Text content (OCR)
March/April 1995
Volume 17, Number 2
$2.95
MacInTax—10
FullWrite2—13
MacN ovice—24
Spigot IT Tape —55
—
Real Solutions:
Real fun.
CTELEL
The FOSE Conference on Technolog ts il
Re-engineering and yy is
co-sponsored by:
Ove Wa
Client Server Today
DATAMATION
© 1994 REED EXHIBITIO
WORKSTATION COURTE:
ynote panel discussion
“The fee of Tomorrow: The
jemote Office Comes To Life.” These
are relat ‘some of the special events
ing for you at FOSE ‘95.
YTD EGE
WASHINGTON CONVENNTON CENTER
WASHINGTON, 0.
Washington Apple Pi
General Meeting
4th Saturday, March 25 & April 22 - 9:00 a.m.
Community & Cultural Center
Northern VA Community College - 8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, Virginia
March 25, 1995
Global Village
¢
The Pi's TCS &
the Internet
From the Beltway (1-495)
take Exit 6 west on VA 236
‘approx. 1 mile. Turn left
, linto the campus of Northern)
irginia Comm. College.
Op around to the rear
\parking lots, and walk to
fh \the Community & Cultural
~~ \Center Building.
S/F There is abundant free parking
adjacent to the Community &
Cultural Center. Note: you must
be present to win one of the
drawing prizes! No exceptions.
March / April 1995 Washington Apple Pi Journal 1
Volume 17
March / April 1995
Number 2
Club News
WAP Hotline...
WAP Calendar
Index to Advertiser:
TCS Help Sheet...
Classified Advertisements
WAP Membership Form....
SIGs and Slices
StockSIG...
by Morris Pelham —
Women’s SIG... Psa,
by Nancy Seferian
General Interest
Map to Meeting ..
January General Meeting
by Lawrence I. Charters
Are the Gloves a Solution? ....... 37
by KA. Murray
Restrictive Export Policy Lags Far
Behind Reality of Electronic
Commerce.......
by Deborah Weil
Putting Donated Computers to
Good Use in Schools, etc.
by Phil Shapiro
The Electronic Schoolhouse......44
by Emery Roth IT
Internet in a Nutshell .............. 52
by Lawrence I. Charters
5
42,
Macintosh Articles
MacInTax—Easy ene
Through the 1040? ...................10
by Joe Cohoon
FullWrite, the Elusive Word
Processor: Upgraded at Last ....13
by Bernadette McMahon
Brainstorm Accelerators for
Macintosh Plus and
Macintosh SE ..
by Sandy Kor
File Inventory Programs—Review
of 7 Shareware ee on the
TCS... Shidteatemeesnent oO.
by Dennis Helsel
MacNovice—“Nesting Habits” .24
by Ralph Begleiter
QuickView ... wissen BD
by Paul Gerstenbluth
Rae Assist: A Personal Information
Manager & More ...........cssee 26
by Glenn Paterson
Mosaic Guides: Two from
Ventana .. anise OO.
by Lawrence f,, Charters
Setting Up Pages On The World
Wide Web: siisisinetsccoanstesaictay 32
by Michael Levenston
French Pronunciation Tutor,
Spanish Prononuciation Tutor .35
by Stuart Bonwit
Macintosh Tutorials 38
40
Using the Macintosh, Special
Edition and Sad Macs, Bombs and
Other Disasters .. ees
review by Bill dengan,
Spigot II Tape: Second Generation
QuickTime Board ...
QuickTime Editors
Anything Word Can Do Nisus Does
Better... 64
Ty
Lunicus (Game review) ............71
by Jerome Williams
by Jeanne Lorenzo
Apple // Articles
“Stop”—An Apple II Program ..75
by Ed Morykwas
Press Release—Balloon v2.0 ....76
January & February Meetings .78
by Joan Jernigan
Apple /i! Articles
The Apple /// Inpert’s Corner ....79
by Allan M. Bloom
Printing In Apple // Emulation
Mode on an Apple ///... rei
edited by Dave Ottalini
Downloading Apple /// Character
Sets .. 22182
edited’ by! Dave! Ottalini
Disk Libraries
Apple Diskete: 85
Macintosh Disk Library
by Dave Weikert
Macintosh Disk Order Form ....94
89
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March / April 1995
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4 Washington Apple Pi Journal
March / April 1995
January
General Meeting
by Lawrence I. Charters
Missed by a Week
HE FIRST “significant”
snowfall of the year fell Jan. 28,
the day of the Pi’s General
Meeting. Most of the 4,000-odd
members proved to be weather
wimps, refusing to brave the icy
gusts, the blowing drifts, the arctic
conditions. But 146 people,
according to those who like to count
people, fought through the
horrendous weather (by nightfall,
the ground was covered with snow,
almost) to see two very different
vendor presentations. It was astudy
in dramatic contrasts; as one wag
put it, the best and worst
presentations of the year. Yet one of
them was also among the best user
group demonstrations I’veever seen,
and I’ve been involved in user groups
for 18 years.
Another highlight of the
meeting, though we didn’t know it
at the time: the first blizzard of the
year hit seven days later. Timing
isn’t everything, but it certainly
doesn’t hurt.
The Best
Elaine Bailey, President of
Applied Medical Informatics (AMI,
2681 Parley’s Way, Suite 101, Salt
Lake City, UT 84109-1630, 801-464-
6210), seemed at first glance to be
the less impressive prospect. Her
software package, Medical House
Calli, is not that well known, and
computerized home health packages
aren’t a major software category.
There was also some concern about
her even showing up; I'd told AMI’s
I
public relations firm that the
meeting wason the fourth Saturday
of the month, but then misread the
date from an old calendar, bringing
understandable confusion to those
on the other side of the continent.
Before her presentation, Elaine
was quite nervous. She claimed to
be not that experienced at doing
live demos, and also wasn’t familiar
with her computer. This (ominous
understatement) alarmed me. She
explained that at work she had a
Quadra 840 AV, but that “they”
had taken it away from her a couple
days before and given her a
PowerBook 540c. She’d spent the
previous night getting familiar with
the new machine in her hotel room,
but wasn’t that comfortable with
its unique software, and had doubts
about the trackpad.
Hah!
Once she took the stage, Elaine
was in complete control. She was
the most serious presenter we’ve
had in a long, long time, and also
one of the most personal and
familiar. There were no canned
jokes, no contrived situations, but
there was a great sense of caring
and warmth, Her command of the
“Ptgn
Communications: d
oy Ta apigaalaglesabenae
Washington Apple Pi
“24-hour.General, Meeting
Call’ (301 y 984-0300 for registration, passwords ”
14+ lines, supporting 300 to.14, 400 bps. modem:
S* Otters &
March / April 1995
Washington Apple Pi Journal 5
We service
Macintosh
Computers
24
ON
A
Cc
O
M
P
U
T
E
R
I
S
Ts
703) 569-5584
A COMPUTERIST, LTD
subject was total: she knew every
feature of her software package,
every detail behind its development,
and — something we've never seen
before — even offered keen insights
into the medical, social and legal
implications of such software
packages, and how these “large”
concerns affect the individual user.
She also had no trouble with
her computer. Her PowerBook 540c
did exactly as she asked, quickly. I
was disappointed, hoping she’d
trade it for the Pi’s IIci.
Medical House Cali, to some
extent, is a home health reference.
It allows you to keep detailed health
records on everyone in the family,
from the obvious (age, gender) to
the legal (shot histories) to the
dynamic (records of clinic visits and
appointments, drugs and
treatments prescribed, etc.). It
6 Washington Apple Pi Journal
contains an extensive database of
over 1,000 diseases, indexed and
referenced in a number of ways.
Mostintriguing to me, it alsohas an
extensive pharmacologic database,
and can not only provide detailed
information about a particular drug,
but also be used to check for drug
interactions.
The heart of the package,
however, is an extensive computer-
managed health interview, backed
upbyasophisticated expert system.
If you aren’t feeling well, sit down,
respond to the prompts regarding
your symptoms, and at the end
Medical House Call will list the
diseases that match your symptoms,
and display the suspects in
decreasing order of likelihood. Since
the interview, and the results, can
be printed, a user can then present
these to a physician when they are
seen, making the most of the
physician’s time as well as the user’s
time.
Elaine mentioned several times
that, on average, a physician sees a
patient for only an average ofeleven
minutes. All the rest of the time
spent on a “doctor’s appointment” is
spent filling out forms, waiting in
the waiting room and such. Making
the most of those eleven minutes is
in the patient’s best interest, from
both an economic and a health care
perspective. She illustrated this
with a personal example: she has a
rare disease of the intestine with a
simple treatment: avoid eating
certain grains. Unfortunately, it
took time to discover these facts:
twoyearsofclinic visits and medical
tests. Medical House Call, in
contrast, quickly made an informed
guess as to the condition, indicated
the most conclusive medical test,
and the projected cost of the test:
$31. While the software package is
nota replacement for a physician, it
does “empower” the user tobe better
informed about their health, and
has the potential to save much time
and treasure.
The audience response to her
presentation was amazing: people
were impressed. The usual cynical
crowd that likes to torment vendors
either didn’t show up, or failed to
rattle Elaine as she deftly, carefully,
and fully answered any and all
questions. It was a struggle to stop
the questions and begin the next
presentation. Questions, and
comments, continued well after the
meeting on the TCS (the Pi’sbulletin
board). The most memorable
comment was a bulletin board
message from a user who took
advantage of the half-price offer at
the meeting ($45, instead of the
usual $89.95) and received the
package via Federal Express just a
few days later. A great presentation,
agreat software package, and great
service.
My one criticism: Elaine did not
provide me with an E-mail address.
A telephone number is fine, but an
E-mail address is divine.
Not the Best
Richard Katz, a software
evangelist for Intuit, did provide an
E-mail address: rkatz@aol.com. He
also provided a quick wit. What he
did not provide was a demonstration
of Quicken 5.0 or MacInTax 1994.
Istrongly suggest to all vendors
that they either pre-install their
software on a computer, and bring
the computer, or pre-install the
software on a hard drive that can be
booted on the Pi’s Macintosh IIci.
Richard did neither, stating that he
didn’t have a Mac and Intuit didn’t
provide a drive.
Not having a Mac should have
set off alarms, but I didn’t give it
any thought until Richard
attempted to install MacInTax and
Quicken before the meeting. He
confessed he wasn’t that familiar
with the Macintosh, a fact made
obvious after demonstrating that
he didn’t know how to install the
March / April 1995
programs (double-click on the
Installer and do what you are told).
At the start of his presentation,
Richard offered an oversized Intuit
beach towel to anyone who would
come up on the stage and help him
with his presentation. Everyone
laughed, thinking he was joking.
He wasn’t joking.
After launching Quicken, he
appeared stumped, not knowing to
what to do next. He quickly got so
far off track that he never managed
toclearly explain what Quicken was:
the most popular personal finance
package ever created. He claimed to
beintimately familiar with Quicken
on “the other platform,” but didn’t
know how the menucommands were
arranged in the Mac version, didn’t
know the keyboard shortcuts, and
was baffled by how the Macarranges
windows.
A technical aside: in the Mac
world, you make a window active by
clicking on it. You can have as many
windows open as you want at one
time, and as many programs
running as you want at one time,
subject only to memory constraints.
Click on any part of any window in
any program, and that window —
and program — comes to the front.
Inthe Windows3.1 world, things
are quite different. Users rarely have
more than one program running at
once, not all windows are equal, and
you must click on a specific portion
of a window to make it active.
Richard, familiar with Windows
3.1, the pretender, and not Finder
7.5, the champion, kept accidentally
clicking outside the active window,
bringing the Finder to the front.
When this happened, all the Quicken
menu commands seemed to
disappear, the keyboard appeared
to stop working, and he was lost in
what he described as “Finder hell.”
Guided by several Quicken users
in the audience, he usually found
his way back, but the presentation
March / April 1995
lost direction or focus. A Great Irony
unfolded: there were a number of
Quicken usersin the audience. They
were generally familiar, and happy,
with the program. They were
undoubtedly more familiar with it
than Intuit’s own evangelist. The
result? Pimembers guiding someone
who wasn’t quite up to Mac Novice
status in the use of a program that
the Mac Novice was supposed to be
pitching to those very same
members.
Pi members often provide help
to new users — that’s why user
groups were formed — but this was
unique.
Thedemonstration of MacInTax
“The audience
response to her
presentation was
amazing: people were
impressed. The usual
cynical crowd that
likes to torment
vendors either didn’t
show up, or failed to
rattle Elaine as she
deftly, carefully, and
fully answered any
and all questions. It
was a struggle to stop
the questions and
begin the next
presentation. ”
was even less informative. Because
of the way MacInTax works, a good
demonstration would involve an
almost completed Form 1040. Using
this as a baseline, the presenter
would then try a few “what if”
possibilities (“what if we use the
standard deduction instead of
itemized deductions?”) and fill in a
I
couple empty boxes (“oh, yeah, I
forgot Ihad another son, so let’s add
another deduction”) and watch the
package automatically crank out
new numbers.
Lacking a completed form,
lacking time, and lacking familiarity
with the Mac version of MacInTax
(a paramount irony), audience
members were left with little more
than reassurances from other
audience members that the package
did, in fact, work, and was, in fact,
fairly easy to use. Several people
mentioned problems with last year’s
package, including a glitch in the
form for Maryland income tax; none
of these issues were addressed.
Amazingly enough, anumber of
people were impressed with both
Quicken and MacInTax. After the
meeting, I stopped at Micro Center,
in Fairfax, to get a lithium battery
for my daughter’s Mac LC, and
found one couple there buying a
Macintosh, Quicken and MacInTax
on the strength of the presentation.
When I left, they were busy asking
a Micro Center employee if they
had a copy of Medical House Call.
1995 Meeting Dates
—General Meetings for 1995 are
scheduled for the following
dates (all the fourth Saturday of
the month). Mark your electric
calendars.
—Feb. 25, 1996: First Annual
Washington Apple Pi QuickTime
Festival and Show and Tell.
—Praxisoft will demonstrate Colar
Compass, a unique color palette
utility.
—Mar. 25, 1995:Global Village will
demonstrate their telecommun-
ications hardware and software.
—In keeping with the theme,
Washington Apple Pi will have a
quick overview of the TCS, the
Pi’scomputer bulletin board, and
apreview ofthe planned Internet.
version of the TCS.
Washington Apple Pi Journal 7
I
—Apr. 22, 1995: Now Software will
present Now Up-To-Date, Now
Contacts, and Now Utilities.
—Main Event will show their
AppleScript editor.
—May 27, 1995: vendor to benamed
later, plus three first-round draft
picks (barring a strike, of course).
Drawing winners
Special Libraries Association T-
shirt: Alan Day
Software.net T-shirt: Walter Forlini
Quicken 5.0 (Intuit): Ralph
Lingeman, Jerome Williams,
Bob Klothe
MacInTax 1994 (Intuit): Pat Garvey,
Michael Finn, John Christensen
Medical House Call (AMI): Steve
Pope, Dennis Kruse, Glenn
Paterson, Grady Houseknecht
QuickBooks (Intuit): Ed Houser
Credits
Apple Macintosh IIci computer:
courtesy Falcon Microsystems
(RIP)
Apple Macintosh 540c: courtesy
Applied Medical Informatics
PowerPoint 3.0 (RIP): courtesy
Microsoft Corporation
Proxima Ovation LCD projector:
courtesy Proxima Corporation
Bernoulli 150 drive: courtesy lomega
Corp.
Lounging TCS Penguin: drawing by
Nancy Seferian
Silver Spring Metro Penguins: photo
by Dennis Dimick
Newt's giraffe: photo by Daniel E.
Slaven
Dilbert cartoon: Scott Adams, via
the Internet
Setup and worrying: Bill Wydro,
Beth Medlin
Question & Answer Help: Tom Witte
Send meeting comments to:
Icharters@tcs.wap.org. Ml
8 Washington Apple Pi Journal
by Morris Pelham
JANUARY IS when we review
how well we did, so let’s get to it.
First, alittle background. Most
mutual funds lost money in 1994.
Stock funds, bond funds, foreign
funds, almost all lost money in 1994.
Some lost 5% or so and some lost
15% or so. There are 6,000 or more
funds available now and of course a
few of them made money last year,
but did yours?
Wedid. Mylongterm version of
our beating the Dow portfolio gained
Barron’s has again
written a story about
our beating the Dow
strategy. This one is in
the issue of December
26, 1994 and I’m sure
your library has it. It
says “ Dogs of Dow
climb 4% in 1994,
beating 90% of stock
mutual funds.”
5.5% for the 1994 period. I have
included both commissions and
dividends in my calculations.
At our January meeting, I
passed out copies of my Quicken
report on last year’s results. I also
passed out copies of my Excel report
on which stocks we picked for both
1994 and 1995, and why, and a
report and graph of what the Dow
stocks have done since 1921. Whew!
That’s more copies than I usually
take to our meetings, but January
is special.
Other people brought stuff too.
Mark Pankin brought reports on
his 1994 (up 3.3% plus the
dividends) and 1995 beating the
Dow portfolios and on his use of the
Fidelity Select mutual funds (up
26.17% for the best and down 5.67%
for the worst, not including the
load). Peter Hui brought his
Fidelity Select results—near
breakeven. And Bob Pallaron
brought a printout of something
new called Time Trend Software,
that he plans to invest real money
with in 1995.
Barron’s has again written a
story about our beating the Dow
strategy. This one is in the issue of
December 26, 1994 and I’m sure
your library has it. It says “ Dogs of
Dow climb 4% in 1994, beating 90%
of stock mutual funds.”
For 1995 our beating the Dow
portfolio is Woolworth, Chevron,
Sears, Eastman Kodak, and MMM.
We plan to follow them at each
meeting, so if you want something
more timely than reading about
our January meeting in your March/
April Journal come and join us.
StockSIG meets the 2nd
Thursday ofeach month at 7:30 PM
at the new WAP office.
by Morris Pelham
OURNEW OFFICE continues
toimprove. This time I drove up to
find a big light already on,
apparently permanently, in the
parking lot and right over our door.
Very nice. Bright, too.
Our Journal continues to
change, too. Now that what I write
takes longer than ever to get to you,
I am spending more time on the
TCS on the Investor board. You are
welcome there too, to posta question
or an answer or a comment. Feel
free to join right in.
Atour February meeting, Mark
Pankin announced a_ small
March / April 1995
correction to his calculation of the
results of his beating the Dow
portfolio last year. He had
something called a “DAverage”
problem in his Excel 5.0 running on
his Power PC. Not as major as the
Pentium problem Intel had last year,
butit didcause the results Ireported
last month to be incorrect. Mark
nowcalculates his return to be 5.0%,
not including dividends, for 1994
instead of 3.3%, also not including
dividends.
For 1995 our beating the Dow
portfolios are ahead a small amount
after one month.
Bob Pallaron and Mark both
brought updates on their use of the
Fidelity Select mutual funds, and
passed them around for all to see.
These several portfolios have some
small gains and some small losses
so far this year. No miracles yet.
StockSIG meets the 2nd
Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM
at the new WAP office. i
Women's SIG
THE PLANNING Committee
for the Women’s SIG met on
Thursday, February 16th to discuss
upcoming elections for the Women’s
SIG Chairperson position and topics
for this year’s meetings. We met at
Nancy Seferian’s house and
discussed these issues at length as
usual over appetizers and dinner.
The topics suggested for future
meetings include “Scanning, ”
“Exploring the Internet,”
“QuickTime,” “Technical Q & A,”
“Computer Repairs We Can Do,”
“Small Business Ideas,” “Portfolios,”
and exploration of some requested
applications such as WordPerfect,
March / April 1995
and Adobe Illustrator. If you
have additional suggestions
please bring them to the April
meeting for inclusion in the
plans.
Our meetings will
continue to be every other
monthon the fourth Thursday
of the month, beginning with
ournext meeting on Thursday,
April 27, at 6:00 PM to 8:30
PM at the new Pi Office. The
topic will be “Scanning” and
we'll learn how to scan,
formats for saving your scan,
how to import the scan into
various applications, and
options for printing. Bring any
pictures you would like toscan
for you own use, and bring a
disk so youcan save your scans
to them. The Pi office has a
great color scanner that is
available for use by members,
so if you don’t have your own,
you'll have access toa scanner
to use after learning how to do
it at our meeting. We will eat
dinner first to give us a chance
to catch up with each other on
recent computer experiences
and everything else.
Meeting dates for the rest of the
year on the fourth Thursday every
other month are as follows: June 22;
August 24, and October 26.
Elections will be held at the
April 27th meeting for Chairperson.
Nominations are open to everyone,
and if you have any ideas for ways to
help out, bring them with you to
this meeting. Hope to see you there.
R.S.V.P. Grace Gallager (703)
222-4570 (Metro) if you plan to
attend so we can plan for dinner.
Call Chairperson Ann Aiken (301)
530-1990 if you would like to be on
the mailing list. @
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Washington Apple Pi Journal 9
Software Review
MaclInTax—Easy Stepping
Through the 1040?
by Joe Cohoon
AX SEASON IS HERE
again. I considered going back
to the old manual technique
of tax preparation which served me
so well in the days prior to the ad-
vent of the home computer. But,
once again, the promise of new tech-
nology caused me to shift from
pencilware to software.
I bought MacInTax 94 at Office
Depot for $29.95 plus tax; a mail-in
rebate coupon for $5.00 was included
in this price. This is cheap com-
pared to the direct mail order price
AP ge
from Intuit ($29.95 plus $6.50 s &
h). Intuit offers a money-back sat-
isfaction guarantee. The package
included a Quicken 4 Updater, but
would not update my copy of Quicken
4, release 1; it only works for release
2 to 5, updating them to release 6.
System Requirements (ac-
cording to the documentation): Mac
Plus or better, system 6.0.7 or
greater, and 15 MB free space on
your hard drive. Caution: read fur-
ther; my actual experience indicates
these requirements are incorrect.
= File Edit Forms EasyStep Help Window
The MacInTax software comes
on four 1.4 MB disks, and I did not
see an option to replace these disks
with 800K, for those who have older
Macs. The package had a skinny
manual, which did not read. Tech-
nical support (voice and modem) is
available for the price of a long dis-
tance phone call. Technical support
is also available on several commer-
cial online services (Compuserve,
GEnie, America Online, Prodigy, or
eWorld). Installation was no prob-
lem on my Centris 610, and took
less than 5 minutes. When ex-
panded, the files occupy 16.3 MB of
disk space. This could be an impor-
tant consideration for those who
have a cramped hard disk. Accord-
ing to the documentation, data can
beimported from Quicken, but Idid
not try to do this.
This is the third year I have
used MacInTax. The interface has
been enhanced this year, and, for
the first time, I decided to use the
Easy Step ‘inter-
view’ option for en-
US. Individual income Tax Return
For the year Januaty 1 - December 31, 1994, of other tax year
1994, ending fe
beginning
Mi Lastname
Everyman
‘YourSecist Security Mumber
123-45-6789
Spruses fatname Mai Lastname
Spouse's Secial Securtty Number
ome sddceze Gvamber and Freel) a PO. box, see awuctons,
1000 Sunnyside Or,
pe Ne
City, wun or pest offce. Ifa freign nddress, see Insbuctons
washington
OP Cote
20008
Presidential Election Campaign
Do you wart $3 to go to this fund?
Ifa joirt rewm, does your spouse warn $3 to go to this fund?
8
Mote: Checting
"Yer" wil ne change
yourtar er reduce
your rtund.
Filing Status Check only one box.
JAN envries for Fiiag Status and Dependents should be made on the Federal Information Worksheet.
Single
iA
4. [tas at ease Ga geste pers I4ahequaying persone» chs bu ot your
dependem, enter this child's name here
51 ointiinn wideter\ sath denention stilt (cont Ze ied = TS z
Matted fling joirt retuen (even it only one had inoome)
Mand Sing separate retin. Erte spouses social sacuty umber above and fill mame here
tering information.
This took about two
hours and involved
wading through a
lot of irrelevant
questions, but this
is the price to pay
for thoroughness. I
encountered two
minor, but annoy-
ing, features of the
Easy Step process.
Telected to enter the
optional address in-
formation for pay-
ers of interest and
dividends on Sched-
ule B. To enter the
name of the state in
the address, it was
necessary to wade
through ascrollable
menu ofthe 50 state
RAM Disk.
Figure 1.—front of 1040
10 Washington Apple Pi Journal
abbreviations, and
March / April 1995
a
[say
= File Edit Forms EasyStep Help Window
PA
© &”
Y
Miscellaneous Deductions
=
[racintosh HO
The total of your employee-related and other miscelleneous expenses is on line 23
of Schedule A.
You'll notice the 235 AGI limitation amount on line 25 and your sllowable deduction
‘amount on Vine 26.
Note that these last two emounts mey change as other numbers are added or changed Wf Back |
on your return,
26 Emer amourn tom Form
18D, ine 32 26 |__az,47a
25 util ne 24 above by 2h (02)... Toran
26 Suara ine 25 tom ine 2.1 fe 25 le mote than tne 23, er
Figure 2.—Miscellaneous Deductions
select the two-character abbrevia-
tion of the state name. Entry from
the keyboard was not supported. A
really slick implementation should
have been able to supply the state
abbreviation, based on the zip code
entered by the user. Maybe next
year!
Alarger problem with Easy Step
arose when the Easy Step interface
asked me to enter the amount of
interest/dividend income from for-
eign sources. I entered a numeric
‘zero’, then pressed ‘Enter’ to go to
the next step in the Easy Step pro-
cess. Wrong! As I found out later,
during the Error Correction phase,
this produced an error condition (as
far as MacInTax was concerned),
and I had to go back into Easy Step,
and change each of the ‘zeroes’ to
‘blanks’. Good software testing
should have detected this problem,
though I realize that Intuit is ‘under
the gun’ to get their product outina
timely fashion to meet the tax filing
season.
Printing of the tax return was
slow on my StyleWriter I. In previ-
March / April 1995
ous years, the printed tax forms
really looked like they had been
done ona home computer. But, this
year, the forms have a truly profes-
sional appearance, which may ex-
plain why the ‘Forms Folder’ occu-
pies 12.8 MB of disk space.
Also included with MacInTax
94 is a small print program named
‘1040PC’. This reduces the Form
1040 to its bare essentials: names of
the tax forms, line numbers of the
forms, and entries. This option is
available only for computer prepa-
ration using IRS approved software;
pen and ink fans must file the old-
fashioned return. The ‘1040PC’ for-
mat is preferred by the IRS, since it
reduces their tax return processing
costs.
Electronic filing is also sup-
ported via modem or mailed-in dis-
kette, for an additional fee of $14.95.
This technique of filing seems rather
tenuous; I prefer to take my chances
sending paper via the U.S. Post Of-
fice.
MacInTax 94 takes a common
‘computer industry’ approach to
handling entries on the tax return:
they put lots of information onto
attached statements. For example,
in the Easy Step process, I entered
Edit Forms EasyStep Help Wind
Regular Interest Income
Enter the payer's name below. If you have two Forms 1099 from the same payer,
‘make each name unique. For example, if First Bank sends you a Form 1099 for
‘your savings eccount ond another for your certificates of deposit, enter “First
Bank ~ Savings” for the first one and "First Bank - CDs” for the next one. This
‘will help us locate the correct Form 1099 for you if you want to change it Tater.
Click *Next™ to continue
Payer's name: [Daddy Warbuske S&L
Daddy Warbucks 5 & L
10010 Vall Street
Mew York
jw 10000
Taped lar PBecpients Wendteaten
founder
121234567 $
1 tasentinesne nat bndated in bon
110,00
Recipients name 2 Ey wiht wwal
peny
Ed Everyman
Figure 3.—Interest Income Name
reaney bigots
Washington Apple Pi Journal 11
4 = File Edit Forms EasyStep Help Window @ & * an elegant interface, and is full-
featured. For those who have cus-
tomarily had their tax returns done
professionally, they might find the
Easy Step interview technique an
Regular Interest Income i effective replacement for their
Enter the interest income from box 1 of your Form 1099-INT. If you have former experience at H & R Block. I
‘nother form ore substitute statement .. like e bank statement or 8 personel . z 2
record you keep from interest an individuslpeid to you... enter that amount in Box like the idea of having a computer
F file containing my tax information,
ean craresy i ieve it i
fare base k in case I need to retrieve it in the
future (maybe, for an audit, ugh). I
hope Intuit (or, Microsoft?) will con-
tinue to improve this product in
ne a fature years.
Pileestysay weer pose For my tax return, I chose the
$ ‘1040PC’ filing option. My entire
‘Geese sluae Gralaing wparnent amber) T relent rene
gehts: | ame return, normally five pages long, is
ST Ta a reduced to two pages of very plain-
looking text. I prefer this to the ten
or more pages, which the standard.
MacInTax print option would have
created. Mi
Figure 4—Interest Income Amt
asingleinterestincomeitem of $110. statement to attach to the return.
MacInTax put this on Schedule B, Iam required to file Schedule B,
with the description ‘See attached _ because [have dividendincome over
Interest Income Statement’. Ac- $400. MacInTax also produced an
cordingtoIRSinstructions, thisitem attached statement forthe dividend
may be simply listed on the front of income. Ideally, in my case, I would
the Form 1040, since my interest have preferred that the program
income is less than $400. The put the dividend information di-
MacInTax approach is to producea _ rectly on Schedule B, and the inter- . 1995 the Rue
Schedule B, and an unneccessary est income on line 8a of the 1040.
—_—_. The two pages of ‘statements’ are Apple Pii 1s collecting —
unwanted, and serve to complicate Giant and Safeway re-
« the information I am providing to bees oe .
The MacinTax the IRS. MacInTax even produced ceipts. ‘These receipts will
software comes on a ‘Wage Statement’ with the in- he used to help schools in
four 1.4 MB disks, struction to attach it to my tax re- the area ae t we are
4 turn. This is not required by the
and I did not see an IRS, and seems really pointless con-
Sponsoring. Please save.
i sidering that my W-2 form will be :
Gplion fe replane stapled to the front of the return. you secs and either
these disks with
800K, for those Bottom line: I know my review
sounds rather grumpy, but truth-
who have older fully, I enjoyed using MacInTax. I
Macs.” could have done my return just as
fast the old-fashioned way (actu-
ally, I did do it both ways, providing
acheck on my work). MacInTax has
12 Washington Apple Pi Journal March / April 1995
)
FullWrite, the Elusive Word
Processor: Upgraded at Last
by Bernadette McMahon
SING FullWrite (FW) as a
word processor is not unlike
using the Macintosh itself—
you're confident that you're using a
superior product, but there are re-
curring frustrations with the extra
effort required for compatibility with
the rest of the computing commu-
nity. Since its introduction, FW lived
up toits claim of being the “intuitive
word processor with desktop pub-
lishing power,” a truly fine applica-
tion, full of useful features. But its
perceived slowness (mostly caused
by the low power of the Macs then in
use) and minimal file conversion
capabilities kept users away in
droves. In my seven years using
FW, I never met another person
outside of our work unit who used it.
Now FW’s rebirth as FullWrite
2(FW2) offers new hope that a large
and enthusiastic user base will de-
velop from among those fed up with
current feature-bloated enormous
applications. Its compact size (800K
application file, 3 MB full installa-
tion), open architecture design for
user customization of features, and
incorporation of the Claris XTND
system for ease of translation should
encourage Mac owners to take a
new look at a long-neglected appli-
Figure 1: FW2 Icons
+ Aetadntichenteel bitnintentendentid@tnebetraunteBentnd tent ft.
«/Ruler; displayed above. Double-
click to remove display.
=/Ruler; not displayed.
Double-click to display.
O|/Header
QiFooter
|Posted note
al/Footnote
al'liEndnote
@| Equation
March / April 1995
cation. Improved promotion by the
publishers is needed to reach that
goal.
Alittle History
The original FW was developed
by Ann Arbor Software and made
available in 1988. By 1990, it had
been acquired by Ashton-Tate, who
upgraded it to FullWrite Profes-
sional. Borland inherited it with
their purchase of Ashton-Tate but
never improved it beyond a few bug
fixes. Brothers Bruce and Roy
Leban, who helped develop FW at.
Ann Arbor, are now President and
Chief Technologist, respectively, at
Akimbo Systems, which acquired
the product from Borland in June,
1993. FW2 shipped at the end of
October, 1994.
Favorite Features
Because most Mac users aren’t
familiar with FW, it’s worth de-
scribing a few of the features that
have kept its loyal users loyal. Any-
one who has used one product al-
most exclusively is not in a good
position to compare it to competing
products, so such comparisons are
minimal in this review; features I
like in FW may also be available
elsewhere. Some statements com-
paring FW with other products are
taken from comments made by other
FW users in an America Online
(AOL) forum established by Akimbo
in 1993 (more on that later).
Iconography. What I miss
most in my occasional use of other
word processors is FW’s use oficons
in the left margin to identify em-
bedded items such as rulers, page
breaks, headers, footers, etc. Fig-
ure 1 displays a few of these. The
icons are unobtrusive but readily
visible, and support the user’s ulti-
mate control over the document lay-
out—and who better to be in con-
trol? Clicking on any icon selects
the associated item for deletion,
Washington Apple Pi Journal 13
copying, or cutting. Double clicking
brings up a window for editing items
such as table of contents entries.
Double clicking therulericon toggles
its visibility—the user can choose to
view the rulers on the screen or not;
if not, the icon in the margin marks
its position for quick viewing.
Change bars. The “icon bar
view” is only one of four ways to
view the screen. In the “change bar
view,” a vertical bar appears in the
left margin of any line of text in
which achange has been made since
the previous version. The bars can
be printed on the document. I took
this capability for granted until a
thread on the WAPTCS Conference
3, Board 6 (Mac Word Processors/
DPub) in early January made me
realize what a treasure it is. In
response to a question, several mes-
sages offered suggestions on how to
force Word to print change bars; if I
interpreted the messages correctly,
all ofthem required the user, rather
than the application, to remember
which lines were changed and to
add a character that could serve as
a change bar! FW2 has improved
upon this feature even more by per-
mitting each word that is changed
to be highlighted by a change in
color or style. Figure 2 displays a
FW2 document with both change
bars and underlined new text. The
user can temporarily disable the
change bar feature by “locking” it,
very useful when, for example, the
only change being made is the style.
The user also decides whether or
not to show spelling cor-
rections as changed
items.
Copying Styles. I had
been using FW for a
while before stumbling
upon this feature and got
hooked immediately.
Once the font, size, style,
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spacing have been estab-
lished for any heading,
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- Equipment Supplies graph, other similar text
- Toner Cartridges can be given the same
style by selecting it and
then clicki hi
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(301) 445-2251 Fax
14 Washington Apple Pi Journal
in the already-styled
text while holding down
thecommand key. Nifty!
Walk-down menus. All
applications should have
this feature. Any menu
item without its own
keyboard equivalent can
be activated by the key
sequence:
Command-(menu bar
number)-(item number).
It sounds complicated,
butit’s not. Think ofmenu baritems
as numbered left to right (File is 1,
Edit 2, etc.). Command-(menu bar
number) drops down the menu.
Without letting go of the Command
key, press the number associated
with the command you want (it’s on
the screen). Most users will memo-
rize only those few key sequences
they use frequently. For example,
in FW2, Command-1-3 will bring up
the Docfument] Setup dialog box.
Outliner. FW contains a full
outline capability that was cited as
the best among word processors in
messages posted on AOL. I often
use the outliner to organize dispar-
ate material into a coherent docu-
ment (e.g., for this article). An out-
line element and its associated text
can be moved anywhere in the out-
line merely by dragging it with the
mouse. The user can view the out-
line (Command-3-4 in the FW2
walk-down menu), select one ele-
ment, and click the “Go to Item”
button for quick navigation through
the document—very important ina
long document.
Sidebars and Pictures. The
desktop publishing abilities of FW
rely upon these features. Sidebars
can be placed anywhere in the docu-
ment, resized and moved with the
mouse, outlined with boxes in a va-
riety of styles, and shaded to any
percentage gray scale. FW2 permits
the background to be in color. Once
created, sidebars can be filled with
text, other sidebars, and pictures.
Sidebars are frequently used to com-
bine text with different numbers of
columns on the same page.
Pictures can either be created
directly within FW, though the tool
set is hardly full-featured, or copied
from another application and pasted
into FW. Users should take seriously
the warning that FW provides when
a pasted picture is opened for edit-
ing—formatting is often affected.
March / April 1995
the job.
Figure 2. FW2 Change Bar View
|FullWrite has everything you need to
produce persuasive documents with
tremendous visual impact. This is a
change that’s been inserted into the
document to display how changed text
is handled. The change bar on the left
shows all lines that contain a change.
At the heart of FullWrite is the most
powerful set of text, page and
document management tools ever
assembled in a Macintosh word
processor. Regardless of your writing
requirements, from single page memos
to brochures, complex technical reports
to books, FullWrite is the right tool for
More Features. Variables,
glossaries, and the ability to print a
document on two sides of paper are
other features that have won fans
through FW’s history. FW offers
both footnotes and endnotes and,
for those who stick little yellow
pieces of paper on everything, posted
notes. Of course, FW has
spell-checking anda thesaurus, and
a flexible and thus powerful, search
and replace capability.
New Features in FW2
Modular architecture.
Akimbo claims that, in revising FW
to create FW2, they attempted to
find the simplest, easiest ways that
would still provide the most func-
tionality. Primary among the
changes is a new modular architec-
ture that permits the user to cus-
tomize FW2 by simply dragging an
extension’s icon into the appropri-
ate folder. FW2 comes with over 100
extensions, some already installed
March / April 1995
and the others ready to be added to
accommodate each user’s particu-
lar way of using the application.
Most important, Akimbo has made
their code available to encourage
the development of additional ex-
tensions by third party developers.
They also see the extension archi-
tecture as a way to distribute bug
fixes between editions. Some future
extensions will probably be distrib-
uted free or as shareware on elec-
tronic forums such as AOL; others
can be expected to be sold as com-
mercial packages.
What features are added by ex-
tensions? Many merely make menu
items of desirable commands that
are otherwise buried in a dialog box;
each of these is named for the menu
in which the command will appear.
The first extension I added was “For-
mate6 Lines per Inch.” With the
extension activated, “6 lines per
inch” appears right on the Format
menu for greatly improved access.
=
On the other hand, I removed the
“StyleeSmall Caps” extension be-
cause I never use small caps. The
capability is not removed, merely
its appearance on a menu.
Other extensions provide major
capabilities rather than just menu
changes. Both sidebars and pictures
now rely upon extensions; without
the extension, a sidebar or picture
can be viewed but not edited. Users
who don’t need the picture editor
can save 144K of disk space by re-
moving the extension. An equation
editor and print merge capability
are both provided by extensions.
Third party database extensions are
reportedly being developed by sev-
eral publishers; these would allow
databases to provide FW2 with
fully-formatted text for mail-merge
purposes. And since FW2 was pur-
posefully designed without toolbars
(because many users asked that they
not be included), the user who does
want toolbars may be able to add
the feature from a third party ex-
tension.
Improved Translation via
Claris XTND. Akimbo adopted the
XTND system as a way of improv-
ing the translation of files to and
from other applications. Claris
XTND was designed by Claris and
licensed to other developers for just
this purpose—to facilitate conver-
sion of files from one application to
another, so that users with differ-
ent software can still share files.
With “Claris XTND System” in the
System folder, the application can
call up a wide variety of translators
(also known asfilters) with the “Save
as...” command and translate the
document. In the same way, the
“Open...” command permits one
application to open a file created by
another. Both Claris translators,
which come with FW2, and MacLink
translators from the DataViz
MacLinksPlus canbe used with this
system. Translators are available
Washington Apple Pi Journal 15
to have Macintosh &
PC Windows skills!
$$$$$$8$$$8$$9$$8$998999S
e are seeking highly-skilled
WN aie graphic artists, desktop
publishers, illustrators and presentation
specialists for temporary, temp-to-
perm and permanent positions in the
Metro area. You must have extensive
knowledge and work experience in one or
more of the following:
+ PAGE LAYOUT AND COMPOSITION
+ Propuction (sHoRT & LONG
DOCUMENTS)
+ GRAPHIC DESIGN & CONCEPTION
+ TECHNICAL OR CREATIVE ILLUSTRATION
+ PRESENTATIONS! PROPOSALS
+ TYPOGRAPHY, COLOR SEPARATIONS &
OUTPUT DEVICES
Applicants must be proficient on Macintosh
and/or PC Windows and be an ADVANCED
USER of two or more of the following |}
programs:
QuankXpress Core_DRAW!
PaceMaker PowerPoint
ILtustraTorn VENTURA
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SS$SSSS$S$HS$S$SSSS$SS$SSSS
Desktop Personnel.
Call 1-800-622-TEMP$
\
16 Washington Apple Pi Journal
for both Macintosh and PC
applications. So far, my expe-
riences with this feature have
been good. I’ve made success-
ful conversions from FW2 to
ClarisWorks and WordPerfect
Mac v. 3. [have not tried con-
version to Word, but several
translators are available; a
message posted on the AOL
forum praised the
MacLinksPlus Word to FW2
translator but found two oth-
ers to be useless.
Translators for FW2 do not
yet exist for all popular appli-
cations; notable among those
missing are PageMaker and
Quark, although FW2 files can
be converted to other formats
that can be imported by these
page layout programs. The
Claris XTND system, how-
ever, provides the structure
for adding other translators
as they become available, and
Akimbo provides source code
for FW2 to facilitate the writ-
ing of import filters.
Akimbo is also touting
these other new features in
FW2; I have not yet had the
chance to try them:
Wa greatly improved tables
capability
Wan equation editor, from
Design Science, creators of
Math Type
@ print merge
an enhanced glossary that
allows any item to be desig-
nated a “glossary macro”
(whenever the glossary
name is typed into the docu-
ment, the full glossary en-
try appears)
@ four different flavors of car-
riage return to implement
different formatting needs
Obviously, there is plenty left
to explore in FW2.
Favorite New Features
So far, my favorite thing in FW2
is its support of Apple’s Drag and
Drop feature (FW2 calls it Drag or
Drop). The user selects text, posi-
tions the cursor over it, and moves it
toanew location by dragging. Hold-
ing the Option key down during the
drag causes the selected text to be
copied rather than cut from its origi-
nal location.
Other nice changes:
Command-P now causes the docu-
ment to print (previous versions did
not follow this common Mac inter-
face rule); the space preceding a
word is automatically deleted, cut,
or copied with the word; and “place
holders” can be used where pictures
will appear to speed the screen dis-
play And FW2 still supports
walk-down menus, even in those
cases where the desired command
appears in asubmenu;e.g., clearing
change bars for a fresh start can be
affected by Command-2-3-3.
The Negatives
Nothing in life is perfect. Some
things in FW2 are worse than be-
fore. In particular, the on-screen
display of invisible characters is
unpleasantly intrusive (read
“Ugly”). My personal preference is
always to be able to see the spaces,
tabs, and carriage returns in adocu-
ment, but FW2’s use of fat dots,
thick right arrows, and thick left
turn arrows to display these items
is hard to look at and sometimes
obscures the text. I cannot fathom
why Akimbo thought this would be
preferable to FW 1.5’s dots, chev-
rons, and paragraph marks. (See
Figure 3 for comparison ofthe screen
views in FW 1.5 and FW 2.)
Many of the changes in key-
board equivalents, such as
Command-P for printing, were ap-
parently made to conform to the
Mac standard interface, which jus-
tifies forcing users to relearn what
March / April 1995
we used to know. In some cases,
however, the changes are puzzling.
For example, the soft hyphenation
command changed from the very
logical “Command-space bar” to the
convoluted “Command-Shift-\”.
Another example: previous FW
versions placed the spell-checker,
logically called “Check Spelling,” in
the Edit menu; a walk-down com-
mand accessed it from the keyboard.
FW2, however, hides it in a
submenu of the Tools menu item
“Words”; the submenu item is called
“Check Document...”. The word
“spell{ing]” is not part of the menu
item at all. Worse, both the manual
andtheon-line help incorrectly state
that the spell-check commands are
in the Edit menu.
Developer Support and
Marketing—The Contradiction
Akimbo’s public availability for
receiving such reports may be the
most encouraging thing about FW2
and a major recommendation for
the software. As soon as they ac-
quired FW, Akimbo established an
AOL forum (Keyword: FullWrite)
to post updates to the previous ver-
sion and to solicit suggestions for
the upgrade they were preparing.
Over 300 comments and sugges-
tions were posted during the up-
grade development period.
When FW2 shipped, Akimbo
opened another AOL area for post-
ing questions and comments on the
new product. Numerous bugs were
reported during the first several
months, and two updates have been
issued to fix them. Version 2.0.1
was made available in November
for users with System 7.5; 2.0.2 was
issued January 22 for all users.
Owners of 86040 AV Macintoshes
have reported crashes using FW
2.0.2; as of this writing in early
February, Akimbo is working to
correct this. Throughout this shake-
down period, Akimbo has responded
March / April 1995
quickly to messages,
usually within two
days. They some-
times offered solu-
tions to the reported
problems; more of-
ten, they promised
toaddanitem tothe
bug list or to pass on
suggestions for fu-
ture improvements
to their developers.
Users also report
that Akimbo’s re-
sponse to Email
messages sent to
FullWrite@aol.com
orinfo@akimbo.com
has been prompt.
Addresses for writ-
ten and faxed com-
ments are of course
available.
Akimbo seems
truly committed to
supporting this
product and giving
it something it has
not had in several
years—a future.
Thus, their failure
to market and ad-
vertise FW2 is puz-
zling and disconcert-
ing. As of February,
noannouncementof
product availability
has yet been mailed
to registered users
(was Akimbo unable
to acquire the list
along with rights to
the product?), nor
has it been adver-
tised in the usual
commercial publica-
tions. Our work unit,
which has eight reg-
istered copies of FW,
Figure 3: Screen Views:
FW 1.5 (top)
FW2 (bottom)
q
State Capitals4
q
AR; Little-Rockd
AZ» Phoen ix]
CA» Sacramento
MA, Boston
MD, Annapolis‘
NJ» Trenton
NY» Albany
OH» Columbus4
PA» Harrisburg4
«
State.Capitalsa
«
ARs Little-Rocke
AZs Phoenixe
CAs Sacramentou
MA> Bostone
MD» Annapolise
NJ» Trentone
NY» Albanye
OH» Columbuse
PA» Harrisburge
obtained FW2 upgrades in Novem- tion on-line. A review in the Decem-
ber, but only because our resident ber5 MacWeek gaveit high marks—
guru stays aware of such informa- four ofa possible five diamonds, and
Washington Apple Pi Journal 17
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it was mentioned briefly in the
March issue of MacWorld, but that
is precious little publicity for a res-
urrected product in which the own-
ers appear to have such a vested
interest.
Many users have serious reser-
vations about the most popular Mac
word processing products, especially
as size becomes a barrier in the
newer versions. So FW2 might well
find a decent niche in the market,
but not without some aggressive
sales effort on the part of the devel-
oper. High volume sales are the best
support for additional development,
which in turn encourages more
sales. It’s a basic concept that
Akimbo needs to incorporate into
its strategy.
Product Details
FullWrite 2, Akimbo Systems,
11 Rose St., Somerville MA 02143;
18 Washington Apple Pi Journal
1-800-375-6515. List Price: $395;
upgrades: $99; educational/
non-profit package: $99; competi-
tive upgrades: $120 (any other Mac
word processor qualifies).
Multi-pack discounts are available.
FW2 runs on all Mac models from
the Plus to Power Macs and is com-
patible with both System 6 and 7; it
requires 2 MB RAM and 3 MB hard
disk space.
All users of FW2 are advised to
update to 2.0.2, using the updater
available in several locations in-
cluding the WAP TCS file area 31,
the AOL forum, and the Internet
site ftp.std.com/vendors/Akimbo (as
the file
FullWrite-202-updater.sit.hqx).
System 7.5 users who previously
updated to 2.0.1 should also update
to 2.0.2—the same updater works
on both 2.0 and 2.0.1. A demonstra-
Clues that FullWrite 2 was
Produced by Old-time Mac
Programmers
They named their com-
pany Akimbo.
The product logo is a yel-
low lead pencil (the
€ 0 mm On € ri33
WordPerfect?).
To reinforce the logo, a
pencil labeled FullWrite
2 comes with the product.
The box and manual are
produced from recycled
paper.
This warning is printed
on the box: “FullWrite
may be habit-forming.
After using FullWrite, you
may be unwilling to use
any other word proces-
sor.”
The following entry ap-
pears in the manual in-
dex: “Stewart, Jimmy, see
invisible characters.”
Somebody, somewhere, is
writing an extension that
will convert wordsinto Pig
Latinas they’re typed; itll
be posted on the AOL fo-
rum when ready.
This definition ofhackers
appears in a table used to
demonstrate the tablefea-
ture: “Hypertext Auto-
matic Context
KnowledgE Retrieval
System.”
tion version of FW2is also available
in these areas. Ml
Bernadette McMahon is a chemist
for the U.S. Food and Drug Admin-
istration whose primary responsi-
bility for editing an analytical
manual is made possible by her
Macintosh and products such as
FullWrite.
March / April 1995
Brainstorm Accelerators for
Macintosh Plus and
Macintosh SE
by Sandy Kowalczuk
E HAVE A variety of
Macs from MacPlustoLC
575 in the Middle School
computer lab at Key School. All the
SEs, Pluses and Classics have been
upgraded to 4 MB of RAM, because
many of our projects involve
HyperCard or PageMaker, and all
use System 7.1.
This fall, lsaw anad from Brain-
storm Products for an accelerator
for the SE which could be evaluated
by educational institutions free for
30 days, and I thought, “Why not!”
Iphoned the company, and they
were very friendly and sent one
promptly, along witha handy toolkit
for doing the installation. We have
been using it for several months
now and have had absolutely no
conflicts with any of the software
we use at school.
I placed an SE without the ac-
celerator and an SE/30 alongside
the SE with the Brainstorm Accel-
erator and did a very unscientific
comparison (I didn’t have a stop
watch). With the same PageMaker
4.0 document on each of the com-
puters, I watched to see how quickly
the screens would be redrawn when
changes were made. While the SE
with the accelerator was not quite
as fast as the SE/30, it saved several
seconds each time the screen was
redrawn compared to the SE with-
out the accelerator.
March / April 1995
“T placed an SE with-
out the accelerator and
an SE/30 alongside the
SE with the Brain-
storm Accelerator and
did a very unscientific
comparison (I didn’t
have a stop watch).”
I was convinced that this was
something we had to have for our
remaining SEs and Mac Pluses, and
have made a request for them in
next year’s budget. The increase in
productivity will make our older
machines viable for a few more years
until they gradually get replaced by
newer models and get moved to
teachers desks to be used for word
processing.
The accelerators for the SE nor-
mally list for $199, but for educa-
tional institutions, they are $129
for 1-24, and $99 for 25 or more. The
Mac Plus accelerators list for $149
with an educational discount to$129
for 1-24 or $99 for 25 or more. This
does not include the cost of the nifty
tool kit—$12 for SE and $30 for the
Mac Plus, or shipping and handling
—$12. Brainstorm will provide fac-
tory installation for the Mac Plus as
it involves some soldering and us-
ing a voltmeter, which they provide
as part of the toolkit along with a
video on how to do the installation.
This is normally $199, but the edu-
cational discount price is $149.
The accelerator has two parts,
an accelerator card which fits into
the SEs PDS slot and a 16 MHz
68000 proprietary chip which re-
places the standard 8 MHz SE pro-
cessor. The combination of the two
“allows the existing memory and
input/output chips to operate at two
to three times their original speed.”
Italso“more than doubles the speed
of the SCSI interface on the Macin-
tosh motherboard.” These are
quotes from documentation pro-
vided by the company.
The Brainstorm Accelerator for
the Macintosh Plus has received an
excellent review in the May 4, 1992
issue of MacWeek.. The one for the
SE gets 4 stars in the March 1995
issue of MacWorld, and 4/, apples
from MacHome Journal, Septem-
ber 1994. BMUG chose the SE ac-
celerator for a Choice Product award
in ‘92, '93, '94 and '95.
I spoke with Andy Seligman at
Brainstorm, and they are willing to
extend special User Group rates to
members of Washington Apple Pi if
we can make a group purchase of 5
or more accelerators, mix-and-
match, for SE or Plus. The club
could purchase one toolkit of each
type, and our price would be $129
per accelerator. We will need to co-
ordinate a group purchase if the
interest arises.
If you wish to speak to the nice
people at Brainstorm for more tech-
nical details, or to order individu-
ally at regular prices, you can con-
tact them at:
Voice: 415-988-2900:
Fax: 415-988-2906
AppleLink D6800. @
Washington Apple Pi Journal 19
File Inventory Programs—
Review of 7 Shareware
Programs on the TCS
y Dennis Helsel
ANY OF US have lots of
floppy disks sitting in
boxes, plastic organizer
trays, or just scattered here and
there. The disks are our backup
protection against failing hard
drives, originals of valued software,
or just necessary off-line storage.
‘Yet when we need them, searching
for the right disk can be chaotic. On
which disk should I back up that
off-line, on diskettes, removable
drives, or CDs. When a file is
needed, the software finds it in its
records on your hard drive, quickly
determining which disk or CD to
insert. It may even automatically
copy the file once the disk is
inserted. Your computer is
organized, so you don’t have to be!
As more CDs with hundreds of
software, fonts, sounds and pictures
clutter our lives, a good inventory
will become increasingly valuable.
Seven inexpensive disk
inventory programs are availableon
the TCS (see Table 1). Five are
shareware ($30 or less), and two are
absolutely free. Any of them will
ease the job of finding files you’ve
stored off-line somewhere. Each of
them will inventory floppies or CDs.
Five of the programs are
applications, one is a control panel,
and oneis a Hypercard stack. One of
the applications also relies on an
extension (init) for its automatic
features.
General Impressions
The general characteristics Ilook
for in a program are: 1) a good value
(okay, so ’mcheap), 2) ease of use,
3) minimum file space for what’s in
them, and 4) pleasant and well-
organized on-screen information.
The top part of Table 2 evaluates
these subjective characteristics for
new game?
Where is that +8
gelestlar ctl Ent Ten tisk Cat’ 20 ec ———$——$ 72)
y File ‘Ten Disk Catlg’ (NOT saved) Files:260 Mem Used:21K/174K (no match data)
stored last year, Selected:1 Total Bytes :24K Groups:1 0
on the FIND [¥ volume :}[ JO Equals © includes}
“Programs” disk, ind Next) (Find First Find All) Typ! Creator @Begins © Ends
«
or on ‘New B MODIFIED
” ReadMe STORM text 08/02/91 08/27/91
Pr ‘O.8a a IS 2 ARASH! 1.0a APPL ARIF 267963 12/15/92 08:58:08 12/15/92
Which CD has new to ARASH 1.00 TEXT MSHD —_-2533_ 12/13/92 17:36:45 12/15/92
that “honk” Hot Air Balloon v2.1 APPL HABC 29704 11/17/92 15:14:16 11/17/92
bes ion BlackBox APPL BBox 12534 05/27/86 22: 13:20 07/13/86
sound? After Daleks APPL DALK 19499 09/03/84 13:10:27 11/23/91
‘i MacChase 2.17 APPL KLG1 162828 01/20/90 14:35:42 01/18/92
feeding 20 disks MacChase 2.1? docs nXd nX*n 39994 04/08/92 22: 13:05 04/08/92
into the slot, and MC_Original MCFL MC1? =: 14765 08/12/88 23:35:36 eral
cies Shareware Update TEXT ttxt 3540 01/05/92 18:32:30 01/18/92
clicking through Stratego 0.91 APPL TEGO 114241 11/15/87 06: 10:32 07/25/88
the contents of Bug Report Form WOBN MSD 5120 01/22/92 00:22: 13 01/22/92
Galaxis 1.1 APPL Gixs 247346 10/21/92 02:23:38 10/21/92
each one to find Galaxis Sounds snd Glxs 220931 12/03/91 22:44:37 10/16/92
the right file, you Galaxis Theme STrk Glxs 113574 03/25/92 19:00:47 03/25/92
k: th 2, Galaxis.DOC. int WDBN MSWD 55296 12/08/91 18:47:44 10/21/92
POW REL eB Tutoriol Game GAME Glxs 1460 11/26/91 20:31:44 11/26/91
better way. There Hexmines 1.2 APPL »Hex 81543 12/21/92 01:35:54 12/21/92
3 aiek Hexmines 1.2 docs TEXT ttxt 5845 12/20/92 22:19:37 12/21/92
Lee Ga8 Desk Invaders dfil movr 109923 02/06/88 18:02:55 04/09/92
inventory Desk Invaders docs TEXT ttxt 6816 09/14/91 20:15:30 09/14/91
fe Dropper APPL Pin? 109102 06/24/90 02:12:26 01/21/92
soltware.. Pentominoes 1.4 APPL PNTS 264615 11/10/93 14:15:12 11/10/93
The purpose Slime Invaders 2.0.1 APPL Arkd 370756 10/08/93 18:33:54 10/08/93
cates Slime Invaders docs TEXT ttxt 7700 12/30/91 16:45:37 10/08/93
of disk inventory Backgammon 2.0 APPL MPDY 37660 11/30/84 18:29:20 11/04/89
software is to Bombs 2.2 APPL BNBS 142828 06/08/91 16:40:00 08/07/92
keep a record of __|Presigien eribbage™ APL CRIB 193081 01/05/89 15:07:25 02/06/89
the files stored
20 Washington Apple Pi Journal
Figure 1. File list from FileList+, a full-featured but complicated program.
March / April 1995
the seven programs (I have no
ee
connection with any of the authors of Neme Size Free Last Modified
these programs, so my opinions are > [2] Big screen games 785K 48K Wed,Jen 18,1995, 10:25PM = [4
totally my own). Usethisreviewasa j} > Big Screen Games2 785K 464K Wed, Jan 18, 1995, 10:39 PM
guide to choose two or three, and j?> Free Games 1393K 104K Wed, Jan 18, 1995, 10:32 PM
them try them out yourself. After all, > C1] Games 3 1415K 293K Wed, Jan 18, 1995, 10:35 PM
that’s the beauty of shareware. > C1] Games 4 145K 245K Wed, Nov 24, 1993, 7:58 PM
The most expensive programs j > CI cemes 5 1415K 244K Sat, Jan 14, 1995, 10:22 AM
aren’t necessarily the leaders in any > C1] Pay Gomes 1415K 480K Wed, Jan 18, 1995, 10:31 PM
of these criteria. The file lists for | Ll Programs 1393K 267K Wed, Jan 18, 1995, 10:47 PM
MacLibrarian, for example, seemed be Oo Fegarams 2 1415K 290K Wed, Jan 18, 1995, 10:48 Pt
‘ A ClockAdjust.SIT 4K 0 === Thu, Mer 23, 1989, 11:14 PM
Gyowded and difficult to read. Disk 4) oesktop Textures 208It 500K —-- Mon, Aug 24,1992, 102 aM
: : b B bisk First aid 7.1.sit 59K Wed, Oct 07, 1992, 2:05 AM
exceptionally clear, while the free j FileList+ 1.0b21.cpt 200K Sun, Sep 20, 1992, 10:19 PM
Disk Trivia was one of the cleanest j p B mecAstro 1.5.cpt 207K Fri, Oct 23, 1992, 12:29 PM
andeasiest tounderstandHypercard } p B noterap2sit 10K Tue, May 07, 1991, 9:22 AM
stacks I've seen. The most powerful jp B pcxchange 72K Mon, Sep 28, 1992, 8:56 PM
sorting and cataloging options were j p TimeTell v1.0.cpt 232K Sat, Jun 27, 1992, 2:53 AM
contained in the other free program, j > ©) trash 1K === Wed, Jan 16, 1995, 10:48 PM
FileList+. Selection of the right {> [1 programs 3 1415K 234K Wed, Jan 16, 1995, 11:01PM fay
program for you will depend on the Te (al
features you want.
Ibegan by cataloging the contents
of 10 of my floppy disks, containing a
motley collection of compressed files, using each
program. The storage space taken on my hard disk
varied considerably (Table 2). Most programs stored
this information in binary format, or in simple text
files. AutoCat, however, represented each file as an
alias in a separate folder named for each disk. In doing
so, it at least doubled the disk space required by the
other programs, even thoughit did not read the contents
within compressed archives. That’s a heavy price to
pay, ruling out its serious consideration for use on my
hard drive. The smallest file, created by ListFiles, also
did not catalog the contents of compressed (Stuffit and
Compact Pro) archives. As most files on floppies will
likely be compressed to save space, I consider that a
serious limitation.
Figure 2. CatFinder’s finder-like interface.
Important Features
Table 2 lists the features found in each of the
programs. The most important features (in my opinion)
are found towards the top. Five of the programs read
and catalogued files in Stuffit and Compact Pro archives
(“Read .cpt .sit”). It is a feature I found invaluable for
finding exactly the file I wanted. The programs allow
this to be turned off, but the savings in space for a
smaller file list would be a poor place to scrimp.
A second useful feature is the ability to quickly
scan and catalog a series of disks without having to
point and click one or more times in between (“Quick
Scan”). All but the simplest of the programs, Disk
Trivia, performed this task. Four of them also
Table 1. Locations of Disk Inventory Software on the TCS
Name Area File No. File Name Size
MacLibrarian 23 217 MACLIBRARIA.CPT 145536
CatFinder 23 497 CAT.FINDER.141 106880
AutoCat 24 591 AUTOCAT.1.0.2 33792
Disk Wizard 23 478 DISK.WIZARD.103 64768
ListFiles 22 268 LIST.FILES.2.4 84000
FileList+ 22 114 FILELIST1.0.SIT 247040
Disk Trivia 22 277 DISKTRIVIA.CPT 29056
March / April 1995
Washington Apple Pi Journal 21
automatically re-catalog a disk
whose contents have changed since
the last time it was catalogued
(“Auto Update”). Without this, you
must decide that files have been
deleted or added since the last
catalog, and click to catalogit again.
This can be tedious — the point of
these programs is, after all, is to let
your Macremember things you don’t
want to!
All of the programs will search
their database, and find file locations
based on key words or letters (“File
Search”). Searches can usually be
done by name or parts of name, by
file type, by date, or by the program
that created it. If you then click on
the file, three programs will even
prompt you to put the correct disk
into the Mac’s drive (“Insert Disk
Prompt”). Disk Wizard also has an
accelerated copy mechanism that is
much faster than the Finder's. The
primary feature of FileList+ is its
flexible sort option. In using it for
this review, for example, I sorted
my list byname. Right next toeach
other were two versions of the same
shareware game, one much older
than the other, that I obviously
stored on two different disks at two
different times. I would never have
found this with the other programs.
Five of the seven tell how much
space is left on each disk (“Show
Space Left”). This is one of the
most useful pieces of information,
letting you decide which disk will
hold that new 500K game you just
downloaded. Its absence rules out
MacLibrarian and AutoCat from
my consideration on this feature
alone.
Less Important Features
Theremaining featuresseemed
much less important in deciding
which program to choose. In
addition to printing the file list
from within the program, three will
export it as a separate text file for
later printing or editing (and two
store their lists as text files, so do
notneed “exporting”). The two most
expensive programs allow the
creation and printing of disk labels.
This appears tobe one ofthe primary
features of MacLibrarian, which also
hasa simple editor for drawing label
pictures. However, it is easy to
import an image from a more
functional drawing program, so the
drawing feature didn’t seem of great
value to me. If creating labels is
important to you (perhaps you're
copying and distributing disks for a
user group), then CatFinder or
MacLibrarian may become your all-
purpose disk management program.
Recommendations
Tliked three of these programs
very much. One is free (told you I
was cheap), and the others
inexpensive. Allthreehaveasimple
look and are easy to use, making a
very positive impression. Getting
Table 2. Comparison of Seven Disk Inventory Programs
MacLib CatFind AutoCat Disk Wazrd ListFiles Filelist+ DskTiv
Version 16.3 1.51 15 1.0.3 2.4.1 1.0b21 1.0
Shareware $$ 30 25 10 10 5 0 0
Type of Program App App cP Ext+App App App Stack
10-disk List Size 42K 42K 84K 42K 5K 23K 31K
Ease of Use 2 1 1 1 2 3 2
Nice to look at 3 1 2 1 3 2 1
Functionality 2 2 2 1 3 1 3
1shigh 2=medium 3=low
Read .cpt .sit - -
Quick Scan -
Auto Update - - -
File Search *
Show Space Left - -
Insert Disk Prompt - * - - -
Export File Lists = = hy t
Prints Labels - - = - -
the feature is present — itis not
* uses the Finder
+ stored as text files
22. Washington Apple Pi Journal
March / April 1995
S252 YYVvyvovyvvyvovyyoyvyovyyyyyyyyD rs
DiskTrivia
5
5
4 Programs 2 i
5
4 FileList+ 1.0b21.cpt oy i
4 FileList+ 1.0b21 i
J FileList+ @ }
} FileList+ Read Me a i
q FileList+ Release Notes
; FileList+ Revision Hist q
4|Used(k): bf
dq} 1417 q
Free(k
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Ke >| J?
J CO
Box Name/#: = =
Disk Label Diskirivia
Figure 3. DiskTrivia’s catalog scrolls across the disk’s
“label”.
2S Home disks - Disks ig]
jum] Volume Name [Create Date|Modified Date] Size [Filespir's| ockstampedffuni [el
10 _iFree Games ‘Wed, Jan 8, 1....Tue, Nov 23,1... |1386K 42 4 vs
Games 3 .._ Thu, Nov 25, 1... [1370K |49. 8 ry
2__ [Pay Games Tue, Nov 23, 1... 11068K 135 6 is
3__|Programs. | Nov 25, 1... 1044K 1105 26 |
4 |Programs 2 Wed, Mar 31,1...:1401KiS9i7 s
S__;Programs 3 Wed, Nov 17, 1.../11 33K /S6 11 s
6 _iStacks jSat, Oct 16, 1... 11413Ki29 1 ‘y
|? _jRes Edit disk [Thu, Sep 17,1... '99SK_ 172 isis
8 Quick Time Disk --/Sat, Mar 13,1... 1047K i320 iS. s
9 GIF programs Wed, Mar 31, 1...1421K 16 3
10 GIF ... Fri, Mar 26, 19931 085K i11 3 s
17 (Mai music. jTue, Aug 31,1... '1362K'174 17 |
12 IMUSIC x. Thu, Apr 1, 1993}490K i233. aii
13 {Manipulate Sounds;Wed, Aug S, 1..:Tue, Nov 23, 1... 906K _i60 19 Ss
74 extra sounds (Sat, Got 31, 1.,Tue, Nov2a, 1.. 976k (62 1 fy
15 _iBig screen games ;Tue, Nov 17... 'Sun, Mar 14,1... i61SK_i9 2 s
16 (Dennis Tue, Jan 5, 1... Thu, Nov 25, 1... iS77K i162 8 ry
17 (Screen Saver ‘Tue, Mar 10..._:Thu, Nov 26, 1... '764K 2 os
Find Oak | ;
Figure 4. MacLibrarian’s list of disks, showing # of directories but not free space.
one will benefit every Mac user who
has more than 10 floppy disks to
keep track of.
First, for those with few floppies,
want an easy-to-use program, and
who don’t change files on disk very
March / April 1995
often, DiskTrivia may be sufficient.
It has several of the important
features above, and its interface is
easily understandable. One unique
feature is that it has a hidden note
field in the stack torecord comments
about each disk, if desired. The
interface does look like a floppy disk
(Figure 3), which may be confusing
for cataloging CDs.. DiskTrivia’s
primary drawback is its need to
click on buttons to input or update
an inventory. Itis a good starting
program, but most users will
probably want to move on to one of
the others as their number of disks
increases.
Second, for those who need to
generate disk labels with their
inventory program, CatFinder is a
much better choice than
MacLibrarian. Its interface is
intuitive and uncluttered, making
it very easy to use (Figure 2). It will
search for a file, prompt you toinsert
the correct disk, and automatically
launch the program. It will store
more than one catalog, allowing you
to keep floppies separate from CDs,
or work disks separate from those
at home. It lacks only an automatic
update mechanism.
However, the winner IMHO
among these seven is Disk Wizard.
It does not print file lists on paper—
if you need that, you’d be better off
with CatFinder. One “bug”, of not
reading the internal files
compressed with an older version of
Stuffit (1.5.1), is listed to be fixed for
the next release (or just re-stuff
your files with a newer version).
Also slated for addition is the ability
to store records in seperate catalogs.
But Disk Wizard’s interface is well
done and pleasant to use.. It has all
the features most users will need.
And the quick and easy cataloging
and updating features will
encourage you to actually use it.
If you are not yet using a disk
inventory program, download afew
and pick the one that’s best for you.
Then pay the shareware fee and
register. After all, even I will pay
$10 for good software. Mf
Washington Apple Pi Journal 23
“Nesting Habits”
by Ralph Begleiter
NE OF THE MOST
perplexing problems
MacNovices seem to face is
figuring out how to use the
Macintosh filing system to store and
find documents they create. The ad-
vent of floppy disks which can store
up to 1.4 megabytes of data and hard
disk drives with enormous capacities
often create a filing nightmare.
T’ve seen Mac users who simply
store all their documents and pro-
grams right on the desktop, or in
the open disk window. They never
use file folders. That’s not a big deal
when all you’ve got is a dozen or so
documents and programs on your
disk. But imagine trying to wade
through it all to find a certain piece
of correspondence— ifthere are sev-
eral hundred documentson the disk?
What clutter!
Your Mac’s Hierarchical Filing
System was created to solve that
problem. Learning to use it effi-
ciently can help you find your work
faster, and can help you avoid costly
mistakes such as losing important
files. You may be asking right now,
“Who cares whether I file things
away neatly? Stop being so compul-
sive! What difference does it make?”
On your Macintosh, it makes a big
difference in the ease of locating
documents later. The Macintosh
system is set up to work fastest
when the computer is required only
to keep track of a few items at one
time, rather than keeping track of
everything all the time.
To take best advantage of the
filing system built right into your
Macintosh, always keep in mind
that your computer disks are simi-
24 Washington Apple Pi Journal
lar to file cabinets in your office.
Individual documents (each with a
unique name) are stored inside fold-
ers (which also have names). In a
large office (such as your computer’s
enormous filing space) folders are
grouped together into categories,
especially if they have similar char-
acteristics. Sometimes, these fold-
ers are themselves placed within
larger folders, to keep similar files
together. For example, letters you
wrote to your accountant in 1994
“It’s the concept
of nesting which
is the key to
keeping track of
your documents
and programs on
your Macintosh.”
might be filed in folders labeled for
each month of the year. These
“monthly” folders might be grouped
into “quarterly” folders, which in
turn are probably stored inside a
large folder labeled “Correspon-
dence.” The Correspondence folder
itself might be nested with other
items within one huge folder (or file
drawer) marked “1994.”
The important concept here is
not the labels or even the number of
folders. The key concept is the idea
that letters you write can be found
quickly and easily by following the
trail of nesting within folders in
your filing system. It’s the concept
of nesting which is the key to keep-
ing track of your documents and
programs on your Macintosh.
The nesting feature is crucial to
remember when you're no longer
working on the desktop level—but.
are working within a Macintosh
program, writing, spreadsheeting
or creating pictures. Because when
you're working within a program,
the folders and files are presented to
you in a different visual manner.
So get started by creating a few
basic folders. You can always make
new ones later as you need them.
Choosing “New Folder” from the FILE
menu creates a new empty folder. As
soon as it appears on the desktop,
giveitaname. (Don’t wait until you’ve
got a collection of unidentifiable
“Empty Folders” on your desktop!)
Now, take some time to create a
system of nested folders within the
ones you just created.
And within each of those fold-
ers, create a nest of still more. You
might imagine this as the nesting of
kitchen bowls of different sizes.
Each bowl holds a smaller one. Each
folder contains smaller ones. The
smallest folders contain only a few
documents, usually related very
closely to one another. .
Another example: Within the
“Files” folder, create a “Family”
folder. Within the “Family” folder,
you could create folders for each
family member, and for important
categories within the family, such
as “House,” “Cars,” “Insurance,” etc.
Also within the “Files” folder,
you might have a “Taxes” folder.
Within that “Taxes” folder, you
might have a folders for “1993,”
“1994,” and “1995.” Within each of
those folders, you could create fold-
ers for letters to your accountant,
for tax forms, for a database of con-
tributions, etc.
The importance of this is that
when you're later actually preparing
March / April 1995
your tax return, your Macintosh will
have all of the documents it needs
within a very short distance of one
another in terms of the filing system.
It won’t have to search among every-
thing in your “Files” folder just to
locate the items related to “Taxes.” It
will only have to keep track of the
relatively few items nested in the
“Taxes” folder.
The same thing will be true, of
course, when you're working with
documents grouped together in an-
other category. The Mac won't be
forced to keep track of your tax
information when you're not work-
ing with it.
Another advantage of creating
all these folders is that it'll keep your
desktop uncluttered. Your eyes won't
have to search through hundreds of
icons or names on the screen to pick
out the one document you want to
work on.
After you’ve reorganized your
desktop, you'll discover how this ef-
fort makes it easier to find what you
want when you're working within a
program (application). When you use
the most difficult part of the
Macintosh filing system, the dialog
box you see when you choose OPEN
from the FILE menu within an appli-
cation, you'll see all the files on your
disk, categorized by your folders.
That’s whenallthenesting you're
doing with your folders will pay off. Ml
*QuickView*
by Paul Gerstenbluth
EKA PUBLISHING
means business. Its Clip
Art Collection has 800
images ranging from pen and ink
drawings to complex 3-Dimensional
March / April 1995
graphics. Each image is ready for
printing at a cost of about 14 cents.
After you purchase the Clip Art
Collection, you can legally use these
professionally drawn images for
your newsletters, brochures and
advertisements. In addition, you
receive quarterly supplements of
over 120 images accompanied by
design ideas and ready-to-use
templates.
Who uses this program?
Typically, non-artists and busy
designers benefit from using quality
clip art. Users receive high quality
images, step-by-step instructions, a
broad variety of styles and design
ideas.
What does the Quality Clip Art
Collection include? It contains alarge
three-ringed binder of illustrations
and Encapsulated Postscript (EPS)
image disks. The design elements
consist of backgrounds, type and
signs plus symbols. They are further
subdivided into borders, cards and
frames. The sign images contain
arrows, general purpose signs, stars
and zodiacsigns. The symbolimages
include traffic, weather symbols plus
tables and index grids.
EPS images work well within
ClarisWorks 2.1 and PageMaker 4.2
programs. Using Adobe Type
Manager (ATM), I am able to print
clear and precise images on quality
inkjet paper with my StyleWriter.
For best results—use a Postscript
printer.
According to WEKA Publishing,
their Quality Clip Art Collection
works with: Adobe Illustrator 5.0,
Canvas 3.0, ClarisWorks, Freehand,
IntellDraw, MS Word and Excel,
PageMaker, QuarkXPress, Ready,
Set, Goand SuperPaint 3.5 program.
Pro Comments. Well written
and illustrated manual of Clip Art
Collection. There is a hard copy of
each image which is numbered and
put in ten separate categories. The
images are detailed illustrations
drawn by competent artists that
are superior to the standard fuzzy
clip artimages. The EPS images are
in color and can also be printed in
shades of gray.
Con comments. The EPS
images do not work with all software
applications. You need a printer that
prints EPS images such as the
StyleWriter Printer with ATM.
Conclusion: I highly
recommend the Quality Clip Art
Collection. The cost is about than 14
cents per image. Ml
Company: WEKA Publishing,
Inc.
Huntington Point
1077 Bridgeport
Ave.
Shelton, CT 06484
800-966-4300
$99 plus shipping
Phone:
Price:
Washington Apple Pi Journal 25
Rae Assist: A Personal
Information Manger & More
by Glenn Paterson
ITH THE popularity
of notebook computers, it
was only a matter of time
until people would begin to use the
computer to replace their day-
timers. ‘The first programs that
appeared were specialized programs
that would act as your calendar or
to-do list or contact manager.
Today’s personal information
managers (PIMs) try to handle all
aspects in one program. Rae Assist
(version 1.0.2) from Rae
Technologies Inc., goes one step
further by adding much of the
functionality of the Newton to your
Mac.
Rae Assist uses an electronic
notebook interface, called a binder,
to manage your business and
personal contacts, schedule, to-dos,
projects, notes, and pictures. What
makes Rae Assist stand out from
other PIMs is a built-in intelligent
assistant that simplifies data entry
and retrieval and helps users create
links between objects.
The Binder
The screens in Rae Assist look
like pages from a binder, complete
with spiral rings on one side and
tabson the other. From the screens,
you click on buttons and tabs to
move through the programs sections
(see Figure 1). The binder’s six
sections are People, Companies,
Planner, To-Dos, Projects, and
Items.
The People and Companies
sections work together asthe contact
manager. People manages business
and personal contacts. It includes
Software Review
Project Name
Company
A Get Software
A In e
A Write Review
111594
11}
111894 01/2095
11/25/94
Vi/1Gi94 Lanvence dt]
sway |syaafoug [ ogo,
Figure 1.—Clicking on the tabs on the right or the buttons will move you around the program. The Project section
shown here lets you keep track of projects and their associated To Dos, Events, and People. Clicking on any of
these items will bring that object up in more detail.
26 Washington Apple Pi Journal
March / April 1995
all the standard fields and five
custom fields that can be labeled
whatever you choose (see Figure 2).
The Companies section stores
information on organizations. It
has its own records separate from
the People section and its own
custom fields. Entering company
information for a _ person
automatically associates the person
with the company. Assist stores
company information in the
Companies section so you can have
more than one person associated
witha single company and you don’t
have to enter the company
information more than once. Or you
can use the company section to keep
a list of businesses you frequent
such as restaurants or hotels.
Planner manages your
schedule. The planner can keep
track of scheduled events (such as
appointments, meetings, and
lunches), day events (holidays and
birthdays), and your tasks. The
planner has day, week, and monthly
views.
To-Do manages tasks and
reminders. There is a detail view to
see the tasks information, start/end
dates, status, and comments and a
list view to view tasks by priority,
dates, or whatever you specify.
The Projects section groups To-
Dos, Events, and People into larger
activities under one heading. Users
can set start and due dates, monitor
the project’s progress, and store
extensive notes. This section also
has a detail and list view enabling
you to view and organize projects.
Items stores both Notes and
Pictures that may or may not be
associated with the other sections.
Notes can be meeting notes, e-mail,
or other miscellaneous text. The
Pictures items are graphic images,
created in other programs, such as
maps or organization charts.
March / April 1995
(709) 799-9140,
Phone
Home “~Hiome FAK
GtennpGd) Ce
Cagsakier ene Ena em
Jan 2, 1968
Brth Date Spoke
(Mec rut
ig time Gients Fen
Commentsjtiotes
Figure 2. —The People section lets you enter all the standard information
for a contact, associate the person with a company, make notes, apply tags,
and see linked events and to-dos. The five custom fields (shown here as car
phone, email, spouse, and custom field 1 &2) may be labeled whatever you
like and automatically formated as phone numbers, proper names, or left
as entered.
Integration and Linking
The power of Rae Assist becomes
evident as you begin to enter data
into the sections. When creating a
new entry in the People section,
users can enter both the first and
last name in the first-name field
and the program will automatically
parse the information into its proper
field (it does not handle middle
initials correctly though, it
incorrectly places them in the first-
name field). The phone number will
automatically be formatted into the
traditional (703) 555-1234 and after
entering a phone number, users can
add a fax number by entering the
different digits and the program will
automatically enter the area code
and exchange.
When adding the name of a
company, Rae Assist will create a
company profile to be added in the
Company section. The next time a
person that works in the same
company is entered, all the user has
to enter is the first few letters in the
company field and all the pertinent
information for that company is
automatically entered into the
corresponding fields. If more than
one company matches the entry, a
list pops up giving the user a choice
of companies the person works for.
The integration extends to all
the other sections as well. A user
entering an event such as “Meet
Kevin for lunch at Hard Times” in
the Planner section can link the
event to Kevin and Hard Times Cafe
in other modules or just click on the
Assist button and the program will
automatically create the links
(giving you a choice if there is more
than one Kevin in your binder),
select the appropriate event type
(lunch in the description would
classify the event as type “food”, for
example, see Figure 3). The links
are also transferred to the other
sections. If you pulled up Kevin in
the People section, you would see
the lunch listed in the events area
on that screen.
Washington Apple Pi Journal 27
'REPAIRS!!
Apple/Mac/I*M Motherboard Repairs
from $45.00 + S&H
Apple/Mac/I*M Power Supply Repairs
from $45.00 + S&H
Apple/Mac/I*M Drive Repairs
from $45.00 + S&H
Apple/Mac/I*M Monitor Repairs
from $60.00 + S&H
Apple/Mac/I*M Keyboard Repairs
from $12.50 + S&H
Apple/Mac/I*M Upgrades
Available!
Used Apple/Mac/I*M CPUs,
Disk Drives, Monitors,
Keyboards available for resale
Warranties to one year on most repairs!
Same day turnaround on most repairs!
formats dates.
Another
feature called Smart
Index can display a
list of all objects in a
binder or only those
that satisfy user-
specified filters. For
example, you can list
everything tagged as
“personal” or
“billable.” The Find
command can locate
any object in a binder
from anywhere.
Assist is able to
import TouchBase,
DayMaker, and other
text files for use in
your binder. As far
as output is
concerned, Assist
comes with several
Arminius
8519 Orchard Avenue
(609) 662-3420
Merchantville NJ 08109
styles already defined
and lets you create
your own. It also
supports Avery label
templates.
In addition to be able to link
People, Companies, Events, and To-
Dos to each other, Rae Assist also
has the ability to create free-form
links for any object. Using this
feature, the user can link, for
example, a map of directions to the
monthly WAP meeting.
Like other PIMs, Rae Assist lets
users assign tags to objects in the
binder to group related items which
can be used as filters in any of the
list views. Unlike some other PIMs
however, Rae Assist can assign
multiple tags peritem. Italsoallows
you to create tags that appear in
just one section or throughout the
program.
The program alsoremembers to
capitalize the first letter of the
names, addresses, and companies if
you forget, and it automatically
28 Washington Apple Pi Journal
The Downward
Spiral
Even with all the great strengths
of Rae Assist, there are a few
shortcomings that some may not be
able to overlook.
First of all, the program display
is in gray-scale only. Not a major
gripe, but color does make it easier
to mark certain types of events to
stand out on the calendar display.
Which brings up the second point—
the display is formatted for a
640x400 screen and cannot be
resized. The screen size and the
lack of color would make one think
that this was designed with
PowerBooks in mind, but the size of
the program (over 4.5 MB with a
few things in your binder) and its
constant disk access do not make it
favorable for space-cramped
PowerBooks running on battery
power. It also requires at least 2
MB of RAM to run, which might be
too much to leave it running in the
background for some users.
Themonthly viewinthe Planner
section uses icons to represent
events. While this is a nice feature
to easily distinguish a lunch date
from a meeting, there is no text in
the monthly view to describe the
event as there is in other PIMs such
as DateBook Pro or Now Up-To-
Date. The user cannot see what is
coming up this month and has to
switch views to see any text
description of the event. Given the
other great features of Rae Assist,
switching views might not be that
big a deal except for the speed of the
program.
When switching views or
“Rae Assist uses an
electronic notebook
interface, called a
binder, to manage
your business and
personal contacts,
schedule, to-dos,
projects, notes, and
pictures. What
makes Rae Assist
stand out from
other PIMs is a
built-in intelligent
assistant that
simplifies data
entry and retrieval
and helps users
create links
between objects.”
March / April 1995
992epo9
|Jpw Contents Back
Event Nome
12:00 PM. 1:00 PM
rd Times
@ =|] Sun
‘Aaa 12285
Jon 16, 1995
Stor Time Gy End Time
Date
BARES
Business
>)
Important
Not-Important
Not-Urgent
“era | won [nobis [ogo Lowa [soumeiog [oroes [ey |
Figure 3.—Clicking the Assist button makes the program
automatically search through the program for links to people,
companies, and projects as well as classify the type of event. You
may also create a link to any item (note or picture) you choose.
sections, there is a noticeable pause.
Although noticeable, the delay was
acceptable when running on a
PowerBook 100—after all, it’s no
speed demon. However, switching
to a PowerBook 520c did not speed
the program up and the delay
became irritating.
Other things that bear
mentioning are the inability to
change the date of an event by
dragging it to another day and the
program’s lack ofhandling repetitive
events.
The biggest oversight, in this
reviewer's opinion, is the omission
of a reminder function to alert you
about upcoming events or to-dos.
Without a reminder function, any
PIM is about as valuable to me as
the scrap of paper I just found telling
me about the meeting I forgot to go
to last week.
New and Improved
Apparently, Rae Technologies
felt similarly about some of these
points because they have released
an update (version 1.5) that
addresses shortcomings in the
March / April 1995
Planner and the performance of the
program.
According to the press releases,
the Planner now supports recurring
events, and userscan reschedule all
the linked events, a single event, or
just future recurring events. The
Planner also features drag-and-drop
rescheduling of events. The week
view was also revamped. The
enhanced week view represents
events within a traditional grid
format (similar to Now Up-To-Date
and Claris Organizer) instead of a
list and displays a time-of-day meter
down the right margin.
The upgrade also boosts the
performance by offering miniview
Showing the first 100000 of 338669 characters.