st.mac 1984 06

SEMAC HOW 10 BECOME A MAGCITOSH SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Previews: iti. Maclerminal Sager and MacDraiy Tecmar Sweetens Macintosh with Hard Disk Power | Mac Drive Tecmar’s Mac Drive gives youa 10 megabyte With Tecmar’s Mac Drive... fixed hard disk or a 5 megabyte removable hard disk. You can add a 5 megabyte e Your Macintosh runs much removable hard disk to either of the above. faster than with the built-in floppy. e Mac Drive will provide up to 38 times more storage than floppies. e You can minimize the use of floppies. e You can access files and save time by loading programs from Mac Drive. e You can take your removable Mac Drive cartridge with you for added security. TNA | Tecmar Sweetens Apples™ Tecmar Inc. 6225 Cochran Road Solon (Cleveland), Ohio 44139-3377 Phone:(216)349-0600 Telex: 466692 STMAC. 4 Viewpoint Gucci shoes and Macintosh: the surprise of quality. 6 Letters 8 The Seduction of the Independent Developer Apple’ aggressive campaign to market Mac software. by Guy Kawasaki 14 The Lisa Toolkit In a class by itself. by David Durkee 16 The Adventure Writer’s Adventure The making of Macintosh Transylvania. by Robert Hardy 19 Inside the Macintosh ROM The User Interface Toolbox holds hundreds of subroutines that are a programmer’ delight. by Robert Hardy JUN E 1 984 24 Racing to a Draw Apple Inc. has its own unique way of getting software out the door. by Brian Cutter 30 Renaissance Mouse Learning the tricks of light and perspective. by Craig and Nancy Calsbeek Ome 34 Clicks & Pointers Pessimistic tips for Mac users. What to do when something goes wrong (as it invariably will). Edited by David Durkee 36 Telecommunications MacTerminal—the fun begins. by Matt Yuen 41 68000 Questions Improving Macs memory, connecting a hard disk, peeking inside the System file. by Andy Hertzfeld 42 Mac-Slots Soft-Life takes a gamble on Macintosh. by Steve Shendelman 45 MarketWatch Some new arrivals for Lisa, lots more for Mac...at last. Edited by Catherine Petersen 48 A Mouse in the Convent The Sisters of Christian Charity has faith in Lisa Technology. by Mike Ferris 52 The Computerized Job Hunt Some thoughts from the author of What Color Is Your Parachute? by Tommy Gear 56 Miscellanea An up-close look at AppleLine, new Macintosh user groups, and a decision from Sears that bodes well for Apple Inc. BASF Computer Cover Company . Haba Systems .. Icon Concepts . Industrial Computations Integrated Systems . Interlobal Systems .. Kensington Microware . MacinSoft . MacPack Systems Adverti Magnum Software Microsoft Optimum Computer Luggage Penguin Software The Personal Computer er . Cover 4 Pryority Software .... Pterodactyl Software RDS Labs .. Safeware . Softalk Publishing . Soft-Life Southeastern Software . Strictly Soft Ware Tecmar .... UniPress Software . Apples ‘new baby has Its called Macintosh’ And it has our brains and a lot of our personality, Were called Microsoft? And our part of Macintosh is five new programs that are bright, intuitive, outgoing, understanding and born % to perform. Microsoft BASIC Bp phen cen Mecipont Our pride, your joy. Taking advantage of Macintosh’ mouse and rich graphics, weve designed software that works like you, even thinks like you. All our programs share the same plain English Microsoft Multiplan. Microsoft Chart commands. So what once took days to learn, now takes hours or minutes to learn with Macintosh. Meet the family. Our financial whiz is MULTIPLAN; an electronic spreadsheet that actually remembers how you work. Even offers suggestions on spreadsheet set-up. When it comes to writing, nothing travels faster Microsoft and Multiplan are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Apple is a registered trademark and Macintosh is a trademark licensed to Apple Computer, Inc. _ our best features. than our WORD. Using the mouse, it lets you select commands faster than you can say “cheese. Our most artistic child is CHART It gives you 40 presentation-quality chart and graphic styles to choose from. FILE is our most manageable child, an advanced personal record management program. MICROSOFT. And BASIC, the language spoken by nine out of ten microcomputers worldwide, is the granddaddy of them all. Now enhanced to take advantage of the — Macintosh mouse, windows and oraphics. 1 Well be adding more ' to the family soon. So Microsoft Word oft File call 800-426-9400 (in Washington State call 206-828-8088) for the name of your nearest Microsoft dealer. TGUliNE ones 4 Chairman John Haller President Margot Comstock Tommervik Vice President Al Tommervik Publisher Mary Sue Rennells Editor Patricia Ryall Art Director Kurt Wahiner Managing Editor Catherine Petersen torial Associate Editors David Durkee Michael Ferris David Hunter Matt Yuen Contributing Editors Jean Varven ‘Alden Woodard Special Assignments Todd Zilbert Copy Editor Cordell Cooper Assistant Copy Editor Judith Pfeffer Proofreaders Harry McNeil Steve Thomsen Marjorie Kaufman Ecltorial Assistant Betsy Barnes rt Assistant Art Director Lucas McClure Production Manager’ Donald J. Robertson Asst. Production Manager Nancy Baldwin ‘Ad Production Michael G, Pender Assistant Ruth Seid Business Controller Duane £. Runyon Vice President of Finance Charibel R. Hilario vance Projects Steve Shendelman Accounting Assistant MaryAnn Nail Advertising Coordinators Linda McGuire Carter Cathy Stewart West Coast Sales. Mike Antich Tac 7250 Laurel Canyon Boulevard Box 7041 North Hollywood CA91605 (818) 980-5074 East Coast Sales an Ross Paul McGinnis Advertising Sales 690 Broadwa Massapequa, NY 11758, (212) 490-1021 Midwest and Rocky Mountain Sales Ted Rickard Kevin Sullivan Market/Media Associates 435 Locust Road Wilmette, IL, 60091 (312) 251.2541 Circulation Trial Subscriptions Deirdre Galen Anna Gusland Ramona Gordon Paid Subscriptions Michelle Vigneaullt Kirschenbaum Janeth Godoy-Aguiar Barbara Naimoli Josie Walley Laurie Ure Jill Stroud Nancy Kelly Back Issues Gene O'Day Dealer Sales Lashea Lowe Leticia Garcia Systems John Heitmann Credits: Composition by Graphic Typesetting Service, Los Angeles, California. Printing by Storm Printers, Memphis, Tennessee ‘Apple, Lisa, and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. , Cupertino, California. Softalk is a trade- mark of Softalk Publishing Inc., North Hollywood, California, ‘STMac. Volume 1, Number'5. Copyright © 1984 by Softalk Publishinginc. llrightsreserved, S7iMac is published month) bySoftalk Publishing nc., 7250 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Nort Hollywood, CA 91605; telephone (818) 980-5074. Second-class, postage pending at North Hollywood, California, and addi- tional mailing offices, Postmaster: Send address changes to STMac, Box 7041, North Hollywood, CA 91605. Free Subscriptions: Complimentary trial subscription to all owners of Lisa and Macintosh computers in the U.S. and Canada. If you own a Lisa or Macintosh, send your name, address, anid the serial number of your machine to STMac Circulation, Box 7041, North Hollywood, CA 91605. Please allow six to eight weeks for processing. S7/Mac is totaily inde- pendent of Apple Computer, Inc. Paid Subscriptions: $24 per year. Special rates for schools, and libraries, $12. Concurrent additional subscriptions for schools and libraries, $8 each. Please allow six to eight weeks for processing Back Issues: $3. Please allow six to eight weeks for processini Problems? If you havent received your S7Mac by the fif- teenth of the month, or if you have other problems with your subscription, Michelle Vigneaull-Kirschenbaum can help out Call (818) 980-5074 or (800) 821-6231 Moving? Send new address and a recent abel rom $7Mac lo ST-Mac Circulation, Box 7041, North Hollywood, CA 91605; telephone (B18) 880-5074 or (8U0) 821-6231, Please allow six to eight weeks for processing VIEWPOINT Gucci Shoes and Macintosh: the Surprise of Quality | There's a time when it’s premature to say a product is successful. And there's a legiti- mate moment to announce the success of a new machine. Let's do it now: The Macintosh is a suc- cess. Macs are being gobbled up like popcorn all across the country. Reviews of the machine have been stellar. Businesspeople are crunch- ing spreadsheets, and hobbyists are using Microsoft Basic to create marvels that only hint at what's to come (when Apple's Mac- Basic finally arrives). Apple Inc. says the com- pany will move 350,000 machines this year, and it probably will—if it can make that many. Dealers think Macintosh is the greatest thing since, well, that other machine. Life is good. But wait a minute. Why is Macintosh suc- cessful, anyway? Maybe despite itself. It's possible, in fact, to build a strong argument against Macintosh: not enough memory, not enough software, not enough—well, those two make a good case by themselves. Then there’s the phantom “external disk drive” promised by Apple. And the fact that plain old Ile’s are priced low enough (now) to tempt all but the most die-hard Macophiles. The IIc looks pretty good, too. And 2,500-odd dollars is real money, right? And 1-2-3 isn’t even on the horizon. So whence the success? Is it the size? The nifty stuff in ROM? The speed of the machine? The fact that text looks like, aah, text? The mouse (though it didn’t work for Lisa, did it)? Maybe just a lucky combination of those traits and more? We'd like to know. You'd probably like to know. The other computer manufac- turers would /ove to know! Here's one guess. It has to do with the vision of Steve Jobs and goes all the way back to the fabled Apple II. As the story is told, the original Apple II was preceded by, not surprisingly, the Apple 1. The Apple I was a real computer, all right, with all the normal real computer stuff. But there was one thing it didn’t have. (No, not a heart, or a diploma, or a proclamation. That's a different story.) What the Apple I didn’t have was a case. A case! Not a carrying case, but a case for the computer—the plastic stuff within which the actual computer part of the computer exists. No case. In those days, it wasn’t a big deal not to have a case. But Steve Jobs wanted a case. And got one. But the point (finally, the point!) wasn't the case. The point was the idea of “products.” Not computers, products. Good consumer products. Which just happened, in this instance, to be computers. One of Jobs's favorite metaphors for all this is the Cuisinart. You know: the great French food processor. The Cuisinart, if you've ever used one, is a good product; it has a great dependable motor, is utilitarian, works like a breeze, and the cord’s not too short. A good product, all around, that just happens to be a food processor. You may prefer knives, but you get the idea More good products? How about Ferraris? Gucci shoes. Dresden china. Harris tweed jackets. Smithfield hams. Nautilus exercise machines. National Geographic magazine. We could go on for a long time with this: small products and big products and expensive products and inexpensive products, but all quality products. That's all you need to know to understand Steve Jobs in particular and Apple Computer in general. A commitment to good products that, in this instance, are computers. And that may just possibly be it. Macintosh is a good product first and a computer sec- ond. Maybe the first Gucci shoe this industry has ever created. It’s not any one thing, and it's not even the combination of everything. It's a totality, a gestalt. An attitude that dots all the i’s, rounds all the corners, and cares as deeply about what's on the box as what's in the case. The point is not to make it only as good as it needs to be, but to make it better than any- one would even expect it to be. The surprise of quality. A risky gamble in a cutthroat mar- ketplace that twirls on features and price and “Will it run 1-2-3?” But, of course, that may not be the reason behind the success of Macintosh. That's just one case, and maybe not the right case. But sometimes when you announce a suc- cess, whether it’s a marriage or a memo or a good night's sleep, you just have a feeling that you know the reason. That's how we feel this month. And we're guessing you feel the same way.—A.W. Maccessories! The Maccessories SWIVEL is a light weight, durable lazy susan that fits neatly under your Macintosh. The SWIVEL re- volves a full 360° and lets you adjust the viewing angle of your Macintosh with the touch ofa finger. Since the SWIVEL attaches to the bottom of your Macintosh computer, it goes everywhere your Macintosh goes, even inside the Macintosh carrying case. Maccessories STARTER PACK. Start your Macintosh off right with this money- saving kit containing the Maccessories SWIVEL, SURGE SUPPRESSOR plus an anti-static DUST COVER to keep your Macintosh clean and dust-free. The Maccessories SURGE SUPPRESSOR protects your Macintosh against power problems. Its y circuitry stops surges and spikes, | and filters out aggravating line e— noise. Simply replace your Macintosh power cord with the Maccessories SURGE SUPPRESSOR and you're ready to go. Now also available: Maccessories (PORTABLE) MODEM Operates at 300 bps with any communications software. It’s inexpensive, rugged and easy to use. Warranted for 5 years. It’s small (7¥2" x 3¥2" x 1%"), powered by a 9-volt battery, less than 1 lb. in weight, and slips easily into the Macintosh carrying case. Maccessories DISK CASE Provides safe storage for 36 Macintosh disks. Five dividers help you organize your disks. Comes with 10 spare disk labels. Available at Apple dealers everywhere. KENSINGTON MICROWARE Kensington Microware Ltd. 251 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010 (212) 475-5200 Telex: 467383 KML NY ‘Trademarks: Maccessories—Kensington Microware Ltd; Apple and Macintosh—Apple Computer, Inc. © 1984 Kensington Microware Ltd. Basic COMments In the April issue, you claim that Microsoft Basic lacks a COM statement [Miscellanea: Where's the COM Statement?]. In fact, it does let you open COMI:, just like on the IBM PC, but it lacks the ability to set the baud rate, parity, and so on with this statement. How- ever, with a little machine language subrou- tine magic, you can do lots of things. Witness Dennis Brothers’s program called MacTEP, which is available on the MicroNet Apple Users Group on CompuServe (go pcs-51). The pro- gram is now up to version 1.81, and Dennis is threatening to give us xmodem and CompuServe protocol file transfers. It's pretty good considering MS-Basic is all we have to work with! Dave Alverson Cincinnati, OH The People’s Computer Ijust received my Macintosh through the Own- A-Mac program for Apple dealers, as well as the April issue of S7Mac. | found your mag- azine very entertaining and read it from cover to cover. Although most magazines stress the unique features of the Macintosh, STMac seems to be more oriented to how those fea- tures translate to the user. Having owned a Lisa for about six months now, I can honestly state that the Lisa and the Macintosh are the only two computers with which one concentrates on the work being done, not how to do it, regardless of the appli- cation being used! Additionally, they open up a totally new form of graphic expression here- tofore unavailable on any other personal com- puter, and it is within everyone's reach, not just that of the hobbyists. The Erroneous Zone I really appreciate your magazine, but I have found an error in your April issue [View- point: Making Mac PC-Compatible]. True, it isn’t a big error, but it is something that | think should be corrected. In this column, A. Woodard states, “Mac’s Finder also has limitations on filenames: They can’t be longer than 255 characters.” This is clearly erro- neous. If one tries to enter a long filename, one is greeted on the screen by... [ok | That name is too long. Use a name shorter than 64 characters (2? for applications and disk names). because I'll keep looking. Dan Eldridge Larimore, ND right of the colon identify the file.” Other than that, I didn’t find any glaring mistakes, but you’d better keep on your toes Umm...Woodard managed to squirm out of this one with a feeble but dignified expla- nation recounted in last month’: Miscellanea: “It seems that the Macintosh operating system software (held in ROM) does indeed provide for filenames of 255 letters... The filename includes both the drive name and the name of the filename. Thus, the filename ‘This is my favorite MacWrite disk:And this is my favorite file on the MacWrite disk’ is a valid filename. The words to the left of the colon identify the disk, and the words to the tut Ey fi 8 2 8 3 3 MacPaint wins hands down as the most addictive program | have laid my hands on, although my overall preference goes to LisaDraw and MacDraw. People complain about Macintosh’s 128K memory; however, if they insist on having a 512K Mac and are not willing to wait, why don't they purchase a Lisa 2? Lisa owners give up portability, but with MacWorks, Lisa emulates a 512K Macintosh, plus it has the potential of running the Lisa Office System software (with the addition of 512K of memory and a hard disk) or the next standard in operating systems: Bell Labs’s multiuser Unix (System III or System V, with the addition of a hard disk). All are available now! George J. Jahchan Montreal, Quebec, Canada Just Fooling Around Congratulations on one of the funniest April Fool’s pieces in any magazine. The Allen Munro/Alan Kay interview [“Alan Kay Thinks....”] ranks right along with BBC-TV’s famous “Spaghetti Tree” episode of 1957. Alan Kay was kidding, wasn't he? Of course he was! Allen and Alan are in a bar some- where right now laughing about the gullible fools who got upset that STMac printed the PARC priesthood story. It was a put-on, wasnt it, fellows? Allen? Alan? Hey, guys.... Barry W. Collins Demopolis, AL Thanks for a fantastic April issue and for a perfect interview with Alan Kay. I wish Kay good luck, but he should consider this: Par- ents are generally too busy to get as involved as we would all like in their kids’ education. Some parents aren't really interested—and although it's common knowledge that many parents want their children to become the people they never were, they also do not want to be surpassed foo much by their offspring. It's a situation in which two-thirds of the key people (parents and teachers) are not only uninformed but also don't want to be informed. At fifteen, | am fortunate enough to have par- ents who do. 7 a x Y; AN x SS os As SS sn eae REESRG REGS NXNN™ N: x ae S SS A Ss nts A WS IS <A ae SA sae NA NS a5 is aA bate i ES x a, »y PL, ay, Sy WSs s's+ About Microsoft Basic for Macintosh: I urge no one to buy it, as it is the shoddiest version from Microsoft I have ever seen. I would rather program in Applesoft on the Apple Il. For example, the LINE command, for drawing a line, will not accept more than two coordinate pairs; in order to draw a number of connected line segments, you must repeat the command for every point after the second. Itook you up on your offer and sent in your card for a free subscription. In return, enclosed is a free cartoon. Ben Geer Miami, FL A Fatal Mistake I had just completed interconnecting the Macintosh to my venerable Apple II. Soon a vast library of Applesoft public domain soft- ware would be uploaded to the Mac. With a great deal of anticipation, and an equal amount of foreboding, | loaded a ter- minal program into the Mac (Dennis Broth- ers’s MacTEP, available for downloading from The Source, CompuServe, and numerous local bulletin boards). So far, so good. It asked me for the baud rate and the name of the file | wished to save. I quickly typed the necessary information. All was in readiness for the next crucial step, the transferring of a Basic program from the Apple to the Mac. I very slowly typed PR#2. This step would activate the serial card in slot 2. I then gave the Applesoft command LIST. My eyes were riveted to the Mac screen. If all went well, the program in the Apple would be sailing into the Mac at flank speed. I waited and waited and...nothing. Was it a hardware or software problem? Was it in the Apple or the Macintosh? | rapidly checked everything. Had I misplaced a comma in the software I had so carefully transcribed for the terminal program? No, it seemed to be okay. Was there a loose connection in the cable | had fabricated for this project? No, that checked out. The baud rate in the Mac software was 9600...check. The DIP switches on the serial board were Off, Off, On. Wait a second...there it was! They should have been set at On, On, Off. With a great deal of optimism I was ready to try again. This time the program listing flew across the Macintosh screen. Success! There it was, my Applesoft program. Oh, it wasn't perfect. There were some minor problems with carriage returns and forty-column listings ver- sus eighty-column screens, but these were minuscule in comparison with my historic achievement. Just then my wife announced that her friend had arrived to print some mailing labels on the old reliable Apple. No problem. I had just climbed Mount Everest and wished to savor my accomplishment. All that had to be done to get the Apple ready for the mailing lists was to get all the cables put away and remove the serial card. | carefully turned off the Macin- tosh and pulled out the serial card. Oh, no! I had turned off the wrong com- puter. The serial card had departed Earth at the speed of light. Oh, well, what's a few bucks for some new chips after what I had succeeded in doing? Larry Margulis Cherry Hill, NJ Making Book on Mac T'm writing a book on art and the Mac and would like to speak with people who are using the graphic arts capabilities of the Mac in their trade or business. This would include artists, planners, architects, designers, printers, illus- trators, technicians, publishers, art directors, and so on. Please call or write me at 2139 Newcastle Avenue, Cardiff by the Sea, CA 92007; (619) 942-3838. Vahe Guzelimian Cardiff by the Sea, CA c=) STMac would like to hear your reactions to articles as well as your views about the world of personal computing. Send your opinions, queries, sugges- tions, and solutions to STMac, Box 7041, North Hol- lywood, CA 91605. programs on LISA and MACIN are easil educational rates. RUN IBM-PC BASIC PROGRAMS ON LISA/MAC PC-BASIC® Developer's Compier provides everything necessary to run most IBM-PC. OSH. It includes a communications package, RS-232 Cable, and an IBM compatible BASIC compiler. Source code of any BASIC program — which does not directly access IBM-PC hardware — can be transferred via the cable to LISA/MAC, recompiled, and run under the Office Environment. Alll in one day. PC-BASIC™ is the finest implementation of BASIC for LISA/MAC available. Programs com- pile to tight ‘machine code for strong software protection, can be linked to Pascal programs, and ly integrated within the Office Environment — including use of Graphics and Mouse. The communications package is great for transfering data and text files. More user-oriented tools are coming to make common translations to LISA/MAC easier. Watch for them. Complete software translation services are available for the new generation of Apple® products. Call for information about consulting, in-house translations, quantity and PC-BASIC™ Developer's Compiler. Complete. (Allows sale of code)... .. PC-BASIC™ User's Compiler. (For use on one machine only) $ IBM-PC to LISA/MAC Communications Package (only) PTERODACTYL SOFTWARE” “We Make Dinosaurs Fly” 200 Bolinas Road #27, P.O. Box 538 Fairfax, CA 94930 (415) 485-0714 THE SEDUCTION OF THE INDEPENDENT DEVELOPER Apples Aggressive Campaign to Market Mac Software By Guy Kawasaki It's no secret that Apple wants the Macin- tosh to follow in the footsteps of its first suc- cessful computer, the Apple II. The Apple II has a track record that no other personal com- puter can match. It has been on the market for nearly eight years and has a software base exceeding ten thousand commercial programs. But the computer market is a different place now than when the Apple II was introduced. A lot of the original Apple II programs were created by ordinary users hacking in their liv- ing rooms into the wee hours of the night. Many of these programs were written in Inte- ger Basic and Applesoft, the versions of Basic that were included in the ROMs of the Apple II and the Apple II Plus. For a program to be accepted by today’s more demanding con- sumers, it must be fast, slick, and powerful. And marketing considerations frequently de- mand that it be written in assembly language. This is especially true of software for the Macintosh and the Lisa, which have no lan- guage built into their ROMs, and which have perhaps the highest standards for software designers to meet in the industry. Apple hasn't put its resources into stocking the shelves with software for the Macintosh and Lisa. Instead, it has been actively seeking and supporting companies that it believes will become the pioneers of a whole new software explosion to come. Let’s look at the process of becoming a Macintosh software developer. Guy Kawasaki is the head of software evangelism and technical support for Apples Macintosh and Lisa products, How To Get Started In order to develop Macintosh software, a developer needs documentation, equipment, and software. The suggested development system currently includes documentation (Inside Macintosh), equipment (Macintosh, external disk drive, Imagewriter printer, Lisa 2/5, Lisa halfmegabyte RAM card, and Lisa Imagewriter Accessory Kit), and software (Lisa Pascal Workshop and Macintosh Software Supplement). Let's take a closer look at each of these components. Documentation The documentation of Macintosh software development is called Inside Macintosh. It is a two-volume set of photocopied manu- scripts containing detailed explanations of the Macintosh ROM, RAM-based packages, user interface guidelines, and the Lisa develop- ment environment. Inside Macintosh shows a developer how to use the software routines developed by Apple to implement features like high-speed graphics, windows, and pull-down menus as they appear in MacPaint or MacWrite. Inside Macintosh presently concentrates on software development; it includes only lim- ited hardware documentation. The final ver- sion of Inside Macintosh will have more infor- mation on both hardware and software. It will be available as a finished, published manual in the fourth quarter of 1984 in Apple deal- erships and bookstores. Any interested party may purchase the current version from the Apple mailing facility listed at the end of this article. 10 Je Ui gNGe Le 84 Equipment Serious commercial development of Macintosh software requires a Lisa at this time; while standalone languages will be available in the coming months, they are not yet on the market. Until we get Mac-based development tools, programs must be written on a Lisa, compiled, linked, and then downloaded to the Macintosh. When the necessary software arrives, the Macintosh will be able to act as its own development system, without the aid of a Lisa 2. Additional equipment is necessary for var- ious reasons. The extra half megabyte of RAM, which brings the Lisa 2/5 up to a one-mega- byte capacity, is required to run the Lisa Work- shop development software. The second disk drive for the Mac enables a developer to pro- duce backup copies more quickly and to cre- ate software that will use a second drive. The Imagewriter printer is used to generate listings and to test printing routines, and the Lisa Imagewriter Accessory Kit provides the cable for printing source code from the Lisa. The development equipment is available from local Apple dealers or, for qualified developers, through the Apple Certified Developer Program. Software Most developers currently are using the Lisa Workshop with Lisa Pascal for Macintosh pro- gram development. To augment that, C for the Lisa Workshop will be available from Apple in July. The Workshop and languages are pow- MACWARE™ SOFTWARE FOR THE MACINTOSH™ @MacAnimation Animate your Microsoft BASIC programs, the instruction book shows how to make animations. @MacMath Drill and practice for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with novel animations providing rewards to the child. @MacSpell Drill and practice for several ages or add your own words. Order at $19.95 Each Send check or money order to Integrated Systems P.O. Box 2618 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 “For use with Microsoft BASIC. Macintosh is a trademark licensed to Apple Computer, Inc. erful development environments, combining an editor, assembler, optimizing compiler, debugger, and linker. Though other compilers exist for 68000 machines, the Workshop provides a full set of utilities and software interfaces to the Macin- tosh ROM. These capabilities are essential for implementing a true Macintosh user inter- face. By using the Apple ROM routines, a developer saves time, avoids making end users learn a new interface, and conserves RAM and disk space. Beginning this summer, Apple will release three standalone development languages: MacAssembler/Debugger in July and Pascal and C in December. These packages will con- tain full interfaces with the Macintosh ROM and will allow the programming of commer- cial applications. When these languages become available, it will no longer be nec- essary for Macintosh developers to purchase the Lisa 2. Those wanting to write programs purely for their own use can do so now with Microsoft Basic. Soon, Macintosh Basic and Macintosh Pascal will be available as well. However, these languages are not intended for the develop- ment of commercial applications like word processors and spreadsheets. The only lan- guage currently available for commercial, standalone development is MacForth, from Creative Solutions in Rockville, Maryland. The final software that a professional developer needs is the Macintosh Software Supplement. The Supplement contains Mac- intosh libraries, utilities, and sample pro- grams. MacWorks, the Macintosh emulation software for Lisa, is also provided so that developers can test their software for Lisa compatibility. Purchase of the Supplement entitles a developer to updates to the Supple- ment software and Inside Macintosh and a copy of the first released version of Inside Macintosh. The Apple development languages are available through Apple dealers or, for quali- fied developers, through the Apple Certified Developer Program. The Software Supple- ment is not sold in dealerships at present; it is available to any interested party from the Apple mailing facility. Assistance from Apple The framework for the overall relationship between Apple and the third-party developers is provided by the Apple Certified Developer Program. A developer who has been certified by Apple can attend conferences and semi- nars, purchase equipment and software at a discount, and apply for technical support. The program is administered by Software Industry Relations, a part of Apple's corporate market- ing department. To qualify for certification, a developer must provide background information about the company and demonstrate its ability to bring Apple-compatible products to market. Appli- cations are screened by Software Industry Relations, which makes a decision based on such factors as a company’s business plans, existing retail products, technical expertise, and marketing experience. The program is intended for developers and publishers whose products will be sold in retail and computer stores. Certified Developer applications are available from Software Industry Relations at Apple Computer Inc. The Macintosh Developers Group, a part of the Macintosh division marketing depart- ment, provides Macintosh-specific develop- ment, as well as design and marketing assis- tance. Activities of this group include soft- ware evangelism, technical support, Mac- Colleges, and marketing programs. Software evangelism, as Apple calls it, is the function of recruiting companies for Macintosh development. Prior to Macintosh’s release, Apple’s representatives convinced more than 100 companies to develop prod- ucts for Macintosh. Since its release, they have provided marketing, technical, and proce- dural information to more than 2,500 developers. Technical support is available through the Macintosh Registered Developer Program. For a $500 fee, the developer purchases from Apple a “package” of services for a six-month period that includes extensive telephone support and consultation. Registered developers receive assistance with user interface design and techniques for implementing features such as windows, text editing, dialog boxes, printing, and pull-down menus. After the six-month period, developers usually require little addi- tional support. To qualify for this program, a developer must be an Apple Certified Developer and demonstrate a serious commitment to the development of commercial products. Reg- istered developers are expected to assign their top-flight programmers to the project and develop products that adhere to the Macin- tosh user interface guidelines. A brief appli- cation is completed by the developer and reviewed by the Macintosh Developers Group. The Registered Developer Program is for seri- ous commercial developers of products and not end users. Another kind of technical support is a series of training seminars called MacColleges; their purpose is to accelerate the completion of products by experienced Macintosh devel- opers. Programmers who have been working a minimum of two to three months can bring their source code to MacCollege in Cupertino, California, for three days of lectures, lab work, debugging, and consultation with Apple's technical people. Only developers with par- tially completed applications are admitted because the lectures and debugging sessions are for advanced programmers. MacCollege attendees must be Apple Certified Developers. The MacCollege sessions cost developers $500. The lectures are held in the morning and private debugging sessions in the after- noon. The sessions are conducted in a facility called the Macintosh Software Mill, which is fully equipped with a lecture area and fifteen The highest quality case built specifically to carry your Macintosh” Computer. Now your Macintosh Computer can leave your home or office fully protected and in style. The MacTote computer case is clearly the finest carrying case manufactured especially for your Macintosh Computer, and for a number of easy-to-see reasons: Padded pouch for mouse; 2. Open pouch for manuals or notes; 3. Open, padded pouch for keyboard; 4. Side handle for easy carrying and stability; Padded, Velcro handle (no snaps); Padded, non-slip shoulder strap; Zippered pouches for disks or accessories on both sides of case; Zippered pouch for accessories, modem, cords, etc.; 9. Padded pouch for disk drive, and extra padding to protect Macintosh’s screen; Reinforced bottom fully supports and distributes weight of Macintosh; Heavy-duty metal zippers. Optimum Computer Luggage has extensive experience in making top-of-the-line totes and accessories and MacTote is the latest in a long line of beautiful and functional luggage. Made of long-wearing and completely water-resistant Cordura, MacTote gives you every feature you'll ever need for carrying your Macintosh and peripherals. Another attractive feature is MacTote’s low price, which makes it even easier to pick up and carry away. Call today for the dealer nearest you so you can get a MacTote for your Macintosh. Who says you can't take it with you? Call (619)287-2886 Or in CA TOLL FREE (800)632-4200. COMPUTER LUGGAGE 4445 Fiftieth Street San Diego, CA 92115 ‘Macintosh is a trademark licensed to Apple Computer, Inc. ‘MacTote is a trademark of Optimum Computer Luggage. ie Ue Ee TUM. 8 a6: free protection frd dust accumulation. Sets come in an array of cglors, and eaebaset includ cover for the Macintosh™, Keyb@ard, and image Writer. Suggested retail: $30.00. Our ‘ Covers are available ngw at; Wabash compujer.systems. EL TORO 23720 6L TORO RO. cen Suse ra i is ‘Also available for ®'Lisa™ and other’poptllar Gomputer systems With-minimumordér ‘your company/corporaté 1096 provided at no extra charge. Petey, Via} 160-3238 (619) 70-1604 (bi seo (602) OCEANSIDE PHOENIX eve fs 4 2205 EL CAMINO REAL 6102 W088 re information contact; Computer Cover Co. P.O. Box 3080 Laguna Hills 92654 or phone (714) 380-0085 dealer inquiries welcomed Lisa and Macintosh are trademarks Apple Computer Inc. private cubicles containing Macintosh/Lisa development systems. MacColleges are conducted in Cupertino so that Apple’s engineers can assist devel- opers in their particular areas of expertise. The engineer that wrote Apple’s printer driver, for example, may help a developer with printer driver questions. This kind of intensive sup- port is nearly impossible with regional seminars. For further information about the Macin- tosh Registered Developer Program and MacCollege, contact Software Industry Rela- tions at Apple Support for the Little Guy Recognizing the need for introductory technical support for beginning Macintosh developers, Apple has trained third-party organizations to conduct regional seminars. One such company is the Technology Ser- vices Group of Bellevue, Washington. The Technology Services Group conducts semi- nars for companies that are starting or con- sidering Macintosh development Marketing Goodies The Macintosh Developers Group helps developers bring Macintosh products to mar- ket in three ways. First, developers can receive a promotional listing in a monthly publication called the Apple 32 Development Team List. This list is printed in quantities of five thou sand and distributed to dealers, sales repre- sentatives, publications, and analysts. Second, developers can familiarize Apple dealer sales personnel with their products by participating in Apple’s Own-A-Mac program. The Own-A-Mac program allows Apple dealer sales personnel to buy Macintoshes at extremely low prices for personal use. Devel- opers can participate in this program by offer- ing their products to Own-A-Mac salespeople for at least 60 percent below retail. This intro- duces their product to the people who will be selling it. Finally, developers can have their sales promotional material and demonstration soft- ware distributed to the twenty-five hundred Apple dealers and sales offices. The Macin- tosh Goodie Box, as this program is called, is ‘To purchase Inside Macintosh ($150) and the Macintosh Software Supplement ($100), send payment in advance to: Apple Computer Inc. 467 Sarasota Avenue, Suite 621 Cupertino, CA 95014 (California developers add sales tax) For information about the Apple Certified Developer Program, the Macintosh Regis- tered Developer Program, MacColleges, and Apple 32: Developers Handbook, contact: Software Industry Relations Apple Computer Inc. 20525 Mariani Avenue, Mail Stop 23AF Cupertino, CA 95014 STMAC conducted several times a year, and devel- opers can submit their materials for possible inclusion in the Goodie Box. For further infor- mation about these marketing programs, con- tact the Macintosh Developers Group at Apple. Advance to Go Macintosh development requires a signif- icant allocation of time and resources, and Apple suggests that developers follow a three- step procedure to ensure that they're making the correct decision. First, they should obtain a copy of the Apple 13: 32: Developers Handbook and an application to the Apple Certified Developer Program. The Developers Handbook contains information about Apple's marketing plans, products and accessories, development paths and environ- ments, and startup procedures. Both the Developers Handbook and the application are available from Software Industry Relations. Second, developers should complete the Certified Developer application and purchase a copy of Inside Macintosh, the documenta- tion manual. By reading Inside Macintosh, a developer can assess the technical require- ments of producing a Macintosh application. Third, developers should purchase a development system including the hardware and software outlined in this article. Macintosh provides an excellent opportu- nity for software developers to profit from the introduction of a new personal computer from Apple. Apple intends to help developers take advantage of this opportunity by providing design, technical, and marketing support. Apple's goal is to make Macintosh the next personal computer standard with the help of its partners, the independent developers. => The first step in getting a large body of Macintosh software to market has been to woo independent developers. To this end. Apple has sponsored a series of one-day workshops for the decision- makers of potential Mac software publishing com- panies. From February through April, seminars were held in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Santa Clara, and Anaheim, California. Abbreviated pre- sentations were made at the West Coast Computer Faire and Softcon. Kevin Goldstein attended the last of these conferences and filed this report for STMac. With the completion of the April Macin- tosh Developer's Workshop in New York, Apple Computer has closed down the first phase of an ambitious plan aimed first at enticing commercial software developers to write programs for the Mac and then at expe- diting those programming efforts. Though its billing as a “Developer's Work- shop” may seem to imply that the one-day seminar was chiefly an introduction to the technical esoterica involved in writing pro- grams for the Mac, Apple took the oppor- tunity to convince its audience of the inher- ent advantages of writing Mac software. While this tack may have been necessary when Mac was introduced four months ago, the 50-50 split between technical and mar- keting talk seemed unnecessary at this last conference—almost all of the hundred-plus attendees appeared to have already made up. their minds in favor of Mac. That impression was strengthened at the conclusion of each of the bravura technical talks presented by Alain Rossmann, when the audience broke into spontaneous applause. This was a group that wanted the cake, not the icing. And Apple seems intent on delivering just that. The company is going after software developers with the kind of gusto usually seen only in beer commercials. Recognizing that the success of the Mac depends not only (on getting a lot of good software onto deal- ers’ shelves but also on getting it there fast, Apple is targeting commercial software developers for special treatment. That treat- ment currently consists of a combination of healthy discounts on Macintosh develop- ment systems plus the kind of technical sup- port IBM PCers can only dream about. That kind of support is expensive. The discounts probably don't hurt Apple much, but tech support doesn’t just eat up man- power, it eats up manpower that’s working on future Macintosh products—and Apple intends to lavish its support on only those developers it believes have the ability and the determination to develop and publish (or to have published) professional quality software. To keep the kibitzers out, the com- pany is restricting entrance to both the Cer- tified Developer and Registered Developer programs with some pretty rigid require- ments. Those requirements all have just one point: to prove to Apple that the applicant has “the right stuff.” And if you look at the situation from Apple’s perspective, it's pos- sible to figure out just what, in this case, constitutes the right stuff. Apple wants programs for Mac, and it wants good programs. Despite a lengthy application form, all an applicant really has to do is prove to Apple’s satisfaction that it can and will produce and publish some quality software in a reasonable amount of time. That means an applicant with a prod- uct already on the market is practically a shoo-in; lacking that, a good brochure will help immensely. Apple is asking startup companies for a detailed business plan, and when Apple says detailed, it means detailed—thirty to forty pages is considered appropriate. If you're wondering how anybody at Apple is ever going to have the time or inclination to read such a monster, be assured that at the work- shop, developer relations program manager Dennis Gallinat swore that all those plans were being read. In view of the fact that Gal- linat says that more than four thousand applications had been received as of April, somebody at Apple must be doing an awful lot of reading. Just for the record, about 70 to 80 percent of the applicants are being accepted, However good an applicant's credentials are, luck might still play a role when it comes time for the application to be approved. Apple is trying to get a broad mix of software, which means that the application from the second company planning to write a spreadsheet is less likely to be approved than the first com- pany’s, and the third is even less likely than the second. Gallinat announced a final step in the development chain called MacCollege. Lim- ited to developers with a complete or nearly complete product, the program is an inten- sive three-day affair, consisting of work- shops and lectures, that aims at fine-tuning and applying the finishing touches on about- to-be-released programs, MacCollege will be held once a month in Cupertino, at its own digs next to the Mac development group. If anybody runs into a problem that the instructors can't solve, some pretty powerful talent can be summoned from just around the corner. What is needed to get the wheels of development moving is a free flow of infor- mation, and Apple, having not totally for- gotten its origins, will likely cooperate with third parties to establish courses open to the public. In the meantime, it was decided at the workshop that more information of a technical type will be made available through STMac and Softalk. (Okay, and Macworld too.) While Apple’s seduction of the commer- cial developer is a unique opportunity for those qualified enough to take advantage of it, it sets up a situation wherein the garage shop tinkerer is likely to feel neglected. The problem is relative; IBM, for example, does nothing for anybody, which means that everybody is equally neglected. (It's more democratic, if nothing else.) In any case, many of the perks currently offered under Apple’s programs wouldnt do the small developer any good at this time anyway, since commercial development can’t be done on a Macintosh-only system—a Lisa anda Mac will be required until some standalone soft- ware makes its debut later this year.—Kevin Goldstein 14 JUS Nee iT She hee The Lisa In a Class by Itself By David Durkee Ever since computers were first invented, computer languages have been used to communicate with them. From the fast, low-level machine languages—the complex numeric codes used to give instructions directly to the central processing unit—to the more human-oriented, higher-level languages that the majority of programmers use, com- puter languages have been our primary means of talking to the machine. Even the end user, who may never have wanted to write a computer program, has had to learn at least enough of the computer's language to tell it what programs to run. Lisa Technology has eliminated the need for end users to learn computerspeak to communicate with Apple's thirty-two-bit machines. The methods a user must learn to run a program on Lisa combine the simplicity of pointing a finger with the clarity of a universally understood set of symbols. There are a few special words to learn, but certainly not enough to be called a language. This degree of simplicity has yet to reach the programmer, how- ever. In order to tell Lisa how to do all the complicated actions that make up something like LisaDraw or LisaProject, the programmer still has to be able to use special languages. The Language Is the Program A Pascal-derived language called Clascal, together with Toolkit, a package of routines written in Clascal, is the basis for the develop- ment of applications programs for the Lisa 2. Clascal is more than just a new language; it embodies a new concept of computer pro- gramming that experts are getting very excited about—the object- oriented language. Until now, all computer languages have been oriented toward pro- cedures. The syntax consisted entirely of commands that told the computer what to do, Pascal, a popular language in the Apple II world, is notable because it imposes an organized structure on program procedures. Once a procedure has been defined, applying it to many different instances is relatively easy; the programmer merely has to say do this procedure and pass along the necessary details—the data that specifies how the procedure is to be performed. Such things, before Pascal, were often haphazard. Toolkit STMAC 15 Besides organized procedures, another important aspect of human language was never clearly expressed in computer language. That is, that actions involve objects. Clascal allows the definition and manip- ulation of objects. Objects were only implied, however, in earlier computer lan- guages. They were created or acted upon by the procedures, but never overtly defined, leaving their meaning nebulous. Clascal breaks with this established way of doing things. It was developed especially for the Lisa and does for objects what Pascal does for procedures. Clascal recognizes, and forces the programmer to note consciously, the prop- erties of objects. Objects in Clascal, like objects in the world at large, are defined by classes and exceptions. One object in Clascal acts as an ancestor to all the others. For instance, if “dog” were the ancestral object in Clascal (which it isn't), then all other objects would be more specific examples of the class “dog.” A “poodle,” for instance, would be defined as a dog of a certain size and shape with curly hair, a short tail, and so on. “Toy poodle” would be a case of the class “poodle” except of a smaller size. With these types of clear interre- lationships and definitions, Clascal provides a method for programs to manipulate objects explicitly. More than that, like Pascal, it pro- vides a structured method. In down-to-earth terms, this means that Clascal is the first lan- guage that provides independent software developers full access to Lisa Technology. It's a shame that Clascal took so long to emerge, because it is the package that promises ultimately to make Lisa as useful and diverse a system as it has the potential to be. The appear- ance of Clascal may overcome the bottleneck that, so far, has pre- vented independent developers from creating that software for the Lisa. Objects for a New Generation Bruce Blumberg, formerly of the Lisa division and now a member of Apple’s Macintosh marketing team, says that object-oriented pro- gramming may initially be a difficult concept for programmers to adapt to. “People who have never programmed before may grasp this approach faster than programmers already trained in the procedure- oriented methods.” To make it easier for programmers to reach this mind set, Apple is providing the Toolkit for developers to start with. The Toolkit is a generic application program combined with a set of building blocks for specific types of applications. So just what is a generic application program? It is certainly not a plain-label database available at the supermarket for a discounted price. Rather, it is the Clascal programming necessary to implement those things that Lisa applications have in common. Lisa applications have standardized ways of dealing with menus and windows and standardized ways of reacting to things the user does with the mouse. They share the same desktop filing system and trade information on the same Clipboard. The generic application contains all the code necessary to do those things. On this base, any Lisa application pro- gram can be built. Some applications wont require all of those things to behave exactly the same. It just isn’t practical for a database to act exactly like a word processor, nor is it meaningful to select a paragraph within a graphing program. Because of this, programming in Clascal with the Toolkit is a lot like sculpting. The artist starts with a block of granite and a chisel and sets out to chip away everything that is not Art. In addition to the generic application, there are sections of code called building blocks. These are still generic in a sense, but they are more specific to certain kinds of applications. For instance, there might be one entire set of building blocks dedicated to databases and another set dedicated to word processors. While we don’t want all word processors to act exactly alike, it makes a certain amount of sense to have similar functions behave similarly. Programmers can pick and choose from among the building blocks to build custom programs with minimal effort. Those things that need to be different can still be different. In addition to building blocks and the generic applications, programmers still have the entire Clascal language with which to customize their work. develop software for Lisa or any other system. One capability Toolkit adds to Lisa’s windowing system that didn’t exist in the earlier applications is split windows. Programs developed with Toolkit will be able to display numerous parts of the same file within a window split horizontally, vertically, or both ways many times. Each of the window “panes” created by splitting a window will have scrolling panels that are independent of the other panes. The fact that Clascal and the Toolkit will be available only to devel- opers does not mean that they will be completely unavailable to someone who wants to break into the industry. It does seem to mean that Apple wants to keep an eye on what is being developed, at least at first. Burt Cummings, a veteran of the Lisa division and now the program manager of Apple university sales, says that people who want to become Lisa developers should contact Apple. They aren't necessarily looking for a proven track record in software publishing. They are looking for people or companies with good, well-conceived ideas and some evidence that they have the wherewithal to pull them off. A licensing fee is required, but not until a product is ready for distribution. While Apple's development support group is making Toolkit avail- able to independent developers, they aren't pushing it. They aren't encouraging developers to write software exclusively for Lisa. In fact, they aren't even giving technical support to those who insist on using Toolkit and Clascal. Lisa product marketing manager Randy Battat wants to present a unified thirty-two-bit product line. To this end, Apple is favoring Macintosh product development over Lisa product development and, on the Lisa, favoring MacWorks over the Lisa’s Office System. The future of Clascal and the Toolkit is admittedly hazy. Battat says that both are remarkable achievements in software engineering. The last word, for now, is that Apple is investigating the possibility of implementing them on the Macintosh. Until then, developers wanting to work only with Lisa can use the tools Apple has provided—but they're doing so on their own. P=) MACINTOSH OWNERS The Original Macintosh Sourcebook - The on- ly definitive, comprehensive and up-to-date guide to all Macintosh software, hardware and accessories; includes complete info on all currently available and planned future releases, product descriptions, release dates/availability, pricing, names, addresses and telephone numbers of manufacturers, developers, and suppliers. - $9.95 postpaid. ICONS; The Macintosh owner’s newsletter. User friendly monthly dedicated exclusively to the Mac; product reviews, articles, ap- plications, letters, news, ideas, followup. A must for every Mac owner. $18.00 postpaid. ICON Concepts Corporation 916 Bradley Athens, Texas 75751 I was working the Penguin Software booth at the winter Applefest when Guy Kawasaki, sporting an Apple badge with the title “Soft- ware Evangelist,” approached us to join Apple's Macintosh prerelease software development team. Mark Pelezarski, president of Penguin, asked if] would like to do Transylvania as our first Mac product. Transylvania is a graphic adventure game originally written by Antonio Antiochia for the Apple II. At that time the sum total of my knowledge of the Macintosh was limited to the prevailing rumors—that it used a 68000 processor, 128K of memory, a 3 1/2-inch Sony disk drive, and a mouse. Since I had just spent the last year programming the 6502 processor, | figured that it would provide a nice change of scenery, so | said, “Yes!” Tagreed to meet Guy in Cupertino the fol- lowing weekend for my first introduction to the Mac. In the meantime, I studied everything I could lay my hands on about 68000 assem- bly language programming. Having spent a long time working with the three eight-bit reg- isters of the 6502, I found the sixteen thirty- two bit registers of the 68000 to be pure nirvana. Boy Meets Mac When Guy showed me the Mac in Cuper- tino the following week I was initially disap- pointed by its diminutive size. | drove four Robert Hardy is a free-lance programmer who wrote the Macintosh version of Transylvania for Penguin Software. hours to see a toaster with a built-in TV screen? But as Guy started pulling down menus, pointing, dragging, clicking, and double- clicking, the Mac began to grow until it com- pletely filled my mind with its enormous pos- sibilities and potentials. By the time | saw MacPaint | knew | was MacHooked! Guy told me he could send everything | needed to create Mac products in four to six weeks. I knew that I'd be climbing the walls, waiting each day for the UPS truck. €eangplbanig” by Antonio Antiochia Macintosh persion Dp 3} authors Gandy @) 1999 Penguin software” he graphice people Programmer Resorts to Manual Labor Finally the Mac arrived. It was accom- panied by a box that contained the develop- ment software and the documentation. The documentation was in the form of three stacks of manuals that contained everything I needed to know and was not afraid to ask. The man- uals, collectively called Inside Macintosh, held information concerning everything from set- ting up the Lisa to creating programs on the Lisa and transferring them to the Mac. ly Robert Hardy Unfortunately, these manuals were simply prerelease photocopies, so my first afternoon was spent punching holes and organizing sheets of paper into more than twenty color- coded binders. (Now, when | need to refer to the QuickDraw manual, I just reach for the yellow one and so on. It’s a real timesaver.) Most of the documentation contains descrip- tions of the Toolbox, the aptly named set of routines that reside permanently in the 64K of ROM in the Mac. Inside Macintosh is abso- lutely essential to the development of any pro- gram for the Mac. QuickDraw MacDraw Meets the Werewolf The making of Macintosh Transylvania started with the conversion of the original ver- sion’s pictures. The pictures were created on the Apple Il with Penguin's Graphics Magi- cian, a utility that allows you to create draw- ings on the screen and save them to disk ina special compact format. Graphics Magician does not save the bit map of the picture but rather the individual steps that were used to create it. The heart of the picture editor is called Picdraw, not to be confused with QuickDraw (the graphic rou- tines in the Macintosh Toolbox). Picdraw was designed by Mark Pelczarski to operate very compactly and efficiently on the much-less- powerful 6502-based Apple II; it predates both the Mac and the Lisa. Picdraw basically does three things: It draws lines, plots brushes, and fills areas with patterns. It must do these things. very quickly, as some of the pictures in Tran- sylvania contain more than five hundred steps. To write Mac Transylvania, | had to convert these routines from 6502 to 68000 assembly language and modify them to run on the Mac. QuickDraw contains some very fast fill rou- tines, so you may wonder why I didn't take advantage of them. The answer is, although there are incredibly fast routines to fill rectan- gles, circles, and even arbitrary areas called regions in QuickDraw, all of them work only on predefined areas. That is, QuickDraw must know ahead of time exactly where the bound- aries of the area to be filled are. Picdraw needs to be able to fill an area whose outline isn’t known until fill time, and it has to be as fast as possible. Using QuickDraw fills was out; I had to resort to good old assembly language. Once the picture editor was usable it was time to transfer the original Apple II files over to the Lisa. This was a simple matter of mak- ing a few changes to the picture listing utility provided by the Graphics Magician. This util- ity allows you to print out the commands ina picture file so that you can see exactly what steps are taken to create any given picture. | modified it to convert each individual step into 68000 assembler—ready format and transfer the results to the Lisa. Transferring files for the eighty-plus pic- tures in Transylvania took a day and a half of pure tedium. It would have taken a lot less time if the Lisa software had been able to talk to my Apple II faster than 1200 baud. Even at that speed I had to retransmit an occasional file because of missing characters. Alas, one of the dangers of being among the first to work with a new computer is getting cut by the sharp edge of its technology. The new Lisa 2 Work- shop environment has eliminated this problem. After the files were transferred to the Lisa they were assembled individually and col- lected into one large resource file. A Macin- tosh resource file can contain many different types of data including pictures, text, object code, or whatever you decide to put in them. Resources can be retrieved from such a file very easily by making calls to a set of Toolbox routines called the Resource Manager. In the Apple II version of Transylvania there are over eighty files containing one picture definition each. On the Mac there is one file containing over eighty picture resources. When I need to draw a picture, all I have to do is make one call to the Resource Manager to get it. [make one more call to Picdraw and there it is on the screen. Who says there’s no Santa Claus? Any Color You Want as Long as It’s... This file and the Mac Graphics Magician picture editor were sent back to Penguin in Illinois where Holly Thomason, coauthor of the Coveted Mirror, edited the pictures into their final form. This was necessary because the original pictures were done in color. The numbers used to represent colors internally needed to be changed to the numbers used to represent the black-and-white patterns of TG OMOTUT You hear moaning noises in creature. Go South A grim chuckle erupts i. 4\Uou are on a lake shore. A path goes You. hear a wolf howl in the distance. There is a wrinkled note. werewolf. Go East the Macintosh. It took a graphic artist like Holly to select the most visually pleasing patterns for each of Transylvania’s locations. | was really pleased when I saw the pictures. While Holly was busy editing the pictures, I began the task of converting the main logic of Transylvania from Applesoft Basic to 68000 assembly language. It took me four ten-hour days to type it in. | would read a line of Basic, convert it in my head to a routine in 68000 assembly language, and then type the result into the Lisa using the mouse editor. This may sound impressive, but the truth of the matter is that the majority of the main logic was so similar that once | struggled past the first few pages my eyes and fingers went into autopilot and my mind wentto sleep. Actually, I'm lying— it was very hard work for me; so go ahead and be impressed. Will the People Please Rise At this time, the afternoon mail brought a gift in the form of a summons. No, | wasn't wanted for conspiracy to commit computer crime or even for jaywalking. I was wanted for jury duty. Just what every free-lance program- mer needs—something to take him away from his contracted work to sit around for who knows how long with eleven strangers to decide what to do to another stranger. On the drive to town I tried to think of an excuse that would get me off the hook. Maybe I would say, “Your Honor, | am the duly appointed Terran ambas- sador to the Bogan Empire and if] am not at the spaceport in five Earth-ticks, heads will roll!” Maybe I wouldn't. As those of you who have been called to serve as a potential juror know, there is a tre- mendous amount of waiting involved. I used this time to edit the program I had just typed in. I looked for (and found) lots of typos, syn- tax errors, and just plain dumb mistakes. A nice, quiet, well-lit place is wonderful for this type of work, and I got this phase of the project done ina much shorter time than if] had done it at home. At the end of each day I was told to go home and call back to see if | would be needed the next day. This went on for a week and I never did get on a jury, but | didn’t mind. I was well paid for my efforts—seven dollars a day. The Parser Gets Munged When you play Transylvania, you commu- nicate with the computer by typing in simple two-word commands. The routine that deci- phers these two words is called the parser. The word parse means to analyze grammati- cally, and that is exactly what the parser does. It looks up the commands in a table contain- ing close to three hundred words. When it finds a match, it returns the numerical posi- tion of the word in the table. This number is then used by the main logic to determine the appropriate response or action. This is actually a very rudimentary form of artificial intelli- gence, which is why adventure games can be entertaining for an extremely long time. I used one of my favorite routines in the Toolbox to form the main body of the parser. It is a single call by the name of Munger, which can do a plethora of wonderful things with data. If you tell Munger where your word table is in memory and give it a word, it will tell you where it exists in the table or it will tell you it couldn't find it. Of course, that’s only a small part of what Munger can do, but, need- less to say, it made short work of writing the parser. And Don’t Forget the Windows After the parser was written and tested, I decided to tackle the text output. One of the three windows displayed during the game is devoted to both the input of the player's com- mands and the output of the game's responses. I wanted to be able to type in the commands at the bottom of the window and have the whole window scroll up as the program printed its responses. There is a set of routines called TextEdit that allowed me to accomplish this easily. ‘TextEdit makes it possible to do absolutely amazing things with text. TextEdit calls 18 HSU Nie Bs 179.8 4 QuickDraw to draw the text on the screen. The text output routine automatically adjusts to the extra screen height and width that becomes available when you run Transylvania on the Lisa 2. I decided that, if I were to use two different type styles to differentiate the user input from the computer output, there would be no confusion as to who said what to whom. It was a snap to change the type styles on the fly by manipulating the fields of records used by TextEdit. A Region Where No Mouse Has Gone Before One of the most Macish features of my ver- sion of Transylvania is the use of the mouse to select the direction of travel by simply clicking on the desired point of an on-screen compass. For me, the compass routine was one of the most interesting and enjoyable sec- tions to write. It was my first foray into one of the things that make the Mac insanely great— regions. Aregion is a QuickDraw data structure that is a collection of connected lines and framed shapes. In addition, a region can contain other regions. What you end up with is quite simply a mathematical representation of the outside boundary of an arbitrary area. You can fill regions, shrink or expand them, clear them, draw their outline, calculate their intersection with other regions, detect whether a given point (such as the mouse pointer) is in them, and do many, many other fabulous things. All | had to do to create the frame of the compass was to open a region and call other QuickDraw routines such as LineTo and FrameOval. While a region is open, no actual drawing takes place on the screen. Instead, the end points of all the lines are stored into the region data structure. Then, whenever the compass needs to be drawn to the screen, it’s a simple matter of making a single call to FrameRegion and four consecutive calls to DrawChar to letter the four direction points. The compass routine was my first foray into one of the things that make the Mac insanely great—regions. During game play, the routine PtInRgn is called to determine when the mouse has been clicked in a compass point, and the routine InvertRgn is used to show which point you have selected. There is a set of Toolbox rou- tines called the Control Manager that can be used to design and manipulate compasses, switches, volume controls, or anything else rds labs INTRODUCES AVAILABLE NOW!! Basic Disk Shooting Stars °Tic-Tac-Toe * Black Jack along with several others Family Budget Check Book Register along with Two others rds labs SOFTWARE FOR YOUR Macintosh™ Template Disk No. 1 For Multiplan™ Basic disk requires Microsoft™ Basic and Templates disk requires Microsoft’s™ Multiplan EACH DISK $35.00 OR BOTH FOR $65.00 ALL ORDERS MUST BE PREPAID WITH CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO: P.O. BOX 1218 Cookeville, TN 38503 With each order please state quantity of each Disk and please add $2.00 postage and handling. Thank you. Tennessee residents please add 7.75% sales tax to each order Macintosh is a trademark licensed to Apple Computer, INC. Microsoft and Multiplan are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation, your heart desires. You can even store them in resource files and use them easily from dif- ferent programs. Zen and the Art of Computer Programming The Macintosh is really a different kind of computer to program for. It requires a different type of programming philosophy. It was nec- essary for me to unscrew my head, empty out a few antiquated thoughts, and screw it back on before I felt at home with my mouse-sport- ing friend. In most other microcomputers, the program must spend most of its time locked in a loop where it knows exactly what kind of thing is going to happen next. Let's call this thing it waits for an event. The programmers who write the code for these other micros only need to deal with one kind of event—the key- press. All they need to have the computer do is collect enough of these events, see what it all means, and call the appropriate subrou- tine to do the desired task. On the Mac, there are many types of events that can occur at any time. Mouse-down events occur when you click the mouse button. Acti- vate events are generated when windows are opened or change in their front-to-back order- ing. Update events request you to redraw the contents of a window. There is even the lowly keydown event with its reminder that, even with mice available, people still have fingers to poke things with. All of these events are recorded into an event queue. It isn’t strictly a matter of first come, first served when it’s time to see what's next in line. Some events have a higher prior- ity than others and can be found taking cuts in front of the other events in the queue. A Macintosh program consists of a main loop that must be able to handle the events given to it by the Event Manager, make a call to the appropriate subroutine, and loop around and do it again. This ability to take things as they come is what allows you to open several windows on the Mac and do completely dif- ferent operations in each of them. One of my biggest difficulties was becom- ing familiar with this type of thinking. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that going back to pro- gramming non-Lisa machines—perish the thought—would be even harder still! The main loop of Transylvania is the only portion that is written in Pascal. Pascal is ideally suited for this kind of programming because of its tendency to force you to write no-non- sense code. As I had never written in Pascal, there’ was an incredible ammount of trial and error required to get the darn thing to work right. If it weren't for Cary Clark and the others in the Macintosh Technical Support Group, Transylvania would most likely not be avail- able yet. On the other hand, my phone bill wouldn't have to be delivered by truck. Thanks, guys. Light the Fuse and Stand Back Once all the subroutines had been written and the main loop was more or less in shape, it was time to put the pieces together and see 19 TOOLBOX Inside the Macintosh sits 64K of read-only memory (ROM) known as the User Interface Toolbox. This Toolbox contains a library of tore than four hundred subroutines that are easily available to the programmer. These painstakingly well-thought-out routines take an incredible burden off of Macintosh pro- grammers by allowing them to concentrate on the application itself, rather than the interface to the user. The following descriptions of the more important Toolbox units are by no means a complete account of what is contained within the Toolbox. They should, however, give you a taste of the great things already built into each Mac that are just waiting to be set free. For more detailed descriptions of these rou- tines, refer to the User Interface Toolbox manual. Control Manager. The Control Manager is used to create, display, and manipulate the unique, interactive controls that make the Mac so simple to use. The standard con- trols can take the form of scroll bars, check boxes, and buttons. Nonstandard controls such as compasses can be custom-designed by the application programmer. The Control Manager contains approximately twenty-six subroutines. Desk Manager. The Desk Manager han- dies the desk accessories such as the clock. From a programming point of view, the Desk Manager is almost transparent. It contains approximately seven subroutines. Dialog Manager. The Dialog Manager is responsible for the creation and handling of dialog and alert boxes. Dialog and alert boxes are used to facilitate the interaction between. the user and the application. It contains approximately twenty-three subroutines. Event Manager. The Event Manager is responsible for keeping in touch with the outside world. It keeps track of such things as the mouse actions, keypresses, and the insertion of disks. Internally, it generates events used in the management of windows and also allows you to read the system clock. It contains approximately eleven subroutines. Font Manager. The Font Manager is used to select the fonts used by QuickDraw. It can also return detailed information about a desired font to the application. It contains approximately five subroutines. Menu Manager. The Menu Manager is responsible for the creation and manipula- tion of the menu bar. It can also handle cus- tom-defined menus such as pull-down menus containing patterns. It has approximately thirty-three subroutines. QuickDraw. QuickDraw is a set of extremely fast screen-drawing routines that are utilized by almost every component of the Toolbox. Generally recognized as the heart of the Lisa and the Macintosh, these routines are responsible for absolutely everything you see on the screen. There are very few graphic operations that can’t be accomplished using QuickDraw. QuickDraw contains approximately one hundred thirty- five subroutines. Resource Manager. Resources are the many different types of data structures that make up an application. They include such things as text strings, pictures, menu defi- nitions, and even the application's program code. The Resource Manager is called, as needed, by the application to gain access to the data structures stored in resource files. It contains approximately thirty-four sub- routines. Scrap Manager. The Scrap Manager performs all of the functions of the Clip- board. It handles information exchange within an application, between applica- tions, and between applications and desk accessories: any action that involves cutting and pasting. It contains approximately six subroutines. Segment Loader. The Segment Loader handles the loading and unloading of pro- gram segments of up to 32K. Each segment, except for the main one, needs to be in memory only if it is in use. An unused seg- ment can be unloaded at any time. The space formerly occupied by the segment then becomes available to the application. The Segment Loader contains approximately six subroutines. TextEdit. TextEdit is the unit responsible for the formatting and editing of text in an application. Toolbox units such as the Dialog Manager and the Menu Manager use TextEdit for the insertion, deletion, and presentation of text. It contains approximately twenty-one subroutines. Toolbox Utilities. The Toolbox Utilities are useful routines that allow you to do such things as fixed-point arithmetic, byte and bit manipulation, and string manipulation, They also allow you to load and plot icons, load pictures and patterns, and hide the cursor if it's inside a given rectangle on the screen. This section contains approximately twenty- four subroutines. Window Manager. The Window Man- ager is used to create, display, and manip- ulate windows. All operations such as drag- ging, sizing, opening, closing, scrolling, and disposing of windows are performed by these routines. The Window Manager is also responsible for the front-to-back ordering of application and system windows. This man- ager calls on QuickDraw to display the win- dows and their contents. The Window Man- ager contains approximately forty-three sub- routines. a 20 SUNG Vy 2 Actually, we don’t call them bugs anymore. The more polite term is “undocumented features.” if Transylvania would fly. When you've been working several months on disjointed sec- tions of a program, you can lose sight of the overall picture of what you're trying to accom- plish. It was real exciting to plug it all in and actually play Transylvania on the Mac. As usual, there were a lot of bugs and irreg- ularities that didn’t manifest themselves until the last minute. Actually, we don't call them bugs anymore. The more polite termis “undoc- umented features.” With the new terminol- ogy, programmers don't have to take the blame when the program crashes right before you are about to get the highest score ever. Or when it crashes just as you finished entering the last value in a 1,024 by 1,024 spreadsheet. Anyway, it took a large hammer and a lot of frustrating hours to finally squash the undoc- umented features that had wormed their way into my code. After I was sure I had found all the bugs, I sent a copy to Penguin, where Dave Albert found a few more with a high-level test- ing technique he has developed called “Kitty on the keyboard” Well, Maybe a Little like 1984 I tried as hard as | could to follow the guidelines set forth by what is referred to as Wooden cross SO TTOTT Wrinkled note [ Go North There is a wooden cross. There is a gravestone. get cross OK. There is a gravestone. look gravestone lt says ‘Here lies Bob’ west. You are in a [og cabin. An exit goes it has today's date. Go South Go South There is a menacing BS «i SSA werewolf. go cabin You hear moaning noises in the distance. NOW AVAILABLE 2025 Lincoln Highway, Suite 312, Edison, 201-985-8000 » Order Desk: 800-222-0550 UniPress Software, Inc. Lisa is a trademark of Apple Computer. Unix is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. Cc pNe Aya , NJ 08817 (outside NJ) Telex: 709418 the Macintosh User Interface. These guide- lines are Apple’s justified attempts to make Mac products compatible with each other. The guidelines are one of the reasons that Mac- Paint drawings can be transferred to MacWrite documents. They also guide the programmer in the proper way to handle interaction between the user and the computer. If a programmer follows these guidelines, the end result will still be a product that is uniquely character- istic of that programmer. It will also be a snap to operate because the user won't be forced to learn a new set of skills for each new program. There is only one place in the game where I failed to abide by these guidelines. Where the program asks you to sign in and enter your next of kin, | am guilty of using what is called a hard mode. A hard mode is where you are forced to do one thing. In my case, | require the players to enter the names in text. While the program is in this hard mode, the user can't pull down menus, edit the input field, or do anything but enter characters with the key- board. Someone had suggested that | use a dialog box instead. I felt that this would have disrupted the overall flow of the program, so I left it the way it was—so there! Does That Banner Yet Wave At last it was time to put in all of the fin- ishing touches. Usually the last thing I do in a game is design the banner page. | always save it until last because I hate doing it. You know you have no artistic talent when you can't even draw a straight line using MacPaint. Brian Carter down at my local computer store used MacPaint to draw the wonderful pen- guins depicted on the banner page of Tran- sylvania. Once he finished the drawings 1 transferred them via the Scrapbook and pasted them into the resource file of my program. I'm telling you, these resources are ingen- ious. When I need to display the title page, all I have to do is make a call to the Resource Manager to get it and then make a call toa QuickDraw routine called DrawPicture, which actually draws it to the screen. That sounds real rough, huh? Lead On, MacDuff I'm currently working on my next Mac proj- ect: a strategy board game by John Besnard called Pensate. It's a thinking game that is superficially similar to chess, but with a per- sonality all its own. I'm looking forward to incorporating things into it that I've learned while doing Transylvania and, more impor- tant, incorporating things that I have yet to learn, I've always felt that the mind dies when the learning stops. The real joy of working with computers is that the learning never ends. Transylvania only scratches the surface of what can be done with a Macintosh. Working with it night and day has taught me that it’s really light years ahead of other computers. 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That's *Contact BASF fora copy of our warranty. ees Reni ts 24 ane 98 4 miler palette of nlargeds sa. spout the marketing st eis RaNGY anager for Li and Lise in cl of setting Lisa's ‘onitoring: pr juction \ev- eeing, he develoP” ich Macbra? itor PO” which * les unorthodox 26 Je USNy lye Ou S ana A Nor mco Inc. Vice President Pass Manager Sloth Salesman The Salesman Buck Jr. Manager Sleep President Buck Vice President Ignore Manager Shirk Salesman Here Salesman Stops The original directive to those creating the Draw software was to make a simple Org Chart Generator. Deviation from the Norm Battat begins the tale of Apple’s unique method of product development by explain- ing the “normal,” as opposed to Apple’s, way of doing things. In the “normal” mode of doing things, innovative marketing people go out and survey the market. They ask people what they need, what they want, and what they would be able to use. Based on these surveys, they come back and tell the engineers what to build. Then, in that most perfect of theoretical worlds, the software engineers write programs to fit the niche the market has defined. But we dont need Battat to tell us that Apple @ Fite Edit Type Font Layout has a different style. Until the introduction of the IIc, Apple never designed a machine spe- cifically targeted by a demand in the market- place. Apple started out by building a com- puter that nobody needed or wanted. A personal computer? What on earth for? At least that's what most of us thought. When the Apple Il turned out to be only slightly bigger than a typewriter and hundreds of times more useful, a need—for a personal computer—was cre- ated by its fill, the Apple II. Similar stories could be told about the public’s lack of desire for the Ill, the Ile, and most assuredly the thirty-two-bit projects. Who COE Fin tines Pen Bring to Front (ann ri til Send to Back Ke AON Hs Rotated Left Rotate Lett Rotate Right Flip Horizontal Flip Vertical Group Ungroup Lock Unlock Align to Grid MacDraw is capable of rotating objects in ninety-degree increments only. Cutter would eventually like to see arbitrary rotation of shapes. needs mice? Some critics, most notably Peter MeWilliams, the author of several microcom- puter books, have done a good job of pointing out Apple's inability to perceive the needs of the marketplace and to design a machine to meet those specific needs. But so what? Apple continues to build machines that no market surveys recommend, that nobody wants and nobody needs, but that everybody buys. So there's got to be something to this maverick company’s unorthodox marketing strategy. It seems that Apple used to have fairly complex, but conventional, ways of starting a project—strategies like New Product Propos- als, Preliminary Marketing Requirements Documents (PMRD), Marketing Requirements Documents (MRD), and External Reference Specifications. Sounds boring, doesn't it? Bat- tat says boring is an understatement. Anyway, a number of these documents had to be writ- ten, filed, and evaluated before a project could even get off the ground. Consequently, says Battat, “Many proposals never got off the drawing board.” It’s difficult to imagine any- one ever reading these documents, let alone getting excited over them. This paper-shuffling on the MacDraw proj- ect was permanently done away with by Apple software engineer Mark Cutter, the author of LisaDraw and MacDraw. Cutter says thatwhen he first started work on the project, paper- pushers hounded him day and night for things like PMRDs and External Reference Specifi- cations. He says it’s pretty difficult to write specifications before you even know exactly what you're trying to build. The papers could have been written, but Cutter knew it was either write the papers or write the code; he told Apple he didn’t have time to do both. At first, this didn’t sit too well with man- agement, but when people began passing mock-ups (simple working demonstrations of ideas for software) of LisaDraw around Apple, the paper-pushers stopped pushing. They thought Cutter’s work was fantastic. Accord- ing to Randy Battat, a good mock-up is a sure way to get the attention of the people with the resources at Apple. Indeed, he says, the filing cabinets are full of new product proposals that will never see the light of day simply because the engineers never mocked them up. So if you have an idea for a program, better mock it up before trying to get funding. Cutter wasn't originally hired to work on the thirty-two-bit projects. He was supposed to be writing a graphics editor for the Apple Ill. But one day he wandered out to the Lisa building and started chatting with Bill Atkin- son, who did all of the low-level graphics rou- tines for the Lisa and the Mac and played a major role in the overall design of the Lisa, contributing to the design of the user interface and to some extent the design of the hardware as well. Cutter and Atkinson spent three or four hours talking before Atkinson realized he wasn't talking to the new graphics person for the Lisa. Apple had been negotiating with someone to write the graphics editor for the Lisa, and STMAC Atkinson thought Cutter was that person. But the person Apple was negotiating with never came aboard; so, just like the stand-in who gets to go on for the indisposed lead on open- ing night, Cutter soon got his wish to join the Lisa project (To be sure, this is only an isolated exam- ple, but perhaps you’re wondering how such a successful organization as Apple can afford to go about getting its software engineers in such unorthodox ways. Randy Battat puts it this way: “Old theory,” he says, “has a lot to do with structure. Structure is good,”"he pauses, searching for something good to say about structure, “...because you can measure it” Structure gives the paper-pushers something to measure, as in: “Oh, the External Reference Specifications call for an ‘A here and your pro- gram gives a ‘B’; ‘B’ certainly works better, but you failed ‘cause your spec says an ‘A’”) A Method to This Madness Battat has worked at Apple for a number of years, and he has found that the project engineers who succeed all do certain things the same way. They stick to a methodology that has evolved over the years. And those who fail are those who ignore these methods. According to Battat, the first thing that an Apple engineer with an idea for a product should do is “demonstrate an early complete prototype that doesn't aim to do much but that does it well.” He says an idea that can be viewed on the screen is much more exciting and likely to get funded than an idea, no matter how good, on paper. Cutter, coincidentally, expressed a similar belief when describing why he decided to do a mock-up rather than a lot of paperwork: “Ideas are fine, but experience is much better.” Believe it or not, the first directive to those creating the Draw software was to make a sim- ple Org Chart Generator. You know, an orga- nizational chart—vice presidents are always drawing them up for other vice presidents so everyone will know where everyone stands in a given week. Although LisaDraw started out that way, it has evolved tremendously. Let's look at how it all started. Mocking Up MacDraw A very elaborate working prototype of a graphics editor had been built by Rod Perkins before Cutter came aboard. Cutter and Perkins spent a month or two meeting and discussing what the graphics editor should ultimately do, but they weren't able to come up with any satisfactory designs; nevertheless, they drafted a design from that first prototype. When Bill Atkinson saw it, he was decidedly unim- pressed. So he went out himself and in a few days mocked up a completely different prototype. Atkinson's prototype contained the basic ideas out of which LisaDraw and eventually MacDraw would evolve. It drew an object from a prototype palette and had handles one could use to stretch it. It was a very simple working version with only a few shapes and options. HE Once Atkinson had mocked it up, he went back to finish QuickDraw, the graphics prim- itives in the ROM, and Rod Perkins went on to write LisaCalc. Well, the next few iterations of LisaDraw followed precisely Battat’s first unwritten rule: “Get an early working mock-up.” Cutter pro- ceeded to get up several early working ver- sions of LisaDraw. In fact, he got the next and successive versions up so fast that the usually overly optimistic marketing people had to keep revising the release date of the product for- ward in time. Originally scheduled for release six months after Lisa, LisaDraw was released at the same time as Lisa, despite the fact that it was started a year later than some of the other Lisa software. The Power of Suggestion Battat insists that his second observation about how software is most efficiently devel- oped at Apple is just as important as the first. each other. That lock-down feature, as well as the movable zero-point, were suggestions from. Apple’s own Wayne Rosing. Rosing managed the hardware development of the Lisa and also was technical manager of all of the engineers for the Lisa project. In Cutter’s view, “Wayne is one of the greatest managers and execu- tives because he would go home and use the software.” Rosing was adding a shop to his home and took an early version of LisaDraw to use in laying out the shop. It was while using the program to design the workshop that Rosing wished some of the objects could be locked down. This was also when he felt the need for a movable zero, or reference, point. A mova- ble zero point allows the user to show one ruler for one area or object in a drawing and then turn on a new ruler with a new reference point at another location. It works like a tape measure. When you want to measure a wall, and then measure the length of a desk against Scale of Ruler: Ruler: @0n @ Inch O Standard Zero Point: QOLocked Major Division Spacing: O12 @1 Number of Minor Divisions: Ol Oz Os os OW O12 Numbering Increments: @1 02 O35 O8 O10 Or oor O Centimeter @Custom © Unlocked Olt/2) 2O2 Are, OSE OG @16 O20 O32 o4 Os O68 Ow O20 O32 A movable zero, or reference, point allows the user to show one ruler for one area or object in a drawing and then turn on a new ruler with a new reference point at another location. There must be “a willingness, on the part of the software people, to let people play with the early versions of a product and a willing- ness [on the part of the authors] to listen to what they have to say.” In other words, an engi- neer has to make duplicates of his product, pass them around Apple, and then maintain a constant openness to revision. He believes that this is the stage where creativity is embedded within the project, as a direct result of the harmonious and sharing environment at Apple. Without mentioning any names, Bat- tat goes on to tell about products that had failed, he felt, because their authors had an attitude of, “Oh, I don't want to show it to you; it's buggy” Many good suggestions have been the result of releasing a product in-house. The ability to lock down an object in LisaDraw and MacDraw was requested by a frustrated early user who accidentally kept selecting the wrong object when trying to manipulate very small graphics right next to that wall, you don't stretch the tape measure out, leave it, and then try to determine the length of the desk by subtracting it from the length of the wall. You simply bring the tape measure to the edge of the desk. Well, like a tape measure, MacDraw’s rulers can move too. One suggestion for MacDraw came from a rather unusual source. It might have come from. one of you; Cutter doesn’t know the name of the person who made this suggestion, but he’s grateful. Cutter had volunteered to answer questions at the West Coast Computer Faire for Apple. A patron who had been using LisaDraw for some time suggested, “Why not show the size of the arc when RESHAPE ARC is turned on with RESHAPE POLYGON?” Cutter thought that was a great idea and went home and implemented it immediately on Mac- Draw. (So next time you go to a computer show, be sure to ask whether the product you are trying out is under development. If it is, and you can make a worthwhile suggestion, 28 JU eNe SE 19 8 4 you might just see your idea implemented.) Cutter says he would like to implement “Undo,” which is on LisaDraw, but he doesn't think he will have time to do that before MacDraw is released. He would also like to implement text rotation, but once again there might not be enough time before his deadline. These are both bells and whistles that might or might not make it in by MacDraw’s release, but at press time it wasn't known whether they would. Cutter would also like to see arbitrary rota- tion of shapes. Right now MacDraw supports ROTATE RIGHT or ROTATE LEFT in ninety- degree increments only, but suppose some- body wanted to rotate just a few degrees. That capability would be fairly simple to imple- ment for most shapes, but it would require new low-level graphics to work for ovals. It took Bill Atkinson several years to implement his low-level graphics routines. Anyone want to try to beat his time? Cutter would like to see 3-D implemented by someone else. “I could certainly do it, but | wouldn't be learning any- thing. I've written this graphics editor twice....1 think I want to learn more than this.” He is pretty much finished with the Draw programs; someone else has been assigned to update LisaDraw, and there will probably be another engineer on MacDraw updates. The Last Few Bugs Are Hard To Find The next step in the Apple product devel- opment cycle is what Randy Battat calls “get- tin’ it out the door.” It’s the step that many amateur programmers often ignore. If you've ever designed a program on your own, you may have gotten it just so bug-free and then left it. Commercial programs certainly shouldn't be released with any known bugs. Battat puts it mildly when he says that getting a product bug-free takes “a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and guts-crankin’ late nights.” Debugging a program can be a frustrating and time-consuming task, and Cutter says that the last few bugs are always the hardest ones to find. A good example of almost not “gettin’ it out the door” was the MacPaint-MacWrite disk. It seems that the final tweaks weren't applied to the master disk, from which thou- sands were to be duplicated, until just “vo hours before the actual duplicating began. Battat believes that software engineers should set firm deadlines throughout the process of software development. People work better under a little bit of pressure. Program- ming is a creative process and therefore is subject to problems common to the arts: problems like the lack of inspiration. Can you imagine how dull MacDraw would be if Cutter had stayed