TidBITS#553/30-Oct-00
Geoff Duncan
=====================
Want to make a diagram? Most graphics applications will let you
down, but not ConceptDraw, reviewed this issue, thanks to its
diagram-specific feature set. We also look at Aladdin's StuffIt
Deluxe 6.0, and cover smaller updates to Eudora 5.0.1, SETI@home
3.0, Action Files 1.5.4, and Action Menus 1.0.2. In the news,
Quark founder Tim Gill exits the company, Napster releases a Mac
client, and Priceline.com bags the concept of bidding on
groceries.
Topics:
MailBITS/30-Oct-00
Major Update to StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 and Expander 6.0
Make the Connection with ConceptDraw
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-553.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2000/TidBITS#553_30-Oct-00.etx>
Copyright 2000 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
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---------------------------------------------------------------
MailBITS/30-Oct-00
------------------
**Eudora 5.0.1 Released** -- Qualcomm has released Eudora 5.0.1, a
minor upgrade to the company's widely used email program (see
"Eudora 5.0 Reads Your Mind" in TidBITS-547_ for a review of the
new features). Changes include a variety of minor tweaks and fixes
to Eudora's rewritten Address Book, along with a number of other
small modifications to the spell checker, Eudora's IMAP
functionality, and importing. If you're using Eudora 5.0 now, it's
a worthwhile (and free) update; if you haven't upgraded from a
previous version, nothing in 5.0.1 other than improved stability
should change that decision. Eudora 5.0.1 requires a PowerPC-based
machine running Mac OS 8.1 or later. It's a 4.6 MB download. [ACE]
<http://www.eudora.com/products/eudora/download/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06112>
**Updates to Action Files 1.5.4 & Action Menus 1.0.2** -- Power On
Software has released a pair of minor updates to Action Files and
Action Menus, the company's $30 utilities for enhancing Open and
Save dialog boxes and for creating custom menus and keyboard
shortcuts. (See "Get a Piece of the ACTION Files" in TidBITS-434_
and "Now Menus Reincarnated as Action Menus" in TidBITS-503_.)
Action Files 1.5.4 improves compatibility with several
applications (BBEdit 6, Adobe Photoshop 6, Adobe Illustrator 9,
Microsoft Word 2001, and CodeWarrior), addresses some
compatibility issues with Mac OS 8.1 and earlier versions, and
fixes a bug that prevented some items from showing up in the
Recent Item list. Action Menus 1.0.2 addresses similar Mac OS 8.1
and earlier compatibility issues, fixes a bug that hampered custom
keyboard command creation and deletion under Mac OS 9.0.x, fixes a
bug that prevented documents created by certain applications from
showing up properly in Recent Items menus, and fixes a bug with
Multi-Action Menu Commands under Mac OS 9.0.x. Although the
updates are unquestionably minor, they are free (just install the
demos to upgrade), and since they patch the Mac OS at a low level,
it's probably worth upgrading when you get a chance. Action Files
1.5.4 is a 2.3 MB download; Action Menus 1.0.2 checks in at 2.2
MB. (And while we're on the topic, kudos to Power On's Now Up-to-
Date & Contact, which has reportedly taken over the number one
sales position in Japan in the scheduling and project management
category on any platform, outpacing even Microsoft Project and
Lotus Organizer on Windows.) [ACE]
<http://www.poweronsoftware.com/products/ACTIONFiles/>
<http://www.poweronsoftware.com/products/ACTIONMenus/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04931>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05619>
<http://www.poweronsoftware.com/information/pressreleases/japan.asp>
**SETI@home 3.0 Client Available** -- The folks at the SETI@home
distributed computing project - which takes advantage of idle
systems around the world to analyze radio telescope data for
possible extraterrestrial signals - have released version 3.0 of
the SETI@home client for Macintosh. Version 3.0 still runs as
either a screen saver or stand-alone application, and introduces
new highly optimized Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithms; the
performance improvements offered by the new techniques enable the
SETI@home client to attempt two types of pulse detection ("pulses"
and "triplets"). Version 3.0 also expands the range of Doppler
shift rates examined, and tightens its Gaussian curve fitting to
reduce the number of false positive reports. The client is also a
little pickier about updating its 3D graph, since drawing to the
screen can take longer than actually performing the computations.
SETI@home 3.0 is a 450K download, and requires a PowerPC-based
machine with at least 24 MB of RAM running System 7.5.5 or higher;
use of the version 3.0 client will eventually be required to keep
participating in the SETI@home project. If you haven't already,
consider joining the TidBITS SETI@home team! [GD]
<http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/mac.html>
<http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_join_form&id=3308>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05401>
**Napster (Finally) Releases Mac Client** -- Napster, the
controversial peer-to-peer music sharing service currently being
sued by major recording industry players for promoting piracy, has
released its first beta client software for the Macintosh. If the
software walks and talks like Blackhole Media's Macster, one of
the most popular third party Napster clients for the Mac, don't be
surprised: Napster recently purchased Macster and has now blessed
it as its official Mac client. Napster plans to keep the same team
of developers working on it. The client allows users who register
with the Napster service to download MP3 files from other members
of the Napster community, as well as optionally share a local
stash of files with that community and participate in real-time
chats. The Napster 1.0b1 client is a 1.3 MB download and requires
a PowerPC-based machine running at least Mac OS 8.1 (with
CarbonLib 1.4 and Internet Config); Napster plans to release
support for non-English languages shortly. [GD]
<http://www.napster.com/mac/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06056>
**Entourage Followup** -- A postscript to my review of Microsoft
Entourage in TidBITS-550_: Despite the congeniality of its
organizational structure to my working style, I eventually found
that, as I had feared, Entourage's speed was a show-stopper.
Entourage was taking several minutes to perform and display the
results of a search that Eudora can complete in a few seconds, and
many seconds to move or delete selected messages, which Eudora can
do almost instantly. Even switching between windows was slow. I've
now migrated completely back to Eudora. This turned out not to be
quite as simple as I stated in the review; the method I suggested
works for incoming messages, but not for copies of outgoing
messages. Instead, I used a superb AppleScript script, Eudora
Export, the combined work of Dan Crevier and R. Shapiro; thanks to
it, Eudora users can experiment with Entourage fearlessly. [MAN]
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06139>
<ftp://ftp.macemail.com/oe/R_Shapiro's_OE_4.5_Scripts.hqx>
**Priceline.com Ceases Bidding on Groceries** -- In "Name That
Price on Priceline.com!" in TidBITS-499_, we wrote about a good
experience (not since repeated) with purchasing airline tickets
through Priceline.com's auction approach. We also looked at
Priceline.com's WebHouse Club program for buying groceries and
gasoline through a similar method of bidding on low price. Though
we have been extremely positive about the utility of shopping for
groceries online through firms like HomeGrocer.com (now owned by
Webvan), the WebHouse Club program made no sense at all to us.
Now, after less than a year of operation, Priceline.com is closing
down the WebHouse Club program (though none of the company's other
services). The moral of the story? Different goods require
different business models, whether or not the Internet is
involved. [ACE]
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05575>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05303>
<http://www.priceline.com/infoctr/update.asp>
**Gill Exits Quark** -- Sources close to Quark, Inc. have
confirmed that founder and chairman Tim Gill has left the company
to pursue philanthropic efforts through his organization, the Gill
Foundation. Fred Ebrahimi, Quark president and CEO, recently
purchased Gill's half of the privately held company. Gill founded
Quark in 1981 and wrote the first word processor for the Apple
III. Ebrahimi was hired as president and CEO in 1986. Quark's
flagship product, QuarkXPress, has been one of the major
applications in the desktop publishing field since its release in
1987. Representatives at Quark had no comment. [JLC]
<http://www.gillfoundation.com/>
<http://www.quark.com/products/quarkxpress/>
**Poll Results: Front and Center** -- Last week's poll asking what
folks consider to be the most common tasks for which they use
their Macs was both enlightening and predictable. By far, the
runaway responses were email and Web browsing, which garnered 87
percent and 80 percent of the responses, respectively - clearly,
the Internet dominates the computer use of this poll's
respondents. Word processing placed a strong third place, ranked
by about 63 percent of the respondents, but from that point on the
responses were a wash. Graphics, spreadsheets, and print/Web
publishing each garnered responses of 30 percent or more (meaning
about one respondent in three considered them a common task) and
both development and games earned a about 20 percent response
(meaning about one poll respondent in five is a gamer or software
developer). Remaining categories - audio and video, tweaking the
system, and other - were cited by 12 to 18 percent of respondents,
and educational software finished last, cited by only 5 percent of
the poll's respondents. [GD]
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbpoll=62>
**Poll Preview: Bandwidth Is Good** -- As noted above, last week's
poll revealed that TidBITS readers consider email and Web browsing
the most common tasks they perform on their Macs. But that raises
the question of bandwidth; if you're such a wired lot, what kind
of Internet connections do you use on a regular basis, both at
work and at home? We use a variety of connections, ranging from
56K modems and 56K frame relay to 128K ISDN and 256K DSL. Register
your vote on our home page! [ACE]
Major Update to StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 and Expander 6.0
---------------------------------------------------
by Adam Engst <a...@tidbits.com>
In moving to version 6.0, the venerable StuffIt Deluxe compression
and archiving package has received a significant update from
Aladdin Systems. Most notable among StuffIt Deluxe's new features
is ReturnReceipt, which enables the sender of a compressed email
attachment to request notification of the attachment's expansion.
ReturnReceipt works by creating an outgoing email message
acknowledging expansion when the recipient expands the attachment
within StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 and StuffIt Expander 6.0. Recipients
always have the choice of acknowledgment, and previous versions of
the StuffIt products just see a text file. We haven't had a chance
to test this feature yet, but it sounds promising for certain
situations. Also new is the capability to search for items within
StuffIt archives, support for additional file formats for
compression and expansion, optional automatic update notification,
cooperation with external anti-virus programs for automatic
scanning after expansion, and an option to recover damaged
archives. It's also worth noting that StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 uses the
same file format as StuffIt 5.x.
<http://www.aladdinsys.com/deluxe/>
The application portions of StuffIt Deluxe work with Mac OS X
Public Beta; unfortunately that's not true of the popular
extensions that rely on the classic Mac OS Finder, including Magic
Menu, True Finder Integration, Aladdin StuffIt Browser, Archive
Via Rename, and the StuffItCM contextual menu support. StuffIt
Deluxe requires a PowerPC-based machine with Mac OS 8.1 or higher
and 6 MB of available RAM. StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 costs $80; upgrades
are $30 for owners of previous versions of the StuffIt line, and
they're free if you purchased StuffIt Deluxe 5.5 after 01-Oct-00.
<http://www.aladdinsys.com/deluxe/osx.html>
<http://www.aladdinsys.com/deluxe/upgrade.html>
Simultaneously, Aladdin released StuffIt Expander 6.0, the latest
version of the company's near-ubiquitous freeware expansion
utility. Changes include support for more file formats (none of
which now relay on the StuffIt Engine provided by DropStuff with
Expander Enhancer), including .rar files, optional automatic
notification of future updates, and cooperation with external
anti-virus programs for automatic scanning after expansion.
Aladdin says that StuffIt Expander 6.0 is compatible with Mac OS X
Public Beta. Since StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 and DropStuff 6.0 continue
to use the StuffIt 5 file format, you don't need StuffIt Expander
6.0 to expand newly created StuffIt archives - the 5.x versions of
StuffIt Expander will continue to work for that purpose, although
they'll see only text files representing ReturnReceipt requests.
StuffIt Expander 6.0 requires a PowerPC-based machine running Mac
OS 8.1 or later (people with earlier systems should stick with
StuffIt Expander 5.5); it's a 2 MB download.
<http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander/expander_mac_login.html>
Along with everything else, Aladdin also released DropStuff 6.0
and DropZip 6.0, upgrades to Aladdin's $30 stand-alone drag & drop
utilities for creating StuffIt and Zip archives. Changes include
tweaks for Mac OS X Public Beta compatibility and optional
automatic notification of future updates. Neither can create
archives that incorporate ReturnReceipt requests - for that you
need StuffIt Deluxe. Upgrades from the previous version of
DropStuff cost $15 (DropZip upgrades are free for registered
users), and demos of both are available as 3.6 MB downloads.
<http://www.aladdinsys.com/dropstuff/macindex.html>
<http://www.aladdinsys.com/dropzip/macindex.html>
Make the Connection with ConceptDraw
------------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg <ma...@tidbits.com>
Sooner or later, you're going to want to draw a diagram. Of
course, you may already know the importance of diagrams - perhaps
because you have to chart team organization or workflow at the
office. But if you're like me, diagramming just sneaks up on you;
you give it no thought until suddenly you need to show someone
some sort of conceptual structure. And it isn't just the final
presentation that's significant; it's the whole process of
thought, creation, and alteration. What you want is the computer
equivalent of a pencil or a blackboard, but neater, cleaner,
quicker; it should be easy to sketch your initial idea and easy to
change it without messing it up.
How do you do that on the Mac? Many programs I've discussed in
past issues of TidBITS _can_ be used for diagrams, including
Inspiration, Canvas, and even Excel. But ConceptDraw, from
Computer Systems Odessa Corp., is dedicated to diagramming, and
brings great ease, originality, and power to the task.
<http://www.conceptdraw.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06025>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05801>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04852>
To understand ConceptDraw, let's explore it in three conceptual
layers that reveal themselves as you dig successively deeper into
its workings: drawing, connections, and "smart" objects.
**Drawing** -- When you start using ConceptDraw, you'll probably
wonder what the fuss is about. It looks like a drawing program.
Indeed, all the standard basic drawing features are present;
ConceptDraw may feel a bit clunky in comparison to the slick,
powerful interfaces of Canvas or CorelDRAW, but no important basic
functionality is missing.
You can draw a path of lines, Bezier curves, and sectors of
circles and ellipses. A path can have line color, thickness,
dot-and-dash style, and arrow style. A closed path can have fill
color, pattern, and shadow. Every distinct path is an object, or
multiple paths can be joined to form an object; multiple objects
can be grouped. Objects can be resized, flipped, and free-rotated.
Every object has a movable text box, whose text can be styled.
There are helpful tools for aligning and distributing objects, and
for copying style features between objects. The cursor can snap to
a grid or to an object's bounding box or outline, and objects can
be "glued" to a guideline. Documents can even have multiple layers
and multiple pages.
Still, although ConceptDraw wouldn't be useful if you couldn't
draw with it, drawing alone is not enough to make a diagram. For
that, you need connections.
**Connections** -- It turns out that every object in ConceptDraw
is either a normal object or a connector object. A connector
object has two inherent connection points, one at each end. A
normal object has four inherent connection points, at the
midpoints of the sides of its bounding box. Furthermore, you can
give any object as many additional connection points as you like,
which you can move or delete if you change your mind.
Now, when you drag one of a connector object's two inherent
connection points, its other inherent connection point stays put;
the object stretches and rotates to compensate. And when you drag
one of a connector object's inherent connection points onto a
connection point of another object, and let go, the two connection
points become attached; this means that if you move the second
object by dragging, resizing, or rotating it, the connector
object's inherent connection point moves too - while its other
inherent connection point stays put. Thus, if you have some normal
objects linked by connector objects, you can move any of the
normal objects and still maintain the linkages.
ConceptDraw supplies two default connector objects - a straight
line, and a sequence of lines that magically stay straight and
perpendicular to each other. However - and this is the Really
Interesting Part - you can turn _any_ object into a connector
object; so connections can appear exactly as you want them. And
any object (including a connector object) can have text; so
connections can be labeled. Plus, you're in charge of where an
object's connection points are; so connections stay neat and
precise.
Thus, ConceptDraw supplies you with much more power to create and
maintain your diagram the way you want it than does a drawing
program not dedicated to diagramming. However, the best is yet to
come: ConceptDraw's objects can be "smart."
**"Smart" Objects** -- Any draw program maintains, for each
object, certain internal data describing it and dictating the
object's drawn representation - the object's height, its width,
its degree of rotation, the endpoints and other determining
parameters of all the segments of all its paths, its line
thickness, its fill color, its text and all its text style
information, and so forth. ConceptDraw, unlike any drawing program
I know, gives you direct access to all this data. Select any
object and choose Show Table from its contextual menu, and a new
window opens, rather like a spreadsheet; that's the object's data.
You can modify the data in this table, and see your changes
instantly reflected in the drawn representation; you thus have
precise numeric control over the object. But the true power
emerges when, instead of a raw value, you enter a formula
describing a value as the result of a calculation, using standard
arithmetic operations and a repertoire of other math and string
functions. Such a calculation can involve other values from this
object's table - or from another object's table. Thus, you can
give an object special customized behavior.
For example, normally when you rotate an object, its text rotates
with it; for an object whose text should never rotate, set its
TextAngle to -Angle (the negative of the object's own rotation).
To make an object's width always be the same as that of another
object named ObjID1, set its Width to ObjID1.Width. To make an
object's text always state the object's height, set its TheText to
ValToText(Height). You can even give an object its own custom
contextual menu, whose items can operate on the object's values.
As you contemplate the power of such formula-based access to an
object's specifications, you may experience a feeling of awe, like
that well-known woodcut where the scholar pokes his head out
through the night sky to see the wheels and gears of the universe
beyond. You may also have a feeling of regret that you didn't pay
more attention to your high school trigonometry. For example, I
was able to create a rectangular object which, when rotated,
remains always a parallelogram with vertical sides; but it took
four cups of coffee, and afterwards I had to lie down.
[Kerry Magruder, one of the creators of the HyperCard-based
notetaking program HyperNote, has researched the fascinatingly
convoluted history of the image Matt mentions above. It's worth
reading. -Geoff]
<http://www.earthvisions.net/flat_earth.htm>
**Pet Project** -- ConceptDraw comes loaded with libraries of
normal and connector objects, many of them smart, ready for you to
assemble into diagrams. There are libraries for describing object-
oriented structures and information models, such as Booch, UML,
and Express-G (don't worry, I don't know what any of that means
either); for flowcharting and dataflow; for database modeling; for
drawing networks; for showing relationships among Web pages; for
constructing room layouts; for circuit diagrams; for technical
drawings; for organizational charts and project planning; and lots
more, including extra clip art, symbols, and map pieces.
You can also create your own libraries; so naturally I had to give
this a try, using a pet project of mine, sentence diagrams.
(Readers who are old enough may remember sentence diagrams from
high school; as an ex-language teacher, I still use them.) The
results were spectacular. After a few days of design and
experimentation, I ended up with a small library that makes
sentence diagrams dead simple to construct. Individual words are
"smart" objects whose line length automatically adjusts to the
length of the text, and with connection points that stay evenly
spaced. Horizontal words are linked by connector objects
expressing subject-predicate, object-complement, and so forth.
Slanting modifier words are "glued" to horizontal words at
connection points through something called a "control point,"
which is too complicated to explain here. My most brilliant
achievement was the right-angle that connects one modifier to
another (as in "very humane"); it's a smart connector object that
keeps its right-angle and its rotation when its connection points
are moved.
To see what I'm talking about, check out the Web page below, which
shows two of my sentence diagrams. But you won't learn much from
this, because what's important is not the diagram but the process
by which it was created. You'll just have to trust me when I say
that once I had the library developed, the diagrams were really
quick and easy to make.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/553/sentences.html>
**Wish List** -- ConceptDraw is a young program with frequent
updates, and it feels immature, even a bit raw in some ways. It
treats screen real estate like a Windows port, with status bar at
the bottom and innumerable palettes at the top. The interface
design is odd: many common actions are available only through
palette buttons (they have no menu equivalents), while others are
buried deep in dialogs. If you make a mistake entering a formula
you get the most unhelpful error message I've ever seen. The
program employs some non-Mac-like conventions, and there are lots
of "secret" keyboard equivalents that you can discover only from
the manual.
The manual is decent HTML, with excellent use of animated GIFs to
illustrate procedures, but it's tedious and compendious, not
instructive or explanatory, and contains some confusing errors.
What's really needed is a tutorial, as well as a guide to the
libraries, which are not explained at all. Also, someone whose
native language is English should be hired to correct the spelling
and grammatical errors that pervade the manuals and the program
itself.
I occasionally saw ConceptDraw crash, particularly when I tried to
paste something it didn't like; so save your work often. Several
times I had to force-quit when it refused to quit normally. Some
operations, such as opening certain libraries, are very slow. It
initially didn't print properly (rotated text was not rotated on
paper as on the screen), but the developers eventually sent me a
beta that fixed this. Also, I was astonished when I opened a saved
ConceptDraw document and found that the text had been corrupted
wherever I had used high-ASCII characters (for example, Option-p
had become a question mark); the developers told me of a setting
that prevents this, and explained it as a cross-platform issue,
but to me there can be no excuse for text changing between closing
a document and opening it again on the same machine.
Finally, now that I've developed a taste for ConceptDraw's smart
objects, I wish they were even smarter. If its formula language
were more like a programming language, and if it could express
valuable notions such as "all objects to which this object is
connected," some even more powerful effects could be achieved.
Perhaps this will be forthcoming in a future version.
**Endpoint** -- It's hard to believe, but there's quite a bit
about ConceptDraw that I haven't mentioned. You can customize
object behavior in other ways, such as what properties (e.g.
rotation) are locked, and what an object does when double-clicked,
or when its group is resized. Objects can contain links, and can
be made to open other documents, other pages of the same document,
or Web URLs. Also, ConceptDraw is cross-platform; the Windows
version does OLE embedding and linking, and there's a converter
for importing files from Visio (its main competitor, now owned by
Microsoft).
<http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio/>
ConceptDraw does two things I really like. First, it helps you
draw diagrams, a functionality hitherto essentially missing on my
Mac. Second, it opens its power to the user, exposing its objects
through data tables and making them customizable through formulas
- and I'm a complete sucker for programs that do that. It has its
faults, but it's also still under development, so look for future
improvements. Meanwhile, if you draw any sort of diagram or even
think you might have reason to do so, now is a fine time to look
into this fascinating program.
ConceptDraw 1.55 requires a PowerPC-based machine with Mac OS 8 or
later. It takes up about 30 MB of hard disk space and prefers 30
MB of RAM. ConceptDraw costs $160 (boxed) or $125 (downloadable,
with a discount to $98 currently available), and a demo is
available for download.
<http://www.conceptdraw.com/purchase/>
<http://www.conceptdraw.com/resources/suppdownl.html>
$$
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