BMUG Newsletter Fall 1986

The Fall 1986 BMUG Newsletter Announcement Line: (415) 849-9114 CompuServe: 70007,2271 Help Hot-Line: (415) 849-HELP Delphi: BMUG BMUG BBS WEST: (415) 849-BMUG GEnie: BMUG BMUG Business Line: (415) 549-BMUG The WELL: BMUG MCI Mail: BMUG AppleLink: UGOO1 Copyright © 1986 BMUG, Inc. 1442A Walnut St., Suite 62, Berkeley, CA 94709 BMUG, Inc. is a California Educational Nonprofit Corporation, and a registered student group at the University of California at Berkeley. BMUG membership is $40.00 per year (including domestic postage and handling). It includes regular publications containing meeting notes, news, product reviews, product recommendations and reference information, accompanied by a disk containing selected choice public domain software; access to the bulletin board system and telephone help hot line; and access to the reeulay General Meeting and Special Interest Groups. For more information see the back of this newsletter. The material appearing in this newsletter may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, for any commercial purpose without written permission from BMUG, Inc. Articles in the newsletter which are not specifically copyrighted by the author may be reproduced for non-profit distribution between individuals or within other non-profit users groups, if and only if, proper citation is made to “BMUG, Inc., Berkeley, California, USA,” and the BMUG newsletter issue in which the material appeared. Copies of any such reproductions must be sent to BMUG. Opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of BMUG or the University of California or its affiliates. Throughout the newsletter, titles of trademarked software and hardware products are presented. All such proper names are assumed to be trademarks of their manufacturing companies. Cover leaf by Dan Wood Title page corn by Carol Morita Page header graphics by Kim Payne Additional artwork and design by Steve Costa, John Heckendom, Beverley Kane, and Scott Kronick Back cover illustration adapted by Dan Wood from Berke Breathed’s original, used with permission from the Washington Post Co. Table of Contents INTRODUCTIONS Introduction ° The state of the group address The “Newsletter” * What we do in between ice cream runs DESIGN, GRAPHICS & ANIMATION Beyond Pretty Pages © Planning and assembling a booklet Zen and the Art of the Macintosh ¢ A book for those without a motorcycle Tutorial: Silicon Press Printing cards, labels, and leaflets, plus color SuperPaint: Its Name is True ¢ Paint and draw in one program A Preview of Cricket Draw ¢ Producing modifiable PostScript files directly ComicWorks & GraphicWorks The page layout program with two names Towards a Strategy for Macintosh Explosions « Improving your destructive capability High Speed Animation on the Mac * A powerful way to produce animation How 3D Graphics is Done on the Mac ¢ What's inside three 3D programs Programming in PostScript ¢ New graphic capabilities through coding Adventures with PostScript BMUG ‘ggg: - Fall 1986 - “ ‘ Reese Jones Kee Nethery Ann Casamajor Frank Patrick Barbara J. Chan Dan Wood Dan Wood Dan Wood Glenn Harris Philip J. Suh Greg Simons Denis G. Pelli Arthur Luehrmann 11 14 16 20 23 25 27 29 31 35 45 BITS & BYTES File and Disk Recovery for Just About Anyone * You should have made a backup, but nooooo... A Picture of Everything a Computer Knows ¢ A glimpse of assembly language for first timers Using Font/DA Mover ¢ Installing and removing fonts, DAs, and more Editing Your DSAT ° A ResEdit challenge ResEdit: Hacking for the Rest of Us * Changing menus, cursors, dialogs, and icons The Animator: A Simple Lightspeed Pascal Program ¢ A programming exercise using animation ZBasic * A quick review by a BASIC user Bypassing the Trap Dispatcher for Fun and Profit * A hackers tool for speeding up applications PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS File Finders ¢ Three programs that locate files Koala KAT-ing Around the Classroom ° A mouse alternative Micrograde and the Joys of Teaching Classes * Grade bookkeeping and calculations All the Home Accounting Programs « Five programs reviewed Mini Reviews * On time, tax, and disk zapping Smart Alarms ¢ An appointment DA WORD PROCESSING WriteNow and HabaWord ¢ The second generation of Mac word processing The New Word Processors ° More word processing alternatives Word Handler ¢ Yet another view ii Steve Costa Scott Kronick Stephen Howard Christian Wiedmann Christian Wiedmann Linda Custer Ken Huie James E. Hopper Mark Loncar Kenneth William Hirsch Jasper Rine Scott Beamer Scott Beamer Steve Cisler John Heckendorn Peter Korn Kenneth William Hirsch 57 65 70 73 75 78 85 88 93 96 98 101 107 110 113 121 126 EgWord * A Japanese word processor More Than You Want to Know About Spell Checkers * A comparison of eight programs Fonts * An introduction to font design Editors ¢ Two editors to use along with MacWrite Document Compare ° A program to compare text files WYSIWYG Technical Word Processing ¢ The current state of equation processors An Equation Maker for the Mac ¢ ADA for including equations in your documents TX for the Macintosh from K&S and FTL * Two very different implementations of T,X FeiMa Chinese Language Processor ¢ Chinese character processing ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Electricity for My Dreams ¢ An Overview of Artificial Intelligence Prologue to LISP ¢ LISP compared with Pascal and C Experlisp 1.5 ¢ An advanced look at the classic AI language MacScheme ¢ A dialect of LISP reviewed ExperProlog II ¢ The AI language newcomer Robotics ¢ Making machines on the Mac Alfonso’s Head is Half-Connected ° An interview with Racter Alice's LISP Machine ° A saga from MIT BMUG Choice AI Products ° Fact and fantasy Paul Swingle Scott Beamer Richard S. Palais Gordon Haig Kenneth William Hirsch Richard S. Palais Doug Shier Richard S. Palais Barbara J. Chan illust. Chris Molé Beverley Kane Beverley Kane Bill Woodruff Andrew Shalit Dan Shafer Jim Strope Alfonso Qwerty C. Stacy, A. Wecsler, & N. Chiappa Al Staff 128 132 145 151 154 159 164 167 169 175 180 184 189 192 199 202 205 210 PRINTING Practical Tips for LaserWriter Authors ¢ Getting a step on trial and error Tips on the LaserWriter ¢ And Other Postscript Printers and Typesetters Linotronic L100 Tips ¢ Lots more dots per inch Using the HP THINKJET and QUIETJET+ ° Hewlett-Packard printers HARDWARE Speeding up the Old Mac 512 * When the watch seems to stop Why Everyone Should Get the New ROMs ° The decision to upgrade I'm Upgrading! * More reasons to beef up the Mac The heart of the Apple ][ is still beating * About the Apple IIGS Radio Shack Model 100 Portable Computer ° Making it a Macintosh add-on A Day at the Races with MacCharlie ¢ In the IBM den Keyboard Wrist Rest ° A do it yourself project for tired typists Locking your Macintosh * Alternate security kits Hush, Micah! ¢ Installing an on-off switch for a hard drive Tips for Hard Disk Users * Getting the most out of your hard drive Building Your Own Hard Disk * Assembling a SCSI disk from scratch Making Printed Circuit Boards on a Macintosh ¢ Using MacPaint to design and make PC boards SCSI Hacking ¢ General purpose I/O with the SCSI port Ronald A. Schmidt Arthur Naiman Ronald A. Schmidt Kenneth William Hirsch Joseph Schaller Gordon Haig Ken Wait Linda Custer Gordon Haig Vicken Khachadourian Kenneth William Hirsch Cliff Stoll Michael Lamoureux Dan Callaway Tim Standing Bryan McDonald Michael Lamoureux 213 218 235 236 239 246 248 249 253 263 266 268 269 271 274 288 294 Adjusting Your Mac * With a voltmeter and guts, you can... CONNECTIVITY AppleTalk Networking Large-scale corporate networking MACLINK-ing CP/M and MS DOS * Wordstar: From IBM to Mac and back MacLink: IBM Data Transfer to Mac ¢ Simple data transfer from an IBM PC to a Mac The Mac Underground ° Connecting to an on-line intelligence system CompuServe Update ° Dungeons and Dragons On-Line 2400 Baud Modems e Experiences with faster modems Strategic Conquest Plus ¢ Connecting with a Mac game MCS: Multichannel Communications System ¢ Transatlantic transmission of files using Macs Two for the Lab: MacADIOS and LabVIEW ¢ The laboratory interface grows up BUSINESS You Don't Need $250,000! Publishing Mac software successfully A Review of the Excellent Exchange ¢ A collection of Excel applications Microcomputer Consultanting ¢ Pointers and pitfalls in working for yourself Big Guns: Double Helix vs. Omnis 3 Plus ¢ Comparing the two database systems dBase Mac and dMac III ¢ Comparing the Mac and IBM database systems Record Holder ¢ Asimple and cheap database system Poor Tom « An associative database David W. Berry Michael Rogers Kenneth William Hirsch Harry Critchfield Chris Halaska Linda Custer Timothy Standing Steven Fransen Paul B. Blood Paul F. Daley Shepard Tamler Don Scellato Audrey D. Cole Rick Eisner M. Joseph Schaller David Morgenstern Glenn Harris 300 303 310 313 314 320 322 323, 326 328 335, 338 341 346 349 351 Macintosh Statistics Software Six programs for statistical analysis COMMENTARY Computers in Berkeley? ¢ The Mac in local politics Australia and the Macintosh © What's up down there Piracy and Rentals ° Legal update Just Say No to Piracy ¢ Nancy takes a stand Diary of a MacNeophyte * How to be a free Beta test site How Do We Pick Our Computers © Let me count the ways A Beginner's Guide to Getting Help Is there anything besides BMUG Herb Cain Punches John Dvoruk for Making Pass at Dear Abbey © Ugly scene mars desktop publishing expo BMUG CHOICES BMUG Choice Products © The very good, the good, or the only The Latest BMUG Disks ° Desktop views of recent library additions BMUG Newsletter Disk #60 Info on the disk that comes with this newsletter BMUG Membership and Product Order Form ¢ Make copies and give to friends Michael La Belle & Melissa Austin Enrique Zambrano Ronald A. Schmidt Scott Beamer Scott Beamer Glen Frendel Enrique Zambrano Mark R. Chandler Scott Kronick 353 361 364 366 369 371 379 382 383 389 402 Table of Specials Mlustrations San Francisco Skyline BMUG Meeting Attendees Circle Dark Castle Architectural Drawing Big Eyes Boxes Puffs Ballons SpiderWeb Watch Shoe Fun and Games T-House Star Scream Processing Words Boxes Flying Horse Arabic Calligraphy Holiday Graphics Dark Castle Pen vii Jones Kronick Chan Silicon Beach Kanemoto Callway Hockabout Wood Wood Wood Wood ‘Wood Wood Chan Zambrano Chan Hockabout Molé Godlas Kanemoto Silicon Beach Wood 19 30 56 77 92 97 100 106 109 lll 112 120 144 166 168 169 173 174 198 234 Race Peruvian Lily Steve Wozniak Scroll TV Faces Blocks Start-up screens Boxes Q-Graphics I-House II Flower Cat Bill the Cat Scan Glass Wire Cappuccino Mac BBS Excerpts Mac Draft 1.2 Tips Grateful Dead Request Pascal Comments Pascal Comments Mac-Chimney Large Screens? Mac Virtues LaserBoard BBS Apple // ina Mac Bmug Graphic and Design SIG Micah Question Hockabout Chan Kane Wood Wood Wood Hockabout Suh Hockabout Cole Chan SunShine Graphics Suh Wood Howard 252 264 265 299 302 309 334 345 348 370 387 19 69 83 84 125 158 183 188 217 267 268 Mac Hard Disk Drives Make a Mac Hard Disk Drive HP 12C DA Big Mac Screen MS Word Question Mac Virtues Avatex Modem Macs in Tolman. Micah Woes Tips MacLabeler Where to get SCSI connecters 270 293 313 322 327 340 342 352 64 363 i ny i= et Introductions INTRODUCTIONS Introduction. Reese Jones The state of the group address The “Newsletter” Kee Nethery © What we do in between ice cream runs Fall 1986 4 An Introduction to BMUG Reese Jones BMUG, Incorporated (previously known as the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group) is located at the University of California at Berkeley and is a registered student group. This volunteer run group is primarily devoted to the exchange of information about microcomputers, primarily the Macintosh and related products. Also supported are the new generation of UNIX based university workstations including the Sun 3, DEC MicroVAX, IBM RT and others. A particular focus of BMUG is the use of personal computers in the academic environment and the interconnection of different brands of computers through networks and telecommunications. BMUG’s membership consists of roughly 3000 people: students, faculty, and staff of U.C. Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley and Livermore National Labs, numerous other universities and research institutions, as well as a substantial number of members from the surrounding community and all over the world. BMUG, Incorporated (A California Educational NonProfit Corporation) BMUG Inc. became legally incorporated in December 1985. BMUG Inc. is now a California educational non-profit corporation and has received 501c3 tax exempt status, which makes any contributions to BMUG tax deductible. BMUG is volunteer-run and is budgeted to be self funding and hopefully break even. BMUG has a paid support staff to handle operational tasks while most BMUG activities are a result of the efforts of numerous enthusiastic and creative volunteers. Prices are set to meet cost of materials and to cover operational expenses for the various services provided by BMUG like the office staff, phone help lines, BBS systems, equipment testing, meeting and mailing costs, etc. Approximately 90% of BMUG's budget goes directly towards cost of goods and direct costs of servicing the stated purpose of the group. BMUG is entirely self-funded and receives no funding from Apple Computer Inc. or the University of California. BMUG takes no advertising (a substantial financial concession) in order to maintain as objective a view as possible. BMUG functions primarily on the substantial efforts and good will of its membership. BMUG People Include: Kee Nethery Beverley Kane Scott Kronick Steve Costa Raines Cohen Linda Custer Barbara Chan Harry Critchfield John Heckendorn Kent Hockabout Tony Vignaux Gordon Haig Michael Rogers Lori Brooks Anne Levine Phil Suh Reese Jones Tenley Sutton Amy Roberts Lisa Cort Michael Lamoureux Sam Roberts Fred Huxham Tom Santos Dan Wood Bill Woodruff Kelley Wicks Jay James Ann Casamajor Carl Di Giorgio Bernard Aboba Rex Dog Help Lines The BMUG help line is usually staffed during the afternoon/evening hours on weekdays. Call (415) 849-9114 for announcements or to leave a message (we will try to return your calls) and (415) 849-HELP to talk to a person (usually the infamous Steve Costa, or leave a message and we will try to return your call). To reach the BMUG office call (415) 549-BMUG during business hours. By modem call (415) 849-BMUG to reach the BMUG BBS. On the help lines we try to ~~) } BMUG ~~. FALL 1986 cae answer your questions or refer you to someone who can. Members who are familiar with a particular program or topic have volunteered to answer Macintosh questions over the phone during a particular time and day (such as Sunday 4 to 5 pm). If you can help answer questions on a particular topic or program, please volunteer; it can force you to really learn your topic. The BMUG Newsletter Minutes from the weekly meetings are are published regularly on the BMUG BBS with excerpts reprinted in the BMUG Newsletter which is published twice a year and also contains news, product reviews, product recommendations, tutorials, and reference information. The BMUG newsletter does not include advertisements because we wish to maintain a high level of objectivity. Neither BMUG Inc. nor the University of California is responsible for any damage or loss resulting from the information, software or hardware products distributed by BMUG. The newsletter consists of material submitted by the membership. See Kee Nethery’s article in this section for information on how to contribute. Submissions don’t have to be long. Contributors will be properly credited and articles may be copyrighted by the author. Let’s share what we've found out. The Spring 1987 newsletter is already underway! General Meetings BMUG holds at least 3 meetings every week. BMUG general meetings are held every Thursday at 6:00 PM in PSL (Physical Sciences Lecture Hall) on the U.C. Campus, near the East Gate of the campus. (In the event we can't reserve PSL for some reason, the new location will be posted there.) Meetings consist of new product demonstrations, tutorials, and/or presentations by invited guests, following the first hour of open discussion, demonstrations, and question- and-answer sessions. Attendance is typically between 250 and 350 people. We try to keep the atmosphere informal, particularly towards the end of the meeting when many people linger to exchange ideas or look more closely at the demonstration equipment. The room ts well- equipped for the meetings with a HUGE video projector (a Hughes high resolution projector directly connected to a Mac) for viewing the Mac's or other computers’ window during demonstration, or video tapes. Meetings are always free and open to the public; you need not be a member to attend meetings or to purchase BMUG distribution disks ($3 each), blank disks, or other BMUG products. New members may register before or after the meetings. We also distribute materials and handouts from software and hardware vendors at the meetings. Beginners’ Group Meetings The BMUG Beginners’ SIG (Special Interest Group) currently meets every Tuesday at 6:00 pm (call the announcement line to find out the location). The meetings are small and informal, and are tailored to the new user who may be lost among the often technical presentations and gossip at the general meetings. Graphics/Publishing SIG Meetings The BMUG Graphics SIG currently meets every Monday at 8:00 pm at Byting Your Time computer parlor on Durant below Telegraph (call the announcement line to make sure). The meetings are small and informal, and oriented to those who are particularly interested in graphics (printed or screen), desktop publishing, PostScript programming, digitizers, typesetters etc. Developers’ Special Interest Group The BMUG Beginning Developers’ SIG currently meets alternate Wednesdays at 6:00 PM in 30 Wheeler on the U.C. campus during the school year. (Call BMUG to verify meeting and location before attending.) The Beginning Developers’ Group is oriented to those who are starting out BMUG Fall 1986 programming stand-alone applications on the Macintosh and deals with the’ basics of creating programs in MPW, Lightspeed Pascal and the like. Advanced Developers’ Special Interest Group The BMUG “Advanced” Developers’ SIG currently meets on the other alternate Wednesdays (vs Beginning Developers Group) at 6:00 PM in 30 Wheeler on the U.C. campus during the school year. (Call BMUG to verify the location before attending.) The Developers’ Group Spring 1985 Newsletter is available to BMUG members for $18 each. It contains tutorials and examples of programs in Consulair C from the Spring 1985 meetings. BMUG disk #18, included with the newsletter, contains source code and compiled programs that supplement the Developers’ Newsletter. The Advanced Developers’ Group is orlented to those who want to discuss the subtleties of programming on the Macintosh and deals primarily with MPW and Consulair C. Computer Music Users Group (CMUG) The BMUG music SIG meets approximately every 3 weeks to discuss the use of the computers in music. There are demonstrations, discussion on such topics as MIDI control and composition. CMUG usually meets on Saturday at Leo's Music on Telegraph at 57th in Oakland. Call the announcement line for details on the next meeting. Educational Software SIG The Educational Software SIG meets now and again and deals with issues in the development of course ware for the university environment. The group tries to bring together instructors, developers and others interested in the uses of computers in education. Trade Shows and Festivals BMUG operates information booths at most of the major computer trade shows, and in the fall of each year, BMUG hosts the Berkeley MacToberFest. Upcoming shows of particular note include the MacWorld Expo/San Francisco (Jan.8-10th), the original Macintosh exclusive computer show, to be held at the Moscone Auditorium, San Francisco. The MacWorld shows are usually well run and are particularly worth going to, with hundreds of different companies showing their products there, often things you can’t find in stores. There are also seminars and demonstrations to see. Contact Mitch Hall Associates (617) 329-7466 for more information. Come help at the BMUG Booth or stop by and visit when you are there. Bulletin Board Systems BMUG currently operates a BBS system in Berkeley running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are currently running on Scott Watson’s Red Ryder Host software. To use the BBS, dial (415) 849-BMUG (that’s 849-2684 for you digital people) at 2400/1200/300 baud. You don’t need an account to log on for the first time, the BBS will prompt you on what to do (leave a password of your choice the first time). Then until your account validated, you will be given five minutes per call to explore the system and to write to the SYSOP asking for validation. Raines Cohen is BMUG’s Berkeley BBS principal SYSOP. The SYSOP will check your membership and try to validate you within a couple of days (remember SYSOPs take vacations too.) When you are validated, you will have full access to mailboxes, news (including a rumors section hosted by Oliver Wendell Jones III, featuring the juiciest computer gossip you'll ever see), and chatting with a SYSOP (if he/she is around and awake). You can upload submissions (new software, newsletter submissions, etc.) or download files from our massive library, which has over 20 megabytes online. If you try calling and the line is busy, don’t despair! BMUG BBS's are understandably popular BMUG FALL 1986 ~e, ma and frequently in use (3-6am PST is the best time to get through). We're looking into expanding into a multiple-line system; call or write if you can help. BMUG and the online services BMUG also follows or maintains a section and a presence on most of the major national online network services including CompuServe, Delphi, GEnie, DARPAnet/Usenet, The WELL and others. If you can help with any of these, please call. MacRecorderll™ Kit BMUG offers a kit called MacRecorder II, which is a speech digitizer and analog to digital converter (hardware and software combination). Cost is $55 for the kit, which includes the circuit board, all parts, box, power supply, microphone, complete software (source code is also available), assembly instructions for building the device, and shipping. See the articles by Michael Lamoureux in previous issues for more information on the design of the MRII. Assembled/tested kits are available from Farallon Computing Berkeley (415)849-2331. MacRecorder II is completely hardware compatible with the MacNIFTY sound digitizer. The MRII has applications for laboratory A/D data collection, recording voice/music on the Macintosh, real time oscilloscope display, displaying and analyzing wave forms on the screen, incorporating recorded sounds into your programs, speech recognition, alarm systems, music and who knows what; give your Mac ears! Adaptor Cables and other Hardware BMUG distributes a variety of difficult to find adaptor cables (Plus to DB-9, modem cables, keyboard extension cables, etc), hardware kits (MacRecorderlI) and group purchase items (modems, mousepads, blank disks etc.). These are often difficult to find or expensive in a store, so we get the parts in quantity and can thus sell them for approximately half of the usual retail cost. See the hardware notes (here and in back issues) for information on making your own cables or adaptors for various purposes. Also note we periodically have “Make your own cable nights” or “Install Your own SCSI port nights” at BMUG meetings where we bring the parts and tools then help you solder them yourself. BMUG, however is not in the business of selling computer supplies but distributes these items for their educational value. BMUG Video Tape Library BMUG maintains a video tape Mbrary of significant meeting presentations, interesting lectures, computer related TV shows, and Macintosh advertisement and promotional tapes. 4-hr. VHS tapes are available for $20 from BMUG. Call or write the office for information. BMUG Products Distribution BMUG products are available at Thursday BMUG meetings or by mail at 1442A Walnut St.#62, Berkeley CA 94709. BMUG products are also available at a couple of local computer parlors : Copy-Rite copy center (415)-548-4433 at 2154 University Ave., (Between Shattuck and Oxford, open till midnight) and at Winner's Circle Computer Dealer Telegraph Ave, near Derby. Referrals We often get calls from companies and individuals looking for freelance programmers, consultants, or instructors to work on short- or long-term projects involving the Mac or to teach classes about the Mac. We maintain referral lists, both of openings and of available freelance specialists from our group. If you are a company or individual looking for a consultant, programmer, or instructor/tutor, or if you are a Mac programmer, instructor, or freelancer who is looking for a project, call the BMUG HELP line so that we may connect you with the appropriate company or person. BM KG YQ )' fe) —— « ep & J Fall | Nal: ‘ Floppy Disk Review Project BMUG is currently conducting a large scale floppy disk test project where we are distributing 1,000 of each major brand of 3.5 inch floppy disks in the market. The disks are labeled on the back with their batch number and the return address and phone number to report any failures. The disks are passed out (for free) at shows, meetings and other computer events with the instructions to “use the disk in your daily routine, and if it fails for any reason to return it fora replacement.” The disks are brand-new off-the-shelf units from the manufacturers’ normal production runs and have NOTHING ON THEM (some confusion there) and, if you can format the disk in your Mac, they should work as well as any other new disk (SS). So please use the disks for whatever and report back if you have any problems. So far we have passed out 6000 between February and October and we are tracking the failure rate of these disks and the remaining brands of disks to be distributed over the next year. We are keeping statistics on initial failure rates, and how long the media and cases last under normal use for each brand. Ten of each brand's one thousand disks are damaged by us before distribution (Controls) so we can also keep proper reporting statistics for disks distributed at different events (see Tables). Objectively evaluating the quality of different brands of floppy disks is a very difficult task because failure rates are typically on the order of 1 in 100; thus to get adequate statistics, a large number of disks must be tested in a carefully controlled protocol. We are most interested how the disks perform in normal use and have designed this test to evaluate that. We have received back several failed disks and have compiled here some preliminary statistics on the test results. These results should be viewed cautiously because they are preliminary and include only the user reported failures, we are currently evaluating and re-testing each of the returned disks to see if they cannot be formatted in our machines and why. The statistics are interesting nonetheless, particularly in that all of the brands had roughly similar failure rates (in the range of 1 in 100) compared with our previous experience a year ago where some brands seemed to have failure rates as much as 5 times higher (1 in 20). We were somewhat disappointed with our control reporting rates, 10-40%, indicating that some of you have not been returning your failed test disks. Please do so; the results will improve our statistics and aid us all in evaluating these different brands of disks. We intend to follow the lives of these and several other brands of disks over the next year to report on media failure rates (in contrast to initialization failures reported here). Tolal ¥ of al | Total ¥ of To Tk Tsibulon | Tod Fol] Nonberof [Ff Contos] % Conbos | ists Retuned | Disks Returned [ta Ser Too Brand | Color} Time Period } Disks Distibuted | Cont Disks | ReturnedRqportin (aldsks) |} (non contol) [roma | it | Use [Conti femorex [Blue paniFeb 8 1000 W Tort * T @ vy? i) q IBASF = Tan Jan/Feb 85 1000 10 3olt0 wh tt 8 1] 2 1 4 lashua | BlackJon/Feb 86 1000 10 4oh10 Mm 7 3 0 1 2 0 jony Blue | Mar/Apr. 86 1000 10 400 Wh a 4]2 2 0 lemorex |Blue |SepvOct 86 1000 10 1oft0 10% 6 5 2 1 1 1 Ful Bue |SeptOct 86 1000 10 1oft0 10% 2 1 0 1 0 0 ol Cases where | % Reported Falire T) : Tk] Sad Fase rFein wsavajsiCotsed [HE] Bs] We spre Favs pr 10) Des Brand [Tone [ Use [| Coneed | (hougt ds ad deta) | Fas | Fas | _ Reason le aod es femorex | 0 i) v a) tw | R BASF 1 1 4 50% oh 13% 19% lashua a 2 0 % Bh oh % ony 4 2 0 % 5 o% 0% lemorex | 2 1 1 20% 20h am Wh Fu 0 ) ) % 10% | Oh 0% Percent of all Percent of Percent of Control [Calculated Overall Reporting Faire Fale Expected Disks RetunedTesf Disks Reumned Test Disks Retuned | Reporfing | Before Double Check (Corrected for Faure per {including Contrdls) {non Contos} (wiConfusion Correction) | Rate %Contols Reporting & Confusion) 100 disks 19% TH Whi4 1h Zr o rales pa TOUS | 110% 080% 040% i 13 142 Fallers pet 100 Disks 010% 030% 030% ah 8% 142 Failers par 100 Disks 1.20% 080% 080% Xe 2% 222 Falles par 100 Disks 0.60% 050% 040% 10% 4% 4.+3 Fails par 100 Disks 020% 10% 10% 1h 1.0% 143 Fallers per 100 Disks Public Domain Software BMUG has the most up-to-date public domain software library around. Disks are currently available to members for $3 each (SS or DS!). See our detailed library listings at the back. We always offer the latest versions available, and we are constantly updating our software library. BMUG Fall 1986 me If you have any new software for the Macintosh, we welcome your submissions. If you've discovered a wonderful public domain or shareware program, have written one yourself, have created a wonderful template, or have drawn some interesting art, upload it to the BBS or send BMUG a disk. If you send us a disk, we will return a disk to you full of goodies! The maintenance of a comprehensive BMUG software library available to all depends on you! Newsletter Back Issues You can purchase back issues of BMUG newsletters. Each of the back newsletter issues come with a disk and can be purchased for $15. Newsletter Exchange Policy We now welcome exchanges with other users groups. Send your newsletter to BMUG, Attn: Steve Costa, at the address on the inside cover. Don’t bother sending “zero-effort” newsletters or collections of meeting announcements. If you've put in some effort, we'll send back a newsletter in exchange. We intend to bind, index, read, and make newsletters sent to us available in a public location and we hope that you will do the same. We apologize to groups that, in the past, have sent us newsletters without ever hearing back. SF Skyline / Jones BMUG Meeting Attendees / Kronick BMUG FALL 1986 ee Pie: Your Article In MacWrite ba IF a dct () (6 lines/inch The “Newsletter” (Bookman, 18 Point, Plain Text) Kee Nethery (Bookman, 14 Point, Plain Text) J keds nd NE Nise ada 6lines/inch SE EI itil. Welcome to the BMUG “newsletter”! This Fall newsletter body is set in Bookman, 10 point, plain text, with no beginning paragraph indentation, at 6 lines per inch, single spaced, and with full justification. This article has several purposes: to describe what happens to make the newsletter come together, to show you how we want your articles formatted, and to request articles on specific topics for the next newsletter. Building The BMUG “Newsletter”: Bookman, 10 point, bold text Each semester the newsletter eventually appears in your mail box. Two things are obvious: it's always late and each issue gets bigger. What's not obvious to you is what happens before it reaches you. A step-by-step article on how to build a newsletter would be nice for us to write, but every newsletter comes together differently. The newsletter team job descriptions are fairly consistent between newsletters. In practice, the editing team shares all these jobs and titles, and works together to bring you this publication. Contributors: People like you write about what they are doing. Beginners describe the basics that we've forgotten were difficult to understand. Hackers satisfy our curiosity about what really happens inside our computer. And the rest of you tell us the truth about things we would like to know but haven't had the time to learn. Thanks! Editor-In-Chief: In theory, the editor-in-chief is concerned with all the tasks involved in producing the newsletter. It's the editor's job to make sure that everything gets done. In practice, the editor worries about as much as possible and everything else gets handled by others who worry about why something is not getting done. Section Editors: Some newsletter sections are decided ahead of time (like the AI section) and a person assumes responsibility for getting and editing articles on that particular topic. More typically, we receive several articles that naturally would be grouped together under one general topic and a person assumes responsibility for editing that group of articles. Section Editors also merge all their articles into one final MacWrite document. Editors: Many people spend many weekends copy-editing each article, checking for accuracy, BMUG ‘ble, Fall 1986 Pe spelling, format, etc. They do the bulk of the newsletter work. Art Editor: Arranges for the front and back covers, headers, and artwork to accompany articles or to be used as filler. Our local Graphics Design SIG (Special Interest Group) has supplied much of our artwork. Production Coordinator: Finds the least expensive print shop that will do a good quality job. Past issues have been photocopied from LaserWriter prints and bound by the copy shop. The cost is high but small incremental orders are possible. This issue is offset printed and Perfect Bound because it looks better and is less expensive in large quantities. BMUG Office Staff: Unlike all these other jobs, entering your membership data into our database is a paid position because it's so important and needs to be done professionally. The staff, with occasional volunteer assistance, also handles packaging, postage, and addressing of your newsletter. When you're sending out thousands of newsletters, like we are, this is a huge job. Software Librarian: Keeps our public domain and shareware software up-to-date, recovers newsletter files when they get trashed, and generally keeps up with what software has value. This person also ponders over what gets included in our membership disk. On-Line Services: Several people spend large amounts of time monitoring the various on-line services (AppleLink, ARPAnet, BMUG BBS, CompuServe, Delphi, GEnie, UseNet, MCI MAIL, etc.) They answer questions, collect information, and generally keep informed so that BMUG information is as up-to-date as possible. Please Format Your Articles We only accept articles on disk (in the past, we have accepted them by other means, including on-line transmission, but we have found some problems with the reliability of these methods). We like to receive them pre-formatted to our guidelines (just like this article). The text should be in MacWrite. If you don’t have MacWrite, print out your article and give us a “text-only” file. I know, you love MS Word, PageMaker, etc. but we have to be able to pass your file around from person to person and we all own MacWrite or some word processor that can read MacWrite files. "_@ File Edit View Special 1 The Animator 16 items 405K in disk ‘300K available ao Zz oo E23) snimatorFigare Custer The aniator About Animator... Custer Sereen Shot. Custer BMUG FALL 1986 en, ~ Graphics can be included in your MacWrite document or you can send us MacPaint screen shots or MacDraw diagrams, or GLUE documents, or Startup Screens, or FullPaint or SuperPaint documents. We will handle putting the graphics into your article. Screen shots (MacPaint images of the current screen, like above) can be made by simultaneously pressing Command-Shift-3 in most programs. The headers and footers need to be big enough to include our standard information. Please format them with four blank lines each, single spaced, at 6 lines per inch (check the box in the ruler). Please keep the margins the same as what you get when you ask for a New MacWrite document. You can tab to your heart’s content; please don’t use spaces to make tables. Basically, look at how these articles are formatted and do what we do. We try to adhere to certain style conventions. Menus, dialog choices, and other program selections, like Save, are Bold and capitalized. Keyboard commands are capitalized and hyphenated if they should be pressed simultaneously (Shift-Option-3). Software programs, and book and magazine titles, like MacWorld or MacWrite are Italic text and capitalized. Programming languages, like C or Pascal, hardware, fonts, DAs (Desk Accessories) and utilities are capitalized. We get a heavy dose of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)... Please spell them out at least once. If you review a product, include the company’s Name, Address, Phone, Price, and if it’s software, whether copy protected. Finally, in Berkeley, this editor is very careful to use non-sexist pronouns (instead of he or she). See why the editors have so much work to do? We can send you a Writer's Disk for the next newsletter. The disk contains the screen versions of the laser fonts we will be using, a pre-formatted MacWrite document, and instructions. Send a note about what you will be writing about and include your return address. P.S. When you send us your article, write a small blurb about yourself. We (Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public) are curious about you. So who are you?? Articles / Information We Would Like To Have For The Next Newsletter ° What's useful for the disabled? ° What's it like computing outside the United States? What should hardware and software designers include for markets outside the US? How do you keep up-to-date? Artificial intelligence applications. Medical applications. How To ... articles (custom start-up screens and sounds, build your own hardware, etc.) Tricks and Tips for use as filler at the end of articles. Graphics and Publishing. ° Hardware peripherals (SCSI drives, optical character readers, digitizers) * Networking (AppleTalk, Ethernet, corporate and university networks) * Telecommunicating (running a BBS, on-line research, modems and mobile phones) ¢ Articles you would like to see. Kee Nethery was the Editor-In-Chief for Spring 1986, and has been an absentee Editor-In-Chief for Fall 1986. His new car is fine, thank you, and he intends to keep it on the road. For grins he organizes large PhoneNet AppleTalk networks connecting various vendors together at Macintosh trade shows, Bookman, 10 point, Italics. 10 BMUG Yi Fall 1986 a a Design, Graphics & Animation DESIGN, GRAPHICS & ANIMATION Beyond Pretty Pages ¢ Planning and assembling a booklet Zen and the Art of the Macintosh ¢ A book for those without a motorcycle Tutorial: Silicon Press « Printing cards, labels, and leaflets, plus color SuperPaint: Its Name is True ¢ Paint and draw in one program A Preview of Cricket Draw ° Producing modifiable PostScript files directly ComicWorks & GraphicWorks ° The page layout program with two names Towards a Strategy for Macintosh Explosions ¢ Improving your destructive capability High Speed Animation on the Mac ¢ A powerful way to produce animation How 3D Graphics is Done on the Mac © What's inside three 3D programs Programming in PostScript ° New graphic capabilities through coding Adventures with PostScript © Book production and fine art Ann Casamajor Frank Patrick Barbara J. Chan Dan Wood Dan Wood Dan Wood Glenn Harris Philip J. Suh Greg Simons Denis G. Pelli Arthur Luehrmann 1l 14 16 20 23 25 27 29 31 35 45 BMUG Fall 1986 Pe # : 2 Beyond Pretty Pages: Planning and Assembling a Booklet Ann Casamajor, J.D. publish \vt 2 ...b: to produce or release for publication; specif; PRINT OK, you've learned to use PageMaker or Microsoft Word and made yourself some pretty pages. Now what? Are you desktop publishing yet? That depends. A term paper or business report will generally go on 8-1/2 x 11 paper in a big stack just as it comes out of the LaserWriter. Velo-bind it and you're done. How many copies do you need? Step over to the photocopy machine and collate that many stacks before binding. Sometimes, however, you might want your final product to be a different size. In my case, that size was dictated by the rules of the United States Supreme Court. After being shocked by the high cost of typeset, printed briefs in the peculiar size specified, I used my Mac to produce two different briefs that were needed in the course of drilling a dry hole in Washington, D.C. Our case was not among the three-in-a-hundred chosen for review by the court, but I was intrigued by the possibilities of publishing such briefs "on the desktop." This article describes the process by which pages put together in Microsoft Word were assembled into a folded, stapled booklet approximately the size of a typical small software manual. Unless you're independently wealthy (or can otherwise justify the cost of a LaserWriter and a large-sheet photocopier), you'll probably need the help of your friendly local copy shop/laser parlor. I used Copy-Rite, partly because they are cozy with BMUG (selling BMUG disks and posting the help line number, among other things), and partly because their laser time is very reasonable. They're also friendly, helpful, and ready to take over whatever part of the process you may not want to handle yourself. Supreme Court briefs must be 6-1/8 x 9-1/4, with a page image size of 4-1/8 x 7-1/8. I used Word, because it's what I'm used to and has some nice options, such as specifiable line spacing, which lend themselves to typesetting work and the minimalist graphics required to make an attractive cover/coverleaf page. A little fiddling with the margins, followed by some trial prints on the ImageWriter, set up the pages. I printed the final in 12- point Times, but used 10-point New York at home to approximate the same page size. Comparison to the expensive printshop product ($800 and up) resulted in 15-point line spacing, which is set from the Word paragraph formats dialog box. This is slightly wider than single spacing and considerably more compact than double spacing. It's what the Big Boys use. The two briefs were printed differently. The first was offset printed and the second was photocopied; there is no perceptible difference in the final product. I think I would offset only if extremely high quality was imperative, meaning the page proofs would come out of a Linotronic typesetter rather than the LaserWriter. Laser printers and photocopiers have approximately the same resolution, so little or no quality is lost in reproducing your pretty pages yourself, likely in the same shop in which you rented laser time. Paste-up is required. I know of no software product that will allow you to lay out non-contiguous pages in landscape page orientations on 11 x 17 paper without nightmarish document-arrangement problems. Something might do it on a Linotronic, but I haven't had occasion to check it out. 11 x 17 is necessary because nothing in 8-1/2 width will be tall enough, when folded, to make the finished booklet. My finished unfolded page size was 12-1/8 x 9-1/4. ll BMUG FALL 19 an The briefs required a table of contents and a table of authorities cited, and also had a short appendix. The drill here is to print the text pages, beginning with Arabic page 1 (which may or may not carry a page number), consecutively from one document, then use the hard copy to peg the tabled locations in the text. Once such things as the tables and any other preliminary materials (preface, forward, author note, etc.) are arranged on pages in another document, number that group of pages with lower-case Roman numerals (i, ti, etc.) and print it out. You can also manually index this way. Open the document, use the search functions to find all references to key words and phrases, confirm the page location on your hard copy, and build an index document, with its own pagination. The cover and coverleaf are essentially the same page, which contains the title of the court, case, and document as well as the names and addresses of the attorneys. The traditional typeset style is to put the case number at the top of the page, then a very tight pair of horizontal lines to bracket most of the page. A similar pair of lines at the bottom of the page completes the bracket. I used Times for everything, 18-point bold for the court's name, 14-point bold caps for the document title, sparing use of italics, and made the pairs of lines by making one (centered paragraph, hold down underscore) line, returning, doing another below it, selecting the two lines and choosing 2-point line spacing from the paragraph formats dialog box.. Experiment a little with length to balance its visual impact with the rest of the page, then copy it to the bottom. If you set your margins so as to leave the standard 3/4" at the top, paste-up is simplified. Slide the top of the printout along the top of the paste-up sheet until the justified margins are 3/4" from the edge of the paste-up sheet on the left and a mark made at 11-1/2" to the right. Real paste-up paper and a waxer are nice, but any clean white 11 x 17 will do, using a glue stick or rubber cement. Before you can paste up, you must plan the layout of the folded sheets so the fronts and backs will all fall into the right order. This can fry your brain if you don't have a method and a good idea of how you want your booklet to look. First, make a map, or “plant,” which is a pictorial diagram of the stack before folding and stapling. Use MacPaint or MacDraw (or something similar) to draw a bold horizontal line for the cover, then a series of thinner lines underneath. Label each face of the lines with the number of the page, including blanks for such things as every face but one of the bold cover line. Plan such things as whether your first page will start on the right-hand of the open booklet, which is the usual style, and use blanks freely, especially at the beginning or end, where they may be necessary or convenient to make a nicer arrangement of finished booklet pages. Make a chart of your pages The number of lines in the stack is the number of sheets you will need to reproduce. The arrangement of pages on the sheets above is for a booklet that folds downward, so the cover is at the top right, which opens to the booklet coverleaf (with a blank back), then lower-case Romans for the tables of contents and authorities (use more if your tables or similar introductory matters run longer). Page 1 falls on the right-hand side of the open booklet, and the Arabic text pages follow front-and-back to the appendix. The appendix coverleaf should also fall on the right-hand side, followed by a blank. Insert a blank at the end or in front of the booklet coverleaf if your page count is uneven. Paper-clip the page proofs (LaserWriter output) together, assemble the stack, and tum through them to make sure it all looks right. Once you're sure it's just the way you want it, paste them up in order. 12 BMU* Fall 1986 we blank m cover blank blank overleaf sP3 apa ; blank blank PP T Blank i Appendix 12 1 blank 10 iW e 3 9 & 5 4 7 6 Make two-sided copies of the pasted proofs, referring to the chart and making a trial copy of each before running the full count. Double-check the margins and the matchup through the page. Front and back should cover the same areas of the sheet. If it's off line, move the second-side master around until the trial print matches up. There's no easy way to collate this kind of work, unless you find a machine that can keep track of the fronts and backs while collating, so you will probably need to assemble the final stacks manually. Photocopy the covers on an index or other suitable stock, or consider having the covers offset-printed as a separate job while you do the rest. Cut the stacks, with covers, down to the finished size. For a booklet of more than 20 or so pages, allow a little more than twice the finished size (a sixteenth of an inch) when pasting up and cutting to allow for a thick fold. A good sharp paper cutter (a.k.a finger remover) will do this, but the print shops have a machine that cuts stacks very cleanly. Do it yourself slowly and carefully or pay to have it lopped off ina trice. Folding and stapling is easy on the machines at Copy-Rite, but the job is relatively simple to do manually. Staple through the cover toward the center sheet, so the ends of the staples are inside the booklet, and fold carefully along the staple line. Now, put 40 of these into a big envelope addressed to the Supreme Court, put six dollars of postage on it, and wait a few months. 13 BMUG FALL 1986 ee Zen and the Art of the Macintosh: Discoveries on the Path to Computer Enlightenment Frank Patrick y) This has been a summer of nostalgia for me. First I rediscover my Alma Mater through an alumni marching band (Rutgers University '73). Then a business trip takes me to central North Carolina, the scene of the summer of my youth (Greensboro, 1967). Last week there was a 20th anniversary salute to the Fillmore on HBO. And now I pick up a book that I expect to be about one of my current infatuations, the Macintosh, and find out that it is really about some of my old infatuations— Zen and the Tao; those holistic philosophies of my counter-cultural youth. Tll admit it. Sometimes my tastes are just this side of weird. So when I saw this book at the Princeton MacFest and was caught by the title (so blatantly lifted from the classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, a tale of coming to grips with rhetoric and technology), 1 browsed through it and was totally blown away by the MacPaint illustrations. I knew I had to check it out more thoroughly. Zen and the Art of the Macintosh, by writer/illustrator Michael Green, is one of, if not the first major publishing project “written, edited, designed, illustrated, typeset, laid out, and pasted-up entirely on a Macintosh computer.” It is ostensibly the odyssey of Mr. Green in his introduction, fascination, and coming to grips with the graphic seduction of the Mac. Profusely illustrated with an eclectic, but heavily orient-oriented assortment of MacPaintings and modified digitizings, Zen and the Art of the Macintosh is highly reminiscent of the multimedia books of Marshal Macluhan and Buckminster Fuller from the 1960s (There’s even a poster included, like my old Dylan album!!!). The media is the message/massage. The content is in the art as much as in the words. If not more so. Green is one of those people who can use the phrase, “the rest of us,” in full seriousness, without the slightest smirk. He can do a full functional specification on the concept of yin and yang, worthy of an IBM manual for the one side of your brain, and then fill the next two pages with a highly stylized version of the dots in the overlapping circles for the other side. Verbally and visually quoting the I Ching, the Tao, and various Zen masters, as well as numerous western artists and philosophers, like Descartes, Chagall, Leonardo, and Lewis Carroll, he draws the obvious parallel between the philoshophical duality and the digital 1s and Os that one might readily expect. But then he goes and draws another, unexpected, parallel between the early hacker ethic of free sharing of information and the medieval artists who shared ideas and images. It's a frustrating book, alternately infuriating and fascinating. Indeed, sometimes the turtle-necked, 1960s, Eastern philosophical sensibilities come through a bit too strong and get a bit syrupy. But just when that starts to happen, you turn the page and are fascinated by a either a little gem of verbal glitter (like the idea of “mental floss”) or by a fireworks display of lasered graphics. Even the author admits this when, discussing his analysis of the left brain-right brain, analytical-holistic dichotomy, he writes that the 14 BMUG Fall 1986 Pree “Analytical You is scrutinizing these statements for flaws in accuracy right now. Holistic You has already lost interest in the discussion. It's— She's (!)— probably staring out the window, wondering when we're getting on to the next picture.” And what pictures! From highly detailed fat-bit edited manipulations to the simplest filled-region and sumi-style minimalism, the book is overflowing with images and ideas. And not only does he offer the graphics as support for his narrative, but in several cases takes the reader/viewer through his creative process, leading in and out of the trial-and-error path that the Undo and Save as.., commands make so fertile for him. The final chapter, “Nuts & Bolts & Bits”, is a primer on the tools and techniques used in the artwork. Essentially MacPaint with Click-Art Effects, Pagemaker, and Easy3D, none of the tips are particularly new, but when told by an artist, with examples, one can really see their use. One which indicates the thought that Green puts into his tools, is the use of Pagemaker as a graphic tool, drawing beyond the boundaries of the page to attain huge, sweeping arcs otherwise only difficultly attainable. Not only the how-to but the why as well. How-to and Why. Word and Pictures. 1960s and 1980s. Digital and Natural. Macluhan and Macintosh. Hippie and Hacker. Yin-Yang and Binary Bits. Mr. Natural and Steve Jobs. Sumi and Fat-Bits. Switcher and Sutras. Mantras and Mice. Sitting Zazen and Midnight Hacking. Art and Science. Art of Science. Science of Art. Haiku and High-tech. Options and Option Keys. Tao and Technology. Infuriating and Fascinating. Angels and Architecture. Simon and Garfunkel. Omigod. . . He's got me doing it!!! Zen and the Art of the Macintosh is an intriguing book (I like the word “intriguing” — it can be totally meaningless in the right context—like a Zen koan!). It’s not only for the Macintosh user, but also for anyone interested in creativity, philosophy, technology, and the arts. It would be sure to be appreciated by your average renaissance man or woman, or your average idealistic college kid (if there are any of those left around days), or your average ex-hippie who's thinking of getting a computer to go with his Cuisinart and condo. But a warning— don't show it to your company’s IBM/MIS department if you're still trying to convince them of the Macintosh as a tool. They won't understand. Zen and the Art of the Macintosh: Discoveries on the Path to Computer Enlightenment Michael Green, Running Press 15 BMUG FALL 1986 on, Tutorial:* Silicon Press Barbara J. Chan Print mailing labels, cards, ID tags, invitations and disk labels in color?! Silicon Beach Software, creators of RealSound (Airborne! and Enchanted Scepters) and useful utilities such as those in Accessory Pak 1, released Silicon Press this spring for Macintosh color fans. With Silicon Press you can lay out graphics and text to match any card or label up to 17 x 17 inches. By pasting in your artwork and selecting fonts for the text, you can design an attractive label or leaflet for both black and white or color printing on the ImageWriter I, II or LaserWriter. When you want to print colored mailing labels for people whose names are stored in your database, you can import data from your favorite database file (FileMaker, MS File, Word, OverVUE, Jazz, and Multiplan to name a few). I wanted to mail an announcement to some conservation corps members (Figure 1). Besides wanting to create the flyer in color, I wanted a colored mailing label with logo (3-1/2 x 15/16 inches) for 35 addressees. So I loaded MacPaint with Rulers (from Accessory Pak I) and Silicon Press into Switcher. Designing the Mailing Label First design a logo 3/4 inch square in MacPaint, using the MacPaint icon. The page was to be printed in black, the paint streak and paint brush tip in red, and the paint brush and hand in blue. Using the lasso, separate the original drawing into three components: page, paint streak and brush tip, and brush and hand. Save them individually in a MacPaint document. Next switch to Silicon Press. Set the mailing label design size at 3.5 x .94 inches and the page for Portrait (corresponds to Tall in MacWrite Page Setup) with the same measurements. If you are using an ImageWriter II, set Preferences in the Format menu for black and white screen and color ImageWriter II printer. That brings up an additional menu called Pen Color. Now go back and Copy the page component from MacPaint and Paste it into the Silicon Press Design window at the lefthand side. Clicking on Show Rectangles/Colors under the Format menu brings up a dotted rectangle around each item in the design window. Now click your pointer in the middle of the page graphic, go up to the Pen Color menu and select black. Repeat the process with the other two graphic components by copying and pasting them into the Silicon Press window. Before positioning them into the page component, click on each of the parts and select red and blue pen colors. Now, using the pointer, move them into proper position. With the Show Rectangles/ Colors feature on, you can see exactly which components will be printed in what color. Figure 2 shows the mailing label and its components. To type the address data format, select a font from the Font menu, click on the point size you desire, and choose a color from Pen Color. As with Microsoft Word’s Merge, type in your field names, marking them with the data merge characters (option-backslash and shift-option- backslash): 16 Fall 1986 om FALL GREETINGS ‘As an Environmental Conservationist, you have contributed to the health and welfare of our ecological environment. We'd like to bring you up-to-date on how your contributions have helped expand the work ofthe Bay Area Conservation Network. AAs part of our ongoing work, $5,000 of the money you raised last year was devoted to three recycling ‘enters In Oakland, Berkeley and Albany. The funda were used to upgrade existing equipment and to provide recycling containera for residential customers. Each of the cities where the recycling centers are located subsidizes the operation by providing people to staff the centers. Because of our commitment to increasing the open space acreage for everyone to use, The Network <onated $10,000 to purchase the area now known as Purple Ridge Park in the East Bay Hilla, ‘This year we will Increase our fund-raising activities to inchide a Summer Auction, a Wildlife Slide and Sound Show by Bill Hickock anda Mud Mime Troup play about the environment. e Chickadee aye: Red Won't you join us in these and other activities? For more information, contact Bay Area Conservation Network at 415-ECO-LOGY. < Beak: Orange Hoad: Black Artwork courtesy of Real by Electric Cottage Industries CHICKADEE COMPONENTS Figure 1 Breast: Orange Upper Wing: Blue ‘owar Wing: Black & «name» MAILING LABEL COMPONENTS Underoresits:.¥ alow: address» citys, «stale» «zips © Poge: Black Paint streak and brush tip: Red Pine Bow: Green 2 a Hand with brush handle: Blue igs ‘Address: Green address» citys, «state» «zips Figure 2 17 «name» «address» «city», «state» «zip» Now it's time to test your design using Test Print from the File menu. Test Print prints your design with a dotted rectangle the size you have indicated in the Set Design Size feature, and it helps you position your design on the mailing label. My design was created for roll labels 3-1/2 x 15/16 inches. If your design is not correctly aligned, reposition your mailing labels and try it again until it is perfect. Then Save the design under the name "Mailing." Next set up the data file for the print merge. Quit MacPaint and load your database application in Switcher. My records are stored in FileMaker and include more than 13 fields. I only wanted to print five fields. I sorted through my database and selected the 35 names to whom I wanted to mail my flyer. With FileMaker it's easy to output the data to an ASCII textfile with the name, address, city, state and zip fields selected. The data was saved under a new name, SP Merge. Switch back to Silicon Press, open "Mailing", and click Open from the File Menu. Next Open SP Merge. The contents flow into the Data Window. To format it for print merge, clean up the tabs and separate each field with a comma and space. Once that is done, click on Print from the File Menu and your labels will be printed one by one, with the proper data recorded for each addressee. Note that there is no separate Print Merge command in the file Menu. You must import your data into the Data Window for the merge feature to work. Creating the Colored Flyer Set your flyer design at 8-1/2 x 11-1/2 inches under Page Setup. Under the Format menu Set Design Size at 8 x 11 inches. I chose a chickadee from Electronic Cottage Industries’ Real Art. As with the mailing logo, you separate the graphic into its color components (Figure 3) and position them in Silicon Press. Remember how we can't wrap words around graphics in MacWrite or MS Word? Silicon Press solves that problem by allowing you to lay out graphics in different color components, and to type text anywhere on the page in the color of your choice. By typing your text in blocks and placing the blocks wherever you like, you can get the word wraparound effect (see Figure 1). If you type each block of text separately and choose your color, it will be easy to lay out your page design. Voila, a completed color flyer! Comments The Silicon Press manual is logically and thoughtfully organized with ample illustrations and begins with a brief tutorial called A Quick Look at Silicon Press. The bulk of the documentaton focuses on using the program. It concludes with appendices to show you how to use Silicon Press with Switcher and with keyboard commands. I would like to see a tool box similar to that found in MacDraw, MacDraft, MacPaint or PageMaker. Granted, Silicon Press is not meant to be a full-fledged page layout program, but it could use line, box and circle drawing tools, and several shaded fill patterns. Lines and boxes can be effective design enhancements. 18 BMUG At $79.95 Silicon Press is a bargain for anyone who wants to create colorful leaflets and flyers. For more information, contact Silicon Beach Software, P.O. Box 261430, San Diego, CA 92126 (619-695-6956). Other Products Mentioned: FileMaker Real Art Forethought MacWare Electric Cottage Industries 1973 Landings Dr. P. O. Box 217 Mountain View, CA 94043 Spooner, WI 54801-0217 800-622-9273 715-635-3516 Barbara J. Chan is a freelance writer, trainer and desktop publishing consultant. She can be reached via GEnie: BJCHAN, The Well: bjc, or 415-644-2794, Msg. #4177 in **Public Messages** Posted on 10/31/86 at 09:09:16 To: ALL From: MARK NDLER Subject: MacDraft vl.2a Her 's a few tips to users of MacDraft vl.2a: 1) If you hold down the TAB key dimension line (rather than having 2) If you are having proble: le drawing a line, you will get a choose it from the LINE menu. s selecting fill patterns, power down ALL hardware, remove your battery for about 30 seconds, and then boot back up (not sure why it works, but it does). Also, if you are using old control panel, the blink rate (upper right setting) should NOT be turned off. 3) Older 1.1 documents can't be opened from the desktop, you musr open them from within the program self (from the file meun). The creator type was changed (from MACD to MDFT). Hope these help, Mark Chandler 19 BMUG FALL 1986 aaa SUPERPAINT: Its Name is True Dan Wood I first saw SuperPaint in its earliest form back in January 1986 when the programmer, Bill Snider was showing it off for Silicon Beach Software. SuperPaint is an extremely well- thought- out combination of FullPaint and MacDraw, with improvements on both. SuperPaint gives you a pattern palette and a tool palette on the screen like FullPaint, and allows you to open multiple documents. The key to the program, however, is that it actually consists of two layers: a bitmapped, painting layer (like what FullPaint or MacPaint produce) and a object-oriented layer (like what MacDraw or MacDraft produce). The layers coexist in harmony, sharing almost all the same tools. A Background Although bitmapped objects and draw objects that appear on the screen may look the same, they have quite different characteristics. A painted circle, for example, is a mere collection of dots (which can be changed with the spray can, the eraser, the pencil, etc.) that will print with the “jaggies,” while a drawn circle is stored as a circle with a particular fill and pen pattern that can be resized or reshaped at any time and will print very smoothly on a laser printer. Similarly, a painted block of text prints with the jaggies but can be modified graphically, while a drawn block of text will print with beautiful laser fonts and can be edited at any time. The fact that the different characteristics of bitmap (painted) versus object (drawn) objects are needed for different reasons makes the availibility of both kinds extremely useful. As an example, most text in a document should be created on the drawing layer, so that they will be printed in laser fonts. Text with special effects of some sort are better off being painted, so that they can be modified. A polygon representing some geometric form should be drawn; a polygon which is the basis for a picture should be painted. While the ability to combine of painted and drawn graphics was available to some extent in MacDraw (using MacPaint and Switcher), the process was time-consuming; the resulting graphics were never quite right. SuperPaint is a program which was carefully written to ensure that everything comes out just right. The scaling of drawn and painted objects align exactly. A painting with a drawn border will be aligned when printed just as it is aligned on the screen. Accomplishing this was impossible in MacDraw! The Macintosh screen displays 72 dots per inch. Since the LaserWriter displays 300 dots per inch, SuperPaint makes one dot on the Mac screen print as 1/75th of an inch (4X4 LaserWriter pixels). Additionally, with a wonderful feature called LaserBits, a painted object will be printed at 300 dots per inch (more on this later). What the Program Will Do SuperPaint has almost all of the features in both FullPaint and MacDraw. The Basic tools— ovals, rectangles, lines, polygons, arcs, freehand shapes, fill patterns, line patterns, and so on, are all there. Other basic tools which only apply to painting (since they deal with bitmaps) include selection boxes, lassos, fatbits, erasers, spray cans, and paint buckets. Tools and concepts which apply only to objects include resizing and reshaping, grouping, bringing to front and sending to back, and true gray shades. 20 BMUG Fall 1986 a“ Here are some other amazing features in SuperPaint, which | will destribe in sentence fragments: Filling characters and character backgrounds with gray patterns. Scaling drawn objects by an entered percentage. Selecting graphics for cut & paste from both layers at once. Full screen graphics (like FullPaint) with the ability to hide the tool palettes and the menu bars. Auto Scrolling for drawing or selecting of large objects. Drawing shapes (rectangles, circles, etc.) from the center out. Double-clicking the lasso for lassoing of the whole document. Drawing a selection box around bitmaps that will turn into a lasso or shrink into a box around the edges. Constraining lines not only to 45° and 90° but also to 30° and 60°. 32 gray shades. Dragging complex objects as outlines to speed things up. Adding vertices to polygons. Being able to open and save as MacPaint, PICT, and startup screen documents. Arbitrary font sizes. Color printing on ImageWriter II. Grabber (hand to move about the document) available all the time. 2X, 4X, and 8X magnification. Editable brushes and patterns. Multiple pattern palettes. Lines that can be of varying horizontal and vertical thicknesses. Free rotation, stretching, slanting, skewing, and perspective (like ClickArt Effects) on paintings. “Nudging” a selection to move one pixel at a time. Rulers. Since SuperPaint works on two planes, you can transfer an object from one plane to another. For example, if you have drawn (using objects) a robot, using rectangles, and you want to then add various shadings, you can select the objects and copy them onto the painting layer. The image (as you see on your screen) is now in bitmap form, which can be altered with the spray can or the eraser. The robot was first created as a then moved to paint then moved back to draw layer, collection of objects layer and edited also reduced 33%, on a grey bax. Transferring in the opposite direction is equally useful. If you want to put the picture of the robot on a gray background, you would select the picture of the robot with the marquee and transfer it into an object. The robot will now be seen as a drawn object (with handles) which can be placed upon a gray rectangle. An object which is actually a bitmap image is fairly static; it can't be modified with the painting tools. The real beauty of moving painted object onto the graphics plane is that they can be shrunken or expanded without losing any resolution when printed on the laser printer. No longer are you forced to create bitmapped graphics that reek of Mac— just draw something bigger than you want it to appear, shrink it, and print it on the LaserWriter. SuperPaint takes this concept of high-resolution bitmapped images one step further. With LaserBits, a separate bitmapped picture (stored in a different SuperPaint file) is linked into a SuperPaint file to be printed at 300 dots per inch, the resolution of the LaserWriter. What you see on the screen is only an approximation of a very sharp image. The image is actually just a bitmap picture printed at 25% actual size. Thus a SuperPaint document which is 8 inches by 10 21 oe inches will be 2 inches by 2.5 inches on your document. Since the LaserBits image is stored ina separate file, the document can contain many of these images without hogging the Mac's memory. part of original LaserBits image on the LaserBits Image when screen printed SuperPaint is, without a doubt, the best graphics program available for the Macintosh. If you create graphics, you will make a lot of use of this program. This is, of course, only the first version of the program, and I can think of several more features I'd like to see in an upgrade, such as arbitrary rotation of objects, tracing outlines, reshaping rounded rectangles, masking bit images (like ComicWorks), entering the dimensions of an object, and producing real, editable PostScript code (which would allow rotation of text, thinner line widths, and special effects), like Cricket Draw. But then, these features would make it the ultimate graphics program. For now, I'm happy with just the penultimate. Note: As of this writing,SuperPaint has just been released; I am reviewing version 0.95, available for customers who can't wait for version 1.0. It lacks five features scheduled for 1.0: color printing, rulers, bitmap effects like rotation and stretching, arbitrary text size entry, and grids. By the time you read this, version 1.0 or greater may already be out. Charlie Jackson, the president of Silicon Beach Software, says that future versions should have more features. The company is very accommodating in handling the requests of the public, so if you have any comments about what you'd like to see in the program, drop them a line. SUPERPAINT Silicon Beach Software, P.O. Box 261430, San Diego, CA 92126. (619) 695-6956. List price $99.95. 22 BMUG Fall 1986 a A Preview of Cricket Draw Dan Wood Cricket Draw, by Cricket Software, the makers of Cricket Graph, is an object-oriented graphics program like MacDraw with a sophisticated twist. As of this writing it hasn't been released, but I saw it in demonstrated at the MacWorld Expo in Boston and the Seybold Desktop Publishing Conference in San Francisco. The special thing about Cricket Draw is that instead of sending its output to the LaserWriter by the standard method (using the LaserWriter driver to encode it into a pseudo-PostScript gibberish that the LaserWriter can barely understand and most humans cannot), the graphics are converted into a more-or-less understandable, modifyable PostScript file which is then sent to the LaserWriter. So you don't program in PostScript? You're not alone. The main advantage is that the program can generate much more accurate graphics that look much better. If you've used MacDraw, you've probably wished for thinner or thicker lines or more shades of gray. Cricket Draw supports that. PostScript also allows for dashed lines of various patterns, which I believe is also supported directly from the program. And, of course, any item (including text, you MacDraft fans) can be rotated to any value, and slanted, such as turning a rectangle into a parallelogram. What was impossible in MacDraw is trivial for this program since it sends direct PostScript. The tools available on the program are much like MacDraw-— Polygons, text, circles, arcs, and so on. There was a strange little printer icon at the bottom that has something to do with bitmapped graphics. Cricket Draw also has some “special effects,” which consist of starbursts (a circle made up of lots of lines radiated from the center), horizon lines, and "fountains" (filling an object with gray that starts light at one end and gradually turns darker towards the other end). These are very nice, although I dread to see the next generation of documents that reek of Macintosh by having fountains and starbursts all over them! Hopefully Cricket will be coming out with a library of other PostScript goodies for some variety. Once the document is created, a window can be displayed that contains the actual PostScript for that document. Each object on the screen corresponds to a few lines of straightforward PostScript code. If you had created a triangle filled with a particular shade of gray and a particular line thickness, you probably wouldn't have much trouble finding that on the PostScript listing and seeing what corresponds to what, then adding a few embellishments if desired. The coordinates of the objects look somewhat complicated (such as moving to point 312, 412 and drawing a line to 330, 446...you get the picture) since those numbers aren't too revealing about the location on the page. Hopefully the final program will have the option of giving coordinates in inches or centimeters so that the position on the page will be more intuitive. Iam very excited about this program! As a PostScript programmer, I have had to suffer with the tedium of laying out a page with a lot of guesswork. This will bring the “what you see is what you get” aspect of the Mac (or, as they say, “what you get is better than what you see”) to PostScript programming. 23 The person at Cricket Software with whom I spoke told me that the graphics created with Cricket Draw (including the unique effects) could be cut out and pasted into other applications, retaining their PostScript compatibility. I certainly hope that's true! I doubt, however, that any changes that you make to the PostScript text get reflected in graphic document. The sample page which they handed out contained an airplane that was created in MacDraw, so you won't have to start from scratch. If you do graphics on the Mac, check out this program when it's available. It's on my Christmas wish list. CRICKET DRAW (not yet released as of this writing, due Fall/Winter 1986) Cricket Software 3508 Market Street, Suite 206, Philadelphia, PA 19104. (215) 387-7955, (800) 345-8112 TidBytes by Ken Huie History of VaporWare The term vaporware may be a newly coined term but the concept is centuries old. In 1777, at the end of a self-published pamphlet, George Palmer promised a future “Chemical Treatise on the Art of Dying” and a transcript of a discussion with Samuel Johnson “concerning the production of black cloth.” They were mentioned as forthcoming by several other authors for the next twenty years but neither of the two products ever came into being. A Speedy & Simple Serial Signal Stethoscope An undocumented feature of the ImageWriter I is the ability to convert all ASCII received to hexadecimal format, 24 hex numbers to a line. This ability is useful when you need to test a terminal program, debug a print routine, or you just want to find out exactly which control codes are being sent out through serial port. To get into this mode, hold the LINE FEED button down when you turn the printer on. When there are less than a line's worth of characters in the buffer, pressing SELECT will print those characters received. Get out of this mode by cycling the power off/on again. This function is a ROM holdover from the time when the ImageWriter was known as the ProWriter (built by C. Itoh). It was not documented then either. Custom Airborne! The game Airborne! has a file called StartupSong that can be replaced with any MacRecorder file shorter than 160K. Make the MacRecorder file from a speeded-up recording since Airborne! will play back at a slower speed. Use SetFile or FEdit to change the Type to WAVE and Creator to WVED, then copy the file to the game disk. There is nothing like a rousing chorus of Loute Louie before doing battle with the infinite horde. 24 BMUG Fall 1986 _ ComicWorks & GraphicWorks Two Programs, One Review, Two Opinions. Dan Wood The program(s) ComicWorks, from MacroMind and Mike Saenz, the creator of the Shatter comic books, is a program that allows Macintosh Users to make comic books, cards, ads, posters, newsletters, and comic strips. Essentially, it is a combination of MacPaint and MacDraw. GraphicWorks, on the other hand, is essentially the same program with a different title. MindScape, the company distributing ComicWorks and GraphicWorks, has released the same program under two different titles and packages so that non-comic-artists will not be deterred by an unserious title. The software packages are not very different. The main differences are that the templates provided with the program are essentially space-hero pictures in one, page templates in the other (can you guess which one is which?); and that the manual has been rewritten. The software, except for a few minor differences, is functionally the same. Thus, I will be referring to the ComicWorks program, although I am actually referring to both. Confused? Good. What it does ComicWorks works on the surface much like MacPaint, in that you are given a number of painting tools to draw a picture. Rather than working in a page, you work on an easel. That is, you only draw one particular object within the confines of an easel. Several easels fit within a panel, and several panels will fit within page. Imagining the page of a comic book, the terms are fairly clear. The painting aspect of ComicWorks is very easy, since it is almost the same as MacPaint. One feature in the program that I absolutely love is the airbrush. It is similar to MacPaint’s spray can, but the airbrush paints with an intensity depending on how long the brush is held down in a given spot. It makes the old spray can obsolete. The other new paint feature is ThinBits™ (was FatBits ever trademarked?), which allows you to draw while in the Show Page display. With this feature, you can draw something big with the right proportions, then clean it up in normal size or FatBits. Anybody who has tried to draw a full-page figure in MacPaint will love this feature. The way that easels work within a panel is ComicWork's most interesting feature. Easels overlap, so that objects can be drawn individually and placed in the correct place on a panel. For instance, a panel might contain a mostly-black field of stars on the bottom, with a planet, spaceship, and rocket-blast tail on top. Overlapping bitmap images is no trivial matter, since overlapping black and white dots should produce the correct effect. Given a picture of a person standing in front of his airplane, you shouldn't be able to see through the person! ComicWorks deals with this by having objects be masked— that is, an outline of the topmost figure is essentially erased before placing the outlined figure on the page. All the standard methods of bitmap transferring on the Macintosh are also available: COPY, OR, XOR, BIC, etc., allowing for some special effects. The other main feature of ComicWorks is the “voice balloon” universal to all comics. ComicWorks provides a wide variety of balloons (that can be reshaped and stretched at any time) containing any mix of fonts and styles (Hooray!). A voice balloon exists on the same plane as an easel; it can be moved around on a panel. 25 BMUG FALL 1986 The templates Two disks of templates come with the ComicWorks program. Essentially these are only useful for inspiration, unless you want to make a space opera. There are several views of a couple of spaceships, several pictures of a serious, muscular astronaut, probably named Dirk or Lance, a shapely blonde space woman, grotesque BEM's (bug-eyed monsters), Dinosaurs, planets, alien landscapes, explosions, and star fields. The artwork is probably the best bitmapped Macintosh graphics around! Additionally, a sample comic book (featuring the same ships, aliens, and humans), figures in motion, and sample greeting cards and newsletters can be found on the template disks. GraphicWorks comes with one template disk of typical desktop publishing templates. How does it handle? ComicWorks is often very clumsy and frustrating for a beginner. The concept of panels and easels takes a bit of getting used to; even with that, it's a major hassle. Easels have a tendency to disappear under other easels when you want to use them, or to persist on staying in front when you want to get rid of them. Response can be a bit slow at times. And— horror of horrors— I got a system bomb when reshaping a panel, and another one while printing. The bad news ComicWorks’ main problem is its terrible printing on the LaserWriter. In reading the manual, I was discouraged from using the detailed print mode, in which laser fonts (like Times, Helvetica, etc.) and balloons are printed on the laser printer as characters and smooth lines rather than as jagged dots. Ok, so they don't want me to do it. Why? The output is terrible. The bitmaps in the panels don't line up properly in relation to the panels. Some LaserWriter fonts were improperly substituted, and the test got repeated not unlike extended versions of pop songs. Panels run off the page. Isn't the quality supposed to be better on a laser printer? When printed in the regular mode, you the quality isn't any better than that of an ImageWrtter, since the laser fonts aren't substituted and the angled lines in balloons look jagged. At least Silicon Beach Software, in creating SuperPaint, was nice enough to circumvent such problems when dealing with bitmapped graphics. Should you get GraphicWorks? In my opinion, GraphicWorks is not the program to buy for desktop publishing. If you happen to have ComicWorks and are using an ImageWriter, fine. Ok, so should you get ComicWorks? If you want a good environment for making comics or storyboards, get ComicWorks. In spite of its faults, the way in which bitmapped objects can be placed upon each other makes the program very nice. Realize that you will have a fight ahead of you if you wish to use the LaserWriter, and that the output will “look Macintosh.” For making comics, I found this program fun and addictive. COMICWORKS or GRAPHICWORKS MindScape, Inc., 3444 Dundee Rd., Northbrook, IL 60062. (800) 221-9884. List price: $79.95 26 Towards a Strategy for Macintosh Explosio Glenn Harris ns Yes, destruction-graphics really can add focus to that otherwise text-heavy quarterly report. But realize that, through overuse, this once-innovative technique now requires a particular Savoir-faire in order to lob your own fulminations above the current sloppy parade of pyrotechnics. What follows is only a brief summary of techniques and helpful tips. If you are already an old hand, you may still find some of the subtler points helpful in your drawings. If you are new, welcome to the rewarding world of expressive diagrammatic explosions. SIZ) sz (x2 ZIN ZIN 7IN Cosmic egg Closed universe Open Subdued The Basics ¢ Misplaced and badly timed explosions can destroy vital data and implies an unprofessional attitude. ¢ Mix explosion graphics with other visuals. Overdependence can turn this serious business tool into just another gaudy effect. ¢ Use MacPaint or FullPaint, not MacDraft or MacDraw. Good explosions require a flexuous touch - not a ruler. e Keep away from digitized pictures or clip art blowups. But digitized clip art is OK. ¢ Take care never to compile explosions. If needed, use them only in interpreted code. * Don’t live your pixels. Keep the violence on the screen. ¢ Balance this with a healthy amount of raw aggression and artistic obsession. Time and Motion ° Explosions should not look like snapshots, but must embody the illusion of motion. To this end, a number of cheap props are available: lightning, sound waves, smoke, particulate matter, shadows, stretch marks, flying technicians, and punctuation. ¢ Use brush mirrors sparingly - it’s good for basic structure, but its symmetry lacks drama. * Laserwriter users: turn that smoothing off! ake < & . 2k = aay) OLS 2G MSN ol iti Brush mirrored Head moused Cauliflorid Broccolish Subject matter * Avoid bad taste whenever possible. Don’t blow up household pets, children under 12, automobiles, Sandinistas, or shareware. 27 Trim overlafge subjects to provide for efficient use of the full blast intensity. Subjects should mean something to the surrounding document: e.g., ice cream with pie charts, livestock with stock reports, and squid with BMUG newsletters. Centralize the subject - keep them away from the border cells in your spreadsheet and from the footnotes. Verisimilitude Always draw the object intact first. Use the lasso for displacing parts (insuring conservation of mass). Establish the explosion definitively in time and space. Include clocks, calendars, and landmarks in the background. Motivate unconvincing blasts with one or more of these foreground items: lightning, a plunger, commandos, restless crowd with torches, unreasonable political demands, a film crew. Gravity should pull ejecta towards the nearest planets. Northern hemisphere discharge rotates clockwise. Human-generated explosions can occur only after 1200 BC. Finally, remember any vacuum effects if in space. © Bang! is i @ Whimper PC (wildcard) ‘Kr yptonic implosion Discretional Nucleus You can always tell the work of a pro by the look of that explosion nucleus. Spend at least 40% of your total drawing time on it. Never have more than one nucleus per explosion. Double-check this before any important presentations. The dark/light nucleus question: the experts will never stop arguing about this one, but a light center does tend to suggest formal occasions. Variations To add variety, try implosions. They do require more practice than their more popular cousin, so try them out first on internal reports. Just follow the above tips in reverse. There are rare instances when you've got to “say it nuclear.” But those techniques are beyond the scope of this article. 28 Fall 198 High Speed Animation on the Mac: A Review of the Beck-Tech MacMovies Program Philip J. Suh There are many graphic programs out on the market for the Macintosh, but none quite as unique or as powerful as MacMovies by Beck-Tech. MacMovies creates high speed animation sequences using ordinary MacPaint files. Unlike VideoWorks which animates with sprites, or individual screen elements, MacMovies animates full Paint screens all at once. Using MacMovies is analogous to creating cartoons the traditional hand drawn way. That is, it repeats the following sequence: draw each frame individually, take a picture, draw another frame with the elements in the frame moved a little, etc. MacMovies takes pictures of each frame and stores it in memory, thereby enabling rapid playback of the sequence. In VideoWorks, having a large number of elements on the screen at once will noticably slow the animation down. In MacMovies, because screenfills of data are manipulated, rather than individual elements, there is a barely perceptible amount of slowdown when complex screens are animated. The top speed of animation achieved by MacMovies is around 30 frames per second which is roughly half the speed that a T.V. images is refreshed (60hz which translates 60 frames per second). As you can imagine, at top speed, many frames are required to create an animation sequence lasting even a short amount of time. The size of the finished movie is only limited by the size of memory available. Because it is necessary to store the whole movie in memory, it is mandatory to have at least 512K of memory, and more if possible! When creating the movies, the Film Compiler compresses the individual screens by only recording the changes that occur between frames. This way, whole screens (22K), do not have to be saved, merely those parts of the frames that differ from the previous ones. With the high speed and large number of frames involved, detailed and very smooth animation can be achieved. It is not unlikely to have a movie composed of as many as 90 or 100 different MacPaint images. In addition to lots of memory, lots of free disk space is also a must. With an average Paint document size of 10K, a complete movie may require 1 Meg, of free disk space for just the raw movie data...this may be compiled down to as little as 300K to 400K of compiled data. You may be wondering how is it possible to create 100 different MacPaint images. If done manually, truly, it would be an impossible feat, but with the Macintosh, many things are possible! Some of the drawing programs, particularly the three-dimensional programs will allow you to move your drawings just a little at a time. This is done by selecting slightly different views from within the program. For example, with Easy 3-D (the best 3-D program out on the market, in my opinion) you can rotate a drawn three-dimensional figure around 3 different axes in 1 degree increments. The way to create a movie using this technique would be to draw a figure, rotate it, and then take a screen dump, and repeat this process until enough frames have been created. What are the advantages in using MacMovies? Well, with MacMovies, it is possible to create very professional looking animation sequences which are very smooth and fast. Also, if many objects are on the screen at once, speed is not sacrificed. In fact, since screens of data are animated, with the help of a digitizer, digitized movies can be created using actual pictures of people or things in action. 29 BMUG FALL 1¢ wae Disadvantages? In order to get the most out of MacMovies, I think that you should have at least 1 megabyte of memory if possible. Also, you should have some way to draw out sequential scenes as MacPaint files, such as a 3-D program. In fact, you can speed up VideoWorks animation by taking screendumps of actual frames of VideoWorks, and then recompiling them in MacMovies. If none of these are available, I suppose you can spend hours and draw each of 30 to 100 screens out manually in MacPaint (Actually FullPaint is much better to use if you have it). MacMovies has not been advertised or promoted heavily. I believe that awhile back they had an ad in MacWorld, but then again, how can you show off an animation program in a magazine ad?! MacMovies retails for $99.95, but you can find it cheaper through mail order houses. If you want to create very high quality animation sequences for displays or presentations, or just for fun, and VideoWorks just isn't cutting it, then I would highly recommend MacMovies. For more information, contact Beck-Tech at 41 Tunnel Rd., Berkeley, CA 94705, 415-548-4054. Dark Castle screen 30 BMUG Fall 1986 Pe it How 3D graphics is done on the Mac. Greg Simons The aim of this article is to give the reader a feel for what is going on mathematically and graphically inside the various 3D engineering, scientific, and entertainment programs currently receiving a lot of attention. This article is an overview of 3 dimensional computer graphics, with several specific references to the Macintosh and the 68000 microprocessor. Some attention is given to efficient algorithms. We will walk through the high-level processes required to draw realistic rotated, scaled, and clipped line segments given the endpoints in a global coordinate system. The viewpoint will be defined by two things: our position in the world (given in x,y,z), and our view angle upon the world (roll, pitch, and yaw). The basic steps involved follow: Translation Deciding what point to rotate around (modifying the origin). Transformation (rotation) Computing the new (rotated) xyz point given the old point and the degrees of xyz rotation. Clipping to the view volume Deciding which lines will not be visible, which ones will be partially visible (and removing the unneeded part), and which ones will be wholly visible. Scaling (perspective) Making more distant objects appear smaller. Projection Getting the 3-D coordinates onto the 2-D screen. Line drawing Drawing lines between the now translated, transformed, clipped, scaled, and projected points (on a bit-mapped screen). Think of the above as a filter with 6 sieves. The matter being passed through the filters are line endpoints. These points may be described in a 3-D world cartesian coordinate system. World coordinates means that all points in the world (in our simulated world) are described in the same coordinate system. Inputs to the 3-D Filter: Your eye’s location, given in three components: x, y, and z; and your eye's angle in the world given in three components: x-angle (angle about the x axis), y-angle (angle about the y axis), and z-angle (angle about the z-axis). These will be the parameters that are used in setting up the filter. After the filter is set up, we can pass the world coordinate points through and get a realistic 3D representation of that on the screen. Translation: This step entails translating the (world coordinate) point passing through the filter to be in our own private coordinate system, where the x, y, and z of our eye upon the world is at the center (yes, programmers get to play God in this world}). Simply put, this means subtracting our eye’s (xyz) from the input (xyz). This sets us up for the next step: transformation (rotation). 31 BMUG FALL 1986 aan Transformation: This step rotates the point by the X.Y, and Z angles about the origin. Since we just made our eye the origin, it will rotate about our eye. (Real World Example: This is the case in flight simulators, where you perceive the world to be moving and pitching and rolling about you; CAD programs translate the origin to the middle of the piece to be rotated, so it is magically rotating about its center on a simulated drafting table.) Mathematically, this is the most complex, and computationally the most time consuming. The idea is that a 3-D transformation can be thought of as a composition of three 2-dimensional transformations. First, we rotate the point about the x axis by the x-angle amount, then the y, then the z. The x-angle formulas follow: x' <- xX {no change to x, because rotation was along x axis} Y' <- Y * cos(x-angle) - Z * sin(x-angle) Z' <- Y * sin(x-angle) + Z * cos(x-angle) The y-angle formulas are: X' <- X * cos(x-angle) - Z * sin(x-angle) y'<-¥ 2' <- X * sin(x-angle) + Z * cos(x-angle) The z-angle formulas are: X' <- X * cos(x-angle) - Y * sin(x-angle) Y' <- Y * cos(x-angle) - X * sin(x-angle) Z'<-@ How it’s really done: To multiply every point by the x, y and z formulae would take 12 multiplications (integer multiplication on most modern CPUs takes about 10-20 times as long as an add--don't even think about floating-point without a math co-processor). We can reduce the number of multiplications for each point to 9 (a 25% improvement) by creating a rotation matrix. This is done by making each of the above sets of equations into a 3x3 matrix and multiplying the three together into one master transformation matrix. Creating the rotation matrix requires alot of multiplication, but it’s worth it if you have more than a few points. Get a book on linear algebra or computer graphics for the details (too much to print here). Don't fear, it’s a pretty mechanical process. Performance notes: Unless super-high precision is required, a fixed-point representation for the trig values is typically used. Coding the matrix multiplication in assembler is best. Also, a table of those values should be used (no Taylor series computations on the fly!!). At this point in the sieve, the points have been transformed into a new coordinate system, with one axis perfectly horizontal with respect to your eye, another perfectly vertical, and the third perfectly orthogonal to the others--pointing from the center of your eye out to (what will become) the vanishing point. At this point, we know alot about how the line will look: whether it is behind us, far above us, way out to the left, and so on. Clipping: In this step you eliminate all lines and parts of lines that won't be within the screen boundaries. Each line falls into one of the following 3 categories: 32 BMUG Fall 1986 a“ 1) wholly on the screen (both points on screen--just keep it), 2) wholly off the screen (both points above, below, left or right), or 3) partially on the screen (the most complex case). Clipping is usually combined with scaling and projection, because clipping implies knowledge about how the points will map onto screen coordinates. Determining what part of a line is actually in the view when both endpoints lie off the screen (say it might be crossing a corner of the screen) is not easy to do fast. In my opinion, this is the most difficult and least agreed upon area of high-speed 3-D microcomputer graphics, and where elegance is sometimes left in the classroom. Scaling (perspective): This step has the most dramatic effect for the work that it requires. In translating and transforming the points, we re-defined them in our eye’s coordinate system. One of the axes is perfectly horizontal relative to our eye (call it x), another is vertical (y). The third axis (z) is running right through the center of our eye (ouch!!). To get perspective scaling, we divide each point’s x and y by its z. Points that are further away in z converge upon the origin (in x and y). A line 10 units long at 10 feet will be 20 units long at 5 feet