The LIMac JANUARY 1999

NEWSLETTER OF THE LONG ISLAND USERS GROUP

LIMac has been serving Macintosh users on Long Island January’s since 1984, when the LIMac Inc. Mac was introduced. Meeting. P.O. Box 518 Annual dues for SomethingVery Seaford, NY 11783 membership is $24. President First meeting is free. Different. Bill Medlow For information, you [email protected] can contact any of Vice President the following: Al Choy [email protected] Membership Treasurer Donald Hennessy Max Rechtman (516) 541-3186 [email protected] [email protected] Bradley Dichter and Kirk Cronk will give a Secretary Public Domain December’s Meeting Bernie Flicker demonstration of networking a personal file Software twofl[email protected] Helen and Bradley Dichter’s Q&A session and two game sharing. Using LIMac’s desktop and laptop G3 The LIMac FORUM Sheldon Gross demos preceded our holiday party. computers, they will connect them with both Editors/Graphics (212) 799-5655 Steven Rechtman started us off with PhoneNet and Ethernet. That done, they will Mo Lebowitz [email protected] Quake, a fast action search and destroy game clearly to demonstrate just what must be done Loretta Lebowitz Technical Advice where your computer screen is your view of in order to set up the file sharing network, and [email protected] Bradley Dichter realtime fast action. Steve went straight for the finally, actually move files back and forth. Distribution (516) 348-4772 difficult level as he moved through the halls Think of all the possibilities for your Mac. Wallace Lepkin [email protected] and rooms, showing us the 3-D game environ- This will be a first for a LIMac general Donald Hennessy Program ment, moving up stairs and across bridges. meeting. You can view all the action via two Printing Willow Graphics Coordinator Geoff Broadhurst gave a Riven demo – a projectors using two screens. What a show! Balan Nagraj (516) 785-5360 relaxed adventure and exploration in which What a great way to start a Happy Mac Year! Imagesetting (516) 427-0952 you mouse click your way at your own pace Bradley Dichter is a freelance Macintosh [email protected] A&B Graphics and travel wherever you want in the 3-D land consultant; Kirk Cronk is a systems engineer (516) 433-8228 Beginners SIG of Riven as you turn levers, open doors, go up with Educational Technology Associates in Donald Hennessy The FORUM is Wally Lepkin and down stairs as you explore to solve Hauppauge, a division of Custom Computer published monthly by [email protected] various puzzles. (See page 4 for the photos.) Specialists . LlMac.All contents, 0 0 Internet SIG –Donald Hennessy Friday, January 8th, 7 p.m., Room 408. except where noted, Al Choy are copyright ©1999 [email protected] Jazzy Stuff in January: by LIMac. Opinions Internet Address expressed are the http://www.limac.org All meetings formerly We are collecting $26 annual dues for 1999. views of the authors in Building 500 will Please pay at the door or send checks to: and do not neces- sarily reflect those of now meet in Room 408 Donald Hennessy LIMac. Contents may of Building 400. LIMac Inc. be reprinted for non- P.O. Box 518 Beginners SIG: commercial use, with Seaford, New York 11783 due acknowledgment Friday, January 15, to LIMac. at 7:00 P.M. LIMac Meetings, unless otherwise noted, are held at the New Guest speaker Alan York Institute of Technology (Building. 400), at Northern Gordon discussing Boulevard, Old Westbury. To see if school is open in bad weather, call (516) 686-7789. beginner Internet. The next LIMac board meeting will be at the DTP SIG: Friday, January 8, at 9:00 P.M. Plainedge Library on Monday, January 11, 1998 More Photoshop 5.0 (there’s still a lot to learn!). at 8:00 P.M. Internet SIG: Monday, Jan. 18, 7:30 P.M. Further exploration of the Internet in the auditorium of the Bethpage Public Library. separately? And wouldn’t it be provides “seamless integration of spell checking problem. Place it where it best suits your work fantastic if you had one single spell and other text tools into existing Macintosh habits in each application and SpellTools will checker that would work with all of your applications.” remember its location every time. applications? Is that what’s bothering All of SpellTools functions are controlled from SpellTools comes packaged with a wide assort- you, Bunky? a floating palette, which can be oriented either ment of plug-ins for many existing applications. SpellTools 1.3.3 by Frank Petrie Well, your worries are at an end. In the great vertically or horizontally.Another plus is that you But what if you have a program that isn’t main- Whatsa matter, Bunky? You say you’ve got a computer-user tradition of demanding something can place your floating palette in a different stream? Nothing to it. Simply drag the desired separate spell checker for each and every one of for nothing, I give you SpellTools, freeware from location for each separate application you use it application icon on to the SpellTools icon and your applications? And you’re constantly updating Newer Technology (the people who bring you in. So, if one position is good for your e-mail SpellTools automatically creates a plug-in for the each and every dictionary GURU and high-quality upgrade cards). SpellTools program, but not so good for your browser, no desired application.That’s it. 2 President’s Message Technical Corner Just a few words to say that 1998 was a suc- | Any feedback yet on OS 8.5.1 update? cessful year for both Apple and LIMac. The G3 It’s supposed to fix problems, but a few items and the iMac, really say it all for Apple, a real need updates, like Snitch 2.6.1 and we’re still success story. LIMac also had a great year with waiting for updates to TechTool Pro’s DNA file Bill Medlow many great presentations, including Bob so it can properly evaluate the System suitcase President LeVitus and David Pogue. for damaged resources. We have the OS 8.5.1 [email protected] For the upcoming year, Apple will start us update in our PD library or it’s about 3MB to off with Yosemite, the P1, and Lombard. download. Hopefully ending the year with Carbon (new | I have a G3 and just installed OS 8.5.1. It Bradley Dichter system) and Sawtooth (1000 MHz G4)! A lot to has a memory problem. After running [email protected] look forward to. Photoshop, the memory isn’t released. I have LIMac will start off with local area networks to restart to clear the problem. REVIEW and the Internet for beginners, along with Sounds like the standard memory fragmenta- some special remote meetings (March) and tion. If you run Photoshop and then something Noted with interest: more great general meetings, as we did last else, like QuarkXPress, for instance, and then Some ideas about STUFF! sensible backups year. With information from our questionaire, quit Photoshop, you’ve left a block of free excerpted from hopefully, we can identify items of interest, for memory where Photoshop was, plus whatever LIMac Board of Directors for 1999: MACADDICT (Dec.98). future meetings and SIGS. was left after QuarkXPress. You’ll notice the “…it’s not worth By the way, just to remind all of our 1999 About This Computer... window indicates the Broadhurst,Goeff backing up applica- members – when making a purchase from largest unused block, not just free memory. [email protected] tions and System files. DataVision (at the Fortunoff Source Mall) and You’ll have to quit out of your programs in Brown-Rosner, Sheree If disaster strikes, you smilephoto@smile CompUSA (adjacent to Roosevelt Field, reverse order of your launching them to avoid photo.com might as well just Garden City) – show your LIMac membership the problem. Applications must use a Choy,Al reinstall them from the card and you will be entitled to a discount contiguous block of memory when launched. appropriate Web sites [email protected] (there may be times where their price is below Jump Development’s RAMCharger 8 helps [or CDs]. No, the Cronk, Kirk things you can never ours). There will be more info available at our work around this problem by tricking the [email protected] next meeting, telling you exactly how this will system by scavenging unused memory blocks. recover are personal Dichter, Brad data such as archived work. This can easily, more than pay for your RAM Doubler helps somewhat, too. Now that [email protected] e-mail, address books LIMac membership. Happy New Year. 0 you’ve installed OS 8.5.1 in an attempt to fix Flicker, Bernard and handmade docu- the problem, make sure you’ve updated your twofl[email protected] ments. Exercising “We have no idea what Level 2 cache is. No one Extensions, Control Panels and utilities. Gordon,Al discretion can take does. That’s why you should ask a lot of ques- Hopefully the updates fix any memory related much of the hassle AKGMac@villagenet tions about it – just to let them know they can’t problems like a memory leak some old .com out of the backup mess with you. programs had. process – rather than Gross, Helen & Shel “Whatever it is, it sounds good. We, wish | The Apple System Profiler on my G3 reports archiving your Web [email protected] browser and its multi- they would. put it in more products. Why not two copies of the . I only have Hennessy, Don megabyte cache low-fat milk, enriched, with Level 2 cache? one strip on screen. [email protected] folder, just grab a copy We’d buy it, and, we’d gladly pay extra. I would assume the mystery one is in your Lebowitz, Mo of its oh-so-precious “Most computers are reputed to have Control Panels (Disabled) folder or perhaps [email protected] bookmarks. 512KB of Level 2 cache. We like the 12; it’s a invisible. Use Find File’s hidden option to find Lepkin,Wallace “Be sure to check the nice detail. It almost makes the whole thing any invisible files. [email protected] for vital believable. | What are the advantages or disadvantages application data, too. McAteer, Bob “Our old computer didn’t have any. The of AOL’s mail versus Eudora Pro or Netscape [email protected] E-mail clients and Web truth is, we never really noticed. But sometimes Navigator? browsers often keep Medlow, Bill late at night, we felt a sense of lack. AOL’s mail offers the bells & whistles of for- important settings and [email protected] data files in the top “We used to fantasize about being, at the matting and colored text and background. It’s Nagraj, Balan level of this folder or high school reunion. No one was talking about not very practical. Only AOL users can see the [email protected] in the Preferences careers or relationships. They were talking formatting. A copied and pasted in URL does Randell, Scott folder, rather than in computers.They ignored us. ‘No Level 2 not form a clickable link like the others. The [email protected] the application’s own cache,’ they whispered, ‘absolutely none.’ ” only real advantage AOL’s mail offers is in how Rechtman, Max folder.“ 0 –Humor from The NewYork Times it treats attachments. Attachments are [email protected]

THE LIMAC FORUM/JANUARY 1999 Let’s look at each button individually: as you have the Speech Manager Extension | Text Tools An array of useful options such as through each function of the software. If FinderPop | SpellTool; this is the main function of the installed, you can have your selected text read word counting, uppercasing and lower-casing of is the greatest freeware utility of all-time (and program. Simply highlight the text that back to you. text, stripping or adding >s in e-mails, and make no mistake about it, it is), then SpellTools is you wish to check and click on this button. It | Stamps A very useful and customizable feature. stripping lead spaces. a very close second. I can think of no reason that comes with a user-definable dictionary Besides the usual date and time stamps, you can | Preferences Shortcut to SpellTools Prefs file. this shouldn’t have a permanent place in your bag which can be manipulated through keyboard create custom stamps with ease.You can make Allows you another way to edit your stamps, your of tricks. shortcuts.Also, there’s a field in the new stamps from a text selection or build them plug-ins, and your user-dictionary among other Oh, by the way, I said it was free, didn’t I? 0 SpellTool window that highlights the offending from scratch.Very handy for salutations and things. word in its context.Very nice. closing lines that you use repeatedly in business In spite of its ease of use, SpellTools comes | Speech; highlight the desired text and, as long correspondence (I use it with my e-mail client). with a brilliant hands-on tutorial that walks you More Technical Corner Sore Eyes 3 automatically stuffed and invisibly encoded for For those members and their children thinking you. With Eudora, you have to stuff your about applying to college this spring, it is not attachment and it automatically encodes it with too early to consult the Net for help. The REVIEW Binhex. Binhex is the best choice for Mac to wealth of information online covers a wide Mac e-mails, but unencode would be better for variety of topics including SAT prep, financial XPert Tools for cross-platform attachments, because Binhex is a aid, college selection, campus maps and other QuarkXPress: Mac-specific encoding. Use ZipIt for PC com- relevant details. Some of the top sites include: Every Quark user patible compression. Netscape does no Apply to College www.applytocollege.com should run right out encoding of attachments, so you have to do it which includes a universal application form and buy this two- yourself. Only plain text requires no encoding. accepted by some 975 schools. volume set (for v3.x or Most Mac files have a as well as a At College Board Online www.college- 4.x). XPert Tools Helen and data fork, but PCs and UNIX systems don’t, so board.org you can prepare for entrance exams relieve the pain of Sheldon Gross crawling through the unless you encode, the resource fork would be by answering the site’s SAT questions changed [email protected] arcane corners of lost and the attached file(s) become(s) useless. daily, or even get an evaluation of your essay Note: These sites are Quark to find impor- Stuffit Deluxe is great for encoding or decoding writing skills. referred to by us for tant action windows. Binhex or unencoded files and also for unzip- To find scholarships, loans, search for a your information only These tools are ping PC-compressed attachments. AOL’s e-mail particular college, athletic programs or chat and neither we nor XTensions, added to has another advantage – return receipts from with other applicants CollegeXpress might be LIMac endorse any of Quark’s interface, other AOL members. Of course, AOL members the place www.collegexpress.com. the products or sites. which will soothe the get a lot more spam or junk mail than regular Most colleges have web pages and e-mail aforementioned pain. Internet e-mail users. AOL mail is delivered addresses to make interactive contact readily And, by the way, with greater delays than ISP-based email. AOL available. Direct contact with the particular increase your speed and accuracy in doesn’t allow you to organize your e-mail like school of your choice should be made before Quark. Netscape into folders of categories. Eudora Pro relying on any of the information gleaned from The two volumes even allows you to program filters to sort your these sites. College Web pages are frequently include: Scaling, Layer incoming mail into folders. Most people with accessed by adding .edu to the school name in Controls, Color (find & Internet accounts just use the mail client built the appropriate place in your browser. 0 change), Image Infor- into Netscape Navigator 3.0.x or Netscape mation, Marqueeing Communicator 4.x.x, or they use Microsoft’s (for printing page Outlook Express which comes with Internet User Group News portions), Pasting Explorer. (remembered item | I’ve recently found my items on my hard Brighid Brady de-Lambert, Apple’s User positions), Menus (four pop-ups for page drive listed in reverse alphabetical order. Group Liaison, brought the following item to views, tools and active You must have accidentally clicked on a my attention and I would like to share this document switching), relatively new user interface element. At information with you. Document Launching, the top of the vertical scroll bar, on the right In a continuing effort to offer the most Max Rechtman Opening,Viewing, Item side of the window, there is a triangle, now up-to-date information to higher education [email protected] Nudging, Locking Text, pointing down, that lets you reverse the sort customers, Apple has created the Apple Formatting, Linking, order of the window’s contents. The button University Arts newsletter. The newsletter is Crop & Register Marks, was added in Mac OS 8.1. Of course, the reverse designed to offer a perspective on what Selective Formatting, sort button applies to sorting by date, size and students, administrators, faculty and IT A Command Pad,Text the other choices. professionals are doing with Apple products in Scaling/Shifting, Box | Tools (conversion, When is Mac OS X expected to ship? colleges and universities around the world. An sizing, etc.), Job In the third quarter of 1999. OS X server should integral part of the newsletter includes success Logging, Rulers, Pilot ship months earlier, about the same time as stories of all kinds. (for navigation), Mac OS 8.6. Apple is looking for stories of students and Scripter &,Greeking. | Other than ATM Deluxe, what substitutes faculty members who are pushing the envelope XPert Tools v1.1.1 are there for Suitcase? in their use of Apple technology. You can 1 Volume $99.95 Conflict Catcher 8.0.3 can turn fonts on and off e-mail your success stories to university Bundled $169.95 as well as the shareware, Fonts Manager. 0 [email protected]. 0 A Lowly Apprentice Production –ML 0 THE LIMAC FORUM/JANUARY 1999 Long Island Macintosh Users Group Post Office Box 518 Seaford, New York 11783 http://www.limac.org

January’s Meeting. Something DO I LOOK FUNNY? Very Different. Friday, January 8, at 7P.M.

4 TIP!

Text flow in QuarkXPress 4.x: | In QuarkXPress 4.x, you can watch text flow around an object as you move it on the page.To do so, enable TIP! the Live Refresh feature, found in In Adobe Illustrator: Edit > Preferences > | To kern letters, hold Application > down the Interactive. and use the left and Resizing Pictures: right arrow keys. | When you fit a | To restore a letter- picture to its box in pair’s kern value to 0: QuarkXPress 3.x using Some of the LIMac board members were caught in the flesh at the Christmas general meeting. Command-Shift-Q. Command-Option- They are: (front row, left to right) Donald Hennessy, Balan Nagraj, Sheree Brown-Rosner, | To reset horizontal Shift-E, it fits exactly. Sheldon Gross, Al Choy; (back row, left to right) Rick Matteson, Bradley Dichter, Bernie Flicker, scaling to 100: In QuarkXPress 4.x, Bill Medlow, Bob McAteer, Helen Gross, Wally Lipkin, Max Rechtman, and Geoff Broadhurst. Command-Shift-X. the picture becomes | A quick way to open one point larger than an Illustrator file into the box on each side FreeHand: drag the (the image gets document’s icon over cropped by its box). FreeHand’s applica- tion icon. This technique can be used to open any document into any application which can read that document. (If the application can read it, the application icon will highlight. If it can’t, it won’t.) This technique is great for opening picture files into Photoshop. All those that were in attendance. Doesn’t everyone look happy?

THE LIMAC FORUM/JANUARY 1999