TidBITS#356/02-Dec-96

TidBITS#356/02-Dec-96
=====================

Are you an established or aspiring Web author? Be sure to read
Tonya's detailed review of Adobe PageMill 2.0! Also this week,
Apple confesses to a serious bug affecting some applications on
68K Macintoshes, Bare Bones Software release BBEdit Lite for
OpenDoc, and Adam explains how to get "soft-power" Macs to restart
after a power failure. And, if you don't have time to read TidBITS
each week, you can now have it read to you... on tape.

Topics:
MailBITS/02-Dec-96
TidBITS on Tape
The Power Key Mystery
Adobe Grinds Out PageMill 2.0

<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-356.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/issues/1996/TidBITS#356_02-Dec-96.etx>

Copyright 1996 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
Information: <[email protected]> Comments: <[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- <[email protected]>
Makers of hard drives, tape drives, and neat SCSI accessories.
APS price lists: <http://www.apstech.com/aps-products.html>

* Northwest Nexus -- 800/539-3505 -- <http://www.nwnexus.com/>
Professional Internet Services. <[email protected]>

* Power Computing -- 800/375-7693 -- <[email protected]>
PowerTower Pro 225 MHz - the fastest desktop system ever.
Build Your Own Box online! <http://www.powercc.com/>

* EarthLink Network -- 800/395-8425 -- <[email protected]>
Providers of direct Internet access for Macintosh users.
For eWorld refugees: no setup fee! <http://www.earthlink.net/>

* Aladdin Systems -- 408/761-6200 -- <http://www.aladdinsys.com/>
Makers of StuffIt Deluxe 4.0, the Mac compression standard, and
InstallerMaker 3.1.1, the leading installer for Mac developers.
---------------------------------------------------------------

MailBITS/02-Dec-96
------------------

**Disable the CFM-68K Runtime Enabler** -- If you use a Macintosh
with a 68K processor, Apple is recommending that you disable the
CFM-68K Runtime Enabler either by using an extensions manager or
by removing it from your System Folder. Some applications that use
the CFM-68K Runtime Enabler can crash your Macintosh, possibly
causing data loss and other problems. This problem does _not_
affect Power Macs.

<http://www.macos.apple.com/macos/cfm-68k.html>

The Code Fragment Manager (CFM) was originally developed for Power
Macs and lets Power Mac applications use shared code libraries
(trust me, they're neat). Later, Apple ported the CFM backwards to
68K machines to make it easier for developers build 68K versions
of Power Mac applications. Those 68K applications are just now
starting to appear, although plenty more are in development.

However, Apple now admits to a problem with the 68K version of
CFM, and it can't be used reliably in all cases. Though this bug
doesn't impact every program that uses CFM-68K, there's no simple
way to know which applications are affected. Programs using CFM-
68K include OpenDoc, Cyberdog, Apple Media Tool, LaserWriter 8.4
and 8.4.1, Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0b1, and the preview of
AOL 3.0. If you use any of these programs, Apple recommends you
revert to earlier versions or stop using them. If you disable the
CFM-68K enabler and try to use one of these applications, you'll
see an error, but no damage will be done. Apple is working on a
fix, but there's no public timetable for when a solution might be
available. [GD]

**BBEdit Lite for OpenDoc** -- If you've installed version 1.1 of
OpenDoc, then you might want to take note of BBEdit Lite for
OpenDoc, a freeware Live Object which includes BBEdit's basic
text-editing capabilities. Although this version of BBEdit Lite
lacks a status bar and doesn't work with all BBEdit Extensions
(see the ReadMe), it still provides useful basic text editing
services in any OpenDoc container. [GD]

<http://www.barebones.com/freeware.html>

**QuickMail Express Available** -- CE Software has released the
free Internet mail client we mentioned a few weeks ago. QuickMail
Express is a less powerful version of QuickMail Pro, their
commercial POP3 client, and both are available for Macintosh and
Windows. [MHA]

<http://www.cesoft.com/quickmail/qmexpress/>

TidBITS on Tape
---------------
by Tonya Engst <[email protected]>

TidBITS recently signed a licensing agreement with AudioMagNet, a
new company that provides the service of converting Internet texts
to audio cassette, using a 16-bit computer voice. AudioMagNet
approached us with the idea several months ago, noting that such
tapes might be appreciated by commuters and by anyone who - for
whatever reason - doesn't find it convenient (or possible) to read
text. TidBITS is AudioMagNet's first title, but the company plans
to have more soon, based in part on suggestions they receive.

<http://www.audiomagnet.qc.ca/>

AudioMagNet is selling the audio version of TidBITS at $5.00 U.S.
per cassette (one issue of TidBITS, at 30-45 minutes, fits on each
cassette). You can also subscribe to the service and receive a
small discount. Subscription prices are: $120 for 25 cassettes,
$235 for 50, $350 for 75, and $460 for 100. The cost includes the
conversion service, cassette, and shipping.

I met Sylvain Laroque, AudioMagNet's co-founder, at Boston
Macworld Expo and he told me about some of the details involved in
creating an AudioMagNet audio tape. Intrigued by his comments, I
followed up by conducting a short email interview with Sylvain and
his co-founder Chantal St-Pierre.

* [Tonya] What voice do you use in the TidBITS issues? Is it a
standard PlainTalk voice?

[Sylvain & Chantal] No, it is not standard PlainTalk. We use
Victoria, a high-quality voice which is available on the Apple
speech page.

<http://speech.apple.com/>

* [Tonya] Do you do any special editing on the files before you
record them? Are there characters or words that have to be changed
before they will record correctly?

[Sylvain & Chantal] There are approximately six hours of editing
before the actual recording phase. First, all email addresses,
phone numbers, and URLs are removed - we refer listeners to the
Internet version of TidBITS for that information. Victoria spells
out anything her internal dictionary does not recognize, which
created interesting listening material while we were testing our
product. To hear "h-t-t-p slash-slash w-w-w (pause) tidbits
(pause) com" isn't a pleasant listening experience, and for some
addresses it can be confusing. For the same reason, we remove any
configuration strings and advise the listener to consult the
Internet version of TidBITS. We also have to watch for brackets,
parentheses, and symbols like quotation marks, as Victoria either
stops and says nothing or tries to pronounce everything she sees.

The second step consists of a search and replace on all the words
we know Victoria cannot say properly, such as email, online,
Macintosh and CompuServe. We trick her into pronouncing words like
"Los Angeles" and "WYSIWYG": that well-guarded secret leads us to
the third step, where we carefully examine the issue for words we
suspect Victoria will not be able to pronounce, come up with a new
spelling to trick her, and add these new words into our search and
replace dictionary for future issues.

We also have to watch for long sentences and break them up with
commas to avoid a bunch of endless sound. We insert what we call
"forced silence," especially between paragraphs. These longer
pauses are designed to indicate changes in subject.

Lastly, we listen to the final product, work out any glitches,
time the issue, and select a custom tape to produce the master.
And then we proceed with the recording.

* [Tonya] What sound equipment do you use to create the
recordings?

[Sylvain & Chantal] Our master copy is produced on a Chrome
custom-length cassette, directly from a Mac to standard recording
equipment. It is then reproduced at high speed on an audio
cassette duplicator for the required amount of copies.

* [Tonya] What made you decide to set up AudioMagNet?

[Sylvain & Chantal] Sylvain thought about the service a long time
ago to make his life easier. Isn't necessity the mother of
invention? As a professional Mac consultant, Sylvain has to stay
informed about new products, trends, updates, bugs, problems,
solutions, etc. Reading magazines and press releases to keep
informed is a necessary evil, but for people who aren't fast
readers (or who don't enjoy reading) the task can be overwhelming.
Sylvain spends a lot of time in his car commuting: he thought that
if he could come up with a way to get the information he needed
while driving he could maximize his time. So he started recording
the information he needed, and thought if it was a good time-
management idea for him, it could be useful for anyone.

AudioMagNet -- <[email protected]>

The Power Key Mystery
---------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[email protected]>

This story starts back in July, when Geoff and I installed a Power
Macintosh 7100/66 in the offices of Point of Presence Company,
where our main Web and mail server (an Apple Workgroup Server
6150) also lives. The 7100 was destined to run StarNine's ListSTAR
and handle the entire TidBITS mailing list - and it's done
swimmingly well at that task.

But that's not the mystery.

The 7100, as you probably know, is a "soft-power" Mac - you turn
it on from the keyboard and off with Shut Down from the Special
menu. Our other server is a "hard-power" Mac that has a constant
power switch, meaning that once the power switch is on, it stays
on. These facts are important for servers, because if the power
goes out and stays out longer than an uninterruptible power supply
can withstand, the servers will shut off. The question is, what
happens when the power comes back on?

The AWS 6150, being a hard-power Mac, comes back on automatically.
The 7100, on the other hand, is a bit of a problem, because it
uses a momentary power switch: simply restoring electricity
doesn't automatically turn the machine back on. So how do you get
it to restart after the power comes back on?

Way back when soft-power Macs first appeared, Apple realized this
was a problem and solved it in an ingenious way. All soft-power
Macs have a reset switch (originally in the back, although it's on
the front of newer Macs). On older Macs with the rear-mounted
reset switch (including the IIci and the 7100) the switch is
notched, like a screw. To ensure that the Mac restarts when power
returns, you used a screwdriver to turn the switch and press it
in. Clean and simple, if not inherently obvious.

After setting everything else up, Geoff and I tried to lock the
reset switch in, to ensure the 7100 would recover from a power
outage. The only problem was that it wouldn't lock. We shut the
machine down, disconnected all the cables, pulled it off its rack,
and opened it up. Lo and behold, there was no catch inside the
case for the switch to latch into.

Being slightly more clever than your average wombat, we realized
we could hold the power switch in using a piece of a paper clip to
hold the power switch in. So, we put the case back on, stuffed it
back on the rack, reconnected all the cables, and pushed the
keyboard's power key. Nothing. With the switch in that far, the
7100 wouldn't even start up.

Out with the cables, down from the rack, off with the case, and we
removed our handiwork. We were completely stumped, and saw nothing
to do but put it all back together normally and hope the power
didn't go out for too long.

Fast forward to Macworld Expo in Boston. Apple Tech Support had a
booth there, so I stopped in and asked about this problem. The
guys there, although they sounded like they knew what they were
talking about, hadn't a clue what to do. I left feeling a little
better that we'd been stumped before.

Then, just a few days ago, the revelation came. I was poking
around Maxum's Web site for information about PageSentry 2.0,
their new monitoring tool for Internet servers (which is quite
cool), when I ran across a tech support posting noting that since
the Quadra 840AV, the switch no longer locks on soft-power Macs.

<http://www.maxum.com/PageSentry/>

Instead, it turns out, the trick is to use the Energy Saver
control panel. If you open the control panel and choose Server
Settings from the Preferences menu, you get a dialog that offers a
checkbox for "Automatically restart after a power failure."

To be fair, I haven't tried this yet on our 7100, since I'm leery
of installing things remotely, and the Energy Saver control panel
wasn't on that Mac - we probably threw it out since we didn't
think it was necessary for a headless server. But, the next time I
visit the server in person, I intend to install a copy of Energy
Saver, just in case.

In addition, since I haven't yet visited the 7100 since I learned
this fact, I'm not entirely sure how it interacts with the
PowerKey Pro from Sophisticated Circuits, an essential little
device that (among many other things) can restart crashed servers
automatically. It's definitely worth testing if you find yourself
in this situation, and one of these months I'll make it into
Seattle to visit the 7100, at which point I'll be able to test
this in person.

<http://www.sophisticated.com/>

If you're a developer writing server software, however, you don't
have to be a slave to a machine's power switch. For many Macs,
it's possible to write code to configure a machine to restart
automatically after a power failure, in much the same way as the
Energy Saver control panel.

<http://devworld.apple.com/dev/technotes/tn/tn1079.html>

Adobe Grinds Out PageMill 2.0
-----------------------------
by Tonya Engst <[email protected]>

Adobe PageMill 1.0 took the HTML world by storm when it shipped in
late 1995. At the time, unlike anything else available, PageMill
was able to generate HTML quietly while users set up Web pages in
an environment resembling a simple word processor. Despite the
ease PageMill 1.0 lent to Web authoring, PageMill users
immediately began clamoring for more features and flexibility.
PageMill 2.0 satisfies many of those requests, with a special
focus on layout and other visual concerns.

<http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemill/main.html>

Adobe's minimum requirements for PageMill 2.0 call for any
Macintosh with 8 MB total RAM (with at least 4 MB allocated to
PageMill), System 7.1, and a color monitor. The program lists for
$149, Adobe's estimated street price is $99, and the company
offers a $49 upgrade from 1.0, a $69 deal to owners of other Adobe
products, and a $79 crossgrade for owners of some competing
products.

**Exploring the Territory** -- After launching PageMill, you see
an empty document window in Edit mode, topped with a crowded,
non-customizable toolbar. There's also a special field for
entering the title of the page you'll create in the document
window. All the toolbar buttons are decidedly small, except for
the Preview button, which toggles into Preview mode, where you see
how a document will likely appear on the Web. In Preview mode, you
can also follow links to other pages stored locally.

Although Adobe added an HTML Source view, the HTML Source command
doesn't have a nice big button on the toolbar; instead it's
relegated to half-way down the Edit menu, fortunately with a
logical keyboard shortcut. In HTML Source view, you can view the
HTML behind a document, and edit it by hand. Adobe has almost
completely crippled HTML Source view for those wish to work
directly with HTML - almost all the menus and buttons for creating
a Web page are disabled.

There's an undocumented (except in the installed ReadMe file)
hierarchical menu on the Window menu called Switch to, which opens
the current PageMill document in another program (most likely a
text editor or Web browser). If you switch out
to a text editor
and modify the file, you can most quickly view the changes in
PageMill by choosing Revert to Saved from the Edit menu;
unfortunately Revert to Saved lacks a built-in shortcut.
(Generally speaking, PageMill has good keyboard shortcuts.)

A new Download Statistics dialog box shows how long a given Web
page, selected object (such as a graphic or table), or frameset
should take to download over a variety of connection speeds.

No tour of the territory would be complete without a look at the
Inspector, a floating, tabbed palette that displays panels for
modifying what's selected in the document. I like the idea of the
Inspector: it provides quick access to many frequently-used
controls. People using PowerBooks and monitors set at 640 by 480
resolution will appreciate Adobe's respect for their screen real
estate, but I wish there were an option for bumping up the size of
the Inspector (and the toolbar buttons). For instance, each
Inspector panel is topped with a tab which is just large enough to
display a tiny icon. The currently selected tab icon has a blue
circle around it; other icons usually show with a purple circle.
On my monitor, the icons appear to mutate into different shapes as
I select them, making them difficult to recognize quickly. The
Inspector also has a number of tiny pop-up menus which require
precision mousing.

I promise to stop complaining about the interface and look at some
of what PageMill does well, but first we need to explore the
"color panel," a floating palette that looks much like a box of
watercolors, with 16 tantalizingly clickable colors. Double-
clicking a color opens a color picker for changing the color,
though there's no help for using a specific palette, such as the
Netscape 216 palette, which contains colors that generally look
good in Web browsers regardless of monitor or platform.

Oddly, to apply a color you must drag it from its palette to a
selection. With the exception of this bizarre take on drag & drop,
the palette is truly useful, since it holds a customizable group
of colors, which can be quickly applied. Unexpectedly, you can
even drag colors from the color panel to Inspector pop-up menus in
order to set overall text and background colors for a page.

**Charting the Features** -- PageMill 2.0 adds more features than
I have fingers and toes. PageMill is unique in supporting some
(and perhaps most) Netscape plug-ins. This means Preview mode can
show the likes of QuickTime movies and Shockwave presentations. I
suspect more importantly from Adobe's perspective, this means
PageMill can also show PDF documents through Adobe's Acrobat
plug-in.

**Tabling your Data** -- PageMill has terrific tables by today's
standards for an HTML editor, although they're not bad by any
standard. A freshly inserted PageMill table stretches the full
width of the PageMill window, with each column consuming an equal
share of the width. I prefer this approach that taken by Netscape
Navigator Gold and AOLpress, which present new tables as skinny
grids with cells only wide enough for a few characters. If you use
the grid to arrange elements on a page, you'll probably prefer
PageMill's full-width approach.

Don't like the width or height of a cell? Want the table to change
overall size? PageMill handles these concerns with panache through
drag & drop options for adjusting column width, cell height, and
overall table size. For more precise control, you select an
element of interest and then format it via the Inspector, though
casual tourists in PageMill land will need to check their manuals
in order to become proficient at selecting table parts.

It's easy to select multiple contiguous cells and apply table
formats to them, like converting them to table-header cells or
changing alignment. Unfortunately, there's no way to batch select
and format text within cells, so if you want all cells in a given
row to have red text or to be unordered lists, you must select and
format each cell individually.

The table buttons on the toolbar provide one-click access for
setting up cells to span more than one row or column and for
adding or deleting selected rows or columns. You can even add and
delete multiple rows or columns at once.

Tables need content, and PageMill only takes baby steps in that
direction. Data entry aficionados will be pleased to note that
pressing Tab within a table cell advances the insertion point to
the next cell. Although you can't paste an Excel spreadsheet into
an existing PageMill table, you can (according to the manual, I
didn't test this personally) paste a spreadsheet into PageMill,
and PageMill will convert it into a table (apparently, however,
much of any formatting is lost). Although you can paste in tab-
delimited text, PageMill does nothing special to help you
incorporate it into a table.

**Divide and Conquer** -- PageMill brings a great deal of
ammunition to the HTML editor feature war, and Adobe perceives
frames to be an important part of PageMill's arsenal. An Option-
drag on the edge of a normal document in Edit mode turns the page
into a "frameset" containing two frames. There's also a pair of
menu commands for dividing page areas into frames, and you can
create multiple and nested frames using the menus or Option and
Command-Option-drag routines. To delete a frame, you drag one edge
a tiny bit over the other edge. Once a frame is set up, you
configure it with the Inspector, and then add content just as you
would to any normal Web page. You may also insert a previously-
created Web page, and though PageMill isn't perfect, it does a
reasonably good job at importing HTML documents created from other
sources.

If you create a link within a framed page, it's important to
indicate in which frame the link destination should appear, or to
have the destination appear in a new window. PageMill helps you
accomplish this through a mechanism wherein you triple-click an
established link, and then bring up a menu (it can either pop up
directly from the link, or from the red target icon at the lower
right of the document window). This menu shows a thumbnail view of
the frameset, and you can quickly choose any frame, or choose
textual options, such as "new window" or "same frame."

In Preview mode, you can follow links you've set up and display
different pages in the frameset. When you switch back to Edit
mode, the pages that were displaying in Preview mode can be
edited.

**Graphical Gyrations** -- As was the case with version 1.0,
PageMill 2.0 can import a PICT image and automatically convert it
into a GIF, though in this version you can optionally name the
converted images yourself. As you would expect, PageMill also
imports GIF and JPEG images. Images may be resized visually by
dragging their selection handles, or you can use the Inspector to
enter precise measurements, complete with options for changing the
size proportionally. You also use the Inspector to enter alternate
text (text displayed in place of the image for those browsing the
Web sans graphics) and to set a border.

You take a trip to the toolbar in order to align an image within
its line of text, or to wrap text left and right of an image.
Wrapped text displays properly, a feature lacking in several
PageMill competitors.

A background image (an image that tiles on the background of a Web
page) is easy to set up, and displays in Edit and Preview mode.

Double-clicking an inserted graphic doesn't open it in PageMill's
Image window, but alert PageMillers will realize that it changes
the table buttons on the toolbar into buttons for making client-
side image maps. To make a server-side map you must Command-click
the graphic, which opens it in the Image window. In either case,
hot spots can be round, rectangular, or irregularly shaped, and
it's easy to create links and shuffle layers. The Image window has
options for zooming and creating a transparency or adding
interlacing, along with tools for creating server-side maps.

**Red Tape** -- PageMill still makes no effort to help with
creating CGIs, programs that can receive and process form data,
and the 2.0 version still only permits one form per page. PageMill
does help with creating a form interface, complete with more
exotic elements like hidden fields and graphics that act as Submit
buttons. To alter an element's basic attributes, you click it once
and then use the Inspector. To type into an element (for instance,
to change the wording of a Submit button), you must first double-
click the element.

**Content Anyone?** PageMill, with its tables, frames, graphics,
and support for form interfaces, makes it easy to lay out a page.
You can't drag & drop items anywhere you like, as you would in a
desktop publishing program, but you can arrange them within a
table grid. Those interested in placing lengthy or sophisticated
text-based content on the Web, though, will need to create content
elsewhere.

PageMill has no macros and supports only core Apple Events, so
there's little opportunity for using PageMill in a situation where
pages must be mass-produced with data from other applications,
such as a database.

The find and replace feature is too simplistic for even a light
wildcard search, though it does implement whole word searching and
wrapping, features that are surprisingly rare among PageMill's
competition. The find and replace has one unusual feature: it can
be restricted to act solely within tables and forms.

PageMill's spelling checker is only for final checks. The
checker's Ignore button would be more aptly labeled "Skip," though
there is an Ignore All button which at least skips all instances
of a word through one spelling check. The documentation for the
spelling checker is so vague as to be useless to all but the most
uninitiated of users. The manual makes no mention of how to use
user dictionaries from other programs or how one might create a
dictionary from a text file.

PageMill has middling support for standard editing conventions.
The program doesn't intelligently insert and delete spaces if you
drag & drop a word to a new location in the document, and it lacks
keyboard shortcuts for moving the cursor from word to word or to
the end of a line. Still, PageMill knows that a double-click
selects a word, and that if you double-click and drag to extend
the selection, the selection should advance by word.

**Evaluation** -- When examining the wheat of PageMill's many
excellent layout features, it's easy to forget the chaff of its
interface, which I find rather cumbersome. The interface elements
are too small, and I don't use PageMill often enough to memorize
all the special Command- and Option-clicks necessary to make it
hum along nicely. Although I wish PageMill had more adequate
writing tools, I can live with Adobe's decision to focus on
layout. Given Adobe's visual emphasis, I am disappointed that they
did not implement style sheets. Adobe may have been waiting for
HTML standards for style sheets to shake out a bit more, but in
the meantime, simple styling options would help PageMill stand out
from its competition, and make it a must for some Web designers

If you design Web pages professionally, PageMill 2.0 is an
excellent choice, particularly for heavy-duty functionality in
tables and frames. For occasional Web authors, PageMill is still a
good choice, particularly if you aren't much interested in
learning HTML. The Jan-97 issue of MacUser has an article I wrote
(in September) comparing PageMill and its then-shipping
competition.

<http://www.zdnet.com/macuser/mu_0197/features/pagebuilders/wysiwyg.html>

PageMill faces competition from two fronts. For casual Web
authors, Claris Home Page 2.0 (scheduled to ship in December)
stands out as a program to watch. On the professional front,
programs like NetObjects Fusion will certainly turn some heads.
Fusion has been shipping for Windows 3.1, 95, and NT for several
months now, and a Power Macintosh version is currently in public
beta (a 14 MB download).

<http://www.claris.com/products/claris/clarispage20/clarispage20.html>
<http://www.netobjects.com/>

Cyberian Outpost is offering a $4 discount to TidBITS readers who
purchase PageMill through this URL:

<http://www.tidbits.com/products/page-mill.html>

Adobe Systems -- 800/411-8657 -- 408/536-6000

$$

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