TABLE OF CONTENTS
We had such a low turnout of testers last month that we have almost nothing this time from the tester group. Nevertheless, Owen Saxton, this month's provider, came up with a HUGE group of tiny applications. Surely SOMETHING in this Disk of the Month will be exactly what you have been looking for! All but one are freeware!
This system extension should be used with QuickTime 2.0 and with the Sound Manager 3.0 (present in System 7.5). It provides enhancements to these system components that enable them to operate more effectively under some conditions and with certain applications. The Apple Multimedia Tuner automatically determines whether your computer can benefit from the enhancements it provides and, if so, initializes itself when your computer starts up. Freeware.
To suppress custom icons on CD-ROMs, floppy disks and networked disks install this extension. This tends to speed up the Finder by a factor of about a zillion. Freeware.
Control Strip Menu is a module for Apple¹s Control Strip (or the shareware version for non PowerBooks, Desktop Strip) that lets you have a hierarchial menu on the control strip. You can select items from its own set or from the Apple menu. This is handy if you have files or folders spread out everywhere and you hate going up to the menu bar to get at them. It's neat and handy to have and it doesn't patch anything. Freeware.
A recent upgrade to the anti-virus program, which adds protection against a mutant strain of the nVIR B virus. Freeware.
Disk Wizard is an advanced disk cataloging program. It is made up of two components: a system extension (Wizard INIT) and an application (Disk Wizard). Once it is installed, Disk Wizard automatically catalogs the contents of your volumes (hard disks, floppies, CDs, SyQuests, whatever). Thus, Disk Wizard's catalog is always up-to-date, without your needing to do any scanning chores. Disk Wizard will even see through StuffIt 3.0 or Compact Pro archives if you wish. Shareware fee $10.
Another program I made because all the others like it have some features that are useful, but none have all the features in one app. This is your basic "search all files in a folder for a string" app, except it allows you to store commonly&endash;used directories. It also has a bunch of helpful options, such as the ability to search the resource fork. The main reason I wrote File Safari was to have a quick and simple utility for finding function prototypes and #defines in .h files; a program without a bunch of useless memory&endash; and disk&endash;wasting junk like fancy graphics and sounds; a program with one well&endash;defined purpose, not a do&endash;all file locator (System 7.5 already has that). Freeware.
A Sort of a Kind, a very robust drag & drop sorting utility for text files. Accent-sensitive, optionally eliminates duplicate entries, etc. Useful for any text or data processing purpose. Freeware.
Caesura cuts text files into segments at the point you specify. Useful for any text or data processing purpose. Freeware.
Cat o' Seven Tails is a drag & drop text file concatenator. Useful for any text or data processing purpose. Freeware.
ShawBerry merges two text files at the points specified by the user. An example where it might prove useful: a DOS user supplies a PRN file of a too-wide spreadsheet. The PRN file has the left half of the text at the top of the file, followed by the right half. If you split the halves into two different files, you could use ShawBerry to reassemble each line of the file. Useful for any text or data processing purpose. Freeware.
The Frog Prints is a simple drag & drop printing application. You drag & drop a batch of text files, and The Frog Prints prints each one in sequence. If you double-click on the application, and if you have text in the clipboard, The Frog Prints will print that text, saving you the launch of a WP when you just want to print some text you've copied from a non-printing application. Useful for any text or data processing purpose. Freeware.
Amanuensis copies files very quickly. That's all. Networked hacks in a hurry will make enemies in a hurry with Amanuensis, but the (no)wait may be worth it! Freeware.
BootLog is an Extension that logs each boot of the Mac it's installed on to a file called BootLog's Log of Boots. Useful as a diagnostic tool for SysAdmin types. Freeware.
This generic help server, which springs from the help facility in the famous Disinfectant program, offers on-line, context-sensitive help service to all AWOL Utilities programs (Maybe, Pictpocket, Menu Events , Menu Grabber and Virtual Desktop), and potentially others to come. Freeware.
This application picks up where Finder left off in its implementation of aliases. Maybe converts a Finder alias file to give it an additional effect. Converted aliases do more than just point to the original item . They can play a sound, open or print every item in the target folder, open some other item (document, application, folder, or whatever) first, send an Apple event to another program, or make a startup item optional, by questioning the user, or checking the state of a key. Maybe doesn¹t solve your problems directly, but it gives you the power to do a lot of things you¹ve been wanting to do. Freeware.
This system extension bridges the gap between scripting applications and the vast number of non-scriptable applications. It makes most, but not all, applications controllable through their menu commands, using program linking (Apple events). Any script, or any program equipped to send Menu events, can query and execute the menu commands of any compatible application on any Macintosh on the network. Freeware.
A fascinating illustration of the power of Menu Events, Menu Grabber lets you pick an application from any Macintosh on the network, and presents an identical copy of its menu bar on your screen (but in bright red and white-on-black, just so you realize what you might be getting into). While grabbing an application, you can pull down a menu or use a keyboard equivalent to simulate the same action on the target application. Freeware.
Here¹s a different kind of screen capture utility, great for people who need to build a lot of window pictures into their documents, but don¹t want to waste a lot of storage. PictPocket ³picks the pocket² of applications as they draw their windows, not after they have been drawn. This difference allows it to place in the Clipboard a 'PICT' which represents the actual elements drawn, rather than a bitmap (raster) image. Freeware. (This was released on the January '95 DOM, but is included here again as part of the full set of AWOL utilities.)
PowerStrip is a "passive" utility. That means it changes nothing on the system, it only reports the current state of affairs. PowerStrip can display, at your discretion, the following information: current time, current date, free RAM, free disk space (and, on PowerBooks, whether the internal disk is spinning or not), whether AppleTalk is on or off, currently selected printer, and mouse coordinates. Additionally, on PowerBooks, it can display CPU speed, whether modem is on or off, elapsed charging time or elapsed battery time, battery voltage, battery level bar graph, battery voltage history graph. Freeware.
Shrinkwrap is a very useful program which makes it easy to manipulate floppy disk images. Amongst other things it copies floppy disks to and from disk image files, and mounts such a disk image as if it were the floppy disk itself. Version 1.1.2 was released on the October '94 DOM, and the current version has many enhancements. These include the ability to create a new blank image file, the ability to convert most (if not all) known image file formats, the ability to convert all file formats that Stuffit Expander can handle, a batch processing option and the abiltiy to use disk space to store mounted images instead of RAM. Freeware.
The first and only of its kind, a virtual desktop manager for the
Macintosh that works on all types of Macs and all types of monitors.
For 160K of memory, you can have a virtual desktop as big as you
like, in full color. Excellent for PowerBooks and other Macs with the
ability to run many programs at once, but nowhere to put the windows.
Freeware.
As mentioned at our General Meeting this month, the Info-Mac Archives are moving from Stanford to M.I.T. This really has little effect on the availability of archive shareware, since we obtain it from one of the mirror sites. Again, we invite you to take a look at what shareware is available from Info-Mac or its mirrors by obtaining one of the Info-Mac summary diskettes - thousands of brief blurbs on thousands of pieces of shareware and freeware. When you see something you want, fill out the form that comes with the disk, get it back to us, and we will make up disks containing those items just for you, at the usual cost: $5 for a Hi-Density disk (plus mailing if requested).
Also, we still have copies of Upgrade 1.0 for System 7.5. It comes on 4 disks but you can have them for only $10.
To turn off Virtual memory at startup - hold down the command key. This will not turn off the extensions (with some exceptions) or rebuild the desktop (like command-option will do).
In fact, at startup you have several ways to change what happens: Hold down the shift key to disable ALL extensions and control panels. (You probably do not want to do this, except in an emergency, such as when an init conflict freezes your machine before you can remove the offending init). A better way to control startup stuff is to install Extensions Manager in your control panels (it also comes free with System 7.5) and then you can bring up this control panel at startup with the space bar. You can turn off extensions and cps (also Apple menu items, Startup items and fonts!) at this point and then continue startup. Every startup can be different!
Finally, you can rebuild your desktop, highly recommended if you
get any kind of crash or hang. Just hold down command and option
together when your last startup icon comes up. You do not have to
press them before that, you have about 5 seconds after the last icon.
An alternative is our shareware item TechTool, which you can use to
rebuild the desktop even more effectively than command-option at
startup. Oh, yes, TechTool also allows you to zap the PRAM (permanent
RAM - it contains many settings which you need to have from session
to session), another good thing to do when something serious goes
wrong with your system. You can do this at startup, by adding P and R
to command-option on startup, but TechTool allows you to save the old
PRAM info, zap the PRAM, then restore.
Louis Bookbinder (disk creation, demo, newsletter, Manager)