TidBITS#191/30-Aug-93

[Adam C. Engst]

TidBITS#191/30-Aug-93
=====================

This issue offers news about DarkStar, an energy saving utility,
an update to Gatekeeper (but no new virus, thankfully), a new
QuickMail gateway, Newton MessagePad sales, a few AV Mac
corrections, and, finally, an in-depth review of IN CONTROL, a
powerful and flexible outliner mismarketed as a To Do List
manager.

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
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Copyright 1990-1993 Adam & Tonya Engst. Details at end of issue.
Automated info: <in...@tidbits.com> Comments: <a...@tidbits.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:
MailBITS/30-Aug-93
DarkStar Released
Gatekeeper Updated
PostalUnion Update
Get IN CONTROL
Reviews/30-Aug-93

[Archived as /info-mac/per/tb/tidbits-191.etx; 29K]


MailBITS/30-Aug-93
------------------
Tonya was one for two last week. Her expose of space aliens
calling technical support brought in reprint requests from three
continents (and yes, please feel free to reprint that article as
long as you credit Tonya and TidBITS fully, and please send us a
copy of the publication - use the address at the end of the
issue). At the same time, her article on the AV Macs had a few
mistakes, which we correct below. We also hope to have some
detailed first hand reports soon, which should help you decide for
yourself about these fascinating Macs. Hey, I want one.


**AV Corrections** -- First, we accidently flipped the code names.
The Centris 660AV was originally known as the Tempest, and the
Quadra 840AV was known as the Cyclone. The GeoPort Telecom adapter
isn't bundled, costs about $130, and based on early reports,
hasn't appeared on shelves quite yet. Second, although the GeoPort
architecture will handle ISDN, modems, and other "telecom" type
things, it isn't how the Mac will connect to Ethernet networks, as
we implied. The DAV (Digital Audio Video) connector is an internal
connector much like a NuBus slot. It's designed not to connect
directly to VCRs and video cameras (which attach via standard
composite and S-Video input and output jacks on the back panel)
but to NuBus cards so that a card can tap into the audio and video
data streams within the machine. Uses for this might include JPEG
compression hardware. Finally, Michael Shannon <data...@aol.com>
clarifies the method of recording from an AV Mac. "Actually, you
MUST have a TV connected to do any kind of composite or S-video
recording. The built-in video can only drive one display at a
time. Therefore, to record video you must hook the AV to a VCR and
then the VCR to a TV. There is no way to watch the display on the
computer's monitor while recording."


**Book News** -- I haven't completed my book about connecting to
the Internet from a Mac, but the major creative work is done, and
I'm finishing the back matter now. I think this book will be
extremely cool, and I hope to reprint some of the text here,
although it will take some rewording to remove screen shot
references. I have full chapters on the four major ways to gain
Internet access - email through a BBS or commercial service like
CompuServe, terminal access on a Unix machine, UUCP access using
the three main UUCP programs for the Mac, and finally MacTCP
access, expressly covering SLIP usage as well. The contents of the
disk may surprise you (and I don't want to say anything concrete
until all the papers have been signed), and for those not already
on the Internet, there will be an immediate access method.


**Where's my Newton?** -- If your daily newspaper offers a comics
page, you may have guessed that Doonesbury author Garry Trudeau
already has his Newton MessagePad, and you may be jealous! Not to
worry; even though virtually all dealers in the "regional roll-out
areas" such as Boston, New York, and San Francisco have run out of
MessagePads, and some early purchasers have managed to resell
their units for huge profits, the nationwide roll-out appears to
be on schedule for Labor Day. According to Mark H. Anbinder,
several dealers have reported hearing from Apple that they will
receive their introductory shipments this week.


DarkStar Released
-----------------
by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- m...@baka.ithaca.ny.us
Technical Support Coordinator, BAKA Computers

No, this doesn't mean Darth Vader has been paroled. DarkStar,
released last month by Apple, and officially known as the "Monitor
Energy Saver Control Panel," allows Macintosh users to conserve
power using "Energy Star compliant" computers and monitors. After
a user-defined amount of idle time, the software puts the monitor
into low power mode. You return from low power mode by pressing a
key or moving the mouse, and it takes up to twenty seconds to
return.

Energy Star is the U. S. Government's energy conservation
initiative, designed to limit the vast power consumption of
desktop computer systems. Several computer and peripheral
manufacturers have moved to comply with Energy Star guidelines,
which call for less energy consumption when devices are active, as
well as sharp reductions in energy use when devices are not in use
but have been left on for whatever reason. The average office
Macintosh, operating 24 hours a day, can use as much as $200 worth
of electricity each year.

DarkStar has the added benefit of preventing screen burn-in,
without the extra processing burden of fish swimming around your
screen all night. At last check, this utility was available only
from AppleLink and from the FTP archive at sumex-aim.stanford.edu
in /info-mac/cfg, but not yet from Apple's anonymous FTP site,
ftp.apple.com. Your dealer should be able to obtain it, but
because of the cost to the dealer of downloading software from
AppleLink, please consider making a purchase at the same time you
ask them to retrieve the software for you!

This utility works on Quadras, Centrises, and LC IIIs, and with
monitors designed with a low-power mode. These monitors have an
"Energy Star" logo on the box. On other monitors, the image will
go black, but since the monitor isn't in low-power mode, there
will be minimal power savings, if any. PowerBook users can already
take advantage of these computers' capabilities to turn off
backlighting, the hard drive, and even the whole computer, during
idle periods.

For users of other computers or other monitors, I suggest CDU,
Connectix Desktop Utilities, whose energy-saving features have
been praised by the government's Energy Star program. These
features include automatic idle-time shutdown, and automatic
screen dimming. CDU's screen dimming feature works only on
computers and displays with grayscale or color capability, or on
Apple's compact Macs with internal dimming functions, such as the
Classic.

Of course, CDU offers many other useful and fun features; we'll
take a closer look in the near future.

Connectix -- 800/950-5880 -- 415/571-5100 -- 415/571-5195 (fax)

Information from:
Apple propaganda
Connectix -- conn...@aol.com


Gatekeeper Updated
------------------
by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- m...@baka.ithaca.ny.us

Chris W. Johnson at the University of Texas recently released an
update to his free Gatekeeper antiviral utility, version 1.2.8.
The new version is a maintenance release, and doesn't address new
viruses, but all Gatekeeper users should obtain this update.

Some earlier versions of Gatekeeper may comment that they are out
of date, and suggest that the user find an update. This feature is
based on Chris's assumption that he'd release new versions from
time to time. Before version 1.2.7 came out, owners of Gatekeeper
1.2.6 found that the software led them on a wild goose chase for a
not-yet-released update. Since many users neglect to keep their
antiviral utilities up to date, this feature can be a helpful
reminder (and as it only appears every few days, it's not too much
of a nuisance).

Gatekeeper provides specific protection against known viruses, and
also acts as a reveal activity monitor, watching for operations or
events that could indicate an unknown virus, or an unknown variant
of an existing virus. On more than one occasion since its first
release in 1989, Gatekeeper has been instrumental in discovering
and tracking new viruses.

You can obtain an update from the master FTP archive at
microlib.cc.utexas.edu (in the directory microlib/mac/virus), or
from other FTP archives, online services, user groups, or dealers.
Then, read the documentation, install and configure the software,
and please don't forget to send the author a postcard thanking
him:

Chris Johnson
4505-B Avenue H
Austin, TX 78751 USA

Information from:
Chris Johnson


PostalUnion Update
------------------
by Mark H. Anbinder, News Editor -- m...@baka.ithaca.ny.us

Continuing their quest to sweep away the barriers between the
world's electronic mail systems, Information Electronics recently
announced the approaching 01-Sep-93 release of PostalUnion/SMTP
for QuickMail, a new PostalUnion/SMTP gateway for CE Software's
QuickMail.

PostalUnion is IE's modular gateway technology, allowing them to
develop new gateway products efficiently by using common modules
in similar gateways. (For example, IE's SMTP gateways for the
various email products can all use a common SMTP module.)
Especially in the case of QuickMail, PostalUnion's operation in
part as a separate application allows for greater reliability and
functionality than purely internal gateways can provide.

One remarkable new feature of this particular product, which
incorporates a new version of the PostalUnion technology, is that
it allows an administrator to remotely access a special "console"
module, and to remotely control all gateway operations over the
Internet using telnet. This eliminates the need for AppleTalk-
level remote access, at least for purposes of gateway control.

Other improvements over IE's previous SMTP\QM gateway include
multiple simultaneous incoming and outgoing SMTP sessions, and
POP3 client support (so users can consolidate multiple mailboxes).

Until 15-Oct-93, the $995 package (which is licensed per gateway,
rather than per user) costs $695 direct from Information
Electronics. Previous SMTP\QM owners may replace their gateways
for $100. In addition, IE will offer a $400 sidegrade option for
owners of other SMTP gateways for QuickMail. There's also a
special low-priced bundle offer if you wish to purchase IE's $295
QMConcierge mail forwarding software at the same time.

Information Electronics -- 607/868-3331 -- 607/868-3333 (fax)

Information from:
Information Electronics propaganda -- in...@ie.com

Get IN CONTROL
--------------
by Matt Neuburg -- cla...@csc.canterbury.ac.nz

Veteran readers of my contributions to TidBITS know that I am
unabashedly obsessed with computer tools for the storage and
retrieval of information. They also know that an almost
unqualified rave review from me is a rare thing. Hold on to your
hats, here it comes.

Take a simple, yet elegant, powerful, and above all useful
fundamental idea as your program's basic metaphor. Then implement
it with meticulous attention to the details of the interface,
taking full advantage of the Mac's features to give lots of
flexibility and convenience. That's the recipe for a great
Macintosh application - such as the one I'm using right now.

The object of my new affections is IN CONTROL (about $85
discounted), from Attain Corporation. It's an outliner with a big
difference. Outlines, you recall, are clumps of text structured as
topics and (indented) subtopics, and since you can "expand" or
"collapse" a topic's subtopics (to make them visible or
invisible), or move a topic and its subtopics to another place in
the outline, they are great for arranging, rearranging, and
navigating information of all sorts.

Here's the IN CONTROL (IC) difference. To the right of the outline
you can create any number of "columns;" and into each column you
can enter information corresponding to each topic of the outline:
a date, a number, a keyword, a comment, that sort of thing, each
column representing some concept you want to associate with the
outline's topics.

And why would you want to do that, you ask? Because now you can
view your outline in new ways, by sorting or hiding topics
according to the criteria of what's in the columns. Picture this:

* Make your outline a list of things to do, arranged into topics
by some convenient typology (e.g. Schoolwork, Housework, Phone
Calls, etc.): now add a column for the date and time when you want
to do each thing, sort on this, and Presto! You're looking at your
schedule in chronological order.

* Make your outline a list of your classical record albums, with
subtopics listing every piece on each album: add columns for the
date, the principal instrument, and the musical form of each
piece, and now - want to know what albums contain flute concertos
written between 1800 and 1850? Presto! Everything else is hidden,
and you're left with a list of only those albums and those
specific pieces.

* To write an article (like this one!), build an outline of topics
and subtopics, so you can brainstorm and rearrange ideas easily;
beneath each subtopic, write sentences of actual text you want to
have appear in the article. Add a column categorising each topic
as a "heading" or a "paragraph," depending whether it's a topic
description or the actual text. Want to rearrange the ideas?
Presto! Show only the headings, and alter the outline to your
heart's content, with no "paragraphs" visible to mar your view.
When you're finished writing, Presto! Show just the "paragraphs"
instead - and since what's exported is what's showing in the
current view, you can now export just the actual text (and send it
to TidBITS!).

* Make your outline a bibliography of books and articles, with
main topics by author's last name. Make columns for date,
keywords, type ("Book" or "Article"), status ("Not yet read," "On
order," or "Read"), and notes. Every entry in a column can hold
32K of styled text; that ought to be plenty for your notes! The
notes will occupy vertical room in the window only if they are
showing: Presto! Just hide the notes column, or use the menu to
show just the first line of all topics, and you can view your
bibliographic info conveniently. Use the keywords to show just
those articles dealing with "Aeschylus," or do a search-match to
show just those books for which the notes contain the word
"Laryngeal." When you're finished, export just the bibliographic
information, retaining text styles, straight into your word
processor.

As these examples show, you can sort on different kinds of
criterion. You classify a column as text, numeric, or date-time,
and IC knows how to sort and co-sort accordingly. The techniques
by which IC decides which topics to hide, called "matching," are
even more sophisticated. You can hide or retain only those topics
with a column entry identical to, containing, or greater or less
than the current entry (or to stuff you type in a dialog box) -
and again, comparison is done properly for text, numbers, and
dates. Sorting and matching will not expose a topic that has been
"collapsed" along with its co-topics into its governing topic, so
this provides a further filter (that's important: collapsing and
hiding are not the same, though both make a topic invisible). You
can also manually select a topic or topics and hide or retain them
directly. Furthermore, retained topics can be shown as an outline
(in which case the topics that govern them are shown, even if they
didn't match the requisite criteria, so as to make the outline
levels meaningful) or in a simple one-column arrangement, called a
"table." (After sorting, what you are shown is always a "table,"
since otherwise the governing topics might have to be repeated
several times, making nonsense of the outline.)

It's important to understand that when you sort and hide topics
this way, no change is made to your outline (although IC can also
sort in ways that do rearrange topics); what's altered is your
_view_ of the information in the outline. You can toggle back and
forth with a button-press between such an altered view, with some
topics hidden and/or sorted, and the normal view of the outline.
Even cooler, you can preserve an altered view. You can hide and
sort, and IC remembers the criteria and actions by which you
arrived at the current altered view. You can then name this view,
specifying the particular features which you regard as important,
and the name appears in a pup up menu. The whole operation can now
be performed again at any time just by choosing from this menu.
Doing this doesn't mean, "show me just the topics that were
showing previously"; it means, "do the same matches, sorts, or
other changes that I performed earlier, on _this_ version of the
outline." Such preserved views are called "scripts," and are easy
to create and modify. (Scripts can be transferred to a new IC
file, but not copied between existing files.)

So you might think of IC as an extended outliner. For extra bonus
coolness, you can extend your outline right on out of IC itself:
any topic in your outline can be "linked" to any document on your
Mac (assuming you're running System 7, of course)! Once you've set
up a link, you select that topic and hit a command-key, and the
document is opened by its application. The possibilities for this
feature seem endless: demos, presentations with pictures,
catalogues of documents, indexing....

I'm sure that by now you're starting to think of all sorts of uses
to which _you_ could put IN CONTROL. The adaptability of IC is
certainly inspiring. Its makers also seem to have found it a bit
daunting. In our present niche-oriented software market, what _is_
this thing they've created? It's an outliner, a date-book, a
database, a writing tool, a table-maker, an indexer - you try to
label it, I can't. Attain's own pedestrian label ("To-Do List
Manager") does it scant justice; this, and the several pages in
the manual devoted to "time management," suggests to me that
they're aiming at a business market. I guess that "thinking people
who want to organise and navigate information" (like me) isn't
considered a worthwhile proportion of the population.

To make IC seem more like a To-Do List, there's a further feature:
besides the columns that appear to the right of the outline, there
is also a column that can appear to its left, consisting simply of
a check-box for each topic. You can hide and sort on the checked-
ness of these boxes, and the manual suggests you use them to mark
whether you have performed the "to-do" item. This is a column by
other means, modified to fit the specialised "to-do list" rubric;
to me it seems an artificial appendage.

The check-boxes, though unnecessary, are at least useful and
unobjectionable. Not so, I thought, the calendar-reminder
facility, even though the manual goes to some lengths to push this
as a major feature. The interface between the outline and the
calendar is brilliant, to be sure; but I found the component as a
whole weak to the point of uselessness, by comparison to the
shareware Remember?, which I use. There is no capacity to enter
regular events ("every Wednesday at 5"), so if you want to use IC
as an appointment book and something in your life recurs regularly
you have to enter a separate notation for each occurrence, one by
one. Nor can you enter dates descriptively, ("the second Tuesday
of November"); you must find November on the calendar and figure
out which day is the second Tuesday. And that won't be fun either,
since calendar navigation is primitive (no nice pop-up menus with
month names or year numbers). If an appointment comes around, you
can be reminded (through an extension) even if IC is not running;
but the signal consists only of a beep and a flashing icon in the
menu bar, and we all know what that's worth (on my first Mac, my
Alarm DA flashed for three weeks the first time before I noticed).
And if you want to know what you're being reminded of, you have to
open the right IC file yourself, manually. Contrast this to
Remember?, which brings up an obnoxious palette in front of
everything describing what's happening, and lets you bring up the
calendar and list of upcoming events instantly from there if
necessary. In short, the calendar-reminder feature feels
artificially and inadequately imposed upon IC - perhaps (but this
is just a guess) in hopes of giving it more appeal to the
lucrative business market. However, I don't need IC as a calendar,
so I don't care.

Aside from this, IC's implementation is beautiful and thoughtful
in its details. The document window has a removable bar with some
popup menus and gorgeously drawn buttons across the top; the
choices have been well made as to which functions to make
accessible here. There is nice use of a changing cursor. You can
Undo just about anything. In short, it's clear that serious
thought has gone into making IC robust and intuitive, something I
can't say of certain other "neat idea" applications I've had
occasion to review in these e-pages.

Keyboard navigation between topics is superb, including commands
to move up or down to the next topic at the same level, whether
adjacent or not, to move to the topic governing the present one,
and to move to the present topic's last subtopic. You can select
topics contiguously or non-contiguously. You can promote all of a
topic's subtopics, or demote all topics subsequent to this one at
the same level (to make them subtopics of this one). You can copy
a topic with or without its subtopics. A style-sheet can be set
for the whole document, dictating the default font, size, style,
and color for each outline topic level; activating the style-sheet
does not wipe out features not specified (if you change a level's
font to Helvetica but don't specify a style, italics are not
lost), and multiple alternate style sheets for the document can be
maintained using a "script". My one complaint is that there is no
keyboard command to move the cursor a word at a time; commands to
split and merge topics would have been helpful too, and it might
have been nice if graphics could be pasted into the outline.

The outline is always at the left; everything to its right is a
column. The width of the outline and of each column can be changed
(or zeroed, if desired), and the relative position of columns
shifted, by dragging in the bar at the top of the window. Each
column's text can be given an independent default font, size,
style, and color. A wonderful feature is that if a column is to
contain keywords, you can enable fast entry of these: if you type
the first letter(s) of a keyword in the column, the computer
enters the rest, and if you hold down the mouse in the column, a
pop-up menu containing the keywords appears. There is provision
for multiple keywords in one column for a single topic; and you
can set the sort order of keywords. Another neat thing is that you
can set a column so that if you make a new topic, this column will
contain the same value as its predecessor, or the next in a
sequence of numbers. You can also cause a single value to be
entered instantly in a column for all (visible) topics. There is
spreadsheet-like keyboard navigation, as if topics and column
entries were cells. Thus, IC is a rapid data entry tool.

You may want to use this power to create tables or text that you
intend to use in other applications. IC can import or export by
copy-and-paste or (to maintain formatting) by using XTND
technology. Tab/return-delimited tables are imported as topic
(first column) and columns, and vice versa for exporting. When
importing, tabs (or option-spaces) at the start of a line are
taken as indent information: thus, you can import from any word
processor right into outline form. You can export the same way, or
(with XTND) export topic indentations as nested paragraphs, using
rulers. A clever feature is that hidden columns do not figure in
importing, exporting, or printing, and hidden topics are not
exported or printed either. This makes it easy to transfer or
present data in just the desired format. One of the first things I
did with IC was to import a huge table I was constructing in Word;
with IC's easy data entry, I'll finish it twice as fast, then
export it back to Word. (The only downside to importing is that
the IC file can be larger by 30 to 100%, depending on the source.)
IC also has good printing capabilities, intelligently managing
tables which may spread over multiple pages horizontally and
vertically, and providing a basic range of options such as margin
size, headers and footers, grid lines, column title style, and
alphanumeric topic labels for the outline.

The manual is splendidly written: clear, simple, small, explicit,
graphic. I could have used a section gathering technical
information; it is possible to err too far on the side of
simplicity (not all your customers will be business nerds,
Attain!). Also, "later in this chapter" is not much of a cross-
reference; page numbers would help. There are twenty graphic
online help screens, and balloon help; even the error alert boxes
are informative rather than merely punitive. Two complaints about
IC. First, I hate to harp on this, but is it really too much to
ask that a program shouldn't mess up the "colors" on my 16-gray
screen? Not only does IC do this, it sometimes turns its whole
window black, and I have to go to some lengths to recover
visibility. Second, a single bad interface decision: there is a
situation where text jumps from under the mouse as you double-
click on it, and you end up clicking in the wrong place. Attain
should rethink this one.

IN CONTROL revolves around a powerful basic concept. The interface
is clean, lean, reliable, helpful, and sensible. Put these two
elements into the hands of just about any user, who surely will
find the program so flexible and adaptable as to serve all kinds
of needs both present and hitherto undreamt of, and you've got a
whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. IC is already
taking over many tasks on my computer that I had assigned to
lesser workers. No doubt it can do the same for you.

Attain Corporation -- 617/776-2711 -- 617/776-1626 (fax)
ATT...@applelink.apple.com


Reviews/30-Aug-93
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 23-Aug-93, Vol. 7, #34
Illustrator 5.0 -- pg. 43
Panorama II 2.1 -- pg. 43
TabHouse 1.56 -- pg. 50
Roland General MIDI Sound Module -- pg. 52
Paint Alchemy -- pg. 52


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