Nov 94 Newsbits
Volume Number: 10
Issue Number: 11
Column Tag: Newsbits
By Scott T Boyd, Editor
OpenDoc Gets a Shot In The Arm
Adobe Systems agreed to join CILabs, the vendor-neutral association promoting
OpenDoc. Adobe will provide financial support to the non-profit organization. In
addition to incorporating OpenDoc technology into their applications, Adobe will also
develop OpenDoc parts for their major video and graphics applications, allowing
display and printing of documents in the content formats of Illustrator, Photoshop, and
Premiere. Adobe’s full sponsorship follows closely on the heels of Lotus
Development’s joining CILabs in August.
Get Thee To the Internet
Kaleidospace, a commercial Internet site for the promotion and distribution of
independent art is asking for contributions to online collaborative work by famous
artists. Internet users can add to stories, graphic novels, music and even videos started
by the celebrity artists. Kaleidospace also promotes, distributes, and sells works by
independent artists, musicians, writers, performers, animators, filmmakers,
CD-ROM authors and software developers.
Kaleidospace, http://kspace.com, PO Box 341556, Los Angeles, CA 90034.
(310) 399-4349 voice, (310) 396-5489 fax, editors@kspace.com.
PPCCode Tracer
Posted to macgifts@mac.archive.umich.edu, a first release of Peter J. Creath’s
Janus (0.1). Think of this as the PPC native equivalent of the ResEdit CODE editor. In
layman’s terms, Janus is a fat binary which lets you find the PowerPC native code
corresponding to 680x0 code. Now you can patch your favorite native games to give
yourself infinite ammo and lives too! NOTE: This is not for the faint of heart. If you
can figure out the 680x0 patches on your own, this is for you. If not, find somebody
who can.
Peter can be reached at pjcreath@phoenix.princeton.edu.
Recommended Reading
The UNIX-Haters Handbook, by Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise & Steven
Strassmann IDG Books, $16.95, ISBN 1-56884-203-1 with foreword by Donald
Norman, Apple Computer, and anti-foreword by Dennis Ritchie, AT&T. Comes
recommended by a number of our readers.
Put Congress In Your Pocket
Now available: the 103rd Congress, a book for the Newton. The 103rd Congress
directory lists all members of the United States House of Representatives and Senate.
Included is the member’s phone number, fax number, mailing address in Washington
DC, and committee assignments.
$25.00. Iverson Software Co., P. O. Box 3, Rice Lake WI 54868-0003. For
more info, call Jeff Iverson at (715) 236-7918.
Add Spellchecking To Your App
SpellWright is a new royalty free spellchecking toolkit from LexTek Int’l.
designed for applications which don’t presently have spellchecking capabilities and as a
replacement for spellcheckers which either have expensive licensing fees or are
hampered by poor performance.
SpellWright supports five different languages: American English, British
English, Dutch, French, and Spanish. Supplemental dictionaries cover Legal, Medical,
Names, Pharmaceutical, Post Offices, Religion, and Science. SpellWright provides
accurate suggestions, checks for capitalization errors, double word errors, or look up
words by pattern.
For more information, contact LexTek International at 2255 N. University
Parkway, Suite 15, Provo, UT 84604. (801) 375-8332 voice, (801) 377-7654
fax.
New ScriptGen
StepUp Software today announced that it is shipping ScriptGen Pro 2.0, which
adds support for Apple’s new Installer 4.0, boasts speed increases over 400%, and
adds developer hooks for customization. Installer action atoms, setup functions, and
rules can be ‘plugged’ into any script.
ScriptGen Pro 2.0 supports the Installer’s new ‘application folder interface’
which allows users to select where application files are installed. Hierarchical views
of custom packages are now supported. Easy Install rules - including System 6 versus
System 7 and gestalt tests - are new to version 2.0. Folders can be installed,
eliminating the need to provide script information for every file included in the
installation.
ScriptGen Pro version 2.0, reengineered for speed, generates scripts greater
than 400% faster than previous versions. Typical 2.0 documents require less than
one-third the disk space of earlier versions. ScriptGen Pro supports decompression of
Stuffit, Diamond, and Compact Pro format archives, with additional software.
$169. Upgrades $49 Canada/US, $59 elsewhere. Free demo is available on
AppleLink (Third Party Demos:Developer Tools), CompuServe (MACDEV), America
Online (MDV), and e-World (Straight to the Source:Info Samples:StepUp Software).