation by the company’s new soft- ware subsidiary. The Claris Corporation, recently formed to market applications software, has been given a char- ter to boldly go where no soft- ware developer has gone before. “Personal computer software is entering its most significant tran- MAC MUSIC AN updated version of Mark of the Unicorn’s music software for the Macintosh has been released by Argent (01-379 6690). Performer 2.0 has a number of features which include multiple tempo changes, independent track looping, multiple meter changes within a song and multi record with 32 in-out Midi chan- nels via the printer and modem ports There are also a number of new edit features such as snip, splice, shift, and multiple repeat. Price £322. CROSSWORD CHALLENGE THE New York Times crossword which for years has chal- lenged some of the best minds in America is now available for the Apple I from MGA Microsystems (05806 4278). As well as all of the usual tricks, taps and teasing puns some special clues are built into the program. Help is on hand in the form of an online dictionary and spell checker. The game has been designed to cater for all levels of player from complete novice to expert. Price £19.99. sition period ever", said former Apple US executive vice president and new Claris president William Campbell. “In 1987, second generation personal computer hardware was delivered, but we have not yet seen true second generation Software. “Our company charter is to be a significant force in defining, developing or acquiring it and publishing and supporting it for broad classes of customers in business, education and govern- ment”, he said. “In the near term, Claris will focus on creating operations separate from Apple, and on mar- keting existing and future products under its own brand name”. He said Claris would make the transition as soon as practical from a wholly owned Apple subsidiary to an independent company developing, acquiring and publishing and supporting a portfolio of applications Apple intended to remain a minority owner of the new company. The man who has headed the Macintosh marketing effort for the past two years, 35-year-old’ John Zeisler is now vice president of marketing for the new company. SALES SOAR APPLE’s sales figures are blos- soming, with third quarter net sales of £398 million, a 42 per cent increase over last year’s level of £280 million. Net income for the quarter was £33.4 million which is a 65 per cent increase from the £20.2 mil- lion recorded in the same period a year ago. “These results are more evi- dence that Apple ts doing well. Acceptance for our new Mac- intosh products is high, they rep- resented nearly 50 per cent of our revenues this quarter’, said John Sculley, Apple chairman and chief executive. “As we enter the important education buying season we see a healthy demand for our Apple it products as well, Word puzzles GETTING words mixed up is all part of the fun with Nord And Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It for the Apple Il and Mac- intosh from Infocom (0101-617 492 6000). Nord and Bert are on a roller coaster ride through the English language in eight short stories set in the offbeat town of Punster. The player has to try and re- store some sort of order to the topsy-turyy town by deciphering messages which are full of double meanings and word trickery. Each story sets a word-based puzzle and cliches are the order of the day. For those who find the going a little tough there are built-in hints to aid progress. Price $39.95. September 1987 APPLE USER 7 Scrics Ea ee Duncan Langford modifies the Mac's desktop symbols IN earlier articles in this series, | have shown how to modify Mac applications using ResEdit. This time, in response to several requests, I'm going to look at icons — no, not religious symbols, those small pictures which the Mac uses to represent files on the desktop. Icons are a tricky area of Mac program- ming, and there are regretfully limitations to what is readily achievable. For example, it isn’t easily possible to replace a general application icon used by the Mac's Operating system, such as the sheet of Paper representing a document. If we attempt this, every appearance of the original will change, rather than a single icon being modified Existing special icons may be altered, but the strong ‘hooks’ between application and icon need considerable rejigging to reset. In fact, the work needed to do so is really beyond the scope of these articles. So can we change an icon? Well, yes, aS ik RAMdisk l ID Clipboard File re) 1D (Es Copy of MacWrite 4.5 = @ Copy of MecWrite 4.5 @TALRT IB DeskTop © VeNoL IB Finder IB A CDEF @ResEdit 1.1 BH NTL IB system @ § cope DITL DLOG _| FONT is L_| FREF Figure |: The fist ResEdit window — ICN® double-click to open an application been on the disc. You can only examine Desktop from within applications such as ResEdit, which allow even normally invisible files to be seen. Working with icons and the Desktop file is potentially damaging to other files, so it is even more important than usual to work on a specially prepared disc, and to check your new program carefully before moving it elsewhere. Let’s assume that you have been working on an application, perhaps adding keyboard shortcuts and other benefits, and would like to change an icon to reflect the Experiment with icons we can. The changed icon will work exactly as the original did, and the alter- ation will be permanent, provided only that, after the changes have been made, our modified application is not placed in the same folder — or, with MES, on the same disc — as an unmodified copy of the same application. If you bear this limitation in mind, with the help of this article you should have no problems in modifying an icon, or even replacing it by your own 32 x 32 pixel drawing. Apart from the enjoyment of per- sonalising applications, a change can be useful, for example, in making clear without using ‘Get Info’ that changes have been made to a program. Mac icons are actually stored on each disc in two places: Within the application itself, and in the Desktop File. This file, which is on every disc, is an invisible file which keeps track of the disc’s desktop — what's on it, and where it is situated, among other things. Interestingly, it also keeps a copy of the icon from every program which has ever 8 APPLE USER September 1987 fact that this particular copy of, say, Mac- Write is different from the original. Begin by building a disc containing a System, Finder, ResEdit and a copy of Mac- Write — as | have said before, never work with original programs, or even with Figure Wl: Inside “Copy of MacWiite” RAMdisk Copy of MacWrite 4.5 | AUECJE ICN#'s from Copy of Macl BI Bal BSSBDHO ral 3 L_|FR Ip] Figure ii: And inside the ICN#’s window originals of your modified programs — copy them! Eject all other discs, or, if using a hard disc, make sure that the Finder on your floppy is active by holding down the Option and Command keys and double- clicking on Finder. By now, the first stages of modifying a program should be familiar — double-click on the ResEdit icon, and you should shortly see a window similar to Figure |. Note that even normally invisible files, like DeskTop, are displayed here. As you would expect, t open the application “Copy of MacWrite”, we double-click on that; a window similar to Figure II should be displayed. Previously, we have looked inside the MENU and DLOG folders; this time we need to open the icon folder, which is titled ICN#, Instead of another list of names, here you will see illustrations of each of the icons used by the application. In this instance we can see the MacWrite ‘writing EDS Icn#'s 1D = 128 from Copy of MacWWrite 4.5 === 7 , Figure IV: The original icon — note the small samples mirroring the fullsize icon, on various backgrounds Series len# Data->Mask Figure V: The Data->Mask option, added to the. ResEdit menu bar when working with icons hand’ icon, and the two document icons used for MacWrite and Text files - as in Figure ill. As we want to change the MacWrite icon, click on the writing hand, to open it for modification. This time quite a large window is displayed (see Figure IV). Drag it higher up the screen, to make sure the whole window is visible. A digression here, to talk for a moment about the different illustrations of Mac icons. The principal icon, which is the large one on the left of Figure IV, is the normal icon of the application, the one which rep- resents it on the desktop. When selected, this icon usually inverts — black becomes white, and vice versa. Performing this change is the function of the other large icon, on the right — the ‘mask’ icon. I'll return to the ‘mask’ icon in a minute. Below these two large (and modifiable} icons are seven others, representing the different ways in which an icon may be displayed by the Mac. When we alter the large icons, watch how all these smaller ones change, too. Now it’s time to make some changes. As a left-hander, I've always been unhappy about the ‘rightist’ approach of Apple’s application icons, which clearly dis- criminate against us southpaws; so I'd like to modify the MacWrite icon to show a left hand, rather than a right one. It doesn’t matter whether you make such a large change. In fact, you may prefer to start off with some minor alterations. Making changes is straightforward, and é File (ZT &ResEdit 1.1 Do you really want to delete the file ‘DeskTop’ ? I System Figure Vil: Delete Desktop is carried out exactly as if you were drawing a picture in MacPaint’s Fatbits enlargement — just click on a square to change it from black to white. If you feel ambitious, you can try shift- clicking to draw a box, then cutting and pasting using the Edit menu. | completely changed the icon, but there is no need, of course, for you to alter things quite so much. Start by modifying the normal icon. Note how the smaller copies change as well, giving you a good idea how the icon will look when displayed on the desktop. Should things go wrong, remember that you can always start again by using the ‘Revert’ command, from the File menu. When you are happy with the appearance [== ICN#'s 1D = 128 from Copy of MacUrite 4.5 == Figure Vi: The modified icon of your new or modified icon, it’s time to make a ‘mask’ for it. The ResEdit programmers have made this a very straightforward task. Whenever an ICN# window is open, there is a new menu item available in ResEdit: ‘Icn#’. Selecting this displays a single command, ‘Data->Mask’ (see Figure V). As you would anticipate, this command automatically builds a new ‘mask’ in the exact shape of your new icon, saving you considerable mouse clicking. Although we'll return to this window, for the time being we'll stop here and save our new icon (see Figure VI). Return to the main ResEdit window by the usual method of closing each open window in turn. When the Mac displays the request “Save Copy of MacWrite 4.5 before closing?", the correct reply is Yes. Remember that | said there were actually two copies of each icon? At this point the copy which would actually be displayed on the desktop is still in the Desktop file, unchanged. We could open up this file and change the icon there too, but it’s really much easier to scrap the whole file. After all, we're working on a special disc, and the Mac does rebuild a missing Desktop file automatically. Incidentally, don’t ever delete a Desktop file if you have saved comments in ‘Get Info’ windows of files. The desktop file is where this information is stored, and should anything happen to the file your information will be lost. To remove the Desktop file, return to the first ResEdit window (as in Figure |) and> September 1987 APPLE USER 9 J click on the word DeskTop. Go to ResEdit’s Edit menu, and choose ‘Clear’. The Mac will ask you to confirm that you really do wish to delete the file (see Figure VIl) before removing it for you. That's actually all we need to do - you can now leave ResEdit and return to the desktop. You should see your modified MacWrite icon, exactly as it was displayed from within ResEdit. It should remain modified as long as you keep it well away from any unchanged copies. The final part of my icon discussion can be skipped by those not wishing to open up their Mac too far. It seems a pity. though, to talk about icons without mentioning a puzzling trick sometimes seen with commercial software — the way a selected icon occasionally changes, and doesn’t look at all as it did before it was selected There are several examples of this, the shareware communications program Red Ryder probably being the best known. Red Ryder normally displays a_ rather complicated icon containing two Macs, two telephones, a disc and several light- ning flashes. When selected, though, this turns into an icon of a cowboy on a horse (see Figure Vil). How is this done? Well, the trick is in the masking, and in explaining this I'll have to explain a little of how a mask works. A way to understand it is to think of the mask in action as overlaying a “normal” icon with its “mask” icon, which displays a white pixel only where there is a black one both in the ‘normal’ window, and the ‘mask’ window. If you think about it, that makes the usual ‘white on black’ of a selected icon. As you will see from Figure IX, which shows the icon window from Red Ryder, Figure IX: Red ICN#'s ID = 131 from Red Ryder 10.5 aa Ryder's icon window = note the confused att masking, which allows the cowboy and horse when selected wey Beg Red Ryder 10.5 “es Figure Vil: Red Ryders normal icon = and the same application when selected 5 Cattle Market Hexham software. distribution tel: 0434 605925 MMM SPECIAL PROMOTION GraphicWriter............£109.95 Notes “n' Filed... scm S200 MMM NE46 1NJ //GS software and more....... on DATAPAK SOFTWARE ee ee TTT TTT £195 ee TTT TT TTLTTTTTL TT BUNDLE Visualliser. Sensible Writer... Sensible Grammar. TML Pascal. VIP Professional.. Music Studio. Paintworks Plu Tass Times in Tonetown. Super Macroworks.. Music Construction Set. MovieMaker. 89.00 Adventure Construction Set... 34.95 95.00 Pinball Construction Set 14.95 95.00 Archon... 14.95 104.95 Archon II 14.95 89.95 Realm of Impossibility. 14.95 125.00 Kidstime ll. 34.95 245.00 Deluxe Paint 89.95 69.95 GraphicWnite 109.95 69.95 Notes 'n' File: 95.00 39.95 45.00 and don't forget.......... 45.00 LASER TONER CARTRIDGES (recond.) 14.95 oisieesiante as TONE a seceects £69 PHONE: _0434 605925 PRICES ARE RRP EXCL. VAT....ORDER DIRECT OR PHONE FOR NEAREST DEALER...ACCESS ACCEPTED 10 APPLE USER September 1987 ea cA there is no simple black shape here in the second window, but a confusion of shapes, mixing horse, rider and Macs. The effect is to totally remove the original pic- ture, rather than inverting it, and a new feplacement icon is drawn over the top Can we make a similar change? Yes, of course. A simple example would be to fur- ther alter our MacWrite icon, so that when selected the ‘hand’ vanishes, and we see a completed document. Back to ResEdit, and follow through the stages outlined above until you again have MacWite’s open icon window, as in Figure IV, This time, while carefully watching the smaller icons, click on the righthand large icon, and make your changes. It’s probably best to freely experiment, restoring the original by using ‘Data->Mask’ if necessary. | found that it was best to clear the old picture before drawing a new one, although the change was actually far easier to manage than it looked (see Figure X) EOS Icn#'s 1D = 128 from Copy of MacWrite 45 === When your ‘selected’ icon (which will be the second one from the left, in the bottom row} is as you like it, close all windows and save your modified MacWrite. Don’t forget to delete the Desktop, and leave ResEdit for the last time. This method will allow you to create and modify icons, as well as to make uniquely different “selected” icons from familiar “ shapes. Keep the new icons away from the old ones — and have fun! Figure X: It may look 2 mess ~ the final “different when selected” inverse icon aa ~ KEYZONE : : é Ll P LEEEELELCLE SAVER ————— oe ——— keyzone ee ——————— = = PAPER PEA | [trees cd a) DIRECT FROM UK MANUFACTURER pag ————} 28S! T rsremrensncre | stare | con] cr Son | dened oe] (| *R| S| SS TEXT CARD FOR APPLE Ile osuucnor poe Pore fee Jogo | se] crm Most versatile 80 column card — plug in auxiliary slot - gives ers 0] taro] ane) | | a wider display screen. £25 BARTHCR wo] ea] tun] | agree tse) oe oe 64K EXTENDED 80 COLUMN CARD FOR APPLE Ile srcouruNas 00] errao| ras wats] a} nas] Expand Apple Ile to 128 K Ram. Double the Tes PNAS ial il gal etal ae| scone resolutions of graphics. Biel ssoal eiisol taal Pave! cue] cae Software select 40/80 column. nos | eo] twa] ewe] [ame tena] oe] ee Fully Applesoft CP/M, Pascal compatible. Replacement for Apple extended 80 column card. 80 COLUMN DISPLAY CARD FOR APPLE I+ | | anwrad ——B5186055 ——|- B58] Epson maemo tt: Wider choice of character than normal ~ normal and inverse Coloured dea vena 42 as standard — line graphics built in — ideal for form drawings Longite a7 i | or graphics — compatible with CP/M, Pascal/Basic etc. £65 Brother = Nooo 2 ‘Goeued =| 60 PARALLEL PRINTER CARD Coloured 4.45) Shinwa Cre 3.78 Printer card with text & graphic dump firmware featuring Mejores. | asi] Star canis ie inverse, double-size & rotated image and High-Res Page 1 Gannon PWItsG/I080" | 2.09 — | & 2. Printer cable included £35 ee laa a Coloured $80 SERIAL RS232 PRINTER CARD Gis ae ee ied we Low cost, easy to use send only printer card. Baud rates L____=""__ from 75 10 9600 printed on card. Supplied with an extension * Special Offer Parrott DS/DD 48tpi £39.50 for 50 * strap with 25 D socket for the printer cable. £40 * More quantity - More discount * FULL 12MONTH GUARANTEE P&P £1+VAT * All prices inc. delivery - Just add VAT * KEYZONE COMPUTER PRODUCTS LIMITED * Ring for full price list and samples* U14 Acton Business Centre, School Road, e Try us for size London NW10 6TD Telephone: 01-965 1684/1804 Phone CLP on (0258) 89 400 [==] \__ Telex: 8813271 - GECOMS G Freepost Blandford Dorset DT11 7BR September 1987 APPLE USER 11 Fre SSS TT Battering ram Geoff Wood puts Cirtech’s PlusRAM memory expansion card to the test EARLIER this year /Agple User, January 1987) | reviewed the Apple memory card and Applied Engineering's RamFactor card. Now Cirtech has replaced its earlier Flipper card (reviewed in Apple User, June 1986) with a new card called PlusRAM. Like the Apple card and RamFactor, Plus- RAM comes with at least 256k of ram — and can be expanded in blocks of 256k up to 1Mb. The card can be used in any slot of an Apple |! Plus, except slot 0, or any slot of an Apple Ile except the auxiliary slot or slot three. PlusRAM can also be used in any slot of the Apple llgs, except the memory expan- sion slot. In practice, slots one to six may be already used for printer, modem, text dis- Play, mouse 5.25in disc drives and 3.5in disc drives respectively, leaving only slot seven for the card. This is usually the best choice, unless you want to use Pascal 1.3. Cirtech also supplies a version of the card called PlusRAM-xtra which has a megabyte of ram chips soldered to the board, whereas PlusRAM has socketed chips. Instant switching PlusRAM-xtra comes with a program called RamDesk Manager which allows you to partition the card into up to four areas for different programs or operating systems, with the facility to switch instantly between them. Ram cards have two main uses — to run programs such as AppleWorks, that auto- matically recognise the extra ram and to load programs and/or data files into the fam card so that the programs operate faster and the data can be accessed more rapidly. AppleWorks 1.3 automatically recognises PlusRAM and offers desktop sizes from 244k to 1012k. The main advantage of a big desktop with AppleWorks is not so much that you can create large files but that you can have up to 12 files in memory and switch instantly between them. AppleWorks 2.0 automatically loads almost the whole program into PlusRAM. It then runs much faster because it does not have to refer to the disc, except for some print operations. The same effect can be achieved with AppleWorks 1.3 by copying the program into the ram card. 12 APPLE USER September 1987 Like RamFactor, the PlusRAM and PlusRAM-xtra cards come with software for adapting AppleWorks. The adapted ver- sions of AppleWorks 1.3 and 2.0 auto- matically segment files which are too large to fit on one floppy disc. These versions of AppleWorks also let you use a mouse for selecting commands from the menus or for moving the cursor around in the spreadsheet, database or word processor. The adapted versions of AppleWorks also. offer a pop-up calculator, which is better than the standard Macintosh calculator because it offers memory store and recall, square roots, percentages, exponential entries and X-Y exchange The pop-up calculator is not available on AppleWorks adapted for the Apple II Plus because it resides in the 64k of ram on the extended 80 column card of the lle/c. The software also allows you to adapt AppleWorks 1.3 (but not 2.0) to run on the Apple Il Plus, It needs a 16k card in slot 0 {for Prodos) and it also needs a Videx com- patible 80 column card in slot three. The Apple II Plus does not have Open and Closed Apple keys, so their functions are emulated by pressing the Escape key followed by another key such as A or E. The actions of the arrow keys are simulated by holding down the Control key and pressing E,S,D or X. The extra characters of the Apple lle key- board are generated by using Control+Z followed by an appropriate key for example < and > give [ and ]. Lower case is obtained by using Control+A as a toggle switch. Alternatively, a wire between pin 24 of the keyboard encoder connector and pin one of the 74LS251 chip enables the shift key to be used to give upper or lower case. Prodos recognises PlusRAM as a block storage device like a disc drive or hard disc. When you boot up a ProDos disc, PlusRAM is formatted with the name/RAMn, where n is the number of the slot containing the card. You can copy files to Pluskam exactly as you would copy them to a real disc. You can store several programs on Plus- RAM and switch between them with the appropriate pathname, for _ instance RAM7/AW. SYSTEM. | tried this with AppleWriter, SuperCalc 3a and Copy I! plus. It worked easily and it certainly speeded up the graphics of SuperCalc. PlusRAM can also be used with Dos 3.3 which treats it like a disc drive with a Capacity of 240k on a 256k card or two 400k drives on a 1024k card. You must first boot up a Dos 3.3 disc, then issue the command IN#in — where n is the number of the slot containing PlusRAM. This will initialise the card as the equivalent of one or two discs. You can then copy programs and/or data files to the card and use it as a disc drive. If you want to start up the computer from the card, it must be in slot seven with a copy of Dos 3.3 on it. To achieve this, you should start up a Dos 3.3 disc, replace it with the disc that comes with PlusRAM and type BRUN PLUSRAM. This program initialises the card and copies Dos 3.3 on to it. Also on this disc is a special version of the FID (File Developer) program designed to handle large memory devices. PlusRAM appears to Pascal as a block structured device, just like a disc drive, with the name RAMn, where n is the number of the slot containing PlusRAM. Pascal 1.3 automatically recognises PlusRAM as a Pascal volume and formats it with a Pascal directory, provided that the card is in slot four, five or six. You can format the card as a startup device and start up by typing PR#n from the Basic prompt. Earlier versions of Pascal do not auto- matically recognise PlusRAM, but drivers are provided on the disc that comes with Plus- RAM. These can be copied to the APPLE! disc for Pascal 1.1 or 1.2. The updated disc then recognises the card. PlusRAM is used by CP/M in exactly the same way as an ordinary disc drive, with a Capacity of 240k for the 256k card and 1008k for the 1024k card. Cirtech’s CP/M Plus system automatically recognises Plus- RAM and formats it with a CP/M directory. Earlier versions of CP/M can be adapted by executing a special program which is on the PlusRAM disc. The manual for the PlusRAM card is only 22 pages, but it seems to give all the infor- mation you need. The manual for the RamDesk Manager is only 10 pages. It seems comprehensive but | had one prob- lem: The RamDesk Manager program comes on the disc with PlusRAM-xtra. When you start up this disc it invites you to make a RamDesk startup disc. You cannot use the original disc to start up the RamDesk manager, but you can make as many RamDesk startup discs as you wish. ERR Configurations When you boot up a RamDesk startup disc it automatically loads the RamDesk Man- ager program on to PlusRAM and displays a screen, offering a choice of six different configurations: @ One program area using all the free space on PlusRAM. @ Two equal-sized program areas. @ Three equal-sized program areas. @ Four equal-sized program areas. @ One half-sized and two quarter-sized program areas. @ One three-quarter-sized and one quarter-sized program area There are two versions of the RamDesk Manager screen: One uses a mouse, the other is keyboard driven. The latter is quite €asy to use — you must press a number from one to six. When you have made your choice, the main RamDesk Manager screen appears. Again, there is one version operated by a mouse and another operated by cursor keys. Across the top of the screen is a menu bar displaying the words Areas, Slot/Drive, Active, Restore, Backup, Name and Clear. RST a Program areas You should start by clicking on the word Areas. (On the text version you must highlight the word and press the Return key). This displays a list of the program areas so that you can select one of them. When you select a program area for the first time, you should then click on the word Activate. You will be asked to insert a Startup disc in drive one. This could be Applel: for Pascal, the Dos 3.3 System Master, a ProDos disc or a CP/M startup disc The next step is to format the program area with the appropriate operating system, then to copy relevant files to the area. The manual did not stress that you must format the program area in order to start up from it. At first, | simply copied the files - only to find that it would not start up from the chosen area. | understand that the manual has been modified to make this point clear. Once you have formatted all the areas and copied the relevant files, you can hold down the Open Apple and Control keys and press Reset. If your PlusRam is in slot seven, the RamDesk Manager screen is displayed so you can then choose a program area. When you click on Activate the program in your chosen area will start up. To switch programs with PlusRam in slot seven, Open-Apple+Control+Reset recalls the RamDesk Manager screen. Care should taken not to lose files before quitting a program. If your PlusRAM is not in slot seven or is in an Apple II Plus, you should press Control and Reset to revert to the Basic or the Moni- tor prompt. You can then type PR#n or nControl-P to recall the RamDesk Manager screen. Of course, it can be quite time con- suming to set up several program areas on the card. To make life easier, the RamDesk Manager program offers the Backup command to make special high-speed copies of the program area. The Restore command reloads the con- tent of a program area from a set of discs prepared with the Backup command. These programs can also be used to back-up to and restore from a special area of a hard disc. Finally, the Clear command allows you to clear a program area so that you can reformat it and load in other files. Conclusions In the previous review (Apple User, January 1987) | favoured RamFactor against the Apple memory expansion card. But is Plus- RAM better than RamFactor? It is certainly cheaper. Although the price of a IMb RamFactor has fallen to £319, PlusRAM starts at £99 for the 256k version with £20 for each of 256k chips, making £159 for the IMb version, The IMb PlusRAM-xtra costs £198, which includes the RamDesk Manager software. However, RamFactor has three advan- tages: It offers up to nine program areas whereas PlusRAM offers only four, the AppleWorks adaptation can read a Prodos compatible clock in any slot and there is a battery back-up system available for £179 so the card can retain data when the com- puter is switched off. But PlusRAM has advantages over RamFactor other than price. It offers a good pop-up calculator with AppleWorks and it includes software for handling Pascal 1.1 and 1.2 and CP/M 2.20B and 2.23. It also includes an updated version of FID and software for formatting program areas with Dos 3.3, In the end, it’s personal preference. But of the three rival cards PlusRAM seems to offer the best value. Product: PlusRAM Price: fram £99 Supplier: Cinech (UK) Currie Road Industrial Estate, Galashiels, Selkirkshire, Scotland, TD! 2BP Tel: (0896) 57790 o September 1987 APPLE USER 13 When seconds count, HyperCharger comes first. Expandable and affordable, HyperCharger 020 quadruples the speed and performance of the Macintosh SE, creatin: one of the most powerful persona workstations available. It does so within the existing limit of the SE’s footprint, saving desk space and preserving its portability. It gives your Macintosh SE a 16 megahertz, 32-bit 68020 microprocessor, an additional megabyte of RAM and an expansion capability which allows other hardware products to be connected. In short, HyperCharger 020 gives your Apple Mac intosh SE the performance of the Macintosh II HyperCharger — first at saving seconds. You can buy Hypercharger 020 from your Authorised Apple Dealer. For further information on | HyperCharger please return this coupon to: | \_ FREEPOST, P&P Micro Distributors ple, \ Carrs Industrial Estate, Rossendale BB4 5BR \ \ Name. | \ \ Company ... \ Address... software written to Macintosh specifications. P)\aP) MICRO DISTRIBUTORS PLC Todd Hall Road, Carrs Industrial Estate, Rossendale, Lancs BB4 5HU. Tel: 0706 217744 Telex: 635740 PETPAM G 1 Gleneagle Road, London SW16 6AY Tel: 01 677 7631 Telex: 919220 PPMICR G Dale Street, Bilston, West Midlands WV14 7JY Tel: 0902 43913 Review Expanding horizons THE Apple ligs has 256k of ram, but that’s not sufficient to run programs such as GraphicWrite, Deluxe Paint and The Music Studio. And with AppleWorks 2.0, the desktop is limited to 125k, well short of the possible maximum. Using the Apple ligs Memory Expansion card will give you up to an extra IMb of memory. With AppleWorks you then have a desktop of 1149k — slightly less if you use some of the card for a ram disc — and most of the program is automatically loaded into ram, only referring to the disc for print oper- ations. But, if you want still more memory, you can now have up to another 8Mb of ram, thanks to the advent of 1 megabit chips instead of the Apple card’s 256k bit chips. These chips are carried on cards which fit in the memory expansion slot. Applied Engineering offers the GSRAM Plus card, which can hold up to 48 chips, giving up to 6Mb of extra ram: A piggyback Card gives another 2Mb. The company also produces the GSRAM card, using 256k bit chips to yield up to IMb of extra ram. Cirtech’s card, the PlusRAM GS8, can hold 64 chips to give up to 8Mb of extra fam. The company’s PlusRAM GS2 uses 256k bit chips and offers up to 2Mb. | tested the GSRAM Plus and the Plus- RAM GS8, each with 2Mb of ram yielding a desktop size of 2,128k With all its memory cards, Applied Engi- neering also supplies a new version of its expander program which modifies AppleWorks 2.0. It offers up to 22,600 lines in the word processor, 22,600 records in the database and 2,042 lines (instead of 250) ‘on the clipboard. Such huge files are too big to fit one 3.5in disc, but the program automatically seg- ments large files to fit on two or more. a ee I Standard options If you use Prodos 8 with AppleWorks, the adapted version reads the clock and dis- Plays the date and time in the bottom right hand comer of the screen, though this can be suppressed. The display can be either American style (mm/yy/dd) with 12 hour clock, or British (dd/mmiyy) with 24 hour clock. If you have a database file with the word Geoff Wood tries two new cards which stretch the limits of the llgs DATE or TIME in the category name, you can read the current date or time — but not both — into the field by typing @ as the category's only entry. Another option allows you to set the size of the printer buffer, up to 64k. This reduces the desktop by a corresponding amount, but this is a small price to pay for the ability to use AppleWorks while it prints out a long file. a EE) GSRAM word processing The adapted version of AppleWorks 2.0 loads entirely into ram and does not refer to the disc, even for printing. However, if you use most of the desktop for files, some of the program will be dropped from ram, and you might then have to insert the disc for some operations. I loaded in a word processor file of about 2,400 characters and copied it until | had 418 pages totalling 22,572 lines. However, when | tried to calculate page breaks with Open Apple+K, it stopped halfway through. This is because the page break adds another line to each page, so 418 pages would have made 22,990 lines. | cut the file down to 410 pages and the problem was solved. The file size was displayed as 1,480k, with 608k still available. But when | saved the file (on two discs) the total was only 888k — AppleWorks compacts files as it saves them. Despite the desktop space remaining, AppleWorks would not then perform certain operations, such as listing all the files on a disc, without listing the file first. | could flip from the beginning to the end of the file instantly with the Ruler, but long files can still be unwieldy, especially in saving and loading. September 1987 APPLE USER 15 Review <1 The moral is to limit the size of files. You can easily move paragraphs between files, and you can print a series of files with consecutive page numbers. | created a database by cutting and pas- ting a file of 500 records until | had 17,000 records and only 33k left on the desktop. | sorted the file into alphabetical or numerical order on various columns, 2 process which took between two and seven minutes. The Find command took only a few seconds to display all the records con- taining a given word, while Select took no more than 15 seconds to extract all the records matching three criteria. The file size was displayed as 1,984k, but the total size on two discs was only 1,21 1k. The file took about seven minutes to save or reload. This must be the the answer for sorting thousands of records quickly — no program that holds records on a hard disc can match the expanded AppleWorks for speed. | created a spreadsheet with more than 77,000 cells, all (except Al) containing formulae. File size was 1,920k and recalcu- lation took almost 30 minutes. Take care — it can be difficult to trace errors in formulae in large files. The big desktop is useful, and not just for creating huge files. It also lets you have up to 12 large files in memory and switch in- Stantly between them. aes Prodos bonus A bonus on the AppleWorks expander disc is Bird's Better Bye, a version of Prodos 8 by Alan Bird. When you quit the program, it displays a list of all the executable system files on the disc. and you can use the arrow keys to highlight the file you want. The Escape key switches to other drives in turn. | found this program very useful — and very easy to use. | set up the GSRAM Plus card as a ram disc with AppleWorks, Apple Writer, Sensible Speller and the utilities pro- gram from Copy II Plus. | could switch fapidly from program to program, more easily than by using Mouse Desk. PlusRAM GS8 Girtech also offers an AppleWorks adap- tation program with its ligs cards. The com- pany decided against expanding AppleWorks, mainly because huge files take a long time to load and save, but the adaptation does enable you to save large files to two or more discs. It also lets you use the mouse for cursor control on the menus and in all three appli- cations. Clicking the mouse has the same effect as pressing Return, while double- clicking simulates the escape key. The adapted AppleWorks also offers a 16 APPLE USER September 1987 pop-up calculator which has memory store and recall, square roots, percentages, exponential entries and X-Y exchange. If you use Prodos 8 with AppleWorks, the adapted version reads the clock and dis- plays the date and time in inverse near the bottom right hand corner of the screen. The display is in British style (dd/mm/yy) with 24 hour clock. | found the inverse display distracting: You can suppress it, but then you have to enter the date when starting AppleWorks and your files are not time-stamped on saving. The Cirtech adaptation also offers a prin- ter buffer which is set at 42k. It is auto- matically connected to the first printer you use, which means you cannot switch the buffer from one printer to another without restarting AppleWorks. If you want to stop printing, you can empty the buffer by holding down the Option and Command keys and pressing E, though this may not work immediately if your printer has an internal buffer. i= zy = Distinctions There is an important distinction between Cirtech’s printer buffer and that featured by Applied Engineering. The latter uses the Iigs buffer and therefore works only with the ligs internal ports: The PlusRAM printer buffer is independent, and thus works with either the llgs ports or interface cards. With both cards you can use the ligs control panel to specify part or all of the memary as a ram disc. When you start up a Prodos disc, the ram disc is formatted with the name /RAMS, and you can copy files to it much as you would copy them to 4 floppy or hard disc. You can start up the computer from the ram disc, having first used the control panel to set it as the start up. You must also deliberately format the ram disc. Disc management Pascal 1.3 automatically recognises the ram disc as a Pascal volume and gives it the volume name RAMS. If you want to start up from the ram disc, you must use the Formatter program from the APPLE3 disc to format it. Cirtech’s CP/M Plus system also recog- nises the ram disc and fomats it with a CP/M directory. Again, it can be made into a Startup disc. The Cirtech card can also be used with Dos 3.3, which treats it like a disc drive with a capacity of either 160k or 400k. There is a special program on the Cirtech disc that patches Dos 3.3 for PlusRAM GS, and a special version of the FID (File Developer) program designed to handle large memory devices. A deskt USING my Apple lic, | once tried to put all my audio cassette titles and relevant details on to an AppleWorks database. | was enjoying the task — until | noticed that | had a lot more cassettes than database. Then along came Applied Engineering with Z-Ram. The cost was high — Around £400 as | remember. Still, | was hooked on AppleWorks (still am) and was mesmerised by the thought of an AppleWorks desktop the size of the Sahara. In my innocence, | imagined that once the card was installed, you had a computer with increased memory and simply proceeded as before. Not sol Use of the card involves studying the manual. Software supplied with the Z-Ram includes a system master for a Pascal Ramdrive (for use with Apple Pascal), a system master for the Z-80 (to run CP/M programs) and an “expander” for AppleWorks. I've found this last disc the most useful. The expanded AppleWorks (a one-time operation), gives a desktop of 394k. Since the whole program is loaded into memory, the program disc can be removed in favour of the data disc, which can then sit in drive one for the duration. Later, I started using Pinpoint, nine desktop accessories which work alongside AppleWorks in such a way that they appear virtually to be a part of it. Since drive two was all but redundant, the accessories could reside there per- manently, ready for action at any time. The There is now a whole Z-Ram family ~ the Ultra series = which allows for expansion up to IMb, Contact Bidmuthin Technologies, PO Box 264, Harrow, Middlesex HA3 9AY. Tel: 01-907 8516. Facts and figures The PlusRAM GS8 manual has only 17 pages, but it seems to give all the infor- mation you need. The GSRAM Plus manual is shorter sti. — only 14 pages: It is compre- hensive 0” the expanded version of AppleWorks, but gives no information about using the card as a ram disc. Both products have a program on the disc to test the ram on the card — testing erases any information there. As for power consumption, Cirtech quotes a figure of only 268ma, even with op the size of the Sahara Lew Norris puts an old favourite to the AppleWorks test expanded AppleWorks disc takes about 90 seconds to load — though if you are impatient, you can press Escape before the computer starts to load AppleWorks’ func- tions and save much of that time. The pro- gram disc must now stay in the drive as it will be accessed as with the original AppleWorks. You still have your 394k desktop, though. Now, finally,.l was able to put my casset- tes - and record albums — into an AppleWorks database file without running out of memory. This 164k file contains 2,318 records, each consisting of four categories: It covers two discs as the Z-Ram auto- matically segments files too large to fit on to one. There are one or two drawbacks with a file of 164k — one being that the file takes ‘Over two minutes to load. While most com- mands are executed quickly, the Sort command (Open Apple+A) can take four times as long as the predicted 25 seconds if the category is thoroughly mixed up. On the other hand, if you are simply adding a few more mixed items to an already sorted list, the sorting time is very fast. If you use the Find command (Open Apple+F) and get a list of selected entries in the multiple record form, zooming into single records (Open Apple+2Z) is as fast as before, but Zooming back to mul- tiple records can take several seconds. If, when saving a file, you change your mind and press Escape, you will delete the file from the disc. This can be done acci- dentally, although a warning always appears on-screen. It’s a little quirk which can in fact be useful: if you attempt to save a file to a disc which already contains too much data to permit the file to be saved, pressing Escape will delete the original file from the disc, thus releasing space for you to use. A second attempt to save the file will succeed — unless, of course, the file being saved still exceeds the size of the space available. Saving a file of 164k takes about 150 seconds. Hardly time for coffee but possibly enough for a quick nip on a cold evening. Returning to the desktop index (Open Apple+Q) can take several seconds, while removing the file from the desktop takes nearly three minutes. If you can convince yourself that the program hasn’t hung {it hasn't), you might just have time to get that coffee after alll If you can’t be bothered to remove the file, leave it where it is. You still have a whacking 210k on your desktop anyway. Beats the old 55k days, doesn’t it? The Find command (Open Apple+F) can take up to 15 seconds. Most of the other commands, including Print (Open Apple+P), work as normal and, since the program is in memory, you don’t have to wait for the command to be accessed from the disc before you can execute it. If some of the above seems a little slow, | can only suggest you try doing the same thing with a drawer full of little white cards. Some of the Pinpoint accessories can take quite a few seconds to access from disc. Using the software provided with Z-Ram, | was able to store them in a 192k famdisc which has the effect of reducing the desktop to 252k. It takes around 40 seconds to create a 192k ramdisc using the expander disc. The Pinpoint accessories can then take up to a minute or more to load. The AppleWorks program then takes about another one minute and 40 seconds. Thus the whole business takes something like three and a half minutes, and this doesn’t include load- ing your data disc — life is hard. Never mind! The whirring, clanking disc drive is gone, and the Pinpoint applications appear almost instantaneously on command. Graphmerge, the application which previously took longer to get at than British Rail Passenger Inquiries, now appears faster than you can say “Privatis- ation”. Well, almost. AppleWorks patched to allow Pinpoint in ram is not fond of segmented files. Loading such a file seems to remove the AppleWorks program from memory. This does not prevent you from working with the file but the computer needs to access the program disc in order to execute a command. The desktop size is not affected. Segmentation occurs only when files exceed 135k (that is, one full side of a formatted disc) The above problem with such files only occurs with AppleWorks patched to allow a ramdisc. The problem does not arise with AppleWorks expanded to give a 394k desktop keeping any accessories on disc. Anyway, for a few measly quid or so, you could invest in a high-capacity UniDisk drive giving you much more storage space on your discs. You are still limited to 12 files on the desktop, by the way, but several of these could each be larger than your entire desktop used to be. Was Z-Ram worth it? I’m not sure. | would certainly think twice about forking ‘out that much loot on such a device again. On the other hand, I’d hate to be without it—| just can’t imagine ever going back to a puny 128k. | think I'd sooner defect to Amstrad! 8Mb. Advertisements by Applied Engi- neering give a figure of 270ma for 6Mb. The Cirtech card has an expansion port designed to accept Promdisc or Romdisc adapter boards which offer non-volatile storage. The former, priced at £88, has up to 256k of battery-backed static ram which allows you to copy your favourite programs ready for instant use when you switch on. The Romdisc board is offered in two ver- sions, both priced at £48. One has sockets for eight 27256 type roms or eproms, the other has sockets for eight 27512 type eproms, giving storage of up to 512k. Conclusions The Cirtech card is certainly cheaper at £1124 for an 8Mb card: Sliding discounts apply if you buy extra chips with the GSRAM Plus though, so that a 6Mb card costs £1419. However, you'll need a 2Mb piggyback card to get up to 8Mb. In the end, you pays your money and takes your choice - the massive AppleWorks files allowed by GSRAM Plus, or the mousedriven features and flexibility of PlusRAM GS8. Now, if | could fit both into one slot... Product: GSRAM Plus Price: £399 for Mb, £240 for each additional megabyte. Supplier: Bidmuthin Technologies, PO Box 264, Harrow, Middlesex HA3 9AY. Tel: 01-907 8516 Product: PlusRAM GS8 Price: £249 for IMb, £125 for each additional megabyte. Supplier: Cirtech (UK), Currie Road Industrial Estate, Galashiels, Selkirkshire TD! 2BP. Tel: 0896 57790 oOo September 1987 APPLE USER 17 Results i Hundreds of impressive designs have been arriving during the last month from all over the world for the Apple Dream Machine Competition featured in the June issue of Apple User — we even received a pile of Special Deliveries on the closing date. The problem contestants faced was to design icons for three software packages — a word processor, database and spreadsheet. Many people managed to get their hands on a Macintosh to develop their designs, but most were happy to photocopy the 16x16 matrix or use graph paper. AppleUser winners The winning DATABASE SPREADSHEET antry HEHE EE t Julian Brown Michael Drysdale Se Robin Lane The overall winner was Julian Brown from Preston who takes away a Macintosh package comprising of a 78-key keyboard, precision engineered mouse, 800k internal drive, comprehensive manual and system discs. In addition he will also be receiving a copy of Icon Technology’s MacAuthor version 1.3, and The Pawn and Guild of Thieves from Rainbird. 18 APPLE USER September 1987 Due to the response and quality of entries we have decided that additional prizes of one year’s free subscription to the Apple User will go to — Michael Drysdale from Glasgow and Robin Lane from New Romney. Their designs are also illustrated here. Our thanks to everyone who submitted an entry — we hope you enjoyed the task as much as we enjoyed judging them. TOP20 | ss AT TOP 20 PRICES RETAIL OUR PRICE MS WORD 295 249 SIDEKICK 75 56 JAZZ 295 234 EXCEL 395 295 MAC SOFTWARE | Micro COMPUTER JONSULTANTS Lip UNBEATABLE offers on Macintosh SE COPY II MAC 50 39 MULTIPLAN 150 U7 MORE 295 195 OMNIS III PLUS 445 320 DBASE MAC 375 316 VICOM 150 113 MS WORKS: 245 STATWORKS 129 READY SET GO 3.1 395 PAGEMAKER 450 ILLUSTRATOR 450 RAGTIME REFLEX CRICKET DRAW MAC DRAFT MAC AUTHOR Macintosh Plus Laserwriter Apple Il GS Trade-ins Welcome HARDWARE 45MB HARD DISK 1495 TURBOSCAN 19951675 THUNDERSCAN 249 198 IMAGEWRITER EMUL BOARD FOR (FX RX) 100 85 IMAGEWRITER Il DMP 445374 POSTSCRIPT LASER PRINTER 4500___3378 Prices shown exclude post and packing and VAT and are correct at time of printing (© Call us for our famous.eye-testing Prica _@ Credit accounts for PLC companies, st with over 2,000 items inc: ‘government depts, hospitals, local Apple, IBM, Apricot, Epsom software ‘authorities, schools, colleges, and hardware, printers, monitors, disks. _universitics. All st grest savings. @ Professional advice. @ Hotline support on al @ Fast delivery. 2 2 products sold. (© Quantity diacounte. AC. INTERACTIVE 8 CLARENDON AVENUE, LEAMINGTON SPA WARWICKSHIRE CV32 5PZ, ENGLAND 0926 450099 Authorised Apple and LaserWriter Dealers Level One-Service Centre Barclay House, 151 Elliott St Tyldesley, Manchester M29 8EL Tel: 0942-892818 srvsOVERSEAS ORDERS A SPECIALITY 2% September 1987 APPLE USER 19 The Best of MacPaint and MacDraw SuperPaint is the most advanced graphics creation tool available for the Macintosh. It has two layers; one for editing dots like MacPaint, & one for manipulating objects like MacDraw. The features read like a Christmas wishlist. Full- screen editing. Multiple windows. 3 levels of magnification. Reduced view. Creates shapes bigger than the screen. Draws circles and squares from the centre. Text can be edited. LaserWriter Fonts. Open and save MacDraw PICT and MacPaint files. Print multiple copies. Colour printing on ImageWriter II. Makes full use of big screens. Best ofall, there's LaserBits™, dot-by-dot editing at 300dots- per-inch resolution. The results printed on a LaserWriter are stunning} Paste these graphics into other programs and they retain their 306dpi resolution! In fact, the SuperPaint file format has been adopted as the standard by all seven major US scanner manufacturers for 300dpi graphics editing. Here's what the US reviewers have been saying about it : "SuperPaint is the best paint program available on Macintosh today" ~ Arian Mewo, MacWontp “Ican really review SuperPaint in two words: Get it!” ~ Suaron Axer, MacUser (US) “"SuperPaint is the hottest graphics package currently available. - CJ Waicanp, MACazne_ When all you want isa masterpiece SUPERPAINT £80.00 “a0 youthe owner of a momorphungy MocPLs or Mos 7 Feed youMoc wh @ MegeMoe 2 the ick ona whe now rearing! Ihe SMA cug nace ond ‘Teohy Memnoatestere sn Sauroc ond Meuse’ Core he people who know Mac software MacSeriouse The MacSerious Company 17 Park Circus Place Glasgow G3 6AH Phone 041-332-5622 Fax 041-332-3209 Telex 777021 MACSER G The MacSerious Company is dedicated to helping the serious - or not so s« fiware he or she needs.. and which no-one els . try Mac: How to buy MacSerious product of the s can't find it elsewhe ducts in directly. us for trade informatio Shipping & Handling: UK § prious. If we don't have it in s Cc pus Mac user get ‘old ide of the Atlantic. If you tock, we'll got it for you if tl exists. g ¥ : Go to your Apple dealer! Iv should have our most popular and if not, we can get what you're looking for there fast. Ifyou don't | us help you get the products your customers want, i) Alloffers are subject to availability. We reserve the right to change or discontinue products without notice. Prices shown here do not include VAT. eoces, LaserSpeed No-wait laser print! Quark Xpress Simply the ultimate desk-top publishing program. Now available. £695.00 that works is here Now you can print and keep working. LaserSpeed is the spooler with built-in queue management. If you're printin PageMager™ 1.2. LaserSpeed is always available. Wg one page or a novel ... get LaserS} Only LaserSpeed works with all your applications, including ed! Just turn on your Mac. LaserSpeed does the work, not you. Get instant “pop-up” notification when your job is done. Turn spooling on and off. No-one else on your network can interfere. Even if someone accidentally tums your Mac off, LaserSpeed's “crash control” picks up nig it where it left off. for in Get LaserSpee: your dividual use for £80, or the LaserSpeed Office Pak for £425. Minimum system requirement: 512K Mac, 800K dis The Macintosh Screen Extender... THE MACSERIOUS PROGRAMMERS TOOLBOX LicutSpeep Pascat £110 ‘An interactive compiler & development environment for the Mac. You'll ind all features of Mac applications. Features include a highlevel sytnbolic debugger: Toolbax level debugger, numerous utiiies, excellent jocumnentation. LicHtS) aan c ‘Acomplete high-performance cmming environment providing in a le integrated Macintosh-style application, a mault-ile text editor, native le compiler, ultrafast linker, & automatic make facility, as well as full Toolbox & Unix compatibility. £150 c el Kamnighan & Richie's “The C Language’, plus more recent features" 'P Lightspeed C compiles more than ten times faster than any other Mac C compiler. Generated code is between 70% & 80% the size, & runs in 65% to 95% of the time taken by other compilers. Stepping Out IS ‘Virtual screen’ software which extends the power of the standard Mac display to give it the same feel and features as a £2000 full page display screen. With Stepping Out, choose the ‘screen size that suits best the task in hand, and working with wide tables, big spreadsheets, and full-page DTP page layouts becomes faster and easier as /ou overcome the limitations of the lac screen size. ‘Other options include working with the whole virtual screen reduced to fit, or for detailed work, you can enlage any portion of the ‘big’ screen up to sixteen times, Your Stepping Out full-page display will only cost you £75. This must bo the software bargah of the yeart Dark Castle Can you defeat the Black Knight, evil ruler of the Dark Castle? Action is hot & heavy as you battle through stunning & smooth anima- t will take your breath away .. an areade/ is ce but most of al FUN! Fontographer Vers. 2.2: £375.00 FONTastic Plus : £74.95 Fontographer: the only professional PostScript™ font editor available for the Mac today. When your design is ready, it can be printed on the LaserWriter, or any PostScript™ compatible device. Now supports composite characters & can replace or add new characters to the built-in fonts. Maximise your Laser Writer power. Bitmaps are made automatically, & can be fine-tuned with the included copy of FONTastic Plus, the enhanced bitmap font editor (also available oniit's own). Mac Zap Vers.4.5 The one essential utility Mac Zap Copy, Now. recovers Mac Zap Recover wezerie SCSI disksl £49.95 Mac Zap Tools, Mac Zap Disk’ Mac Zap Fat Dick Makor LightSpeed Pascal & LightSpeed Care the compilers of choice with most leading Mac developers today. MacNosy version 2 £80 fi MacNosy Debugger for Mac I cd abi ‘Card for Mac IT Complete Pascal development system that compiles both Mac & Lina Pascal, permitting the ereation of standalone Souble-clickable applications and DA‘s, ‘And to go with it tiere's the TML Development Tools: ‘TML Source Cove Limarr £70 18 example Pascal applications Darasase Toount £85 Extensive library of Pascal procedures MacE; £175 of Pascal procedures ‘The MacSerious Top Ten-June ‘ 1 a gicket Bra Stepping Out UghtSpeed C MacSerious: the source for Mac software. Write or phone for our free catalogue today 20 APPLE USER September 1987 Feature 263.LG hf This month's column answers questions posed by Geoff Thomas, Kate Wyndal and Chris Lawson Smoothing out the LaserWriter PRINTING documents on the ImageWriter appears to be relatively hassle-free, but print- ing on the LaserWriter is considerably less so. Where one printer is shared between several Macs via AppleTalk, current best esti- mates of the number of trips to the Laser- Writer and back in the course of printing any one document hover around (3 + N] where N is the user's telephone number. However, the following tips should be useful to all who use the Mac predominantly for word processing or desktop publishing. (SAGEM isa 5 Font handling First, there are two check-boxes in the Page Setup dialog which often cause confusion — font substitution and smoothing. If the first of these is checked before you print, the Laser- Writer will automatically convert certain fonts into cenain others. The reason for this is that, unlike the ImageWriter, the LaserWriter is not capable of printing all fonts. In fact most Laser- Writers, whether upgraded to LaserWriter Plus status or not, can only handle around half a dozen fonts, of which Times, Helvetica and Courier are probably the best known and the most commonly used. What is more, the Laserwriter doesn’t nor- mally know about New York, Geneva or Monaco, which are probably the most commonly-used fonts when laser printing is not intended. So if you feed it a document written in New York font, the LaserWriter will print it in Times. Similarly, Geneva gets printed as Helvetica, and Monaco as Courier. Of course, the conversion process takes time, and if your document actually was writ- ten in one of the fonts “native” to your Laser- Writer you should always uncheck “font substitution” before printing. For similar rea- sons, it's a bad habit to write always in, say, Geneva font when you know that you're going to want to print on a LaserWriter. BSc ae What you see The inter-word spacing of non-native fonts always looks odd when printed. Choose a native font instead (Helvetica looks nicer when printed than it does on-screen, and is quite similar to Geneva). In any case, no two fonts are exactly the same size, and there is every likelihood that printing your document in a different font from the one you intended will mess up your formatting. What you actually get out of the printer will not be exactly what you saw on screen, even allowing for the font change itself. Some people who believe that the Mac is not as WYSIWYG as it claims to be are making precisely this elementary mistake. Incidentally, Write Now can also do font substitution. When you ask it to save your document it also saves a great deal of other useful information, and amongst this is a record concerning the System file you were using at the time. Presumably the record is of something quite simple such as the exact size of the System file. But if next time you open that document the record doesn’t tally with the System you're using, Write Now assumes that something in the System has been changed, and sets about checking to see that all of the fonts which your document needs are still present. If one or more is missing, Write Now substitutes the nearest equivalent it can find. When you don’t check ‘font substitution’ but still try to print a document written in a non-native font, the LaserWriter has to take the bit-mapped image of the font (the same as you see it on your screen) and try to print that. Particularly in larger point-sizes, this can result in a very jagged appearance. Look closely at the words on the Mac’s menu bar, and notice how very jagged they really are. The LaserWriter can improve things somewhat by employing a smart smoothing algorithm, which attempts to fill in the gaps and so lessen the jaggedness. This often works quite well, but on very small point- sizes, say |Opt or less, the smoothing process can actually make the words less legible by filling in gaps which shouldn't be filled in. So it’s up to you to decide whether to check “smoothing” before you print. The same process will also often improve Mac- Paint pictures, or indeed artwork from any application which stores your document as a bitmap [most of the commoner ones do so}. iii ee Faster printing But, again, it can ruin details which you wanted preserved, and once again the necessary processing takes up a good deal of time. If you didn’t know about these things before, you may be surprised how much faster your LaserWriter prints if you use a native font and uncheck both “font substit- ution” and “smoothing”. Sometimes the Page Setup menu will (depending upon which application you're using) contain other check-boxes whose meaning may not be entirely clear — for example, “binding margin” or “gutter”. Look at any printed and bound book. The inner margins, the ones where the book is bound together, are wider than the outer margins. Printers normally think of the page as having a left margin the same width as the right margin, and also having an extra binding margin or gutter on whichever side is the inner side. So, if you never intend to bind your document, you don’t need the extra margin. Uncheck it. Another odd term which you may sometimes see is “page wrap factor’ According to Write Now’s manual, this is “the size of the tallest line which can con- tinue from one page to the next”. What this appears to mean is that if the fontsize you're using, or the inter-line spacing you've chosen, or the height of an>& September 1987 APPLE USER 21 Feature J embedded picture, exceeds the page wrap factor, then you should increase the page wrap factor. Quite how this is useful | haven't been able to discover. EEE Line spacing “Leading” and “kerning” are not found in the Page Setup dialog, but they do very much affect the appearance of your final output. Leading (pronounced like ‘bedding’, not like ‘bleeding)) is a distance measured in points. The name comes from the fact that in traditional printing narrow strips of lead are inserted between the lines of type to control the amount of space between consecutive printed lines In other words, it is the line spacing. It is generally measured from the baseline [the Notional line running along the bottoms of Most letters, corresponding to the line on lined paper if the print were handwriting) of ‘one row of print to the next. It will normally be several points larger than the pointsize of the type, because if it were the same there would be no space between the lines, and if it were less each line would overwrite parts of the one above it Kerning is the same sort of thing in the horizontal direction: The amount of space between adjacent characters. As Dave Russell pointed out last month in his review of XPress, the term “kerned” is usually applied to pairs of letters which have had the space between them adjusted. XPress also allows what it calls “tracking”, which involves adjusting the space to the right of each of a selected group of characters. Most fonts are what is called propor- tionally spaced. This means that a letter such an i actually takes up less horizontal space than a letter such as m. In a typewriter-like font such as Courier or Monaco this is not the case. In proportionally spaced fonts kerning can become a very complex process, since some pairings of letters still look good if their rela- tive spacings are changed, and some do not. The smaller sizes of some fonts (Helvetica, for example) show this effect on-screen — words like “good” look very stretched out, while words like “‘still” look squeezed together. Of course, Helvetica looks perfectly alright when printed. bn ee a Standard sizes | expect you know that fonts are usually supplied in a standard set of point sizes: 9, 10, 12, 14, 18 and so on. For some reason which | have yet to find an explanation for, the LaserWiter is not happy with the in-between sizes, even of its own native fonts. LaserWriters use PostScript programs rather than bitmaps to represent the fonts, and these programs describe each charac- ter as a set of curves. It is therefore a simple matter to scale any character to any desired pointsize without any loss of quality. WORD processing plus is the selling point for Manuscript Manager from Per- gamon Press, designed very much with authors’ needs in mind. And while it has a distinct American flavour, Manager does promise to take the tedium out of typing for anyone producing reports, technical articles and manuscripts The program prompts the entry of references and ensures consistency in their presentation. Headings - set in standard format — can be called up at a keystroke to show the outline of a docu- ment at a glance. Manager automatically numbers fig- ures, tables and so on — and all text references to them. All standard word processor functions are supported, including the facility to combine multiple documents for larger manuscripts. A valuable extra is inbuilt proofreading for style errors. Manager is easy to work with, func- tions being called by sensible key com- Professional touch Appleljpdate— FOOTNOTES binations: Control+O, for example, will switch the cursor from Insert to Overstrike mode. Help is always at hand in the shape of 70 “context sensitive” help screens which appear automatically for title pages and citations. While Manager is aimed more at the professional writer than the casual tapper, it does feature useful facilities that other word processors lack. 22 APPLE USER September 1987 The point sizes of LaserW/riter-native fonts which appear in your favourite word processor's Font menu are there only so that the Mac can display them to you on screen; the corresponding PostScript de- scription sent to the LaserW/riter is much more accurate. However, trouble arises with those in- between sizes if you like to mix your styles. Say, your main text might well be in Plain style, but with the occasional word or phrase in Bold, in Italic, in Underline, and so on. When printed, these occasional styled sec- tions can be shifted both horizontally and vertically from their “proper” positions relative to the surrounding plain text, sometimes to such a degree as to overwrite parts of the plain text. It looks terrible, and | can only assume that Apple has never tried to use I 1pt Times or 1 3pt Helvetica. You've probably already noticed that underlining looks horrible when printed on the LaserWriter. This is because the underline is continuous, and doesn’t leave gaps for the descending tails of letters such as q or y. | recommend avoiding underlining wherever possible. After all, we are so used to seeing it only because until recently we had nothing better than typewriters for our documents and inter-office memos. Now that we have the Mac, we can use more elegant-looking methods of stress; Italic is my own favourite. Check list . This next advice will sound trivial, but it has saved me many an unnecessary trip to the LaserWriter and back. The advice is to follow a simple check list every time you feel ready to print. Check that there is plenty of paper in the paper-tray, check that the printer is selected via the Chooser (particularly if you access it via AppleTalk); and check Page Setup. Some word processors are notorious for forgetting that a document is intended to be printed on A4 paper, and repeatedly default to US paper size. Word 1.05 always did this, though version 3.0 never does. Finally, although I've said this before it is worth saying again: If you use AppleTalk as a means of sharing a single LaserWriter between several Macs, do make sure that all of the Macs use the same versions of the Laser Prep and LaserWriter software. If you don't, the printer will continually demand to be re-initialised, and with the earlier versions of the software this means a trip to the machine to physically switch it off and then on again. The wait for a LaserWriter to re-initialise seems interminable. If you've got a problem related in some way to your Mac and its many uses, send it to Tony Hasemer at Apple User, 68 Chester Road, Hazel Grove, Stockport SK7 SNY. jae Review Nice ‘n’ easy LAST month | described the Ilgs word processor, GraphicWriter, from DataPak Software. According to its manual, that word processor is accompanied by a set of modules (bought separately) called offices, which perform tasks such as mail merging and filing, In fact none of the pull-down menus offers a route to these offices, which | inter- pret as meaning that the manual is out of date and the error has not been noted. To offset these deficiencies DataPak has produced an accompanying program called Notes‘n‘Files which can act as a filer and mail merger for GraphicWriter, although it is just as useful as a standalone unit. In fact the links between the two pro- grams are rather tenuous. Text files — and | mean text, not graphics — may be trans- ferred between the two. But text may be created from within Notes’n‘Files, making GraphicWriter almost redundant. Similarly mail merging is really carried out totally from within Notes’n'Files so that in use GraphicWriter is limited to creating, for example, fancy letter headings. If you do this you have to pass the paper twice through the printer, once under each program. Notes'n'Files is not a fully-fledged, free- format database with powerful search operations. But it is useful as a simple filing system with reasonably powerful search capabilities. And it is. also capable of generating form letters with targetted, mail- ing labels which can be tracked by date. The program comes on a protected 3.5in disc (there is an option to mount the pro- gram on to a hard disc) which boots to give Prodos 16 and the Apple Launcher which | briefly described last month. Font — Style —Termet Print - | Figure |: Notes ‘n’ Files main screen Starting the program soon shows a screen (Figure |) with the Apple, File, Edit, Font, Style, Format and Print pull-down menus ranged across the top; a double- drawer, metallic looking (nice touch that) filing cabinet in the middle of the screen and six icons at the bottom. These are labelled Stationary, Master List, Index 1, Index 2, Copier and Trash. The program is mainly controlled by the mouse, Max Parrott tests out a filing system with a difference although some functions may be called from the keyboard. The filing cabinet is labelled Sample.files and | assume that if it were not on the disc you would simply pull down the file menu and open whichever filing cabinet you wanted. As it is | had to close Sample.files and then open the one | wanted when using Notes'n‘Files normally. A drawer of the current filing cabinet (there can be only one cabinet and one drawer from that cabinet active at any one time) may be opened by double clicking the mouse button when the cursor is on it (Figure 1). Frampton, Tine _ [i Edwards, Lise Denning, Mike |_| Corison, fred] | Baker, Thomas [Anderson om |_| i v Figure Il; Folders fan out in alphabetical order The drawer pops open and displays some of the folders it contains, arranged with their titles showing in alphabetical order. The title of a folder is the first field in its record and is generally the name of a person but this can be changed. Product: Notesin Files Price: £95 or £189 when bundled with GraphicWriter Requirements: Agple igs with at least one but preferably two 3.5in discs or a hard disc. Supplier: Software Distribution, 5 Cattle Market, Hexham, Nointhumberland NE# INI. Tel: 0434 606526 The folders may be scanned towards A or Z by holding the mouse button down while the cursor is over one of two arrows on the front of the drawer, or a folder title may be picked out by name, Clicking on a folder’s top will open it out into a window at the side of the screen. This shows two areas, the folder summary and a document area. Clicking on the summary area opens out another window which details the folder record and the documents held within it. The default record field names are shown in Figure Ill, but these may be changed via the Edit menu. A folder summary is, however, of fixed format so even if the names are changed the layout stays the same. | have only two real criticisms of Notes‘n'Files and one of them is that | think > Nome [Company Address Document. Article city State |2ip Code January Phone 1 Phone 2 Misc. 1 Misc. 2 Misc.3 [Misc.4 |Labels: Letters: Comments: Figure Ii: Default record field names can be changed September 1987 APPLE USER 23 Rev jee w ERS RR hE SRT TLS ie <j it would be generally more useful and quicker if the folder summary window opened directly and the first window was cut out all together. However it does not take long to move the mouse and click. It probably was designed like this because more than one folder can be active ata time and it is probably easier to see the smaller, first windows than the second kind which fill the screen. | should say that win- dows may be dragged round the screen and left where they are most conveniently placed and also opened and closed swiftly. Creating a new cabinet and naming the drawers is well described in the manual. The job is made easy by the similarity of the task to the use of the Apple Launcher pro- gram and by the well laid out windows. A new folder for the new cabinet, or for an established one, is obtained by clicking on the Stationary and New Folder icons. Once up on screen the folder summary may be edited or details of the first record filled in. Once the entries have been detailed, the folder may be saved and put away into the drawer by use of the mouse or keyboard, and another empty folder will present itself. Both entry of data and subsequent editing are easy. The tab and arrow keys and the mouse allow easy movement around between fields and the mouse allows quick jumping to insertion and dele- tion points within text already established ‘on the screen. When saved, a folder is written to disc Straight away. This slows the program somewhat, but is probably much safer as far as data integrity is concerned. Using the keyboard buffer option of the II control pro- gram allows data to be entered while the folder is being saved, generally without any loss of characters. Although the format of the summary is fixed, the data entered into each field may be of any length up to a maximum of 40 characters and disc space is not wasted. The fields are delineated by carriage returns, so it is possible to import data from other programs. | tested this by creating a text file from Basic containing 100 such records, each with 15 fields. The file was imported quickly and faultlessly. Searching for folders and moving between them is quick, no doubt because they are arranged alphabetically on disc. The disc arrangement is also protective of data: | deliberately changed folders and switched off the machine without closing down folders, drawers and cabinets to see if | could make the disc files useless; | could not, which bodes well for general use, when mistakes or power cuts can always happen. All the folders in a cabinet (that is from both drawers) may be listed using the Master File icon. Part of the list appears on-screen and, of course, may be scrolled vertically and horizontally (Figure IV). Searches may be performed directly for a given folder and a sub master list can be created using the “and” and “or” con- ditions together with a possible formula for 24 APPLE USER September 1987 @orower1 rower? Conditions: C)"ano" Con" A PageMo cones, review Seltsikas, Leon 16 |February qwiew Cook, Mike 16 | Jenvary review Vlood, Geoff 37. | February review Green, Hugh 47 |February ting files only Ogg, Allan 9 |Jonuary | ‘scale, setup str..|Smejc, Jaromir 158 |Jonuary | Desk Top Publish... Gerrard, Mike (32 February | serview Cowley, Mike 40 |Jonuary | terview part 2 |Couley, Mike 4 ae Figure IV) aterast, book, re. 37 (January Master File Ty allows both horizontal and | Start Display At: [L =] (Setup) vertical scrolling each field which is entered within a window similar to the left half of Figure Ill. The possible formulae represent searches for exact matches, any occurrence, equal up to a given value, lesser than, greater than, lesser than or equal to, greater than or equal to, not equal to and finally not equal to any occurrence. Ranges may be dictated within a field by combining formulae, separating them with a comma. As well as the Master List, there are two indices which may be maintained for each cabinet. You set these up by column, in whichever order you chose, using the field titles from the folder summaries. The first, selected column (and only the first) may be sorted into ascending or descending order, alphabetically, numerically, or by month. The on-screen display may be adjusted by varying the widths of columns (compare Figures IV and V) but unfortunately a list, when printed, shows only three columns of fixed width, although conditions may be selected to control what gets listed. This almost total lack of control over the format of a list is my second real criticism of Notes'n Files. Fortunately, much more control is avail- able over label printing. You can print them from the Master List or from an index, and select both the number of labels to be printed horizontally and the physical dimensions of each label. A trial printing of two dummy sets helps with the set-up without wasting expensive labels. The thing which sets Notes‘n’Files apart from most other simple databases is its abil- ity to store documents within each folder — the only limit is disc space. The documents are created from within Notes’n Files itself and are printed on the Imagewriter in very high quality. There is an option to print on the Laser- writer but | was not able to test that. This is interesting, since GraphicWriter does not have this option, although as | described last month it is promised when Apple comes up with the goods. Presumably, and I'm guessing ‘here, Notes'n‘Files prints using Laserwriter fonts whereas GraphicWriter uses Laserwriter gfaphics and DataPak is waiting for Apple to write these. The word processor within Notes’n’Files is rather similar to Graphic Writers but lacks graphics and the ability to set regions or columns. There are only two fonts and three sizes (9, 12 and 18 point}, but there are five tab positions. And cutting, copying and pasting and left, right. centre and full justification are all supported. Printing, as with GraphicWriter, is in draft, standard or high quality mode: Unlike GraphicWriter the printing is correctly carried out on the Imagewriter. At print time, Notes’n’Files can perform mail merging using the data from the folders. In particular the first name field which will hold both surname and fore- name can have the two treated separately — a comma in the field delineates the two. By creating a form letter with field titles @ drover 1 Format-80 Scientific Fulltext, information Graphics cursor positiol Hyperdrive & MacBot tom, Input routine, appletip ROM Figure V: Varying the Obrower 2 Error Handling in DOS 3.3, Appletip Forma Making with MocPaint Gorbage, clean up, appletip Graphics Expander, review Oar" Company Conditions: [) "Axo" Addr City February 19 | Jonuary ‘January January 11 [February Wy February Longford, Bu Hood, Geoff Alright, Fred in, oppletip review column widths for | Start Display At: [[ [Caen the screen display SUNS EAE RE REVIEW surrounded by braces, (see Figure Vill), a one shot letter may be printed by dragging its icon from its folder (or from the sta- tionary folder, in which case the frontmost folder only is used) across the copier icon. Altematively, by starting the printer all the folders in the cabinet may be used to create a multi-shot letter. In addition, folders may be flagged for labels or form letters. This means that at print time the fact and date of printing are reco