Mousehole Report

By Rusty Hodge, Contributing Editor, Mousehole BBS

AppleWorld Report

From: David Smith

I don’t see any Apple World posts this morning so I’ll post what I saw. The SE is a definite improvement over the Plus. 25% speed up due to a big 4K gate array replacing all the memory management PALS. From the window level, the SE seemed very snappy in comparison to the Mac Plus. In fact, the Mac II did not seem that much faster than the SE at the desktop level. The SE has 256K ROM including improved SCSI and Appletalk stuff. The II also has 256K ROM, but not the same ROMS. It has color quickdraw, colorized managers (window, dialogs etc), NuBus slot package, and 68881 SANE package. The SE also has SANE in ROM but not the 68881 version. The integrated Woz machine disk interface has been reduced even more to a very tiny custom chip! Amazing if your an old Apple timer. The II has a Sony made universal switching power supply. The slots and power supply look a lot like an Apple II. Its a beautiful single board implementation of the 68020/68881 with a whole bunch of custom flat pack ICs of various sizes. Both machines have increased custom chip density. The ROMS feature new text edit packages that support a style record that handles multiple fonts! (At least I think its in both ROM sets). Apple’s version of Unix on the Mac II allows plug in compatibility replacement for a Sun or Apollo workstation in a Unix net. And you can still have the Mac window interface in a Unix environment. The II is dynamite in the workstation market. They said the May ship date on the II may slip... The power supply on the SE is also supposed to be better, but this was not obvious. However, the SE is a most definite performance improvement over the Plus and this message is not getting out with the excitement on the II. But the II is impressive, but expensive: $3800 bare to $6800 loaded!

New Product Line

From: SpUd PoTatO

SPUD’S PREDICTIONS

=================

Mac II HIT!

Color Better

Monochrome Worse

Mac SE FLOP

Apple PC Equipment LIMITED HIT

Apple Hard Disks FLOP

Apple Extended Keyboard HIT

Video Card/Expansion FLOP

A/UX (Unix) FLOP

EtherTalk HIT

Universal Monitor Stand WHO CARES?

Remember, you heard it here first! -Spud

Mac II

From: Lsr

Here are some of the capabilities of the Macintosh II.

You can have up to 6 screens (1 per slot). They are contiguous (a la Radius). You configure them (position, depth, etc.) in the new modular Control Panel. Windows can be partially on a 8-bit color screen and partially on a 1-bit B&W screen (or anything in between). Quickdraw takes care of all this automatically. When using color, you generally specify the RGB components. The Color Manager will convert this to the closest color the device can display. (This is similar to the way the Font Manager works.) You can also ask the Color Manager if a given color can be represented on the screen.

Color Quickdraw supports color patterns, which can be an arbitrary pixel map. (A pixel map is an extension of a bitmap, since each pixel could be bigger than 1 bit.) A lot of stuff happens automatically; there was a DA called Magnify that magnifies a section of the screen. It works in color.

Instead of a sound driver, there is a higher level Sound Manager. Sounds are generated by synthesizer resources. Synthesizers support 1 or more channels of commands. (All standard Synthesizers support a subset of the commands so you can send the same commands to different ones and the resource will execute the commands as best it can.) The sound hardware does not take very much CPU time. (There is a custom sound chip.) [Apple said they went with their own custom chip on the motherboard for software compatibility. -Ed]

Fortran plotting

From: Gary White

You might also want to look at McFace which advertises in MacTutor. Nice product for $50. It doesn’t have the prefabricated plot routines but is nice for enhancing Fortran toward a Mac-like interface easily.

New Mac

From: Jim Reekes

Okay, where’s the Mac III. That’s what I want to know. )]> reekes <[(

Mac II Color

From: Rick Boarman

As far as I can tell from reading Inside Mac Vol. 5 is that the upgraded video card will support 256 colors on the screen at one time.

“... an eight bit index into a table of 24-bit

entries would allow a selection of 256 colors out

of a total range of 16,777,216...”

TML, MDS, & MacApp

From: Worker

I am working on adapting MacApp to work with the TML Object Pascal compiler, and MDS 1.0 for the assembler parts (I just received MacApp yesterday, so I have only begun). Step one was to fix the MDS assembler to accept the percent sign in identifiers. I think my patch is Ok, but I’m not sure yet; I will post it when I’m sure it’s correct, or sooner if someone else is treading down the same path as me. Also, if anyone knows of any obstacles in my way that will be next to impossible to overcome, let me know. [Consulair has bought up the rights to MDS and will now be marketing it. You might check with them as they would probably be more helpful than Apple has been on MDS. -Ed]

I talked to Tom Leonard at the Expo about TML/MacApp and he said 1) it needs a new linker to handle Apple’s files and 2) there’s a difference between the way TML and MPW handle some feature within Object Pascal. TML *will* be brought into line with MPW’s syntax, Tom said, and the new linker shouldn’t be any real trouble, but they’re waiting for Apple to license the MacApp stuff to them. The upshot of all this: it may not be worth your while to attempt the conversion, unless you’re prepared to write a whole new linker and maybe a pre-processor for the code. [Just remembered: the Linker problem is that TML uses Lisa-style segs and MPW uses something else.]

Renaming FONTs

From: Jim Reekes

Since I use LaserPlus fonts constantly and hardly ever print on the ImageWriter, I wanted to rename all the Laser ones to show at the top of the menu. The only util that I could find to change the name of a resource was ResEdit. I changed every occurrence of FOND, with the ‘Get Info’ option. But then I started to get the double-font name problem. Both old names and the new ones were showing up. But opening the FONT resource only picked the font name from the FOND list. So, hold down the ‘OPTION’ key while opening the FONT resource and you’ll find where the older set of font names are stored.

I guess that some of the older programs were still looking for fonts names by looking at the FONT and not the FOND resource. By the way, while you’re changing names, rename “New Century Schoolbook” to just plain “Schoolbook”. I prefer the single quote ( ‘ ) in front of the font name, that’ll put them at the top and not be too distracting.

Mac II software compatibility

From: Dr. Dog

Here are some quick benchmarks on a Mac II running in competition with a Mac Plus (the Plus has 2.5 meg of ram and a DataFrame XP40 Hard disk):

A partial list of software that currently bombs on the Mac II: MacTerminal 2.1, MacWrite 4.5, QUED 1.54, Videoworks, MS Works 1.0, MacDraft 1.2a, and (sob!) MacPlaymate.

So as Bill says, it does run (some) software, and the speed is truly amazing (especially for computation intensive tasks like PackIt compression).

Platinum Macs....

From: Scott Winders

Well, My store got in 60 platinum Macs today!!! They look fantastic... Can you imagine having a platinum Mac, Ice white ImageWriter, and a beige disk drive??? Yuck....

Misc

From: Macowaco

Re: stuff on multiuser apps on Appletalk.....I can’t imagine how anybody can even consider sharing app SW over dog slow Appletalk. It was NOT designed for that and therefore it will NOT perform for that.

Anybody know of a lockup application that will work like Macserve’s server? With Macserve’s server I can create a non-network volume (only the server can get to it) with a password. The only way one can get inside it and see what’s in it (regardless of how the system is booted) is with the password.

Finder 5.4 & Sys 3.3 on the XL

From: mouseFur<tm>

Using a Mac XL w/ 1 Meg RAM & MacWorks 3.0, I have found the Finder 5.4 compatible except when selected from SuperStation at which time it’s a guaranteed crash. (ID02) System 3.3 will NOT run at all.

From: Rick Boarman

I’ve been using System 3.3 & Finder 5.4 on an XL for a couple weeks now with no problems. The only quirk I can find is that the view by name choice is terribly slow. It takes ten or fifteen seconds to draw a small window.

SYSTEM 3.3

From: Jason G.

I’ve noticed that while running under system 3.3/finder 5.4, the Mac seems to want to do a lot more disk swaps than under previous systems (namely 3.2) Once booted up under the disk, if a file or disk copy, from another disk, is attempted, the Mac wants the system disk back; under 3.2, the copy occurs without any extra swaps. [Note: Apple wants everyone to use system 4.0 until 4.1 comes out in late spring. System 3.3 is only for Apple Share, whatever significance that has (the word ‘everyone’ in MacTutor means programming & technical types.) -Ed]

International MAC, not true!

From: Julio Carneiro

I would like to raise a question I have not seen yet covered, regarding so called “International Macintosh”, that interests all of us non US MAC users. Why, almost all (may be “ALL”) of the software written for the MAC does not use the information on the INTL resources for proper operation internationally. Some programs use it partially, like HELIX, which outputs dates according to INTL info (e.g. D/M/Y), but accepts only M/D/Y as input. Others, such as EXCEL, use a different, and private, resource for the month names table. The worst (eg OVERVUE) do not even allow you to use the foreign characters! Apple did a great job in the definition of the INTL resources, and associated packages. WHY NOT USE THEM?? The International Market should be taken into to account by the developers. Julio - from Brasil

International Mac

From: Mark Chally

This may sound terrible, but frankly, the average American doesn’t care much about the “outside world”. Granted, s/he should, but s/he doesn’t. Perhaps if Apple had not made it so easy to ignore such things as special characters it might be a little different. I mean, if you had to use special chars to get to regularly used items (like command-option being ctrl) then programmers wouldn’t be so likely to ignore them. I know, because I’m one of those callous programmers who’s in the process of getting rid of those characters in his program. I need a toggle-bit on my characters for separating chat characters from game commands in a game I’m writing, so the ol’ option-key got the axe. I’m sure if I’d lived in Brazil and felt I needed the special keys, I’d do it differently, but the temptation was too great. I don’t have an answer except maybe the best thing you can do is write letters to magazines (this is an excellent place to complain with all the developers running around) and companies who offend. I hope I’ve helped enlighten you on _some_ of the possible reasons it may be done. If simply by laziness of LOOKING AT the option-key, that’s BAD. I wish you luck and want you to know that I FEEL ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE THAT I’VE DONE IT TOO!

Bug in AppleShare

From: David W.

While playing with AppleShare at a friendly dealer I found that dragging a copy of the system for an AppleShare folder to a floppy does not write the boot blocks on the floppy.

From: Lsr

This is not a bug. When you copy a system folder to a disk, the Finder initializes the boot blocks from the source disk. In the case of AppleShare however, the Finder cannot get the boot blocks from the server. The Appletalk Filing Protocol does not provide a way to get the boot block, since the server might not be a Macintosh.

AppleShare

From: Bob Denny

I have been close to the AppleShare/TOPS thing and ... finally ...I can talk about it. AppleShare represents a great deal (1 year) of intense work on the part of two terrific guys at Apple, Rich Brown and Pat Dirks. They took the original AFP spec that was done as a team effort with Centram and ran with it. As they began to implement it, they discovered that theory and practice diverged. About the time they started, Centram and Apple had a “falling out” (details unimportant). Their cooperation ended. As development at Apple continued, Rich and Pat got into “imagining the possibilities” with respect to Finder enhancements. The result: FINE piece of work! The only weak point that we can see is the net protocols used ... they’re real handshakey ... bad news on internets with delays.

Noisy Apple Stuff

From: Bob Denny

What is with Apple??? Haven’t they figured out that “the rest of us” are sick and tired of noisy equipment? Our HD20-SC is so noisy that nobody will have it in their cube. The Mac II is also a noisy thing!

System Heap Problems

From: Bob Denny

There is a bug in the 128K ROM where the system will crash in random “interesting” ways if system heap gets too full. Here is a LightSpeed C “program” that fixes this. You must build it as an INIT resource!!

{1}
/* INIT resource to set the size of the System Heap to 56k */  
#include <MacTypes.h>  
#include <MemoryMgr.h>
#define LargeHeapSize   0x0000EB00
main()    
{    
  Handle Us;              
  SetApplBase((long)LargeHeapSize);    
  Us = RecoverHandle(*(Ptr *)0x9CE);  /* Handle ourselves */ 
  DisposHandle(Us);         /* Free memory containing us */    asm   
   
   {    
    move.l      Us,d7    /* d7 = handle (for macboot code) */  
   }
} 

WARNING!! Don’t try to extend the system heap on the old Macs above $EB00. The 64K ROMs have a brain-damaged trap dispatcher that was designed by the byte-squeaking pin-heads in the days when they thought no one would put more than 64K bytes RAM into the Mac. The dispatcher can’t handle ROM Patches starting above the 64K line. Making the system heap larger than 56K pushes some patches that are in applications’ heaps above that line and the system will bomb. Multiplan is a famous example of this.

Quit to Finder

From: The Atom

I want to be able to make my Application re-run itself when ever ExitToShell is called. - so that an exit to the finder simply re-runs the application. Is it as easy as just changing the low-mem global that has the Finders name in it, or do I have to set something else special under HFS (blessed folders, etc.)?

From: Chief Wizard

If you change the low-memory global to your application, an ExitToShell will re-run your application if it’s in the Blessed Folder only. If it isn’t in the Blessed Folder, you’ll get an ID-26. (Or it may run the Finder, I’m not sure.)

If you don’t mind changing the environment (i.e., you’re doing copy protection and don’t mind if they have to reboot.), you can patch ExitToShell to a small routine of yours that you stick in the system heap that Launches your application again.

Code Segments

From: Lsr

On the 128K ROM, if a code segment’s rsrc attributes do not specify it as a locked resource, the Segment Loader will auto-magically call MoveHHi on it when loading it in. This avoids the problem of the 64K ROMs, where the Segment Loader would just lock a segment down wherever it happened to be (usually in the middle of the heap).

You generally want segments at the top of the heap where they are out of the way, but you do need to be aware of this and allow for it in your memory management strategy. This is discussed in Tech Note #39.

MPW Asm

MPW Asm groups routines into PROCs and FUNCs. You can change the segment for a whole PROC or FUNC with a SEG directive before the PROC directive. If you specify a PROC as EXTERNAL, then its name will be external. All names within a PROC are internal unless you have an explicit EXTERNAL directive.

MPW Disk Space Requirement

From: Dennis C. De Mars

I’d like to take issue with the statement, that I have seen on this board and in MacTutor among other places, that you need a 40MB drive to use MPW. Actually, MPW on a 20MB drive is quite comfortable; and I am not talking about a disk dedicated to MPW either. In fact, if you wanted to devote a hard disk to MPW, you could probably get by with a 10MB drive (but a 10MB drive is not cost-effective nowadays).

Here are the raw statistics: I have MPW with assembler, MPW C, MPW Pascal and MacApp all resident on my 20 MB hard disk. Everything combined takes up less than 6MB, and that includes the compiled MacApp object module, as well as the complete MacApp source codes. Nothing has been deleted, including example files. I am working on two separate MacApp projects: together, they take up around 1.5MB, your mileage may vary. So you can see, it is an exaggeration to say that you need a 40MB drive. Now, if you already are pushing the 20MB limit without MPW, you obviously can’t fit MPW onto your disk. But if you get rid of garbage that you never access (save it all on floppies) you might be surprised.

Apple Share...

From: James B. Du Waldt

Just got back from Mac Orange, where two men from Apple demoed AppleShare for us. Some notes follow : (1) To prevent only 1 copy of Excel, Word, etc. from being used by 25 people (apparently the largest number of users AppleShare will support AT ONCE), we now have 3 types of software:

File Server Unaware

File Server Aware

Network Ready

Multiple Launch

Multiple User

MacWrite & MacPaint are “Server Unaware” - they can apparently foul up the works. Supposedly, if two people start 2 copies of MacPaint while hooked up via AppleShare, there are conditions under which they can gain access to the others screen... “Server Aware” stuff is the vast majority of software. Basically, if two people try to run one copy, it won’t let them. “Network Ready” is the interesting category. “Multiple Launch” means just what it says - multiple people can launch Separate documents at the same time. Mike & Dave believe that most software companies will have versions of this sort for their bestsellers soon. Of course, it will cost “..just a dime more...”, as Mike jokingly said.

“Multiple User” though, is the REAL winner. What this will do is allow two (or more) users to work on the SAME document, as long as they are working IN DIFFERENT PARTS of that document. The possible application Mike (sorry, I didn’t catch their last names) mentioned was two lawyers working on the same document. In fact, they said that one program coming out soon was for architects. The most interesting thing was how “Multiple User” programs would differentiate document areas, though. In the mainframe/mini world, users can do this by dividing their documents into fields or records. Apple Share will allow programmers & users to do it by “Byte Range Locking” - which right away sounds like a much more flexible scheme to me than records or fields ! (It immediately struck me as one of those “why didn’t I think of it first” ideas - very fundamental!)

And very fundamental to the Mac, too... bit-mapped machine that it is. That means fields can be things like pictures, etc !

Some good news for TOPS/MacServe/InBox users - Mike & Dave said that Apple is DEFINITELY cooperating with them in the production of new versions of their products. We apparently should be seeing them “soon” (scuttlebutt is this summer).

For $700 (and a MANDITORY Network Administration training fee) you get a system that DOES need a dedicated Mac, allows 7 SCSI devices for up to a TOTAL of 660 MBytes, and allows 2 other drives to be connected to the drive port, AND will support as many workstations as you care to connect to the server.

MS Basic Compiler comments

From: Chris Riley

I have been using the Microsoft Basic compiler (1.0) for the past couple of months. I have been using it to compile two programs for the most part: one is 22k source which compiles to 81k, and the other is 214.5k source which compiles to 420k.

As you can see, it produces quite large applications. Here is a list of problems and non-problems that I have found:

Communications: I have seen several articles (including one in MacTutor) that claim that it doesn’t work. We have been running a BBS (300/1200/2400) compiled with it for two months and have had no problems with lost characters. However, we may be accessing the modem and reading characters in differently than they do in the example terminal program.

Clear statements: I have tried to resize the memory allocated for the heap, stack, and data segment. This compiles OK, but later several sections of code that access arrays do not work properly and return an Error #38 to the error trapping routine. I have removed the Clear statement and the problem disappears, so I know that it is the culprit. As of yet, there is “No Such Error” as a 38 listed in the manual, so I have no idea as to why this occurs.

Error trapping: Errors are trapped fine, but the error line numbers are not returned in ERL properly (always says line #0). Without error trapping on, the correct line numbers are returned correctly, so I believe that there may be something wrong with the ERL statement.

Bombs: ID 2 bombs occur too often with the compiled applications. It has also on two occasions bombed with an ID 3 and an ID 10 bomb. Reallocating memory with the Clear statement seems to stop most of the ID 2 bombs from occurring (allocating more space for the stack), but as I stated above, they cause error 38s to appear in several places where arrays are accessed (but not all).

Wish list: LPT1: In the manual it states that you can only open “LPT1” for output. I do not know if it is possible to open it for input (haven’t tried it), but it would be nice to be able to do so.

Application: A simple statement to allow you to respond to the “About application...” dialog and put your own information in there. (Perhaps allow the MENU statement to return 0 for the “About” in the Apple menu.)

I would hope that Microsoft will release a fixed version of the compiler as it is much better than ZBasic for compiling MS Basic code. With its bugs fixed it would be excellent.

Compiler update

From: Dave Kelly

I received a new version of PCMacBasic a few days ago. Looks like they have started work on it again. I wrote MS a letter will full set of complaints about their compiler, and they have invited Dave Smith and myself to come up and discuss future product development.

New Tecmar s/w (HFS)

From: Vax Hack

I’ve been bugging Tecmar for new HFS compatible s/w for the MacDrive. Yesterday, they called to announce version 2.3 for only $50 + $3 s/h. While I’m very happy to get it, I can’t help thinking what $50 will buy in terms of Mac s/w and how many s/w updates are FREE or MAYBE $10. And why should I start to expect decent after sale service for my MacDrive at this late date?

Jasmine DD 20

From: David Robinson

I would also like to agree with all those who posted above in support of the Jasmine Direct Drive 20. We have 2 of them and love em! This drive is very fast and incredible quiet. The surge protected outlets and external SCSI address switch are just two of the great features of this drive. Other features include; Filtered air intake, low profile & small footprint, easy access to terminating resistors to allow chaining of drives without opening the case, cable included, 1 year rep. wrty. , 48 hour turn around on repaires , external access to fuse. What else do ya want for $612.72 delivered to your door. Go buy one now and help support this company that has made high quality affordable drives available to the rest of use. I’m excited, can you tell?

From: Jim Reekes

The Jasmine is pretty much the same drive as the Apple 20SC. They both use a noisy Seagate 225N. I suspect the performance is about the same too. Don’t get too excited about the PD stuff they install on it, most of it is trite. The Jasmine doesn’t require you to buy a terminator and has some handy power outlets too. I can’t tell you how long they’ll be around to service it, and I don’t think you can get enough hard disk support over the phone. The question you should ask yourself is “will it still work in six months, and what if it don’t?” Hard disk have a tendency to develop bad tracks after so much use.

I don’t like the idea that they _only_ sell mail order and not to dealers. [remember the Sider situation?] The only other difference between Apple’s and Jasmine’s is the price. The 20SC is way over priced, and the Jasmine isn’t. Consider this, if you could successfully complete the MacTutor’s “build your own hard disk” project, then you should buy a Jasmine. The parts would cost you about the same.

I couldn’t recommend sending away your money until you seen, heard, and had the chance to use it. Also, one thing to make note of. The Mac Plus’ SCSI software is going to change real soon [there is a ROM update coming out]. I know that many drives will not be ready for this. Stick with a name brand hard disk. And make sure you get a backup system for what ever drive you get. Don’t drive without a backup, you’ll kill yourself!

DiskTimer II, etc.

From: Mac Spy

I ran DiskTimer II on the Paris with its internal 40 meg drive. The results: Reads - 36; Writes - 42; Seeks - 15.

The HD 80 on a Mac+ : Reads - 67; Writes - 67; Seeks - 18. Thats the Apple HD 80....

Disk First Aid Workings

From: Phil Kutzenco

If you type command S just before telling Disk First Aid to start ex- amining a volume it will open a window and tell you what it is doing. As it examines the disk it checks:

disk volume

extent BTree

extent file

catalog BTree

catalog file

catalog heirarchy

volume info

I don’t know what kind of problems it can repair, but I have a disk with a problem that makes Disk First Aid terminate while checking the catalog BTree and it just says it can’t verify the disk. It doesn’t offer to repair the damage.

APPLE MENU QUESTION

From: Ram Warrior

I’m writing an application in turbo pascal and I need help with the Apple menu. I’ve got the program handling DA’s fine but if the menu has to scroll, the menu items get mashed together.

From: Rick Boarman

If you have any Icons in the Apple menu, it causes it to get all scrunched up when scrolled. Without the Icon it should work fine if you use System 3.2 and Finder 5.3.

From: Laser Dolphin

It seems any menu with icons in it will mess up the scrolling royally. This is a pretty severe bug in the new menu manager.... sigh....

Multiple regions

From: Jack Howarth

I’m trying to use an array of region handles to record the regions that different data sets contain when plotted in a GrafPort. What I am not certain about is how to handle more than one region at a time. I am currently creating the rgnhandles with NewRgn and then OpenRgn to use it. What I want to do is repeatedly come back to existing regions and add to their contents. I know I can stop collecting to a region by saving the rgnSave field and substituting NIL. However, is rgnSave the same as the rgnHandle for that region? Also, must I close the rgn before I open another? If not, I would think I could open any number of regions, NIL the rgnSave and reactivate the regions by substituting their rgnhandle into rgnSave. Lastly, does OpenRgn destroy the current data in that region or just append it onto the existing stuff?

Multiple Regions

From: Rick Boarman

Jack, You must close a region before using another one. If you don’t the old region would get written over or just appended onto. Be sure to close the region before calling NewRgn again. Also be sure you are storing the handles in different variables.

Text Handling

From: Micro Ghoul

Ciao, I have been (for that last 6 months) working with the Core Edit text handling tool from Apple (this was originally made for the Lisa Development system and I am not too pleased with it at this time), and have a few questions to the general peoples out there.

1. Is anyone out there using a licensable text handling tool that can either do or does not make unfairly difficult:

* display text in multiple styles, sizes, & fonts * left, right, center, full justification * tabbing * first line indentation * insertion of char(s) * translates mouse activity into text selection * Cut, Copy, Paste * word wrap

2. Has anyone used the newer version of Core Edit from Encore Systems?

3. Does anyone know their phone # as they never answer their AppleLink mail?

4. Are most of you using TextEdit?

5. Those that need extended abilities are you developing your own from scratch?

6. Anyone want to comment on their experiences with the handling of text on the Macintosh? (I know that if people are interested in the topic I am more than willing to discuss the problems that I came up against).

From: Jeff

Isn’t Core Edit fun? I also used (wrestled with) Core Edit on the Lisa for a couple months before deciding to start from scratch. Apart from its bugs, Core Edit’s biggest limitation is that it seems to provide no way to do page breaks, and as you may have noticed it isn’t exactly speedy. At one time we did get a version of the documentation of core edit which had routines to support page breaks and a couple of other goodies. The source code we got, didn’t have those routines accessible, although there seemed to be some remnants. Finally we decided that it would probably be a heck of a lot faster to start from scratch than to try and rescue someone else’s soggy, ancient code (Core Edit was written in 82 I think? - back in the old days before the computer for the rest of us)

Writing the equivalent of core edit including page breaks, and other goodies took a month or two. Also writing your own routines allows you to take full advantage of the 128 ROMs improved font manager features such as fractional character spacing and intelligent font scaling. Fractional character spacing helps in increasing accuracy when printing to the LaserWriter and font scaling helps makes it so that when a font is not available it doesn’t just use copybits to scale an existing font but instead will take a smaller font but leave larger space around the character. This enables you to edit in real time (which is always nice). Hopefully the new 256K ROM may even have more goodies in store for us.

From: Chief Wizard

I have to agree with Jeff - stay away from Core Edit. For the amount of effort it will take you to develop your own font/style changes in TextEdit, you’ll save yourself some large headaches.

Trap Calls for Time Manager

From: Sticks

I am trying to program a millisecond timer for the Mac using the time-manager calls as listed in inside Macintosh Vol.4 pages 300-301. The routines are: InsTime, PrimeTime and RmvTime. My Aztec C 1.06H.1 does not include these calls in its header files. When I attempted to write my own header I found that the Trap Words are not listed in Inside Mac Volume 4 page 305. Does anyone know the Trap Numbers. Can anyone give me any info. on these routines?

From: Rick Boarman

The Trap words you need are:

_InsTime $A058
_PrimeTime $A05A
_RmvTime $A059

I found them with TMON on a Mac +.

The Great MouseHole : Pirate software survey...

How many programs do you USE (as oppose to just having them on disk stored in a drawer or something) that you haven’t bought or obtained legally?

Total Votes: 203

1. 28% (None)

2. 33% (One or Two)

3. 19% (Three to Six)

4. 18% (Seven or More!)