Open Apple Vol 7 No 10 NOV 1991

A2-Central . A journal and exchange of Apple II discoveries formerly Open-Apple a November 1991 Vol.7, No.10 ISSN 0885-4017 newstand price: $2.50 Photocopy charge per page: $0.15 HyperStudio 3.0 preview By Jay Jennings Roger Wagner Publishing debuted HyperStudio in late 1988. Since then it has become the number-one selling piece of Apple Ilgs soft- ware. Never one to rest on his laurels (whatever those are), Roger Wagner decided HyperStudio needed even more features and power. For the last 10 months, the HyperStudio programming team has been working on the successor to HyperStudio 2.1. Roger Wagner announced HyperStudio 3.0 at the 1991 A2-Cen- tral Summer Conference. There are so many new features that it would be impossible to cover them all here. In fact, with the amount of room available, I'll only be able to dig into a few of the features in depth. First, here’s a quick overview of some of the features and enhancements that are the most important. Buttons can now be edit- ed. If you like 320-mode graphics, you can use them in a HyperStu- dio 3.0 stack — and going from 640- to 320-mode pictures and back is seamless. Cards, buttons, and all other objects can be named and referred to by name. HyperStudio 3.0 has enhanced painting tools, including floating tool and color palettes. A scripting language is included that gives you complete control over the HyperStudio envi- ronment. And New Button Actions take over where XCMDs left off. All of this means more power for the end-user with greater ease-of-use. Group Objects. An addition to fHyperStudio 3.0 makes creating identical screens much easier {and the identical screens take less memory). You can specify group cards and group objects. This means that any change made on one card will take effect on all the others in the group. And group objects can be changed on one card and the changes will take effect on all other cards in the group. As an example, if you create a stack consisting of 10 group cards, you can place a “home” icon button on card one and it will be dupli- cated throughout the stack. No more copying and pasting buttons from card to card. And if you decide the background needs a little touchup, you only need to’make the change to one card - the other cards in the group will be updated automatically. Since you can choose to make any specific object a group item, you can create objects that are duplicated on each card, yet retain the ability to have unique objects on any card. In other words, you can have your home icon duplicated across multiple cards yet have differ- ent buttons (or other objects) on each card. The biggest change in HyperStudio 3.0 is the introduction of editable buttons. in the past you had to delete and re-create a but- ton that wasn’t doing exactly what you wanted it to do. Since creating a button was very simple, this wasn’t a major problem, but it was a great annoyance. Now you double-click on the button with the pointer tool and the dialog box shown on the next page in Figure 1 pops up. You can change the type of button, the button name, all the actions that particular button is in charge of, the foreground and background color, and so on. Anything you could do when creating the button can be done in edit mode. Instead of the four different button styles the old HyperStudio let you choose from, version 3.0 gives you eight styles. And one of those styles, the “expanding lasso’, can turn any oddly-shaped object into a button. If you have a map of the United States and want to make the ‘state of Kansas a button, you can place an invisible rectangular but- ton over the top of it. And, since Kansas is mainly rectangular, that works okay. But what if you needed to make a button out of Alaska? You could take the freehand button tool (one of the new ones) and trace around the outline of the state, but unless you're really good at staying on the line (with a mouse, no less) you'll end up with a hit- and-miss button. Instead, choose the “expanding lasso” button type and click in the middle of the state of Alaska. Voila! The button expands to fit the outline of the state. Now when you click anywhere inside the state you'll activate the button. You can even make invisi- ble buttons highlight when clicked so you get some visual feedback when a button is pressed. The number of things a button will do when clicked has also been iowased, Most of those button actions are discussed later in this arti- cle. One of the best “freebies” you receive when buying Hyper- Studio is the digitizer card and microphone. The card won't win any awards for innovation (although I’m glad that it doesn’t take up a slot}, but it does a very good job of recording voices and sound effects for use in HyperStudio, or other programs that utilize digitized sound. There are two ways to create a digitized sound for use in HyperStu- dio. The first way is by using SoundShop, a stand-alone program that comes with the HyperStudio package. With SoundShop you can digi- tize the sound and then edit it. You can add an echo, reverse the sound, loop it, and otherwise manipulate it in order to get exactly the sound you're looking for. The second (and easiest) way to include digitized sound in Hyper- Studio is to add sound to a button. When you choose that option from the Button Actions dialog, you'll get the screen shown on the next page in Figure 2. While using this Tape Deck you can choose one of the sounds that’s built into HyperStudio, re-use a sound that’s already been installed in your current stack, load a sound from a disk THE FIRST GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE COPYRIGHT LAWSUIT, gam 7.74 A2-Central [ob File Edit Move Tools MIME colors Options extras Background | ne: i show None! Show toon CJiightiont Figure 1 file, or record a sound on the spot. Notice that there are no sound editing features. If you don’t like the sound you record, just record it again until it sounds right. If you need more control over the sound, bop into SoundShop and do your recording and editing. Once you've decided on a sound, you need to attach it to your stack. With the older versions of HyperStudio you had two options — embed the sound in the stack or make it disk-based. In HyperStudio 3.0 you have a couple more options. Your third way to store (and access) the sound is by placing it in the resource fork of the stack. This has some of the benefits of disk- and stack-based sounds. A disk-based sound takes up less memory, but a stack-based sound is faster (quicker to play when activated by a but- ton, not faster in rate). A resource-based sound stays on disk until it’s called. It’s then read into memory, played, and then it sits there. As long as there’s room for it in memory it'll be there waiting for the next time it’s called. If memory gets tight, the sound is purged from memo- ry. Then if it’s needed again in the future, it’s read back in from disk. You can also choose to compress your sound. This has the advan- tage of taking up less room on disk and in memory, but it also has the disadvantage of being a little slow in the “play” department. I created a stack with six buttons that played a specific sound using each of the access methods - both with compression and normal access. The methods that used no compression were almost instantaneous - even the disk-based sound had no perceptible lag. That will vary, of course, depending on whether you use a fast hard drive or a slow floppy. The compressed sounds all took about 2 seconds between clicking the button and the time they started playing. In some instances this time lag won't be an issue. But if you want instant aural feedback when you click a button, don’t compress the sound. New Button Actions. Back in the good ol’ days we used XCMDs (external commands) if we needed more power than HyperStudio gave us. An XCMD could be called by clicking a button. Its function depended on what the creator of the XCMD wanted it to do. An XCMD could change the border color, display a message in a dialog box, or create animation on the screen. Anybody could use an XCMD, but few people did. It was a little more complicated than most “users” want- ed. And Roger Wagner thought the word XCMD sounded so technical that it scared people away. So he changed the name. But New Button Actions aren't just XCMDs with a new name. They still increase the power and functionality of HyperStudio, but now they’re easier than ever to use. Look at Figure 3 for a peek at the New Button Actions screen. The scrolling list at the left shows all the NBAs available to you. If you want some different options, however, click the “In Use” or “Disk Library” buttons at the bottom of the screen. That's right, you can load NBAs from a library file off disk. There’s another opportunity for programmers. Create a disk full of New But- ton Actions and get rich. When you choose an NBA, a description of how to use it pops up in the text field on the right. If parameters are needed for the NBA, a box will pop up when you click the “Use NBA” button. This parameter box can be as simple as a text edit field, or as elaborate as the one shown in Figure 4, which is the parameter screen for Steve Allen's Vol. 7, No. 10 “Animate” NBA. Screen transitions are the visual effects that you see when you go from one card to another. They include things like a fast wipe (basically no special effect) and a venetian blind effect. In the old HyperStuaio we were limited to 12 different transitions. In HyperStu- dio 3.0 there’s an unlimited number. The program only comes with 29 different kinds, but click a button in the transition dialog box and you can load transitions from library files or other stacks. 1 expect third-party developers to come out with transition libraries in the very near future. There's a “Try Me” option in the transition dialog box. Click it and you'll see what the effect looks like. There are also three different speeds to choose from. Try out the different effects and speeds, and when you're satisfied, click okay. These new features make moving from card to card very cool. Since HyperStudio 3.0 now accepts 320-mode pictures, you may wonder about mixing the two modes in your stack. The new transi- tions are seamless when going from 640- to 320-mode. The first time, I saw it | was blown away. The palettes are changed in sixteen differ- ent steps while the transition switches from one card to the next. You'll have to give it a shot to really appreciate the effect. Oh no, not a computer language to learn! Yes, HyperStudio 3.0 now adds a scripting language. But don’t panic, most people won't ever need to enter the script editor in order to make HyperStudio do what they want. For those of us who like to leave the world of point- and-click now and again so we can get down and dirty with some ver- biage, SimpleScript is a welcome sight. The following script was pulled from a sample stack that created a bar chart on the screen. The data used for the creation of the graph came from a text field called Scores. This example shows you how straight-forward SimpleScript is. Even a non-programmer can read it and follow along. Set line color to 15 Fill flag is on Draw box from 428,49 to 608,142 Get field “Scores” into AllScores MaxScore = line 1 of AllScores TRect = 450-16-4 RRect = 480-24-4 Set line color to 4 Current = 2 Repeat until Value = “End!” Value = line Current of AllScores ‘TRect = 140-Trunc (Value/MaxScore*91) Draw box from LRect, "Rect to RRect, 140 Lect = IRect + 30 RRect = RRect + 30 Increnent Current End Repeat Learning SimpleScript should be very easy for those people who already do some programming. It’s almost a cross between Hyper- ([o File Fit Move Tools EERE colors Uotions Extras tod at_} Choose o sound to play or, record anew one. Music.lo 4 @®Sonples | | Olnise are Dera Obisk Library. lise compression Access: Figure 2 Downloaded from www.Apple2Online.com November 1991 Talk (the scripting language in HyperCard IIgs) and Applesoft. For those people starting from scratch, HyperStudio comes with a “syntac- tic” editor, You can create a complete script with almost no typing. When you go into the script editor you'll have all the commands at your fingertips. Just pull down a menu, choose an option, and it writes the correct line into the editor. There are a few times when you'll have to “fill in the blanks”, but the scripts almost write them- selves. One of the cool things about the scripting in HyperStudio is that SimpleScript isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning. Anybody with a lan- guage can place it inside HyperStudio. For example, if you had a C compiler, you could wave your coding wand and make it appear inside HyperStudio, Then when you went into the script editor you wouldn’t write your script in SimpleScript, you'd write it in C. Virtually any language can be placed inside HyperStudio. Note! That doesn’t mean a “user” can do it, it means a compiler writer can do it. If there’s a language you’d like to see running inside HyperStudio, send a letter to the publisher of the lanquage. Creating a text item and modifying it used to take multiple trips to the menu bar. Now when you create a text item you're allowed to choose the foreground (text) and background color right away. You can also set the features at creation time. These features allow you to specify whether a text item is locked (text in the item can’t be deleted or changed), a group item (explained earlier), hidden (pretty self- explanatory), or is transparent (the text will show through over the background of the card), At creation time you can also choose whether text is to be embedded in the stack or disk-based. One limitation of disk-based text is that the text field must be spec- ified as read only. | think this is a major limitation that RWP should change. Roger Wagner, on the other hand, thinks it’s more intuitive this way. Since disk-based text is pulled from the text file every time you move to the card the text item is on, allowing users to edit the text might be confusing. Changes to the text wouldn’t be saved when the user moves off that card. | think that’s something the stack designer should take into account. Let me create my stack the way I choose. If 1 design a bad stack, it’s my fault. One nice addition to HyperStudio is the ability to print text from a text item. Clicking inside a text item and then choosing “Print” from the File menu will allow you to print just the text in the item, and not the card. This doesn’t work, however, if your text is disk-based. Why? Because disk-based text has to be read-only, so disk-based text items can never be active. Hmmm... (Note: I let Roger Wagner read this article before going to press and he came up with a couple different ways in which to get around this problem. First, a few lines in the scripting language would be able to pull a disk-based text file into a text field. Second, hitting Open-Apple-Tab will switch to the pointer tool. At that point you could click on the text field in question to activate it, and then print. He also said that there’s a possibility that disk-based text may be editable in the release version (for advanced users).) One of.the nicest enhancements to the paint.section of Hyper- Studio is the tear-off tool menu. Pull down the menu and with the [Le Fite fait Hove Tools EINEREY colors Options Extras New Button Actions [EA Hi Lh AUT Nones: Info: [a] [aeeP HideShow Enter the number of times to beep into the HS.XCHD Message Box. For testing purposes this will not Roll Credits beep if you have not set the Advanced User |_| Sort Cards ontion | a lal Concel [@ samples Oinvse Ooisktibrary | mK cl Figure 3 A2-Central 7.75 [[e@ File Fait Hove Tools Objects Colors Options Extras tord 1 _| NBAnimator [7G Size: 1,036 bytes Playback rat Repeat Count: This color is transparent [_] Loop Back (Cltide background on tst frome [] Reverse Direction Hide graphic on Lost frome Figure 4 mouse button still pressed, drag the cursor down and off the menu. An outline of the menu will follow along. Drop it wherever you like and a windoid (floating window) shows up with the tools on it. This windoid stays on top of all other windows on the screen. It even hangs around when you move from card to card. Now that you have the tool palette within easy reach, try double-clicking on the following tools: Selector - selects the entire screen. Lasso ~ lassos entire screen of objects on solid background. Pencil - goes to fat-bits mode. Paint Brush ~ brings up brush selection. ‘Eraser - erases entire screen. Line ool brings up Line width selection, Square, Oval, Region, Poly, RRect - toggles fill mode, ext Tool - brings up text style dialog box, Magnifying Glass ~ goes to fat-bits node. These double-click short-cuts make working in the paint environ- ment much nicer. Other enhancements to the paint tools include being able to use them in 320-mode (although you can’t choose 320-mode, they just work that way if you've imported a 320-mode picture), and grabbing a piece of the screen and using it as a brush. Extras, There’s an extra menu at the top of the screen in Hyper- Studio 5.0 called Extras. This is a menu that can be filled with utilities written by third-party developers. While New Button Actions are creat- ed for use by the end user (when the user clicks a button), Extras are mainly valuable to the stack developer. A sample Extra called Box Maker adds a new paint tool to HyperStudio. Choose Box Maker from the menu and then use the cursor to create a square on the screen. Release the mouse button and new lines pop into place - new lines that form a 3-dimensional cube with your original square as the base. Moving your mouse around moves the new 3-D box around. When it’s the size and shape you like, click the mouse button and it plops into place on the screen. Once you try it out you won’t be drawing boxes and buildings freehand anymore. Other Extras include a utility to edit, load, and save palettes and patterns, a tool to turn a portion of the screen into an icon (for use as a button elsewhere in HyperStudio), and lots of other things that pro- grammers around the world are dreaming up even as you read. If you want to make in the Apple Il world there aren't as many Chances as in the good old days. But opportunities still show up — and lots of them have shown up in connection with HyperStudio. Creating a commercial quality stack may not be for everybody, but there are a lot of peripheral projects that could line your pockets. If you like hacking around with the graphics screen you might want to think about creating a library of cool screen transitions. Two other areas to think about are New Button Actions and Extras. Packages of those utilities will probably sell quite well. If you do create such a library, check with Roger Wagner Publishing, They might be interested 7.76 A2-Central in publishing your work. If you're a registered user of HyperStudio 2.x, you'll automatically receive an upgrade notice in the mail. Upgrades will cost $45 + $5 shipping ($20 + $5 if you purchased HyperStudio after July 15, 1991). The retail price is $179.95, which is an increase of $30 from the price of version 2.1. The complete package still includes the dig tizer board and microphone. Upgrades consist of new disks and a new manual.(When sending for an upgrade, be sure to include the serial number of your HyperStudio package. California residents add 8.25% sales tax.) Toger Ragner Publishing 1050 Pioneer Way - Suite P BL Cajon, cA 92020 (619) 442-0522 Mac LC’s lle card improves By Dennis Doms We received the new Ile Card Software Version 2.0 update recently. The new software is supposed to improve compatibility with some third-party printers usable on the Macintosh. More importantly, it adds support for using hard disk drives and AppleShare network volumes attached to the host Mac LC. The software comes on two Mac high- density (1.44 megabyte) 3.5 disks; one is a Ile Startup Disk that can be booted to start the Mac LC and the other is a Ile Installation Disk that installs the new Ile Card software. Version 3.0 of Apple’s HD SC Setup utility is included on the disks. To use a hard disk from ProDOS while the Ile card is running, you must use HD SC Setup to create a partition on the Mac’s hard drive that can be formatted for ProDOS. (If the disk has already been in use, you'll need to back up the contents before changing the parti- tioning. Repartitioning the drive will erase all your files.) Version 3.0 of HD SC Setup includes the definition and formatting capability for the ProDOS partition. You also may need to update the hard disk driver with the setup tool (this is definitely a must with System 7; otherwise the ProDOS partition won't show up on the desktop). One gotcha: Apple’s utility does not recognize some third-party drives; it ignores our homebrew Seagate drive, for example. Once the ProDOS volume is prepared, you can enter the Ile mode by running the Ile Startup application on the Mac. Most of the opera- tion remains the same as described in “The Apple Il as Mac Peripher- al’, A2-Central, July 1991 (pp. 7.43-44), To specifically add the hard disk partition, you need to go to the Ile Card Control Panel (control-open-apple-esc). Select the “Slots” item and make sure you have the SmartPort icon (the one that looks like a set of disk drives) assigned to a slot receptacle (usually slot 5) in the array along the top of the control panel display. Then select the “SmartPort” Control Panel item and pick where you want the Smart- Port drives located. We assigned the hard disk partition as slot 5, drive 1, and the (Mac internal) 3.5 floppy as slot 5, drive 2. (Not hav- ing a 5.25 attached, we also tried shuffling some other cards into slot 6, but the Ile Card will still have none of it. There’s nothing like losing the use of a slot.) AppleShare support has also been added. To assign the file server to a slot, drop the AppleShare icon into the desired “slot”. (We put the server in slot 1 in the virtual Control Panel.) The AppleShare implementation gives you both server and (net- work) printer access. To print, you direct output to the assigned slot; for example, an Applesoft “PR#1* command sends printer output to slot I. The lle Card will use the printer selected in the Macintosh Chooser (accessible while in the Ile Card’s Control Panel) as the cur- rent printer. Apple needs to supply the equivalent of the Apple Ile Workstation Card software for use from the Ile side. The only current way to log onto an AppleShare volume is apparently to boot from the network, Since all our Apple II systems have hard disks, we don’t currently have our server configured to boot Apple II systems and we weren't able to complete the login. The server leaves us hanging while telling us our server startup information is incorrectly configured. With the ProDOS partition on the Mac LC hard disk it is also more expedient Vol. 7, No. 10 not to be forced to boot from the server; the Chooser, Login, and Logoff applications from the Workstation software would allow config- uring the local boot disk to allow access to the server, To make the ProDOS disk volume palatable to the Mac, there’s a new “ProDOS File System” extension which goes into the Mac’s Sys- tem Folder. This extension lets the Mac recognize ProDOS volumes (including floppy disks) and transfer files between them and other recognized volumes. It also confuses Apple File Exchange, which now believes ProDOS disks are “Mac” disks, but you can still access text translation options through the “Mac-to-Mac" menu. If the floppy isn’t write-protected, a Mac “Desktop” directory file also gets written to it if there is room. The file is type $00 and won't be visible from the Mac Finder, or from the IIgs Finder if your preferences aren't set to display “invisible” files, but you'll see it in ProDOS 8 directory listings. On the other hand, we saved an AppleWorks 3.0 document to the ProDOS 8 partition and were not able to see it from the Mac Finder even though the ProDOS File System extension was installed and many other AppleWorks files were visible. We finally jumped out to Applesoft to confirm that the file was indeed where we had put it, but it just wasn’t visible from the Mac side. It looks like there are still a few kinks to be worked out, and the Ile Card’s video still seems slothful on the Mac LC, but the addition of hard disk and AppleShare support increases the value of the Ile Card tremendously. Worrying About the Apple Il - A Psychic Energy Drain By Jay Jennings Apple Il lovers have been on an emotional roller coaster for the last few years. One month we hear that Apple has rededicated itself to the machine that begat its existence and the next month a reorga- nization takes place within the company and all is lost once again. That same scenario has happened over and over. This spring Apple II developers received a letter from Robert Barnes, the Apple II Business Unit Evangelist. It implied we shouldn't lose hope. It implied that Apple had some cool things in store. And it implied that Apple was committed (once again) to the Apple II. Things looked good. People were cheery. We all waited for KansasFest to see what rabbits Apple would pull out of its magic hat. KansasFest came, and Apple arrived bare-headed, The main message from Rob Barnes was encouragement to develop 8-bit educational software. Some people took an emotional nose dive. Some people made plans right then to get out of the Apple Il arena. And some people ignored what was said. I’ll get back to those people in a second. Because those people are the focus of this piece. You can scan the online services right now and see people talking about the User Group telecast that Apple produced on September 25th. Apple Product Managers and Engineers announced new IIgs System Software, an EtherTalk board, and a SuperDrive card. Howev- er, according to the rumor mill, John Sculley was supposed to announce a new Apple If CPU. No such luck, Apple said that no Apple Il advertising campaign was scheduled for this Christmas season. It’s just one more ride on the Timberwolf (sorry for the local metaphore, the Timberwolf is a giant roller coaster for those of you who live out of town). Another trip to Depression City - until the next batch of rumors hits (you could set your watch to this cycle). Let’s get back to those people who ignore what Apple says. What are they doing? Using their computers, that’s what. And they‘re using their computers whether Apple says yes to a new CPU, or no. It doesn’t affect them because their Apple II does what they need it to do. Some people need more powerful computers (and some peo- ple just want them), That's fine. Go get one. But it’s time we stop whining about what Apple does or doesn’t do with the Apple II line. At this point I don’t think the user/consumer voice registers with November 1991 Apple Computer, Inc. It’s a non-issue with them. Which means the end result will be the same whether we whine about it or not. My suggestion? If you need a faster machine, .go buy a clone. I wouldn’‘t suggest buying a Mac at this point because | don’t trust the judgement of Apple Computer. Go buy a clone and forget about the Apple II world. It’s just a computer, after all. And if you stop thinking about what morons the executives at Apple are, your ulcer will go away, you won't have those migraine headaches, and life will be much nicer. If you don’t need a faster or more powerful machine, then your course of action is much easier - stop whining about how unfair life is. It's just a computer, after all. Realize that future revisions of the Apple Il are a pipe dream and get on with using your computer for whatever it was that you bought it for. Worrying about something that isn’t within your power to change is a psychic energy drain. It'll screw up your life, so knock it off. And if you can't stop about the injustice of it at all? Take your computer, put it back in the box, and give it to someone you don't like. Then rejoin the human race. Get reacquainted with your family. Go on a bicycle tour. Take up bird watching. Life’s too much fun to spend it bitching about a corporation and what they do. Live a little. Dealers vs User Groups By Jay Jennings Since most dealers have elected to drop support for the Apple II, user groups are more important than ever. Where else is a person going to learn how to format a disk, or find out how important back- ups are? Yes, they could read the manuals (what a novel ideal) but since most manuals are written by/for propeller-heads, that doesn’t work too well at times. I think it’s time for User Groups to come out of the closet, become a little more visible, and take up some of the slack. Isn't it the responsibility of the dealer to support his customers? To a certain extent, yes. But if a dealer has to spend hours and hours with one customer in order to get them over the initial learning hump, that dealer will never sell enough systems to stay in business. If the dealer can sell a system and then point to a local user group as a source of information, everyone involved wins. The dealer makes more sales and stays in business and the user group has new bodies that could become new members. A big problem facing user groups right now is that of shrinking or stagnant membership. Normally in a club about 20 percent of the members do 80 percent of the work. In a smaller club this means that just a few individuals are carrying the entire load. True, a smaller club means less work, but it still shouldn't be centered in a little “clique.” Finding people who want to help out should be Priority One with user groups. QuickConnect, Apple’s Newsletter for User Groups, has several ideas in the September/October issue regarding this-prob- lem. And if you have any ideas about giving user groups a kick in the pants, let us know. We'll pass them along. Miscellanea ‘The Graphic Exchange Library Disk #1 adds several new trans- lators to The Graphic Exchange. The disk works with the recently released version 4.2 of The Graphic Exchange and adds the ability to work with file formats for Springboard Publisher's Works of Art, Print Shop and Print Shop GS borders, SuperPrint stationery, backgrounds, posters, and borders, GIF files, PCX (a graphics format common to MS-DOS machines) files, 3200 color graphics, and others. The disk is $29.95 from Roger Wagner Publishing, 1050 Pioneer Way, Suite P, El Cajon, CA 92020, 800-421-6526 or FAX 619-442-0525. Are you always looking for fonts in all the wrong places? Try- ing 8 or 10 (or more) different typestyles to see which one looks the best? Make it easy on yourself and get a printout of over 550 fonts, Stuart Goldman put together a listing of most of the public domain fonts available, plus a few non-public domain fonts. If you use a IIgs, or TimeOut SuperFonts, or Publish-It! 3.0, this may be just what you need in order to stay sane. Goldman is selling the packet for only $6, A2-Central 7.77 which just covers his printing and mailing costs. If you do desktop publishing or just like to experiment with different fonts, this printout could be worth much more than that to you. Write to Stuart Goldman, 257 School Street, Waltham MA 02154. And tell him you read about the font list in A2-Central. AppleWorks is the most widely used program in the English- speaking Apple Il world. And with the addition of an AppleWorks 3.0 to French Conversion program, the power of AppleWorks is released to the French-speaking public as well. The conversion program, writ- ten by Daniel Lurot and published by JEM Software, takes a copy of AppleWorks 3.0 and translates all the text messages to French, It also converts TimeOut UltraMacros to French as well. Individual users pay $45 + $5 shipping for the program. A site-license is also available (perfect for French classes in school), Contact JEM Software, (303) 422-4766, or FAX (303) 422-4856. If you have frequent encounters with Writer's Block and his friends, you might want to try putting a little organization into your creativity. John Hopkins of Husky Blue Software put together a writing system that could help students, businessmen, or professional writers collect their thoughts. WriteWorks is a writing automation system that works within AppleWorks. It was developed by a freelance writer with 25 years of professional writing experience. A set of AppleWorks database templates, custom report formats and special macros allow you to create an outline, take notes and coordinate them with the outline, organize research information, create a rough draft from the organized notes, enter references, and “automatically” generate a bib- liography. There are also templates for non-fiction goal-setting and fic- tional plot and character development. The manual walks you through every step of the system and also includes lots of writing tips from the developer. WriteWorks works with any version of Apple- Works, but performs best with version 3,0 and UltraMacros 3.1. WriteWorks sells for $39.95 and is available from Husky Blue Soft- ware, 715-25 Frenchtown Rd., Bridgeport, Conn. 06606. oes ait bee sevdti | plop eseelaa te al 7.78 A2-Central Ask (or tell) - Uncle Off-by-one errors usually don’t refer to let- ters of the alphabet. Here’s one more try at the address for B & D Computer Repair in the August and September 1991 issues: B & D Computer Repair, 6115 S. Massasoit Chicago, Ml. 60638. We were off by one word in the description of DreamWorld’s lgs paint program (“Kansas- Fest 1991", September 1991). The program's name is DreamGrafix, not “DreamPaint”.—DJD HyperGoof I saw a couple of mistakes in the October issue of A2-Central. You said | found a problem HyperMover has with transferring the order of buttons and fields to a recreated stack (true). But then you said that card objects could be arranged in a stack so they receive messages AFTER background objects and this was the ordering that was not preserved during a HyperMover transfer (FALSE). Here is the situation: Within a card (for exam- ple) buttons and fields can be ordered so that, say, button 2 is on top of field 2 which in turn is on top of field 1 which covers button 1. If you try to transfer this stack, HyperMover will put all fields in a layer behind all buttons so that the recreated card will have, from top to bottom, button 2, button 1, field 2, field 1. What Apple's Tim Swihart said was that since the card layer is ALWAYS over the background layer, this occurs because the relationship between buttons and fields WITHIN A LAYER cannot be identified from a script, not between card and back- ground. Now, having said that, I can tell you that Tim was wrong (grin). | have come up with an easy way to derive the ordering and have made patches to HyperMover that allow button/field order to be preserved. I've given the changes necessary to the editor of Script-Central (along with a slick stack that performs updates to other stacks). My second correction (dont you just love this?) is to the part about conflicts between HyperCard and the Write-It NDA. I was the one that reported this problem also, and it only occurs when using the palettes (tool, pattern, etc) while Write-it is open. The only way you can do this is to resize the NDA's window to get at them, so if you don't resize, you won't see the crash. | use Write-It all the time while in Hyper- Card without a problem; 1 just have to. stop using HyperCard while | have the NDA open. | hope this is helpful. If not, just ignore me. Chris Budewig Midwest City, Okla. I'm drawing a blank... The October 199] issue of A2-Centra} dis- cussed UltraMacros and screen blanking, The description wasn’t totally accurate. Here’s what really happens: If it’s running on a Ilgs, UltraMacros just changes the border and text to black, and then restores the original colors after a keypress. On other Apples, UltraMacros only saves Page 1 (the original 40-column screen) to a safe area, replacing each character with a space as it does so. Then it switches into 40-column mode and the screen looks blank. When a key is pressed it switches back into 80 columns and restores the 40-column screen saved earlier. This avoids the hassle of messing with Page 2 text, and is faster to boot. Randy Brandt Arvada, Colo. Thanks for the information, Randy. Little tricks like that can really help when trying to squeeze all the power possible out of a machine JJ Whiner-Central? Like Scott Galbraith in your June 1991 issue, I was about to let my subscription lapse because of the moaning, groaning, and excess Apple Ilgs attention, but his cheery and con- structive note inspired me to try for one more year. ‘Amongst Apples, I have an Apple Ile, Apple lc, and an Apple II Plus which resides with my grandson. But | also have a Mac Ilsi and a Mac Plus. | teach a computer course which is not computerspecific at an over-55 “Academy” affil- iated with our local state university. | use alter- nately the Apple Ile and Mac Plus to send their computer display via suitable adapters to one of those overhead projection panels. It gives a sense of immediacy to the class demonstrations and discussions; a person in the class may be amused at the big-screen display of keyboard boo-boos by the student at the computer, but two minutes later he is at the keyboard and oth- ers may chuckle. T enjoy doing some programming to aid the discussion; I have found the old Higher Text of Ron and Darrel Aldrich (1980) to be beautiful for display, and with a Zip Chip the scrolling mode which originally was a bit jittery is now quite smooth and almost spectacular. People think it is hot modern stuff and it all comes out of the back of my Apple Ie! Of course, | also display AppleWorks stuff on the big screen. My point is, let’s exchange some of our fun and successes, and go easy on diatribes. Why not? W. Henry Linton Wilmington, Del. You're right, and we've talked about that around the office. Apple If people spend entire- ly too much time moaning and groaning, and not enough time doing. You'll still see some people up on their soapboxes now and again in A2-Central, but what we're really interested in hearing about right now is how people are using their machines. That's the kind of infor- mation that can help us all—JIJ Mac vs ligs: Software Wars | finally broke down and bought a MacUser magazine at the grocery store. | am impressed by the product support for the Mac in contrast to that for the ligs. Still, 1 can’t help but feel Vol. 7, No. 10 that there is a niche for the Ilgs price range. I've had my IIgs since 1987 so it has paid for itself. 1 could start anew. Obviously, aside from profit motive, there must be programs available to the Mac that the Igs can’t do; or is it a matter of dif ficulty in getting it done? Has the IIgs been fully explored as to mimicing the Mac programs? Can the Mac Classic do much more than the ligs, or is it just the beginning of one’s investment in a much more expensive machine? Herbert Olnick Mineral Bluff, GA There are a lot of programs available for the Mac that could be written for the Apple ligs. The stock Apple ligs can handle quite a lot without bogging down. The main reason you won't see a lot of Mac to ligs ports is financial, not technical. Third-party developers look at the Apple ligs market, then at the Mac market, and they go where they can make the most money. If you spend thousands of dollars on developing a product you want to be very sure about making that money back - and more. You can charge higher prices for Macintosh software (and they do!) and the Mac users will pay it, But try to market a ligs program that’s more than a couple hundred dollars and you'll tun into a stone wall. It's a smart OS ‘A couple years ago I wrote to you asking how AppleWorks file names can allow spaces and lowercase although ProDOS cannot. Thank you for the answer that you published. | do appreci- ate it. It's been fun since then playing with the auxtype and watching it change the case in the filenames in AppleWorks. How, though, does GS/OS play the trick of allowing lowercase? I'm sure that it's not the auxtype in this case. Barry Austern Cincinatti, Ohio One of the cool things about GS/OS is that it's quite generic. With a Macintosh FST (File System Translator) you can use filenames with lowercase letters, spaces, and squiggly marks. If you had an MS-DOS FST you'd see eight letter filenames with a three letter extension. GS/OS doesn’t care. It's happy with just about any- thing. In this case the ProDOS FST does the “trick” in order to get the lowercase filenames. Instead of using the auxtype, the FST uses the bit positions in the MINVERSION and VERSION fields that are in each ProDOS file header. This means that lowercase filenames will only be seen on the ligs in native mode.—JIJ Harder than it sounds How do you get sounds into HyperCard? | Jove your catalog. Three men walk into a bar. The fourth one ducks. (Stolen from the back- ground sound CDA.) When told about your cata- jog (no pictures, shipping included, etc.), a friend said you were all a bunch of “left brains.” With System 7 on the Mac and System 6 on the ligs, Apple could push the Ilgs as a faster com- puter. If MultiFinder allows you to crash in more than one application at a time, then file sharing in System 7 allows you to crash more than one computer at once. Dan Demaggio Detroit, Mich. Dan, first of all, try some decaf. There are a lot of brands on the market that taste as good November 1991 as the real thing. Second, I think I'l just adress the first question in your letter (but thanks for the rest of it). To get a sound into HyperCard you have to start with a digitized sound in the rsoundSam- ple format. That's a resource file with a sound inside. Once you have that, it's a simple matter of copying that resource into your HyperCard stack. You can use the Scripters Tools stack that ships with HyperCard, or any of several public domain or shareware utility stacks that are floating around on the online services. Just copy the sound resource from the source stack or program into your stack. Voila! You may be wondering how to get a digi- tized sound into an rSoundSample format. Well, that’s a little more complicated. Roger Wagner spoiled us all by allowing us to import sounds into HyperStudio with no trouble. You even received the digitizer card and micro- phone when you bought HyperStudio. No such luck with HyperCard. They left sound creation as an “exercise for the reader.” That's good news for third-party developers, however, and one has stepped forward to fill the void. Mike Nuzzi of Triad Ventures is getting close to releasing a stack-based program called SoundConvert (although he says the name is subject to change). This stack will include a digitizer XCMD that will allow you to record sounds using the Audio Animator, Sonic Blaster, Super Sonic, and HyperStudio digi- tizer card. Support for Mac Recorder and Future Sound should come at a later date. Besides digitizing sounds, SoundConvert will also convert sounds from one format to anoth- er. So if you can wait a few weeks you'll have an easy way in which to get sounds into Hyper- Card. If you cant wait, there's always the hacker mettiod. Apple ligs Technical Note #76 describes the format for an rSoundSample (type $8024). It's quite short, so I'm recreating it here. Offset Name Description 0 Fomat ‘his mst always be zero, 2 fave Size Sample size in pages (256 byte chunks) 4 Rel Pitch High byte is a semitone value; the low byte is a fractional senitone, These values are used ‘to set the pitch, 6 stereo. _ Low nibble holds the output channel. 3 Sample Rate Sampling rate of the sound in hertz (Hz). rT) Sond Sampled sound data starts bere and continues until the end of ‘the resource. 8-bit values. Using this information you could create an rSoundSample quite easily. Since the Hyper- Studio sound file format is well documented you could write a program that reads in a HyperStudio sound file, strips the HyperStu- dio header information, and adds the rSound- Sample header. Then open the resource fork of your HyperCard stack and copy in your new sound.—JIJ Serial switching 1 am considering a communication program for my Ile and Super Serial Card. The card instructions say DIP switches 1-5 and 1-6 must be changed between communications and print- ing. Can this change be made by proper ‘cabling? My Ile is situated in a position where inside changes cannot easily be made. I'm not worried about the “Terminal/Modem’ jumper block since I am sure this change can be made by the use of a null modem. E. A. Smith Chadds Ford, Pa. Looking at the firmware listing in the older Super Serial Card manual, it does appear that several things are done differently in the initial- ization of values used by the firmware for the two modes. Since some telecomm packages don't use the firmware to access the card (they go straight to the 6551 interface chip), they may work with the card set to Printer mode in combination with a null modem. We occasionally get requests for exactly how to use one serial card for both a printer and a modem; we've never resorted to this our- selves, If anyone has a step-by-step procedure, we'd be happy to keep it on record (at least, until some accidental mail purge).—DJD Printer quality and 5.0.x Last year, using the same- hardware but before getting System 5.0.2, I was able to print what I considered to be fine resolution on my ImageWriter I, especially with Courier 12, Times 12, and New York 9. Last fall | changed the system to 5.0.2 then to 5.0.3 using the same font folder that | had used before with 5.0. The resolution of these exact same fonts was suddenly much worse. I phoned asking if there was a noticeable decline in quality when the new printer driver was working with the new system and the fellow I talked to on the phone was not able to help beyond suggesting that I check to see if the fonts were “active”. (As we all know, fonts do not have an active/inactive check box.) I wrote a letter and sent it dated January 6, 1991. I never received a reply. I called while in the U.S. this summer and the fel- Jow who answered the phone, though very help- ful with other questions, was unable to help me with this problem. Jack Clay Leysin American School Leysin, Switzerland First, regarding support in general: We do make an effort to respond to all questions. Usually if someone doesn't get back quickly, and the letter hasn't gotten lost before it is answered (which occasionally does happen), and there is a return address (all letters and FAXes need to have a legible address) it usual- ly means I didn’t know the answer off the top of my head and have put the letter on an “investigate” stack, and | haven't managed to get enough time clear to check the “investi- gate” stack, We ask for questions and com- ments because we hope to get them dealt with, but we don’t have the resources to act as on-demand consultants. Look at the fee for a computer consultant versus our subscription fee and you'll know why. That being said... have had the printer driv- er quality questions in the queue for a couple ‘of months, trying to find time to get the equip- ment together to do some quick tests. | made print samples for 5.0, 5.0.2, and 5.0.4; the first two using the “Better Text” setting in the “Print” dialog (from AppleWorks GS) and the last using the “Best” mode (with Black and White chroma) of the 5.0.4 drivers (I didn’t worry about 5.0.3 since the 5.0.4 update fol lowed shortly after it). A2-Central 7.79 The printer driver files for 5.0 and 5.0.2 are identical (verified by a file comparison). The drivers were revised for 5.0.4 to speed them up. We've had others complain about the “lower quality” of the new drivers. Out of the two font examples of yours I tried (“New York” isn’t one of the standard Apple fonts, so | can’t be sure I've got the same version) I’d have to say | agree that Times 12 looks noticeably worse with only the “Times.12° font installed (Courier looks pretty much the same to me). I've checked this versus the Harmonie ImageWriter driver and it seems to do a slightly better job, but there are some limitations (Har- monie won't print over AppleTalk, which is how we connect printers at the office). Printing gets very complicated from desktop programs. | believe the symptoms you're see- ing are part of a change to make sure the print- er driver accurately reproduces what's seen on the screen. Basically, to avoid spacing prob- lems, the printer driver has to use a font that is an integral multiple of the screen font size. llgs fonts are derived from Mac screen fonts which are designed for 72 dots per inch (dpi) resolu- tion. Such a font may look unnecessarily “blocky” on an ImageWriter (which can print 144 dpi) unless some type of “smoothing” is done to the font. The problem with this “smoothing” is that it can change the size of the characters incrementally; such small changes don’t mean much on individual char- acters but the accrued changes on a line of text can cause problems with the formatting of the text. For example, if the line is just a little bit longer it may extend past the margin. (We occasionally have a related problem with files we take to the typesetter; it can be madden- ing.) ‘Apple’s new driver appears to use the inher- ent resolution of the character set when print- ing; that solves the formatting problems and also should make the driver fast (since it doesn’t do any “interpolation’), But 72 dpi characters don’t print at the “best” (144 dpi) resolution of the ImageWriter. The solution is to use double-sized fonts; that is, to have “Times.24” installed if you've used Times 12 in your document. If it’s present, then the driver is smart enough to use the double-sized font at 144 dpi, giving a smoother (in my opinion) result than even the 5.0.2 driver. (For the ImageWriter LQ, you need triple-sized fonts, since it can print at 216 dpi.) This works in reverse: to get the best quali- ty, you need to stick to font sizes for which you have double-sized fonts installed, If you use a “size 6” font and no size 12 font is available, the printed results will look ragged. If you don't have a size 6 font available, another size of the same font (if available) will have to be scaled and things will look even worse. Identifying and solving the “problem” here are two separate issues. If using Harmonie, System 6.0 (when it arrives), or larger font sizes helps in your eyes, those are possible answers. Other than that, I won't have a solu- tion, because it’s generally not feasible or advisable for an individual to make changes to the massive llgs System Software (this is true also for the Mac and Windows drivers, which also are tightly bound to the operating system). If you haven't reported the problems to Apple I'd suggest doing that in the interim; 7.80 A2-Central Apple has to know what their users expect so they can evaluate changes to the system soft- ware. But Id suspect that the new driver actu- ally works better (in terms of accuracy) than the older one and that most solutions will involve careful selection of fonts. System 6.0 is also expected before the end of the year. We'll try to keep the test results on hand for comparison.—DJD E-Mail Security | enjoyed your Electronic Frontier article in the October 1991 issue of A2-Central. You've written an excellent summary of the issues; the best I’ve seen. And, I've read several articles on the subject in the last couple of years. With regard to E-Mail, have you any thoughts about the argument that protection and governmental access should be similar to information sent via the U.S. Postal Service? Information, while in transit, is more or less untouchable and the U.S. Postal Service is not liable for illegal materi- als or information they handle. Again, a great article. Can you recommend a publication about MS- DOS machines that provides the same type of information A2-Central does for the Apple Il world? | have reached the point where | must start to learn and use this equipment. There’s just too much MS-DOS at work; I'm the only one of 300-325 people using ProDOS (AppleWorks ‘on a 128K lle with white keys). I'm going to stick with the Apple II at home, but | really need some good information about PC compatibles. | realize this may seem like an unusual A2-Central’ a © Copyright 1991 by Resource-Central, Inc. Most rights reserved. Al programs published in A2-Central are public comain and may be copied and dstrbuted wthout charge. Apple user groups and sigifcart avers may oan permission orp aris rom ie to te by space wrtlon request. Papier Eton Tom Weishaar Jay Jennings wit al tom: Dennis Doms Sally Dwyer Dean Esmay Jett Never Ellen Rosenberg Denise Shatter ‘Tom Vanderpool Jean Weishaar ‘A2-Centralties Open-Apple tough Janary, 1963—nas boon pub- {shed money since January 1985, Workbatde pres (in U.S. dolars;armal celvry cued a no adktonal charge): $28 fot year, $54 fo 2 years $78 for 23 yeas. Al bak sues are curt avalabl fo $2 each bound, indexed ed tans of or fst six volumes ao $1495 each. Volumes ond wih the January ie; an index or fhe pce volume is incuded wt he February sve heh etl each se AD Centra maa 35d, 20 wth a selection othe best new pubic domain and shareware fes and pr as tye ern Oa cane pea 8, reas serd al cxresporcence to: A2-Central P.O. Box 11250 Overland Park, Kansas 66207 U.S.A. ‘A2-Central's sol in an wiproteced formal for your convenience. You ‘are encouraged to make back-up archival copies or easy-o-tead enlarged ‘copes for your own use without change. You may also copy AZ-Central ior <stnbuion to oters. The dstrbuton ie is 15 cents per page per copy ds- tnbuted (i WARRANTY AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. We warrant that most of the inlormaton in A2-Ceatral is uselul and correct, although ctivel and mistakes are included trom me fo time, usualy unintentionally. Unsaishied ‘suboctbers may cancel the subseriion at any time and receive a ful rode tit pay The ed porn oy pa subscrpion wil be relunded even Gn CABLTY FOR ERMOMG AND OMESSIONS Ts UMITED TO TH PUBLICATIONS PURCHASE PRICE. In no case shall our company or our ontbvtrs be lable for any incdentl or consequential damages, rot for ANY damages in excoss.o the fes pad by a subsorbor 1S3N 0685-4017 (GEinie mai: A2-CENTRAL Voice: 913-469-6502 Printed in the U.S.A. Fax: 919-469-6507 request to A2-Central, but I've developed a great trust in the information you publish. Frank Shaw Amercan Fork, Utah Thanks for the compliments. We try to make sure that what we publish is not only interest- ing, but accurate. As far as an A2-Central-like MS-DOS publication, we haven't seen one. Frankly, we've thought about starting one, (in addition to our Apple il publications, not instead of) but we're not sure if there’s a mar- ket there or not. And if there is, how do we reach it and what do they want? If we can find the answers to these questions, we'll probably give it a shot. PC Magazine and the like are good publications, but they're a little heavy when all you need is the straight dope on mak- ing your machine do what you want it to. With regards to E-Mail and privacy, yes, it seems like the U.S. Postal Service model should be used. | know that when I send a “real” letter nobody is going to open it except the recipient. | don’t have that same confi- dence with E-Mail right now, although it comes close on national services like GEnie and Online. With more and more daily information going electronic, some good laws are going to have to go into effect in the near future, or something's going to break —JIJ Chip Request It sure would be nice if one of your readers could tell me what the numbers of the three buffer chips are that go in the Street Electronics Business Card. | could buy them at an electron- ics store. Mike Saathoff 11155 Saathoff Drive Cypress, TX 77429 80/40-column switching 1 would like to switch the 80-column card from assembly language without unhooking Pro- DOS, like PRINT CHR$(4); “PR#3*, from Apple- soft. How is this done in machine language? When | do a JMP $C300, ProDOS is unhooked. When I do it by the input buffer, it disconnects a running Applesoft program. G, Steinbach Gerlenhofen, Germany Switching between 40- and 80-columns in assembly language can be a pain if you want to mess with flipping softswitches. But by using the firmware, it’s all nice and neat. When you turn on or reset the Apple Il, the 80-column firmware is inactive and you're placed into 40- column mode. Before’ you can show 80- Columns you need to wake up the 80-column card. mah ja non-printing character ISR $0300 wake up the finware This will clear the screen and place you into 80-column mode. In order to switch to 40- columns, just send the firmware a Control-Q Character. The following piece of code will switch you to 40 columns, wait for a keypress, and then switch you back to 80-columns. Ida HSL ja Control-Q character jar Cost jsvitch to 40 columns jer Rikey wait for a keypress da W512 ja Control-R character js Coot ;svitch to 80 colums You can find more information on the video firmware in the Apple lle Technical Reference Vol. 7, No. 10 Manual (Chapter 3, Built-in I/O Firmware) or the Apple ligs Firmware Reference (Chapter 4, Video Firmware).—JIJ High-density identity Do you use both regular and high-density 5.25" floppy disks? Come on, confess, | know some of you have those user-hostile PCs sitting next to your Apple Ils. in one hand | have a reg- ular disk and in the other I have a high-density disk. Now quick, which is which? Simple, the regular disks have a dullish dark brown color. The high-density disks are glossy, almost black. Could this have something to do with the fact that high-density disks have a denser coating of magnetic media? Is the same true for 3.5” disks? Will Apple ever make a 25 MHz ligs? Will Oprah ever do a show in the nude? Stay tuned and find out the answers to these exciting questions and more, in the next issue of A2-Central. Bill Materse San Jose, Calif. Thanks for the tip on telling the difference between ‘regular’ and high-density disks. In answer to your last two questions, yes. Within a week, we're sure.—JUU (Editor's Note: We've printed two silly letters in this issue. We don’t want to set a precedent so please write only serious letters from now ‘on. In fact, we won't even open your letter if you weren't wearing a tie while writing it. Thank you.) (Publisher's Note: The preceeding note was a lie.) It's the money, honey | just got Volume 4 Number 2 of the Sier- ra/Dynamix Newsletter. In it, Ken Williams has an article where he talks about what computers to buy and so on. I'll quote, “Imagine how you would feel if you were one of the unlucky peo- ple who purchased a 2GS {sic} from Apple. You now find that: a) your machine is disconti ued b) few, if any, new products are coming out for your machine (none from Sierra).” It looks like Ken and Roberta have forgotten their roots (Mystery House, etc.) and maybe Sierra wasn't selling enough Iigs software, It does seem a bit much to say that the IIgs has been discontinued. Davie Mitchell Burlington. Vt. If you've ever read Hackers by Steven Levy you know that Ken Williams got into program- ‘ming the Apple Il for the money. It wasn’t for love of the machine, it was for a new hot tub. Eleven years later nothing has changed. He's in business to make money and he apparently can’t make it in the Apple II world. However, that’s no reason to spread a lie that the Apple lgs has been discontinued. That's the kind of remark that should raise the hackles of the Apple Hl Business Unit. Whether they're more than just a name though, I'm not sure, 1 haven't seen any action lately to make me think otherwise (oh, sheesh - | was going to stop whining about them, wasn't I?).—JIJ