TABLE OF CONTENTS
by Louis Bookbinder
This month Owen Saxton has provided several useful MIDI utilities and some other interesting items, to make this a really different disk.
The fastest way to convert MIDI files to QuickTime 2.0 movies. No need to change file types and press all those "Convert..." and "Options..." buttons; just drag and drop. Freeware.
Clipfolio is a control panel that watches your work and saves the information every time you cut or copy to the clipboard. You can come back later to use this saved information over and over while copying new stuff. Clipfolio will save up to 20 of your most recent cuts or copies. Automatically! Shareware fee $15.
In the tradition of other award-winning hacks (ColorFinder, MovieFinder), CyberFinder extends the Macintosh Finder in ways never before thought possible! With the addition of CyberFinder to your Macintosh, the Finder becomes a database for your favorite sites on the Internet. No more trying to remember whether you stored the info in Netscape or America Online - now keep it all in one place! Freeware.
The Internet Configuration System was designed to make your life easier by reducing the number of times which you need to enter your Internet preferences into the various preferences dialogs of all your Internet applications. In particular, currently you need to enter your Email address into many common Macintosh Internet applications (e.g. Eudora, NewsWatcher and Anarchie). The goal of the system was to get each of these applications to get this information from one common place and to give you a tool to edit these common preferences. Freeware.
Memory Minder is a RAM management tool. Its purpose is to allow you to reduce or increase the memory requirements for application programs. It does this by keeping track of how much memory applications request and then actually use, and allowing you to adjust the preferred memory size for recently run applications. Shareware fee $10.
Menu Bar Pattern is a control panel that allows you to install a pattern in your Menu Bar! A selection of patterns is included. Others may be imported or created using the supplied editor. A transparent mode is also available. Shareware fee $7.
Midi Typer is a drag-and-drop utility requiring System 7.0 or greater. It convinces your system that all those MIDI files you downloaded (or bought) really are MIDI files. It is smart enough to automatically distinguish between real MIDI files and text files (such as ÔRead MeÕ documentation), so you can just drop the icon of a folder or disk on Midi Typer, and it will do the rest. You can also use Midi Typer to change the application that will open your Midi files. Freeware.
MidiQT is a system extension that enables real-time synthesis of MIDI data using Apple's QuickTime™ 2.0. Applications such as sequencers or music notation programs that are able to connect to Apple's MIDI Manager can transmit MIDI signals to the Quicktime 2.0 synthesizer and produce immediate sound output. Demoware - the full version costs $20.
Here is a fun new toy: an antique pocketwatch! This is a totally self explanatory desktop ornament. Requires a color-capable Mac and System 7 or greater. This is a fat binary. Freeware.
The QuickTime™ Musical Instruments file contains forty-two musical instrument samples which can be used in QuickTime 2.0 movies. It is included as an extra on the CD-ROM version of the System 7.5 distribution, and is provided here for owners of Quicktime 2.0 who do not have this CD-ROM. Freeware.
Screen Ruler is a great virtual ruler ready to be dragged around on the desktop. It is useful (as any ruler) to measure things on the computer screen in Pixels, Inches, Picas and Centimeters. It allows accurate measurements with dynamic cursor display, vertical or horizontal orientation, with a custom length feature. Shareware fee $10.
This upgrade to the StyleWriter driver applies to all models of
monochrome StyleWriter printers, and provides several new features.
These are: two- and four-up printing to save paper; the printing of a
"watermark" on every page of a document; two different halftoning
methods for grayscale printing; and the ability to share a printer
with other Macs on an AppleTalk network. It also corrects a spacing
problem that was apparent when using monospaced fonts. Freeware.
As mentioned at the last General Meeting, the team wants to make software updates available to the membership. We see a lot of updates in our sources, but we have not put many of them out because we just didn't know who needed them. We could fill a Disk of the Month completely with them each month, or maybe two or three, and would not get you any useful shareware. More important, we have no way of knowing, except by sales, which updates are needed, and which are not.
Below we present a short survey which would help us solve this problem. Please fill it out or just jot the info in a piece of paper and get it to us at the August 7 meeting. You need not include your name, since we just want to know what updates would sell. We will track these as best we can and have these available at general meetings for nominal cost. To help with this we have subscribed to the Macintosh Software Update Report, a newsletter a SMUG member saw promoted at the recent Mactivity in San Jose. We will pass around a copy at the next meeting. If you see a software update you need, make a note of it and see us at the break. We might even have a copy of that particular update.
And, as we mentioned before, we really do need another warm body or two. This is exciting work we are doing, but projects like software updates take time and energy, and more team members would greatly improve our contribution to the club.
List below software for which you hope to get periodic updates. Include commercial ware and share/freeware
COMPANY______________Product_______________________version
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From Your Shareware Team
You may remember a few months back when I demoed HTML.Pro - a utility to build HTML pages for the (World-Wide) Web. You must have liked it - I got a round of unexpected applause. Again, last month we demoed another HTML editor, WebWeaver. If you looked closely you should have been able to see the tags used to build the HTML page.
Somehow the idea has gotten around that Web pages are difficult,
esoteric, for programmers only. This is not the case. In its bare
essentials, any page of ascii text can be used as a Web page! No, I
am not kidding, and here is the proof:
Now, this does not mean that anybody out there with a browser can read all your text files. You need to do a lot more to publish on the official WEB. That is a problem for you and your internet access provider. Join the internet SIG for more particulars on doing this.
But I want to assure you that building Web pages is not an arcane art. It is just ascii text with some marks added. And the marks are not all that obscure. You could learn the secrets of HTML just by looking at other people's pages! Here is how: Each browser also has a SOURCE option of some kind, which will either display or download the source text for the current page. Browse around and pick a really simple source page - no pictures, sounds, or entry forms, no icons, no fancy lists, just some text and a few titles and maybe one or two links. Now use your SOURCE option to get the HTML.
You may see some things like <H1>(some text)</H1> These are markers for big fancy titles. If you want a big fancy title for your document, just put <H1> before your title and </H1> after. Try it with your own document above, save it, and try again. You may have to rebuild your page (command-R in Netscape). A title! Easy, huh? You are now an experienced HTML programmer! Put it on your resume. Put your resume on the Web!!!
Look at the other marks in the source you downloaded and see what
they do. With a little initiative and a lot of time you can build
really fancy pages. Some features:
and more. These are evolving features. HTML 3 standard has just been
released with many interesting new features. More will be added in
future. A lot to play with.
And that is what you should do. Make up a SIMPLE home page for yourself. Get it published. Then play with it. Add color. Add icons. Add links. Change the text. A little bit at a time. Unlike old-style text which you wrote once, and then it was fixed forever, Web pages are meant to be modified. That is why you keep going back to interesting pages - to see what new has been added. If you add something and it is not what you want, or it doesn't work right, modify it or remove it. Nobody will get on your case for changing your mind. And after months of tinkering, you will have a work of art which you can be proud of!
Some real tips (courtesy of track-ball wizard Thomas Carlson):
€Need some more exact info on memory usage of running
applications? Open About Macintosh and then start balloon help. The
balloons give k-bytes used and k-bytes remaining in each
application's memory heap!
€Have two macs you want to link together? If you have a 9-pin
DIN cable used for printing, plug one end in each machine's printer
port. INSTANT APPLETALK NETWORK! (You need Appletalk, of course) It
seems Apple did this on the original mac before developing more
sophisticated networking and never took it out!