SHAREWARE NEWS

JULY '95 DISK OF THE MONTH (DOM)

by Louis Bookbinder

One consequence of Larry Hutnik's leaving the shareware team is that we no longer get to meet at his office in Mountain View. We tried to meet at the SMUG office on San Antonio, but for certain reasons that proved unsatisfactory. Last meeting was at Ilana Braun's house, and we may try mine (Louis's) or Owen's. Call us if you need to know.

Many of you take shareware for granted. You do not realize what an incredible phenomenon it is!! Many of the authors have put as much careful work into that shareware as commercial developers into products which are marketted for KILOBUCKS. Why do they do it? What do they get out of it? Most authors include README files which not only describe their products but the motivations behind it. Fascinating! This, and the products themselves are just two of the reasons we love doing this. You ought to come to one of our meetings if you want to hear some enthusiastic people!
ASCIIPaint 1.0b4 - lets you paint, like you would with other Macintosh painting programs. The big difference is that you are painting with ASCII characters. ASCII characters are letters, number, symbols, and any other character you have on your keyboard. 62x23 grid, eraser, grid, constrain to horizontal or vertica, Clipboard and typing support, and saves text documents. Black and white text. Freeware
Church Windows 1.1 - is a Control Panel that allows you to change the style of windows used by your Mac. Window styles are implemented through plug-ins, six of which are supplied with this release (Windows 3.1, Windows 95, NeXT, Motif, Silicon Graphics Iris, and a grow-handled System 7). Church Windows requires System 7 (and has been tested up to 7.5.1). Shareware - $15
HEARTS DELUXE is like no computer card game you¹ve ever seen.
It¹s features include: 3-D INTERFACE, 256 COLORS (though it will happily support black and white), Multichannel SOUND, ANIMATED EXPRESSIONS that change in context, SPEAKING OPPONENTS who comment on each hand, ABILITY to download new opponents. A TUTOR to help you learn and then master the game, OPTIONAL RULES to accommodate almost all Hearts variations, TELEPATHY window which gives you an exciting look at the artificial intelligence engine that powers HEARTS DELUXE, WELL WRITTEN and extensive on-line documentation, And most importantly, it plays a very good game of Hearts. Shareware - $15.
HTML Web Weaver 2.5 is a text editor designed around the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) used in World Wide Web documents.

HTML Web Weaver allows you to easily and quickly create HTML documents by allowing you to write your document and then edit in your tags via a select-and-tag method. HTML Web Weaver also makes more complex HTML tags such as linking to other network services (ie. Gopher, FTP, WAIS and WWW sites) by using a simple information form format.

HTML Web Weaver provides the user (you) with both a simple and flexible interface, in other words, it's only as complex as you need it to be. HTML Web Weaver is designed to be very modular allowing a simple step to add new functions (specifically HTML tags) using a simple 'plug-in and play' interface (see the file 'Installation Guide' for details). Shareware $25.
WithAView7 1.1 - is an extension for use with System 7 that allows the user to change the view in a Finder window from Œby icon¹ to Œby name¹ by clicking in an appropriate part of the window. The user can also switch to view Œby icon¹ or Œby small icon¹ by clicking in the appropriate part of a Finder window while holding down the option key.

Tip O' the Month

From Your Shareware Team

The System Folder - cleanup.

A couple months back I mentioned that my system folder was a mess. Again, the main problem is that a lot of applications and inits put their own special files randomly in the system folder. It tends to look like my daughter's bedroom after a while!

But all is not hopeless! Here are some basic principles to keep your System clean:

1. Cut out all the "goodies" you seldom use. We love to sell you shareware every month with these goodies, but really don't expect you to keep ALL of them and use them every day. Once the delight of a new dingbat wears off, if you do not use it, remove it. Some examples might be Zipples or Shutdown effects. They are cool, but what do they contribute to the use of your mac?
2. You can always copy off to diskette if you are not sure you need it. Then if you do, copy back on. Do not just trash it, especially if you do not know what it does. It may be that obcure item which allows your system to use your modem, or something.
3. Do it often. Do not go months between cleanups. In a month I add about 50 new items to my machine, to do shareware evaluation, and not all of it goes away when I am done. Some great candidates: the "(disabled)" folders created by Extensions Manager. Some of those items are gathering digital dust. Clean them out. Preferences! When you install a program, you usually create a preferences file. Did you remove it when you removed the program? What about ACTIVE extensions and control panels? Once you set date&time, how often do you set it again? Disable them, first, then later remove them. And After-Dark modules are cool, but I usually only use one at a time, and maybe 10 over the course of a year. Put them on diskette, just keep the one.
4. Keep as few folders in your system file as possible. Experiment with having another folder called JUNK or something like that, inside your system folder, and put your odd items in that. Check that your system still works, of course. You may have to pull these items out again. KEEP A BOOT DISK HANDY!
5. Learn about the special services. When I installed ARA 2.0 on my mac, I got about 50 modem drivers with it. I only have one modem. I trashed the other 49. How many printers do you have? How many printer DRIVERS? How about those nifty CD-ROM inits? Do you network? Other comm inits? How about fonts - do you really need all 35 of them? And when was the last time you looked inside your system FILE? It has some layouts and sounds you will probably never use.
6. Finally, get Alias Assassin and remove all those surplus aliases. Aliases are a great system 7 feature, but they tend to accumulate, and hang around like preferences. Also, when you use FIND FILE (or UltraFind), stop and check out the other items it finds - you may get some surprises!

Another note on startup modifier keys: to boot from an external disk, remember DOCS: Delete, Option, Command (not control), Shift. Of course, the external disk must be bootable, or you will get a sad mac.

Check out the June issue of MacUser - I got a lot of this stuff from there.

Conflict Notes:

Do not try to Use Resedit on resources on a RAM disk created with Shrinkwrap. Copy to the desktop first, and work on the copy.

Do not use ARA with Empty Trash. It hangs, bombs and does other odd failures.

If you discover other conflicts with any shareware we sell, or any programs at all, send us a note and we will include it here.

THE SHAREWARE TEAM

Louis Bookbinder (disk creation, demo, newsletter, Manager)