Letters to The Editor

Dr. Dobbs Look-alike

Thank you for the sample issue, I’m sold. So start my subscription with the next issue. Please find enclosed my check for $24. Please keep up the good work, your current issue looks very much like the first few issues of “Dr. Dobbs”. I think you have great potential to make “MacTech” a very slick publication.

- Andrew A. Koran

Thanks! We want to be the Dr. Dobbs of the Mac world. -D.S.

Modula-2 Support?

I picked up a copy of the December issue of MacTech at the Apple booth at Comdex. Terrific! Please find enclosed a check in the amount of $24 for a one year subscription, to start with the January issue, if possible. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my copy of MacPascal and would like to eventually move to Modula-2. I would greatly appreciate your providing coverage of this language too, once it becomes available. Thanks for the much needed publication.

- James E. Miller

We’re considering it. -D.S.

ICON CONVERTER IN C

Here’s a program to convert icons to resource format written in Aztex C. It must be run from the Aztec C shell, as I don’t have the upgrade from Manx Software that allows programs to be runnable from the finder yet.

The problem with icon design is that the icon editor saves icons as 128 bytes of binary data, the bit pattern, which represents the icon, in the data fork of a file. The icon as a resource is 128 bytes of binary data plus header, in the resource fork. The “human readable” format is ascii hex in a format suitable for a resource compiler. The enclosed program in Aztec C, reads icons from a list of files, and outputs resource compiler input format. A typical use of the program would be: iconRes*.icon>icon.res which would read all the “.icon” files and write them to “icon.res”.

- David Dunham

#include <stdio.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#define NEWLINE ‘ \n’

main(argc,argv) int argc; char *argv[]; {
 int    f, i;
 char bufr[128];
 int    fil;

 for (f=1; f < argc; f++) {
 fil = open (argv[f],O_RDONLY);
 read(fil,bufr,128);
printf(“    RSRC ICON,%d,32,\”%s\””,f,argv[f]);
 for (i=0; i<=127; i++) {
 if ((i % 16) == 0) fputs(“\n      HEX “,stdout);
if ((i % 4) == 0 && (i % 16) != 0) putchar(‘_’);
 puthex(bufr[i] & 0xFF);
 }
 puts(“ \n   ENDR”);
 close(fil);
 }
}
puthex(byte) int byte; {
 put_digit(byte / 16);
 put_digit(byte % 16);
}
put_digit(nibble) int nibble; {
 if (nibble < 10)
    putchar(‘0’ + nibble);
 else
    putchar(‘A’ + nibble - 10);  }

Comdex Report

from The Mousehole

One thing that was very nice to see was a “almost” release version of Microsoft Word. It was fast, and I mean fast!

- Mac Scotty

The BIG news is from a company called General Computer. They announced a Mac mod called HyperDrive, which is a RAM expansion to 512K, and the installation of a 10 meg hard disk with the controller INSIDE THE MACINTOSH. This allows direct booting from the hard disk, free modem port, no serial I/O to slow things down, and no external box to carry around. Price is $2,795 on a 128K machine or $2195 on a 512K machine. They do the installation or you can buy a kit from your dealer.

Jazz from Lotus is supposed to ship March 1985. It’s excellent. Five applications can be open at once. Spreadsheets can be pasted to charts, which can be pasted to word processing. But the real killer is when the spread- sheet was updated, the chart in the word proc- essor changed! That’s the first time word processing has been dynamically linked to a spreadsheet.

- SILVER SEE